Welcome to Gaia! ::

Keres slid the worn-out, brown canvas bag off her shoulder and held it up close to her face. She gave a quick peek inside before she thrusted her other hand in and rifled around. Keeping her eyes ahead of her as she walked, she drew out a scallop shell, but returned it a second later. She then pulled out some sort of round shell, but that one was tossed back into the bag as well. Again and again she pulled out her shells and then dropped them back in until she finally found whatever it was she had been looking for. But as she held it up to the sun to admire it, she suddenly stopped mid-step with her hand in the air.

A curious sound tinkled in her ears and she blinked and cocked her head. It sounded like music… No, it was music, but where it was coming from, Keres had no idea. It was close-by, though. Very close – in one of these houses along the street…

Keres lowered her arm and dropped the shell back into her bag, and then slowly she slung the strap over her shoulder. She lowered her head slightly and hunched her shoulders before she started to walk down the sidewalk again, peeking through windows to try and find the source of the music. She looked like a lurk. A lurk on a mission. Lucky for her, though, it didn’t take long to find the music-making house.

It stood two houses down from where she had initially stopped. It was small, white, and had a little second level. Hedges and a short wrought iron fence lined the property and a brick path lead up to the open front door. Keres stopped in front of the latched gate and stared, just stared, and listened.

She could see a girl sitting at a piano, all dressed up with her hair curled. She watched as the girl moved her arms and hands up and down the keys. When she finished, she stood up from her stool and bowed, and an unseen audience gave a round of applause while one said, “That’s my girl!” By the time the Piano Girl took her seat again and started another song, Keres has already made it down the block, running at full speed towards Anya’s bar.
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“Anya! Anya!” yelled Keres as she ran towards the bar’s front door. It was still early and the dirt lot in front had yet to be filled with motorcycles and trucks. The front door was open, though, and Anya was already standing ready from behind the bar.

“Yes, Keres?” Anya asked, slightly exasperated though not completely annoyed or unwilling to give the girl her complete attention.

Keres ran up to the bar and slapped her palms down on its surface, which caused Anya to do little more than blink and tilt her head. “Anya!”

“Keres.”

“Piano.”

“Pian—“

“I need to learn it!” announced Keres, her tone forceful and her face completely serious. She stared unblinkingly at Anya and watched as the Sven tried to fully understand what she had just said.

“Uhh…” Anya drawled as she opened her mouth, but she closed it again and resumed a confused expression. She placed her hands on the bar and splayed out her arms and thrusted out her bum so that her shoulders were hunched up around her cheeks. She tilted her head and furrowed her brows quizzically before she tried to talk again. “This… this isn’t a school thing, is it?” she asked, blinking.

Keres threw back her head and let out an over exaggerated sigh while her hands slip off the bar like globs of Jello. “UUUUUUUUGHHH, NOOOOO! Anyaaaa….”

“What?! I wouldn't be surprised if it was – you’re always bustin’ in here when you have crazy school stuff to do!” Anya stated quickly in defense. She snapped up from the bar and stood straight once more, her arms crossed under her chest.

Keres smacked her tail on the ground like how a little kid would stomp his foot. She crossed her own arms and stared up at Anya with her chin out. “I do not,” she retorted, “not all the time anyways. And I’m serious – I want to learn how to the play piano! I saw this girl playing in her house while I was walking home from the beach and it was so prettyandcoolandeveryoneclappedforherbecauseshewasplayingforpeopleand ANYAAAA!!!” She moved her torso up and down and contorted her face a little as she let her whining voice rise and fall.

“Keres, you start that whining tantrum and you’re going to get a smack upside the head and whatever it is you want to do is never going to happen,” Anya warned sternly.

The child immediately cut the whining and she stood stock still, a blink of her eyes clearing her contorted face. “Ok ok ok…” she said quickly, hoping to make up any lost ground. “But Anya… can I please get piano lessons? Pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaassseeeeeee!” She put her hands together in prayer and held them out towards Anya. “Pleeeeeaase!”

“Keres, how do I even know that you’re serious about this? I’m not going to go spend money on a teacher just to have you complain and quit three lessons later?” Anya asked. Keres’s mouth immediately opened, but Anya held up a finger and continued. “Besides, how are you even going to practice? We don’t have a piano at home. …AAAND where are we going to find a piano teacher?”

“Anya, I’m serious and I really, really, REALLY want to do this! And you have the piano in the back room with all that other junk! I’ve seen it! Anya please, I’ll do anything!” Keres pleaded, her hands still clasped and held out to the Sven. She was dead serious about this. It was something she had to do – something she WANTED TO DO.

“Keres…”

“Ah Anya, she said she’d do an’thing,” came a voice from the back room. Rann walked through the door with an inventory list and pen in her hand.
Keres and Anya both turned and looked at Rann in surprise.

“You’ve been lurkin’ back there this whole time?” asked Anya, her face showing some disbelief.

“Yeh, I was doing your inventory! Not my fault you forgot!” retorted Rann. She set the inventory book down on the bar. “Besides, I think I may know a woman who will give piano lessons.”

“REALLY?!” exclaimed Keres immediately. Her golden eyes widened beyond all belief and she slapped her palms back on the bar-top again. Her face fell, though, when Anya piped in.

“Wait, what? Who’s this woman and how do you know her? And you’re not helping this situation any, you know…”

Rann waved a hand at Anya and dismissed her last comment before she spoke. “Ya ya, whatever. But an’ways, as I was sayin’, I met her after doing some fashion shoots with her. She’s actually a tattoo artist; the same one who you and I went to at the time, remember, Anya? Anyways, I know she plays the piano and that she’s quite good… so maybe she’ll agree to something.”

Anya looked at Rann skeptically, but Keres once again was beaming.
“I don’t kno—“

“Oh come on, Anya! Can we at least try?” interrupted Keres.

“Yeah, let me at least call h—“

“You guys!” Anya barked, holding up her hands to silence both Keres and Rann. “You guys, what makes you think she’s going to even have time to give lessons? If this is the same woman from the tattoo place, then she has a full-time job as an artist there, apparently does some modeling stuff from time to time, and Rann, she has two three year-old kids! WHO HAS ANY FREE TIME WITH THAT SCHEDULE?!”

Keres kept quiet for a minute as she stared at the ground, but she eventually looked back up at Anya and let her shoulders fall. “Anyaa… why can’t we at least ask? Try? Why are you so against this? PLEEAAASSEEE, ANYAAAA!” she pleaded.

Anya let out a sigh and turned her head to her sister, who only stared back critically with her arms folded over her chest. Anya then looked back at Keres and gave one more sigh. “OK… OK—“

“YEEAAAAAA—“

“Now hold on! Don’t go jumping about just yet. There are some things that YOU are going to have to do, OK?”

Keres nodded, her full attention on Anya.

“Keres, you have to do inventory here twice a month and clean the house once a week. You also need to find me a good piano tuner… dude and give me his number, then you need to get that piano out of the back and clean it up –“

“OKOK, I’ll do it!”

“No hold on, I’m not done. When Rann calls this woman, I want you to also talk to her on the phone and ask her very politely to do this and explain to her why you want to etc. AND, whether or not she says ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I want a written letter to her that thanks her and all that. Got it?”

“AYE AYE CAPTAIN, I GOT IT. I’LL DO IT! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Keres exclaimed happily. She could do all that stuff easily! It’d be SOOOOO worth it anyways! THIS WAS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME.

Both Rann and Anya nodded. “Alright, then,” said Anya, “piano lessons for you. Maybe…”

Anya picked up the phone, said a few words, and then placed it back on the receiver. There was nothing special in the way the action was performed, and Anya hadn’t exclaimed an “OH ********” or any other obscenities that would make Keres pause in her lesson and look up from the piano. But Anya then called Ms. O’Neill away to her, and the sphinx-girl finally looked up from the black and white keys to watch the two as they murmured at the other end of the bar’s building. Both women looked a little stony, not much emotion showing on either of their faces.

Keres continued to watch them while her hands went up and down in her piano exercises, but soon she began to skip keys or hit the wrong ones, and then Ms. O’Neill and Anya broke from their meeting.

“Keres, we’ll continue this later. Practice your new warm-ups and the songs from last week,” Ms. O’Neill said evenly as she came back to the piano and gathered her coat. Keres stopped her hands by then, and gave the red-haired woman a confused, quirky look that had some natural attitude.

“Al…right?” was all she managed to say and she watched her teacher go back across the building and out the bar’s front door. She then shifted her gaze to Anya, who hadn’t moved, and who stood there with her arms folded.

“Anya, what the Hell? Did I just lose my piano teacher?” she girl half-barked. Her gold eyes narrowed a little and her wings puffed up slightly, her body readying for some sort of show-down argument. “Anya, I swear to God, if –“

“You didn’t lose your Piano teacher,” Anya said. Keres shut her mouth, but her eyes were still screaming with the question of ‘What’s going on?’ as the Sven walked over to her.

“But I think you might have lost someone else…”

Keres suddenly whipped all the way around and was on all four paws, her eyes suddenly wide with realization and fear. “Oh god – Diana!?” she squeaked and threw her hands up to her mouth. She looked at the ground, then back up at Anya. …but was severely taken aback by the woman’s utterly confused face.

“What? Diana – no! Keres, your cat’s fine –“

“Oh, thank GOD!” A mighty sigh of relief billowed from the girl as she lowered her hands and tried to calm herself. “I thought she had been killed – hit by a car, thrown in the trash, locked in the washing machine…”

“Washing machine?”

“ANYA IT HAPPENS! IT DOES –“

“Keres! Keres. This isn’t about Diana, it’s about Harper.”

Keres recoiled her head and gave a very high arch of her brow, part of her lip going up with it. “Harper?” she questioned outloud, and searched the floor with her eyes as if she’d find the answer lying there while Anya talked over unhearing ears about the boy that she knew Keres knew.

“Anya! Of course I remember Harper! God, it was one meeting, but still, my memory isn’t as shitty as yours. What does he have to do with whatever’s going on?”

“He’s dead.”

It was two words. Two simple words, and Keres felt -something- break inside. She didn’t know what, or why, but something hit her and it hit her hard. She blinked up at Anya, mouth moving but nothing coming out, and then she looked back down at the floor, again as if she would find something there that would offer more clarity. But all there was was dirt. “How’d it happen?”

“House fire.”

Keres nodded her head, though she still didn’t understand. She hugged her shoulders, head now hanging. Her body felt cold. She had met that boy once, and the conversation hadn’t even been a good one since the boy had been doped up on medicine… but still, the doped up boy was now gone.

“It’s alright to cry, Keres,” Anya said calmly, as if not too bothered by all this. Her words fell on half-hearing ears, and the girl looked up at little, but her wings fully drooped.

“Anya, how can you be so… calm. Don’t you CARE? Don’t you ******** CARE?” Her voice was cracked as the tears suddenly began to flow, and Keres became more angered by this since her previous anger hadn’t been able to be fully voiced. She glared at the Sven, her face red and the bridge of her nose wrinkling, but no matter how many death-stares she sent at Anya, the woman’s demeanor didn’t change.

“I care, but this isn’t the first time death has been upon me, nor the first time I’ve had to tell someone that someone they know is now dead. It’s how the world goes, Keres. People are born, and people die. I’m just sorry that it had to be a kid who died, and someone you knew.”

“…Well… what now t-then?”

“The funeral’s in four days.”

“Will you go?”

“No. It’s not my place. I didn’t know any of them well enough.”

“What should I do?”

“I can’t answer that, Keres, only you can figure out how you want to grieve.”

"I'll go..."

I
Sticks and stones can't break my bones, but words can hurt me

“Oh my god, just look at it.”

“I know. It’s sooo hideous – I wanna barf.”

“Seriously, I can’t believe it even exists. Whoever created it should be shot.”

Keres cast a sidelong glance over her shoulder at the two girls who were snickering about something at a near-by rack of clothes. She gave no concern to whatever it was they were talking about, after all, the clothes on that rack WERE hideous in all ways. In fact, the clothes she was looking at herself were ugly as well.

Damn, the whole store was ugly. Why she had even come in was beyond the sphinx’s memory. So she flung the what-ever-it-was she had been looking at back on its rack… table… thing, hitched her purse up on her shoulder and moved towards the store’s door.

“Annnnd there it goooes~” snickered one of the girls, a mean smirk and glare glued to her pasty face.

If Keres had been walking faster, she wouldn’t have heard the comment, but …that didn’t end up to be the case, and the sphinx had indeed heard. It was only then did a spark of realization occur in the back of her brain, and she whipped her head to the side to stare fully at the two girls near the racks. Their sudden burst of laugher sealed it all.

The average being would’ve kept walking, would’ve been the bigger man, but Keres didn’t believe in that philosophy and she preferred being bigger by using physical force. This tactic usually worked. Usually.

…It just didn’t work today, though.

While the two girls stopped their raucous laughter, their smirks and glares of disgust never ceased as Keres stormed up to them with wings flared and tail lashing as much as space would allow.

“Oh, Susan, watch out! IT’S going to infect you,” snickered the tallest girl. She recoiled her head as Keres moved up close, but she didn’t back down, and neither did Susan.

“Oh no, Olivia, I think she’s singled you out more,” replied Susan, who moved closer to Keres. She extended a stubby hand to try and touch one of the girl’s wings, but Keres thwarted off her hand with a slap from her own.

While Susan snickered at the slap to her hand, Olivia gave Keres a sudden, meaningful shove at the shoulders. “Don’t you DARE TOUCH US!” she screamed, her tight face contorting in serious, disgusted rage. “You disgusting FREAK.”

While the shove did little to disturb Keres’s balance, she was caught almost off guard to the shove and had a moment’s worth of shock in her feral eyes before they narrowed once more. “******** off, you tight-faced, flat-chested whore!” she snarled, smacking her tail on the floor and shoving Olivia into the wrack behind her.

The girl’s face was shock, pure and simple, and Keres swelled a little with pride as she dropped her arms to her side. When it looked like nothing else was going to happen, she turned to leave once more. But she only got so far.

“You-you goddamned FREAK!” came a scream from the clothes rack, and Keres turned to look over her shoulder. She saw Olivia up on her feet and walking towards her, Susan at her side. By the time Keres got fully turned back around, they were all face to face.

“Freak seems to be your favorite word, you skank!” snapped Keres.

“It’s fitting for one of nature’s ******** ups like yourself! What happened – did you mother ******** a dog, and that’s how you were born?!” Olivia retorted, once again shoving Keres at the shoulders. Meanwhile, Susan had slunk around to Keres’s side and was once more trying to grab at her wings.

“Maybe she ******** a chicken too,” Susan added. She was slapped away once more by Keres, but in the process, the sphinx was once more shoved by Olivia.

“You got a thing for ******** cats or dogs too, Beastie? I bet you do, you ugly disgrace!” A fourth shove by Olivia. Keres tried to hit back, but Susan had gotten to a wing and ripped a clump of golden feathers out. Another shove and another, followed by another rip of feathers.

“You sorry piece of meat. You should be shot, hung by you little p***y toes, wings stripped like a chicken’s.”

By this time Keres was actually crying. Her shoulders were bruised and there were feathers littered all around. She slashed her tail, but only hit a rack of sunglasses, and that went falling to the ground with a smash.

“Look what you did, you ugly a** beast!”

Keres hardly heard the girl, though. She turned to the best of her ability and ran, Susan grabbing one more fist-full of her feathers before she got out the door. It was then that mall security finally showed up, and Keres could hear Olivia scream after her, saying that she had stolen stuff and hit her. She didn’t care, though, and she ran as fast as she could back home.