Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was nothing Elizabeth hated more than grocery shopping with Eight de Cartier. It felt like an exercise in stabbing oneself in the eye multiple times, only without the comfort of eventually going blind or the eventual loss of feeling due to brain damage. (She knew what would happen if you stabbed yourself in the eye how she did not know, but she just knew, you know, like how she knew how to kill someone with her fingers, wasn't that weird?) The only thing, the only thing, that made it bearable was the fact that she got to take her own shopping cart and pick out all the snacks she wanted.

Since Lizzy was Lizzy, this meant that mostly her cart was full of asian pears and citrus fruit and also strawberries. But she had wandered off into the cookie aisle with exactly one brand in mind - the coveted, limited time, ultra tasty, kinda rare, really popular strawberry milkshake oreo. It was the God of cookies, the ultimate mecha of cookies indeed, with the flavors of vanilla and strawberry and chocolate.

So clearly, she was destined to have them. Woe betide the one to stand in her way, for she was an angel on a mission, and if she did not achieve it then someone would pay. Probably with their eardrums.

Fate would have it that in the instant she reached out for the very last package, someone else did too.

Elizabeth yanked it away and held it over her head. It was an exercise in futility as any idiot could see the rude red-haired boy was taller than she was, but she would eat a thousand clams before she would tell anyone that she knew it was pointless. "No you didn't," she said, backing away and pulling her cart with her. "I grabbed it so it's mine."

She smiled a triumphant smile at the boy, green eyes narrowed in cruel victory. No way he could contest a claim like that, not if he was a good and fair opponent! All right, so maybe she was cheating a bit, but the rules were ladies first, so therefore she had a right to the cookies.

Her wings puffed out a bit in a show of dominance. (Lizzy had read about how making yourself look bigger scared tougher opponents. Well, now she'd see how it really worked!)

Maybe her grip was stronger than his, or she took advantage of his surprise at recognizing her, but she managed to somehow wrest the cookies form his hands. Her mean, triumphant smile became even more insultingly proud; for a moment, it was like a primeval intelligence started out of those virulently green eyes at Josh, but then it was gone and Lizzy was just a little girl again.

"You can't trick me," declared Elizabeth, because clearly him knowing her name was a lucky guess. She tucked her cookies behind her skirt and smoothed the pink and black pleats; it wouldn't do for her to be seen looking like anything but the Nice, Well-Mannered Girl she was. "These cookies are mine, I saw them first, as evidenced by the fact that they are in fact in my hands and not, in fact, in yours." Seeing that the threat was seemingly past, she tucked her wings in firmly against her back, but kept herself between her cookies and the red-headed mean boy.

Hmph, she thought. This would teach him! She saw herself as a ferocious lioness, tall and proud and protecting her kill -- or oreos, that was like a kill, wasn't it? It was hers, was the important thing, and she really wanted to dump them in her cart and hightail it back to Eight before this redheaded guy could get at her cookies! "Fft," she said, "How'd you know my name anyway, I've never met you before."

"Why not," asked Elizabeth angrily. "Am I too girly for you to do valiant, honorable cookie-based combat with? D'you think I'm weak 'cause I'm a girl? Because I could make you cry. I just don't 'cause I'm a Nice Girl."

Now that he'd brought it up, she paused and the cruel eyes turned thoughtful. "I never told you my name," she said suspiciously. But she had given it to plenty of other people so maybe he'd been eavesdropping, like a terrible sneaky person who was very sneaky and terrible!

But probably not. It was also the fact that she called herself Lizzy, and not Elizabeth. This was all very suspicious and she skipped back a few steps to deposit her cookies in among the pears and clementines. She wanted people to like her, of course, that was very important, but she could not stand that he tried to take her cookies and then said that he didn't want her cookies. How could he insult her like that? This guy should decide whether he wanted the cookies or not.

Then again, he was a boy. And as Carlisle and Mr. Luka demonstrated, boys were dumb. She resolved to be nicer.

"Ha! That's a funny kind of respect, if you won't meet me on an even battleground!" Always stupid, idiotic boys telling her no no no girls should be careful and delicate and should not climb the Liberty Center walls no matter what because her wings weren't big enough to fly yet! Angrily, the feathered appendages flared out as if she was about to take flight. Her green eyes were narrowed sharply, barely little slits of emerald against her tanned skin.

Then she tossed out her dual-colored hair and put on a look of eminent superiority, confident and in its prime. "Friends don't fight over cookies, but I don't have friends. I am the angel who walks alone, and all places are alike to me. And I could so fly if I wanted to, so don't even start with it because I'll hit you."

Lizzy's chin went up and her shoulders went back. Here he was, saying he'd been friends with her, and then he was going right around and saying that she was unimportant? Oh, he was phrasing it in terms of the cookies well enough, someone as unintelligent as a boy might miss it, but she knew. She always knew. And then to be told that it didn't matter that she was a girl? Of course it mattered, being a girl was a defining part of being Lizzy. What, should she be a moose instead? So not only was she not important, but one of her defining traits was also unimportant! Oooooh, this guy was such a jerk!

She decided to inform him of this. "I'm not friends with people who I don't remember meeting," she snapped with a diva toss of her hair, "for one thing, because I am a Good Girl. I have standards."

"I'm quoting the Cat because it's a lesson you need to learn. Maybe the Cat got chased, and the Man threw things at him, but he was his own person, and that is an important thing to remember!"

Besides, Phelly did not count as a friend. She was more like a Painting Sister.