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Something in this child's mind that was still firing neurons told him that he shouldn't be alive... it was impossible... he was impossible, although the words did not exist in his vocabulary, the ideas were still there-- ideas! Flitting back and forth, tantalizing and taunting, teasing him with their intangibility, why couldn't he reach out and grab them? They just flitted back and forth, somehow managing to exist while only being percievable by some metaphysical ghosts of sensory experience. How was that... why...

...words have meaning, it's important to speak, you use words to--

--your own voice, in your-- try again--

there was someone else but it was as if there never was-- existence is fleeting, a reflection passing across a cracked window, and then it's gone forever.

Dark and dusty. Dusty and dank. Dank and lonely. Lonely and what was that clattering on the floor, tiny marbles on a miniscule rope? It was those... didn't they have colors before? They had colors, and then clear and blank as glass, tumbling out of a small dark hand that curled with the other into a crumpled heap of limbs in the corner. They were as mocking as the formless shapes and colors and tastes and feelings were.

A voice tried to manifest itself into the child, but died before it could be concieved with the right words. He had wandered so far on his own, somehow staying walking even though he should have collapsed, staying awake even though he should have passed out... staying alive even though he should have starved to death a very long time ago, and now he hung in that natural limbo in the shelter of a condemned building.

The child shifts his position on the dusty and crumbling floor, uncurling to sprawl himself out on the chipped boards, for no reason greater or lesser than to feel the internal muscular sensations that came with moving. His brick-colored hair settled there with the intention of being a skewed little spiral (unfortunately, it was too short for that) as his strawberry gaze blankly pointed at the ceiling. There wasn't much to look at; the room was shrouded in darkness.

At least until a dim, orange-yellowish glow bulged into the room. The child cringed by reflex at the sudden brightness-- it hurt his eyes and he squinted while making a little noise in protest at the invasion. Blearily, his arms and legs moved to sit him up, half-porcelain face scowling in disapproval. The string that held the little glass beads were still perpetually entwined in his fingers; as he lifted his hand to shield his eyes, the faint sound of them clacking together made him flinch.

What... who... why was this unpleasantly bright thing here? It was almost as if he didn't want to believe she existed: in response to her calling out, he had turned around to face the wall and stare at his own shadow.

Arya's words - what started with an implied apology, and developed into a more offensive tone, might have well been said to thin air. The child had working ears, the other Shattered's voice had been heard and maybe even processed, but there was an almost complete lack of acknowlegement towards them. The shadows caused by Arya's wings stretched, bobbled and shrunk as she moved closer and knelt down. Now his own black silhouette on the wall was about the same size he was; a pleasing little copy of his own image.

Something in this brightwinged individual felt almost irritatingly familiar. It made something within him feel like it wasn't fitting together quite right, as if he was somehow incomplete, or that the girl possessed things that made her better than him in a way that escaped him. Or at least different in a way that seemed appealing... enough so that his eyes slowly rolled in her direction, wide and questioning against the uncomfortable light.

At the little solar flare Anarya produced, the boy recoiled again with another strained little groan. He took a few seconds to catch his breath and uncover his eyes again after the girl regained control of the offending wings, and his legs reflexively shuttled him backwards until he was sitting a few feet away. However, he was also now making direct (albeit mostly blank) eye contact with her. The dim glow was just enough that his new acquantaince could probably make out a peculiarity about his face; his dark complexion was broken by what looked like a mask.

"Hey, where?" he parroted, in a voice that wasn't completely his own. In fact, it was more as if Arya had shouted into a canyon and recieved an echo than that the child before her had actually spoken. If he had understood her question, he was clearly unwilling to answer it.

The word 'mom', in fact, was a very foreign word in his vocabulary. Arya's other words were at least ones that he understood, but that was one that had never reached his ears until this day.

...A 'mask'? That word was very familiar.

The boy wordlessly brought a hand up to his face, running his fingers over that side of his face, feeling out the edges of it at the middle of his face and over one eye. It certainly felt like one... but on the other hand, there was a sensation of touch that wasn't the dull pressure one would expect from touching such a thing. He tried to dig his fingers underneath it and pull it off-- but the sensation that followed was unpleasant. The attempt wasn't necessarily painful; it was just oddly uncomfortable, and the thought of going any further filled the boy with a curious unease. Starting to feel more conversational, he concluded "No." to the bright girl.

And yet again with words he didn't recognize. "What are..." he tries to ask. For some reason finding out what this girl meant felt very important. Extremely important...

To the question about the mask, the boy more or less jerked his head in half a nod, signifying that Arya had managed to understand his point. He was about to make a move to ask about the miniature solar flares arcing up away from her back, but then she went on to the other part of their conversation, and he forgot about those curiosities as he was reminded of the other ones she had incited.

This or that? Well, the answer... he took a minute to try and call up the word, and ended up piping up "Both." in another unfamiliar voice; probably one he had heard in passing through a window or doorway before ending up here.

All of the time Mirorim had been spending with Anarya had been immensely helpful, and it showed. He was slowly becoming a bit more talkative - not a perfect little chatterbox like a kid his age should be, but it became apparent that he had his own voice and could use it after a while. There was also something more... vibrant about him. It was a strange thought, but lights seemed to illuminate him more brightly, as if his entire being was more readily and willing to exist.

Something was on the verge of clicking here, and it would take only one more piece of the puzzle to make it happen: he needed that strange thing called "family" that Arya had been trying so hard to explain. The bright girl was a "friend", and that could be very close, but it wasn't close enough to fulfill the boy's needs.

---

Leonard Laurence was a bit of an interesting man, in the sense that he was mostly ordinary. There wasn't anything in his blood besides straight-up human, nobody in his family had been bitten by a vampire or seduced by an angel, and the only real tragedies in his life were his unsuccessful attempts to get his older brother to like him and the fact that he was a miserable failure when it came to romance and relationships.

He was also, however, a very nervous and busy man - a composer, in fact, who often worked with a philharmonic orchestra, and that was probably the only area in his life where he was able to display any confidence. The man loved music. It was so better at conveying ideas than words were... but right now, he was being his normal nervous self as he jittered through the streets, bespectacled brown eyes silently pleading for the wind to stop. Drafts of his latest score were blowing all over the place!

It probably only made the man feel even worse that measures 44 through 106 had fluttered over to the crosswalk to smack Arya square in the face.

"Oh, well I... yes, umm, you see-- I-- yes. Thank you," the man nervously nodded, gratefully taking the rescued score from the girl's outstretched hand. How lucky! Sure, he hadn't recovered all of them, but he could probably rewrite the rest of them later. "Thank-- I mean, n-n-no need to trouble yourself more, i-i-it-i-it's fine..." With an awkward little smile, he carefully tucked the sheets away into his folder, averting his eyes to make very well sure that he would not fully notice how the girl's back was on fire.

Of course, his wandering eyes wouldn't be able to stray away from one sight for too long. The strangeness of this encounter was probably weighing heavily on all three of the individuals present, but that didn't stop the youngest one from taking a few steps closer to Leonard and just... staring. Something was trying to click together in his head once again. And this one felt extremely important.