Welcome to Gaia! ::

Caoimhe looked down at her arms, the smooth grey-blue skin with little circles of greys spotting around her forearms. Her guardian had once said that the pattern of spots on her skin was probably the way that her race distinguished individuals, but across worlds, the girl had never met someone just like her; she was fairly sure she never would. Part of the selkie liked that, her uniqueness, her individuality, the fact that no one looked just like her, but it was tiring sometimes. She felt alone, even with Mrs. Kates next door and Gristla asleep in the next room. Even sitting on beach in the dying sunlight with Mortimer.

"People can get used to anything, if they deal with it long enough," she said, looking back up to Mortimer. Caoimhe hadn't enjoyed Aranorn, not really, but it wasn't so bad. No place was. When you are forced into an environment, you either flounder or survive. If there was one thing that the girl understood, it was the importance of that: survival.

However, for all her survival skills, she wasn't prepared for where Mortimer went next. Almond eyes widened slightly, long lashes brushing the skin below her eyebrows. A restaurant sounded great--who could say no to food?--but a date? Caoimhe didn't have much knowledge or experience with the concept of dating, but Gristla had explained it to her once after an episode of General Hospital one day. Apparently, people who like each other go places together, and after a while, one of them does something bad and the other one gets to slap them while dramatic music plays.

Was that what Mortimer wanted?

She was silent for longer than was sociably acceptable, not that the girl noticed. "I love to eat," she said, probably a little too emphatically. Her tone flattened. "It's probably my favorite thing to do." Granted, she was excited at the thought of new foods and less about the prospect of this 'date' he spoke of. Plus, she didn't like people 'taking her' anywhere. She liked to go places herself. The selkie bit her lip at the corner, not sure what to say next. What did a date mean? She didn't even know if Gristla would be okay with it.

Not sure what to say, she just more or less looked at Mortimer in confusion, grabbing a piece of curled hair between her fingertips.

Caoimhe pulled her knees closer to her chest like they could be some barrier against the questions, something to protect her pride. She liked talking to Mortimer with the beach humming in the background, but a rock was forming in her stomach, rolling against her rib cage every time she couldn't think of an answer.

On Aranorn, Caoimhe was considered ugly. She was the only mostly hairless creature the Enilef and Eninac had ever seen. Many assumed she was diseased, or some perversion of an experiment gone wrong. It was probably better that way; she never had to fear violation. And in her two years on Gaia, the most attention Caoi got was from whistling construction workers. She didn't go to highly populated areas, avoiding any real conversation. So, truth be told, she had done nothing, felt nothing.

But she couldn't tell him that, not like that.

"I don't date," she said, not quite lying. She raised her eyes to prove she was okay with this conversation, but there was still an uncertainty lurking behind her lashes that was likely readable. "I don't see the point when it is going to end with someone getting slapped." It was true. It happened that way on television usually, and Gristla and Mrs. Kates spent more time making fun of men than saying anything good about them.

Idly, Caoimhe dragged a hand up and down her left shin before sliding it around to her lap.

Caoimhe sat straighter at Morty's approach, leaning slightly away from him. He was the first real man she had had a conversation with since she made it to Gaia. A close second came to the police officer who scolded her for skinny-dipping in a public lake in the middle of the day within her first few months in this strange place. But the cop never came this close, never tried to really talk to her.

She didn't like the weight in his voice or the compassion. It made her uncomfortable, but the Fa'e listened, feeling the notches of her spine locking tighter with each word. Abuse? No... no. Caoi had never dated, never kissed, never cared. Back on Aranorn, she'd been tortured by some Eninac warriors, but they weren't all men. Actually most were women. It was apparently some specialty for Eninac females.

Bitches.

Mid-rant, the selkie girl felt the brush of soft fur against her shoulder, and her eyes shot wide. Flashes of sliding body parts burned on the back of her eyelids like a wall in her mind had not been opened---but blown away by dynamite, spraying bits of hard-packed memories all over the inside of her skull. Throwing herself forward, Caoimhe lurched toward the sand, tucking into a roll at the last minute and jumping to her feet.

Chest heaving, she pointed a finger at Mortimer and said, voice tense and thick, "I haven't ever dated anyone or let anyone touch me---not in Gaia and not in Aranorn!" She might be claiming otherwise, but the girl flushed beneath her grey-blue skin. Her eyes swam in the corners, but she narrowed them to trap the tears. Caoimhe couldn't control herself, and if she weren't feeling bits of herself tearing apart, she might have been embarrassed. Instead, she felt like she wanted to vomit and scream at the same time. "How does me not saying mean that something bad must've happened to me?" It never occurred to the girl that her mention of the slap might have triggered this thought in him.

Panting for breath, Caoimhe felt herself separating, a second skin sliding beneath her own, poking at her, connecting with Mortimer's words. It was like he was speaking through her to something inside that she was unaware of. She glared, mad that he could bring this out in her and terrified at what he might say or do next.