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Amaryliss Aura' St. Grey noticed the girl walking across the street and knew instantly that something was familar about her, but couldn't quite put a finger on it.

Aura wasn't one to watch people like this yet she couldn't shake the feeling that the girl with the blue-ish hazel eyes would be interesting to talk to. She'd been told before not to randomly initiate conversations with strangers, but she wasn't one to listen to such advice. The young girl tended to operate based on instinct alone and she clearly was picking up on something now as she crossed the way to follow the pale-skinned girl who seemed to be a few years older than herself and minding her own business, much unlike Aura.

The girl seemed very focused on... something.

"What are you focusing on? You look like you are thinking about something."

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The distant, far away gaze. The pause to process. The look of deep thought.

"You remind me of Imagi."

Aura spoke rather bluntly. She had the unfortunate tendency to speak her mind exactly when the thought came. She was impulsive and, at times, impatient.

"Definately not like my sister. She has a great memory. Though she thinks too much so there is part of the similarity."

Aura hoped she wasn't overwhelming the girl. She had a tendency to be too forward when it wasn't welcome.

"Sorry that I bothered you. You don't know me. At least, I don't think so." The girl brushed back a mess of hair that was beginning to fall into her light blue eyes and grinned. "The name's Aura."

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"Of course." Aura noted. Why would she go to a different school as her sister? "Imagi goes there too. Just started last semester."

Aura looked down at the girl's notebook for a second. She didn't stare for long. If experience had taught her anything, it was that other people's notebooks tended to not be very interesting.

She shook the girl's hand firmly and with a bit too much force.

"What's your name? I don't think you said it yet."

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Aura noticed Lily's distant persona. She smiled wide for what seemed like no reason at all. That was it too.

She could see her sister in the girl and she found it amusing still.

"Crystal Academy is nice enough. A bit too strict and rather uptight, really." The girl stretched her hands behind her head nonchalantly. "I am surprised that I was let in with a minor athletic scholarship to be perfectly honest."

She stretched her arms and back now too. It seemed she was a bit unhappy about the situation, but was trying not to show that she was bothered. She didn't like feeling that she hadn't had much say in the matter.

"My sister's the real reason we are attending in the first place since she scored so highly on all the tests given at Knightside at the end of last year."

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"Crystal Academy wouldn't be anything if it wasn't regulated..."

There was a clear edge to her voice now. Something between sarcasm and experienced resentment. In all honestly, she had barely qualified to attend. But she didn't want to admit it.

"There was no way Imagi was going without me." Aura said this rather protectively and as if it was insulting. Who would leave their twin sister like that so easily!

"She's very analytical. Good at science. Reading too." She recalled the little graph that has come with the tests they had both taken. Lots of peaks, but very low valleys too.

Aura looked back at Lily and wondered if the girl was getting a bit tired of her own constant references to someone who wasn't even there.

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Aura had trouble imagining what life would be like without a sibling. Aura and Imagi had always been so close and, even without her twin, Alphonse, her older brother, would have been there. She thought for a moment that Lily might be lonely, but that brief thought vanished as she looked at the girl's curious gaze.

"Mirror?" Aura couldn't shake the feeling that was what Lily's blue-green eyes had been but a moment ago. "We do occasionally. Sometimes there's an uncanny look in the eye I have been told we both give when we are determined to accomplish something."

She laughed as she thought about it. Her mother had always said that when both twins got that look in their eyes, she knew trouble was coming. Creative trouble, her mother had said. It was an argument she knew she would concede to her daughters like the time they had combined their efforts to plead, succesfully, to be allowed to go to an over-night summer camp at the stables across town.

"We counter each other quite a bit though." Aura struggled to think of a good example that covered the breadth of it. "Imagi will think things through for a very long time and will come to her conclusion that way. She wouldn't make a decision about anything at all without being rather crazily thorough."

Aura sighed just thinking about it.

"I would much rather learn by experience and practice. You're not going to get much done if you just think about it that much. I try everything at least once. You miss too much if you don't."

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What you might had been or have yet to be.

Aura found herself puzzled by Lily's last sentence and it showed on her face as she bit her lower lip. Where had that come from?

The girl felt as if they were talking about two different things now, but she lacked the wherewithal to connect the statement to anything she had said or done.

"What do you mean by that?"

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"Oh." Aura stood with her mouth still in the shape of the sound she had made as something clicked in her mind. The girl could be rather dense at times, for sure, but now it particularly showed. It wasn't welcome.

"Imagi and I have always been different than each other..." She paused as if thinking about it in a new way, prompted by Lily's words. "It was always hard to compare because of that. I mean, sure, you could compare the two."

She paused. She meant that you could compare the two, but that there was no need to. But was that really true?

Hadn't Imagi gotten into Crystal Academy on an academic scholarship yet Aura got an athletic one? Certainly, you couldn't compare the two. Right?

But everyone had been so interested in Imagi's scores and abilities. It had hardly seemed that Aura was there when they had been interviewed to attend. It was as if the two girls were not just different. It was as if one was better than the other.

"No. It isn't like that at all. It can't be."

Aura seemed to be haven't trouble figuring out which it was. She was always honest. Blunt, even. But could she really say what she felt if she didn't know exactly what that was.

It was as if Aura was suffering some spell of cognitive dissonance for the first time.

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