Train Tracks into Uncharted Territory

[Estella Cijan]

Estella stared at him, not sure why she was beginning to get motre angry at him. Why could he do that? No-one was meant to see her when she was invisible. As she became angry, it began to rain outside, even though it had been a nice day until then.
"Really?" She asked, and turned invisible. "What about now? Now? Now?" She said, each time disappearing and reappearing. Finally she stopped, and relised that people were looking around at her. Lena kicked her leg under the table, and gave her bad look.
She looked at Guy, and then away, out the window at the weather she had caused. A few minutes later she glanced back, to see if the woman with the food cart was near them, and it looked like it was in the carriage behind them.

[guy]

He wondered if that was a rhetorical question.
"I can only see you like that when my X-Ray Vision is turned on," he said finally. "I can keep it off if you want."
She'd be able to tell if he had it on anyway. 'UV'-coloured eyes were hard to miss. Most human eyes came in the two categories 'blue' and 'brown', and everything else ranged somewhere in between. Guy's eyes were a particularly black shade of brown.
Estella's eyes were different, of course- that odd blue-grey shade.
Again, he found himself wondering if this mean that she was pretty, or not. He'd heard that the human female ideal was blond with blue eyes, but he'd seen hardly anyone blond yet. Most girls seemed to have brown hair.
Maybe that's why males liked blondes. Because they were rare.
Well, he liked the way Estella looked, anyhow.
"Do you... want me to keep it off?" he prompted her again.

[Estella Cijan]

Estella didn't answer him, just stared forward. Finally she heard the woman that she had been talking to moment before.
"There you are, now you can buy something." She said, in a bored tone. Estella looked at what she was selling, sandwiches, fruit, drinks. Lena looked at everying and asked for a packet of the crips, and a tin of Coka-Cola. Estella waited until her sister paid, and then asked for an apple. Her old coach had told her that she needed to keep her weight down for a competition that was coming soon. She then asked for a bottle of water, and paid.
"Is that all?" Thw woman asked the two of them, but Estella and Lena turned around to look at Guy, waiting for him to get something.

[guy]

"Er..."
What did that shiny packet that Magdalena bought contain, anyway? It had made the strangest of crackling noises; like there was a special kind of magic inside. He recognised the fruits easily enough; you could get most of them in the markets of Africa. He'd robbed a banana plantation once only to discover that bananas tasted horrible- so sweet it felt like his whole tongue was going to shrivel up and drop off. And for a whole week afterwards he'd gone around imagining the taste was still there, on the tip of his tongue. Every fresh piece of meat he got his claws into it stank of the unbearable fruit, and he couldn't eat any of it. The weight had dropped off him in pounds.
What was that shiny cylinder? He could swear he'd heard some kind of liquid sloshing about in there. And was that chocolate in that purple paper? He'd always heard of it, but he'd never tried it before. Someone had told him their wife was addicted to it, and Guy, not wanting to take any unecessary risks, had never touched the stuff as a result.
He liked the look of those sandwiches, though. An old classmate from Manse-Waters had brought some in before, and let Guy have them, because they'd contained lamb, and the boy didn't like lamb.
Guy had enjoyed the sandwich- even if it was a little... cold.
"I'll have a sandwich, please," he said, checking the price.
"What kind?"
"The sandwich kind," Guy frowned.
The woman rolled her eyes. "Har-de-har-har-har. What kind? Chicken, egg salad, or tuna?"
"Er... chicken. Please," Guy added as an afterthought.
She picked up one and tossed it at him. "That's three fifty."
Guy handed over his four gold coins, for which she exchanged a larger, silver hectogon.
He examined it keenly as she moved on down into the next compartment.
"It's got a woman and a lion on it," Guy told Estella. "What does that mean?"

[Estella Cijan]

Estella rolled her eyes, not answering Guy's question for a few minutes. Finally she turned her body around, slightly, to be able to see him from the corner of her eye.
"I do not know what that means. I do not know the history of the British currency." She said coldly, taking a bite from her apple. She tried to ignore Guy, Lena, everyone else, and tried to just listen to her own thoughts, but it's hard. Yes, she can hear her self think, but she can't do it with out a train carriage full of mumbles of people around her. And anyway, no-one was thinking anything really good.
She began to think about the new school again, and the worries that she thought she had pushed away started to come back again. Becoming agitated at her own thoughts, she began to nervously picking at her bracelet that she had since she was small. It was a present from her father, who got it for her when he was on a business trip to France.
Finally, she set her hands on the table in front of her, and turned around to Guy.
"If you don't mind me asking, but why do you not understand all of this? I know that you're from another country, but you don't seem to be accustomed to...normal life. Sorry if you don't want me asking, but I just want to know." She said, becoming quite shocked that she had asked someone that. Also, she didn't know if she was doing it in spite, or if she felt sorry for him.

[guy]

ooc: The summer makes me tardy...

Guy felt very hot, very suddenly. That was unexpected. He knew he was... hazy... about most things. He knew he was inexperienced, and he knew it would be obvious... Still, he hadn't realised it was quite so bad.
"I... think you must have made some mistake."
Dad had told him to avoid the truth- at least at first. Better not to mark yourself as an outsider. Wait until you've fitted in; wait until you're settled; even then wait to be as sure as you can that everything's safer than safe can be.
"Imagine; to them, you are a new tribesmember. You're a creature new to their ways and customs. An outsider- you remember when Frea first came to the tribe? Remember how hard it is at first it was to trust her. Trust is something that must be earned, yes?"
"Yes."
"And it's a prize worth winning."
"Yes."
"For now look at Frea! Happy... with children, and a mate."
"Yes."
"And you remember how she did it; she kept her nose down; she kept appearances up. We know her now; we accept her flaws- but d'you think we would've been so accepting of her at first if she'd come to us as a stranger sort of stranger than she was?"
"No."
"Do you understand me, Guy?"
"Yes."
"Do you?"
A long pause. "Yes. I do."
"I have... trouble, you see," he cleared his throat, "it's shyness. I'm sorry. I'm shy around new people. It makes me... awkward."
Yes. An awkward adolescent, shy in the presence of a new, pretty girl. It seemed perfectly understandable.
"I don't mean to be."

[Estella Cijan]

Estella frowned slightly, not entirely happy with his answer, there was still something he wasn't telling her, but she didn't want to pry any longer. She'd find out sometime, anyway. She didn't want to listen to his mind anymore, so she focused on a boy who was sitting in the seat infront of Guy. He was thinking about a girl called Megan, who he had seen the day before last, and he was replaying this meeting over and over again, adding in his own commentary.
"Estella."
Estella heard her name being called, but she didn't look up at her sister.
"Estella." This time Lena actually said it, making Estella repond.
"Can you make it stop raining possibly? We'll be there in around...39 minutes." She said, smiling a little, glancing out the window at the rain. Estella rolled her eyes and laughed a bit, feeling herself ease the rain out doors a bit, and then clear the clouds slightly, not trying to go from one extreme to another.
"There." She said, very quietly. She looked around, feeling Lena go back to her own thoughts. She stayed silent for a few minutes, watching the world outside the train rush by. Not too long to go, now, apparently.
"Have you ever been to Cardsdale, the, eh.." She started saying, turning her head to the boy again, but forgetting the word. She paused, and remembered the word aagin. "The village, the village by the school, have, you ever been there?" She asked, mainly becuase she wanted to know if they had a gym that she could train at.

[guy]

"I... no, I haven't," Guy wondered at the idea.
He remembered the hot, bustling little African villages he'd visited- far out, remote places, where the colours had blinded him time and time again. Market stalls had huddled close together in suspicious bunches; their owners calling back and forth in rough, mysterious tongues. Dirt tracks wove a path between the stalls; and from every corner livestock swatted flies with their tails and had bayed insistantly, not really aware no-one was paying them any heed. Guy had always been called to, and yelled at with particular insistance by the market stall owners. He was white, and to them, a white man in Africa meant only one thing- wealth. Guy had never anything to offer in terms of his supposed wealth- the goblins only brought him things to trade. They were pleasent folk- the ones he traded with, anyway. They were fair, and friendly, and quite a lot spoke English, too.
Guy thought he might like to see the village market.
"Have you?" he asked Estella, keen to learn more about this added bonus of the school.

[Estella Cijan]

"No, I haven't yet. The only places that I've been to, I only went there becuase of Gymnastic Competitions. I was part of a team back home, and we went to places like Berlin and Madrid, which was a lot of fun." She said looking over at her sister, who was staring out the window, not listening to Estella speak. She was letting her mind wander, so Estella found it harder to listen to her thoughts, but she just got flashes of being back at the train station with their parents.
She thought about this memory, not through her sister's eyes, but from her own. She hadn't thought about it yet - she was going away from them, into normal school, with lots and lots of other people. She would be staying in a room with strangers, and she wouldn't be seeing her parents for a while. She felt her self start to feel weak, and she was beginning to fade, if she didn't watch it, she would make herself completely invisible. She tried to push her own thoughts out of her mind, wanting to talk some more, so she wouldn't have to linger on her worries.
"What year are you going into?" She asked, leaning over a bit to look down the carriage. She needed practise talking about normal school, since the different age groups were split into different years. Also apparently they taught differently, than Estella was used to. Her parents had explained to them that it wasn't so much of a discussion with the teacher, but the students had to sit and stay quiet, and just listen to what the teacher was telling them. She needed to get used to this.

[guy]

Thank goodness for Manse-Waters.
The school year system was somewhere that- at least- his knowledge was not gapped.
“I’m going into my final year at school,” Guy smiled, “at least, I should be. I may actually be going into my penultimate year instead, to give me some extra time, because there’s lots I don’t know about this war, and I want to… learn.”
It wasn’t just that. Why would someone go to a place so wonderful as Orchid Hill- for Orchid Hill did sound truly wonderful- just to leave again after a brief 10-month stint? No, Guy wasn’t willing to do that. They’d have to drag him out kicking and screaming.
He was going to make sure he enjoyed this experience.
“What year will you be going into?”
He could only hazard a guess at her age, which… well, was difficult. He had only ever known human male adolescents- himself included- and he knew that human males and females aged at different rates and in different ways.
Still… if he had to guess… he’d say she looked between 15 - 17.
It was her eyes. Those weren’t the eyes of a child. He didn’t know how he knew this… but… he did.
But he had no way of confirming this.
Other than asking her, of course.

[Estella Cijan]

Estella nodded, thinking. When her parents were talking to one of the teachers at the school, they had been told that she should be going into the sixth year of the school, depending on her age, but since she wasn't taught in a normal school, she could be more advanced than the other people her age in some subjects, but less in others.
"I, eh, think I would be going into the second last year. According to my age." She said, looking out the window. They occasionally passed a farm, but apart from that, there wasn't much life outside. "I've never been in an actual farm. It would be very nice, with the animals, wouldn't it?" She asked, thinking about it.
Estella, what the heck are you talking about? She heard the internal voice of her sister. Estella rolled her head to look at Lena.
"But wouldn't it be nice? They would have horses, um...sheep..." She told her sister. Lena turned to look at Guy and rolled her eyes.
"Apologies about my sister, she can be very silly sometimes." Lena said, making Estella raise her eyebrows.
"Me?! Lena, you don't realise your silliness, until someone else has to hear it as well, all the time." She said, smiling. "Do you have any siblings?" She asked, wanting to know more about the boy's family, to see if she could find out about him, without having to treck through his mind herself.

[guy]

What was a farm- ?
"Me?! Lena, you don't realise your silliness, until someone else has to hear it as well, all the time." All of a sudden, Estella smiled.
The smile shocked him, it had happened so quickly. It wasn't like one of those polite smiles she offered him every so often- it was a real, genuine smile. It was a smile for Magdelena, wasn't it? A proper smile.
It was really beautiful.
And it didn't make any sense, really. All Megdelena and Estella had really done so far was fight a bit. Why would they smile? What was so funny about fighting?
Guy was beginning to feel the horrible, horrible sensation of not knowing something. Of not understanding.
And usually, about humans, and stuff, that was sort of okay. He could deal with it for a while. But not this.
It just didn't make sense...
"Do you have any siblings?"
No. Not unless Leroc counted.
"No," Guy said softly, "I... no. I'm an only child."

[Estella Cijan]

Estella glared at Guy, wanting to slap him. Was he lying to her? When she asked him the question, his mind immediatly thought of someone, but he answered her completely differently. Wel, maybe there was a lot that he didn't want people knowing. She stared at him into his eyes, and then turned her back on him, looking out the window.
"We'll be there soon." she said, not sure who to. Lena smiled, not sure of what had happened to make Estella angry, but she knew that the boy most have thought of something, becuase his answer to her question seemed perfectly reasonable.
"You wouldn't know." Estella said to her sister quietly. "How much longer?" She asked, looking up the sky, a the clouds that rushed by.
"About 30 minutes." Her sister answered, bending her neck, to stare at the celeing.
Estella stared at the clouds, making them change shape, causing the wind to pick up slightly, then them clamed it down a bit.
"About 30 minutes." Estella repeated her sister, she said, turning to stare blankly at the empty seat beside her sister.

[guy]

Smile was gone now.
Guy looked back down at the little table in front of him. He'd offended her, right? Maybe it was the sibling thing. Maybe if you didn't have siblings, it was seen as some kinda flaw- a disadvantage- maybe it made you a freak. Most people had siblings at Manse-Waters, but there were others like Guy.
Maybe Estella just came from a place where it made you a freak.
Different people; different society; different rules.
He had to remember this.
"About 30 minutes."
He jumped, looking round at Estella. Was that addressed to him? But it couldn't be.
Neither sister was looking at him.
That had to be rude.
He knew this much; that had to be rude.
"Right," he answered, resolving to be rude as well. "Okay."

[Estella Cijan]

Estella stared out the window, ignoring the comments of the boy across from her. She didn't like people lying to her, and it wasn't hard to do that with someone who could read minds. She stared out the window in silence, and realised that she had a book in her bag. She picked up her satchel that sat under the table. She rummaged through it, ingoring the interest that was being expressed by her sister, and brought out a copy of Animal Farm, in Portugese. She thrumbed her way through the pages, finally getting to the spot that she had left it at.
She turned her body to the window, and brought her legs up onto the seat. She read a couple of pages, but finally had to look up, with her sister calling her name mentally, over and over again.
"What?" She asked, glaring at the young face of Lena.
"Whatcha reading?" She asked quietly.
"Animal Farm." Estella replied, turning invisible, so her sister would realise that she didn't want to be talked to. Lena didn't like it when Estella turned invisible, but she would soon forget about her, and get back to her own thoughts.
She reached the end of the chapter, and set down her book on the table, making in reappear when it left her touch. She looked at her sister for a while, who still looked a bit angry. Estella became visible again, and tiltedher head, trying to catch Lena's eye.
"Are you okay?" She finally asked. Lena looked up, and nodded, but looked out the window again. Estella went invisible again, and turned herself towards the window aswell. Occasionally she listened to Guy's thoughts, to see if he was still deciding to be rude to them.