No way. No f*cking way. It couldn't be.
And yet, there they were, in their golden-tinted glory, draped in the red cloaks from Scevola. Although, the golden tint seemed to be a base, coloured with brown low lights. Seems like I wasn't the only one to use glamour back then. Oryn still had the lighter shading. Currently, they were deeply engrossed in a conversation with Opal and Courtney, who seemed to be trying to convince the four boys that Lyllah had broken a school rule.
"It's true, Lila was spotted out of her quarters last night!" Courtney was still determined to mess up Lyllah's name.
"And she should be right around here, your highness." At least Opal was still maintaining her graceful image. Wait. Your high-
Trying to retain her balance, Czarynah missed Al's reply. Not that it would have mattered, as she had placed all her weight on the wrong branch, slipping off sideways and cutting off the rest of his sentence. Shi-
"What was that?" Humans! At least let me finish my thoughts!
"It's Sabrina, Lyllah's sidekick!" Still stuck in that awkward position, Czarynah manoeuvred herself to land gracefully, or at least neatly. It worked, but now brushing the leaves out of her hair, she still needed to get Lyllah down. There's no point in leaving her there since Czarynah had already blown their cover.
Leaping up once more, she came back down after snatching Lyllah off the thick branch. Carefully setting down the taller girl, Czarynah grew aware of the thick silence. So she turned to the four dudes to introduce herself, prompting Lyllah to greet them too.
"Excuse my careless blunder. Czarynah Nahmayhn." She bowed since she didn't want to curtsy with her new uniform swap. Lyllah just curtsied without a word, so Czarynah guessed that maybe she knew them already.
Meanwhile, Al was just standing there, his taped-on patient smile flapping loose in the wind while Oryn pinched himself (a trick he learned from Czarynah to wake himself up from nightmares or weird dreams). The other boys, one blue-haired and one white-blonde, were just looking between the three, trying to figure out how the two guys that liked to avoid girls like shadows from the sun came to be acquainted with (what they thought was) such a feminine boy.
"Do you guys know each other o-"
"Ah-Fei!?" Ah. My alias. After telling Oryn that story, she gave him her former name Yifei Zhao shortened down to a nickname - Ah-Fei. Al heard it from Oryn afterwards.
"Yup, the one and only." She scoffed, despite her blank-eyed look.
At this Al promptly burst out laughing. The pale boy with amber eyes raised an eyebrow at the ten-year-old prince. This was odd, he'd never mentioned any 'Ah-Fei'.
"By the way, did you get into trouble already?" What?
"What d'ya mean?"
"Bandaged hand." Oh!
Czarynah hastily explained. "No, that's from my Guzheng, since I forgot to check the strings that night and they snapped because of the strain during the musical instruments lesson." She was going to play dumb, just for now.
But if Al's reaction can be called strange, Oryn would be a truly unpredictable character. He had tears streaming down his face, his hands over his mouth, trying to stop any sound, but he had to uncover his mouth to speak anyway. The words "I missed you" and "I thought I'd never see you again" were so blurred that it took the rest of the gathering a few seconds to penetrate.
Laughing gently, the nine-year-old in trousers pulled the crying boy into a warm bear hug, despite him being a third of a head taller than herself. The two strange boys, stunned at the little reunion, finally realized Czarynah's gender, seeing how much more feminine she was compared to even lithe Oryn.
At very best, she could be judged gender-neutral with her trousers balancing out her rather youthful face. Not too pretty, but not ugly either.
Her face structure was clearly suited for very light hair colour, not the suspiciously matted dark brown that she currently bore. These observations were noted down by the bluenette boy, while the pale boy was busy gaping along with Opal and Courtney. Al just smiled with an unfamiliar glint in his eyes.
"How about we get inside first, to settle down a bit?"
Yeah, I keep forgetting how young we still are, since we're acting like angsty teens already.
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In the end, Courtney grew so annoyed at the attention the boys were showing Lyllah and Czarynah that the lolita just stomped off, while the brunette swept much more gracefully after her. The boys didn't give them a second glance; it was Czarynah that looked on worriedly at their distancing backs, gone around a corner.
Al cleared his throat. "Pardon my forgetfulness." He gestured to the albino dude from Rotwald. "This here is prince Charon of Xardestan." The boy in green nodded politely at the two remaining girls. The other strange boy, however, sprang up in Czarynah's face, since he hadn't seen her before on campus.
"Hey, I'm Xeb!" Xeb in royal blue helpfully volunteered. Oryn sighed while Al smiled endearingly and Charon face-palmed. Even Lyllah's eye twitched.
"I'm guessing Prince Xeberys of Yjndien." The copper-skinned boy smiled, confirming her jab in the dark. He reminded her a little of her father or maybe Lyllah, with his darker skin tone. A little mysterious, if I say so myself. And how are Al and Oryn friends with royals again?
Charon's muffled voice rang out. "Albert, Rynfus, why haven't you mentioned this 'Ah-Fei' even once in the so many dozen times we have met?"
Al started explaining the story of how the two boys came to be acquainted (until just a week or so ago) with 'little Ah-Fei', a young girl only comfortable in boy's clothing. Oryn uncovered the mystery of their first meeting, but Czarynah stopped him from telling the story - that would take too long.
And just in time, the uncanny melody swept across the school grounds, pushing the six onto their feet and towards their next lesson.
Saved by the bell.
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Having waved a quick goodbye to the four ten-year-olds, Lyllah dragged Czarynah to the dreaded lesson: art. It wasn't that she didn't like it, or that she was bad at it, it was just that that bastard was there, and she didn't want him to ruin her reunion-induced good mood.
But of course, Czarynah couldn't miss the class, and she arrived in line a short two minutes later she was standing in line to the door. Inside, the marble classroom wasn't actually that bad. There was a warm, ivory coloured atmosphere hovering around, but that was broken when she spotted Courtney and Martin sitting in one corner, quietly drawing on a canvas with their collection of friends.
It was strange, seeing the two without negative light in their eyes, just sitting there like normal people. But it turns out, even bullies have lives.
So Czarynah decided to distract Lyllah by reminding her that she was new to this class, and therefore needed assistance. Lyllah's reply was slightly troubling, though.
"You haven't lived. Let's go." And she promptly dragged the girl in boy's uniform towards a duo of blank canvases, seemingly waiting for them. After a minute or so of explaining, Czarynah waddled off to find some materials, while Lyllah prepped the brushes and checked the canvas stands. Sabotage exists, after all.
And despite all her earlier worries, that bastard's brief flash of long, dark hair was nowhere to be recognized.
Since they were painting landscapes, the options were a bit limited. Lyllah ended up sketching a field of flowers, each more magnificent than the last, but Czarynah had only started on the outline of her final painting, due to her indecisive nature. She had wanted to paint movement, make the viewer seem like they were in the scene, not just observing it.
The pencil marks had first formed a raining forest, then a snow-blown mountain, then a sunny valley, then a stormy shoreline, then a gleaming underwater sea view, then ... yeah, you can see where this goes.
She ended up drawing a familiar scene from the modern world: that brief hour when the sun is just about in the corner of the world, letting some of the stars show in the darkening sky.
She'd drawn the weather in a modern setting, the sun behind a tall skyscraper, the stars waiting in its shadows. The silver-blue moon was to be on the other side of the canvas, far too shy to show its full face.
After all, who still counts the stars, when the moon shines so brightly?
Of course, right now this was just some lines on a piece of paper, and Czarynah grew slightly disappointed when the bell rang, her mind stuck on that painting. That painting clouded her mind for the rest of the day, not leaving room for any other thoughts.
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Later that night, finally collapsing into bed, she was half-asleep already. But that one thought that had been nagging her mind all day popped back up, still unfinished.
Albert? Rynfus?
But the darkness stole that away too.
