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{{The big mirror ate her. LOL!}}

((A big mirror.. ate her? I had left before she died, lol. And it's your choice, I just got my xBox set up so teehee~ It's like how the Sims is for you, Laura lol so I'm going nuts with this. biggrin D))

{{You can play the Sims on the XBox!! biggrin }}

{{And I'd prefer to be at the spring now. It'll be night then and Lin will be working on homework. I don't know what else to talk about at the dinner. lol.}}

A couple hours later, Lin and Dymetri were sitting at a wooden table that was butted up against the rocky edge of the large spring. At this section, there were quite a few tables set up for students to study at near the relaxing spring.

Lin had three books out and was cross-referencing in them. Only one book was her actual textbook. The other two were from her father's library.

"Alright, so if rose thorns can serve as good cold medicine to relieve mucus build-up, then what do you use to soften the thorns enough to become digestible?"

She was looking back and forth between the two books above her textbook.

{{lol! I wanted to add some humor. smile But in her textbook, the question is completely real. You can have Dymetri say whatever. lol!}}

Danni stared at Ophi as he spoke, and her hands slid into her pockets as they curled into fists. She shook her head when he asked if she was clingy or sensitive. No, she wasn't. She'd worked hard not to be. But when he spoke of Ialo acting as her mother, she blinked, completely blindsided.

That's not what she was doing, not at all...Was she? No, no of course not. She didn't need a mother. Mothers played on the feelings you had for them, tried to guilt you all while smiling. She didn't need a damned mother.

When Ophi asked why she didn't like Poopsie (AKA herself) she shook her head, looked at Poopsie, who was holding a conversation with his Raggedy Andy, his thumb still stuck securely in his mouth.

"Who said I didn't like him? He doesn't disgust me. He...terrifies me." That admission alone had her swallowing audibly. "He's a damned innocent. He hangs around me long, he won't stay that way. He's so trusting, so...sure I'll be there. What am I supposed to do with that, Ophi?" She asked, running a hand through her hair.

"There was a reason I buried that...sensitivity, why I don't cling. Staying that way would've broken me. I would've just kept building myself up for rejection, over and over again. And that's what I'm doing to him, damn it! Just what...Just what my parents did. I don't want to, I just...I can't give him what he needs. It's not in me, that...damn, that love you can see is in him. I survived by pushing all that away, by being hard, cold, ruthless...I can't just drag it back into me." She said, her voice pleading. She had no clue what the hell she was supposed to do. She needed help. And that, too, was a bitter pill to swallow.

Ophiuchus listened carefully to Danni. "He terrifies you, so you terrify yourself." That wasn't surprising, considering what the girl was capable of. She had knocked the wind of Satan's sails, so to speak. "Understandable."

"But you see, Danni, the fact that this child displays such love means that you have such love inside you. After all, he's you in a sense." Ophiuchus stood u slowly and put his arm around Danni's shoulder briefly. She seemed like she needed someone right now.

"If you reject Poopsie, you're rejecting yourself. If you let him down, you're letting yourself down. Don't you see, dear?"

Dear. It was a term that rarely came from Ophi's mouth to refer to another person. He used for Ialo, on occasion, and for Lin sometimes. "You must be yourself, as unhelpful as it sounds. Accept that you are an innocent, loving girl."

The arm around her shoulders wasn't something she was used to, but she didn't pull away from it either. "Innocent..." She wanted so badly to believe him, to think she might have something redeemable inside her like that. "But Ophi...Ophi, I kill people." She ran a hand over her face, sighed, and stared for a long moment over at Poopsie.

When he saw her staring at him, she saw that hope brighten up his eyes again, and it broke her heart a bit. So when she would've looked away, instead she sighed, patting her leg once, and he let loose a whoop of excitement, jumping off the bed and scrambling over into her lap, where he immediately curled up, his face nuzzled between her neck and collar bone.

She looked over his head, at Ophi, and though it was a bit strained, she smiled. "I'll take care of him. He's me...in a way. So that makes him mine. I take care of what's mine."

"Three things wrong with that pet name of yours," he said, lifting his other hand to show three fingers.

"Sexy? I prefer to think of myself a little more classy than that. Two, little? Please rethink that and try again. And three, I'm not a professor anymore, you know that." He grinned, showing that he knew she knew and was only joking.

He fought the urge to say that the profession died with his name.

"So I'm going to be a mirror image of you soon," he said softly, his smile dying. His eyes flickered awake. "I'm a student now!"

The water ball continued to flow up and down each finger, reattaching itself whenever broken. "I kind of have to be in school now, don't I? I thought the only reason you were able to leave grounds all the time was because all the teachers loved you. Hell, maybe another professor had his eye on you like I had," he added quietly.