Fall in May

~2~ Mayhem

...it's not even funny. Or is it?

Because she is not crying, exactly?

I think she might actually be ...laughing ...at me?

"Okay yeah, I suppose that would tend to explain a lot of my more questionable fashion choices, huh?" Her wicked smirk returns with a vengeance.

"So what was it that gave me away? Was it my sparkling personality? Or these uber cool blackout shades that I'm forever rocking? Or... I don't know ...something slightly more subtle?" She the wiggle'waves the long white stick in her hand. "Like maybe the big white tap-tap stick in my hand?"

"I'm seriously sorry, I swear I didn't know you were... you know?" I stagger searching for words that will make this all good and find nothing.

"So I know what now?" She tilts her head back and stares down at me thru her nightshades. "Oh, so you're sorry that I'm blazing blind? Or you're just sorry that you didn't know I was blazing blind before you came all the way down here to pick a fight for a blazing blind girl's honor? When you could have just kept zoning out up there at the top of the bleachers, or whatever you were doing?"

"Ah...neither?" I falter searching for some better words, any words at all that will make this cool. "I'm sorry, that I didn't realize that you were ...whatever? Before I opened my stupid mouth and said, 'Oh Holy Hell, you're blazing blind'. Like maybe you needed someone to point this out to you, just in case you forgot?"

"Hmmm, an oddly decent answer." She slowly rocks back and forth. "So you're almost quick on your feet for a tough guy. Which means you're probably not as slow as you sound, Mr. Nobody."

"Ah ...thanks? I think?" I reply cautiously, still trying to buy time to regain my balance back.

"So does Mr. Nobody have any other names? Like maybe those one might find on ...oh let's see ...two official pieces of identification?"  

"Dare...ren Dean?" I stumble through my own name like a mental patient.

"Well greetings and salutations, Dare'ren Dean. As you might have heard earlier they call me Batgirl." She intones huskily, and then burst out a low chortle. But when I don't reciprocate in kind she quickly slows her roll. "And I'm the only one laughing at my own joke ...yet again."

"Welcome to my world," I grumble under my breath because this whole scene with the Strange Girl has gone seriously sideways on me.

"Okay, let's try this again. I'm Maybe Grimm." She cautiously extends her left hand out to me at an oblique angle to shake. "Not Maybe, like in a possible probability, but...May...Bee. Two words, like the month and the buzzing bug that stings."

"Nice to meet you, May...Bee?" I repeat cautiously. I uncurl my fist from the socket and hesitantly take her slender hand in mine, which she instantly clasps tightly as if her life depended on it.

My first tactile impression of her hand is like everything else about this girl, a study in strange. While her elfinine hand is small and slight, there is a tensile strength to it. Albeit, with some rough calluses in odd places that one wouldn't expect to feel from a typical girl's hand. I can only assume that the thick calluses around the webbing between her thumb and index finger are from swinging her Shaolin walking stick around. But the spider web of scars I see skittering across her knuckles and over the back of her hands remain a mystery to me.

I hesitantly try to break the contact with her, not wishing to be any more insensitive than I have already been with all my "wait and see" comments. But then she does something strange, she catches my fingers with both her hands and leans down and slowly breaths over my skin. She doesn't sniff or smell at me, but rather slowly inhales the air over my hand, like perfume.