[PRP] Not fair (Amrita & Aisha)

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha ran into the dorms, almost fully sunken into the depths of her baggy clothes. She didn't understand, she'd said everythin wrong and now she'd lost one of the only friends she had.

She knew it wasn't fair but somehow felt like it was her fault.

The zombie wanted to just go to her room and hide forever and never come out but she was in such a state that she'd stubbed her toe on the common room sofa, tripped onto the couch, and now was a sobbing mess, face down in the cushions.

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

Well, that was quite the show.

The Patchwork stood on the other side of the common room, having just come up from the basement, and had her phone in one hand, and a nestled book against her ribs with her other arm. The door opening so forcefully had been enough to make her pause, and the storming of a familiar figure made her stay put.

Then came the trip, and the dramatic fall onto the couch, and now sounds of gross, heartbroken sobs filled the air.

Amrita stood there for a moment or two longer, still frozen in place as if unsure of what to do, or if she should even interfere in what was clearly a private, very emotional display. But as the sobbing continued to pull at her unbeating heart, she fired off a quick text and put her phone away in a hidden pocket of her dress, then set her book down on a nearby table, before finally beginning to approach the ghoul.

"Aisha?" She questioned softly, sitting down on the small space of couch that wasn't taken up by the sobbing teen. A backwards hand, bent at an awkward angle, came down to rest gently on the ghoul's back, between her shoulder blades. "What's wrong? Are you alright?" Clearly she wasn't - because sobbing was never a good thing - but who knew what was hidden under that hoody.

loveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha was sobbing hard enough, frustration now and embarrassment, that she hadn't heard her own name. She'd felt the weight on the sofa and started to pull herself. There was no need to wipe her eyes as there were no tears.

"S-sorry.. I'll.." But she turned to face the person and finding Amrita, burst again into a sob and tossed herself against the other undead in a cling. "Amrita.. my.."

Aisha didn't even look to be herself, sunken into her baggy clothes she was no more than white skull paint and pinpoints of orange smouldering eyes. The joyful flickering loa energy that usuall seemed to almost pour from her eyes and mouth had retracted into a tightened controlled burn.

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

There was a moment, just a fraction of a second, where Amrita tensed at the sudden, clinging touch. She bit her lip instead, focusing all her discomfort on that one p***k of pressure, and turned just enough to accommodate the other ghoul, draping her arms around her as carefully as possible. She began to slowly and rhythmically rub her back, an attempt at comfort that she had always found helpful in the past. Boil trouble? Ghoul Trouble? Lost pet? Bad grades? The FEAR she felt off the ghoul, while weak, didn't seem physically damaged as far as she could tell - but...who knew...

"Aww, Aisha...It'll be okay," Amrita started softly, confident in her own words. "What happened?" She repeated, once more urging the ghoul to tell her story.

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

"I'm... sorry.." Aisha sat up again, pulled back a little and once more sunk into her clothes. Thankfully her hood had fallen down but her dreads were in disarray. The saddened expression on her face made the skull face paint look lamenting. "I'm... only 2." She confessed. "years old. Emotions are... strong."

She took unnecessary deep breaths because her Papa had taught her to use it to calm herself. Even if the breathing wasn't necessary, the rhythmic motion was a comfort.

"My f--" she paused, "A ghoul I thought.. we were friends but." Her lips trembled. "She just found out I was undead and said undead were dis..disgusting and.. she ran off." Her shoulders trembled.

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

"You don't have to apologize, you know." The hand on Aisha's back paused, raising instead to slide down the mess of dreads. "They'll always be strong, there's no shame in that." Hiding them hurt, she knew that first hand...though, admittedly, sometimes showing them was just as painful.

Aisha told her story, and Amrita's lips set into a thin, grim line. Ah, racism, ever rampant, it seemed. It calld to mind her own experiences with it, and once more she saw herself in Aisha. The times she had spent in tears - or as close to tears as she could get - over being labeled gross for something she couldn't control. It was a rather unsettling comparison and an even worse thought, but her expression slid easily into pity and understanding.

"Some species just don't understand." She said slowly, fighting the urge to claim that the ghoul clearly wasn't her friend, or that anyone who acted like that should me smacked. It was hard to feel betrayed, and the last thing she needed to do was make it worse right now. "Maybe she just...never had any experience with us? Maybe her clan doesn't approve? It happens, as sad as that is." Jack, she hoped the ghoul she was trying to play devil's advocate for was worth it.

"We're not disgusting. You're not disgusting." That was important to express, she felt, and so she placed rather heavy emphasis on it. At some point during her talk she slid over, wrapping her arm around Aisha's shoulder. "The only disgusting thing is how she reacted, and that's not your fault." Her hand came up again, patting the ghoul's hair.

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

"I know.... I know." She shook but was calming. Amrita's company definitely helped. Aisha leaned into the girl a bit. "I know all about FEAR and the human world and.. birth and death and... we're all not different at all. We're all just FEAR and that's why we're all the same. And everyone is held together by the same things no matter what we... can do or.. look like.." Her manic sobs had finally tempered into earnest, soft tones. "My papa.. my.. creator. He's a doctor. He taught me all of this when I was born..ah.. created."

She sagged. "I didn't say the right things and maybe I could have convinced her or.. if I'd just said it the right way. Explained.." Aisha played nervously with the cuff of her sweatshirt, worn from frequent worrying.

"It just hurt and I thought.. I thought I had a friend finally." Aisha muttered, eyes on her lap.

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

"Your creator isn't wrong. That is all we are..." Amrita shifted uncomfortably, but stayed close to Aisha regardless, not willing to let this topic, of all things, to make her back down. "It's just...hard to explain." Amrita grasped at straws, trying to explain something that wasn't pleasant. "It's...stereotypes, I guess. Unfair, uncalled for stereotypes."

"And it's not something that'll go away over night." The pity was still in her voice was still there, but for the situation as a whole, not for either of them. "It's like...say...uhm...my dress. It's orange, right?" It was indeed orange, and her free hand picked at the cloth to bring it into the conversation. "But say when you were created, your Papa told you this was purple. You grow up thinking that this colour is purple. You know it's purple, you accept it as purple. Then, someone comes along, and tells you it's actually orange. They show you proof that the colour was never purple at all, and now, everything you thought was purple, wasn't." Metaphors weren't her strong suit, and she hoped she at least sounded convincing.

"Something you thought was truth, and accepted as truth, was just a lie all along. You'd be uncomfortable, right? And confused, maybe upset?" Now rounding to her point, she felt a little better, and a little more confident in what she was saying. "Sometimes, some families raise their babies to believe that Undeads are disgusting, and stupid, and unworthy of attention...so the babies grow up, and go out in the world believing it to be true. Then they find a really great, friendly, smart undead-" She gave Aisha a little squeeze, to suggest she was talking about her now. "-and suddenly, everything she thought she knew, was a lie." Amrita really, really hoped that this was the case. Please let this be the case.

"It really hurts, but you two were friends before this, right? Maybe that's what your friend needs. Someone like you - brave, strong, amazing you - to show her that we're not terrible creatures. That we're just as remarkable as everyone else. That you two can actually be friends, no matter what her parents say."

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha listened, still looking at her lap until Amrita talked about her dress and her eyes finally drifted. The steady smoulder of her eyes had relaxed a bit when she calmed down, now simple orange glow that wisped gently away from her face. It was almost back to normal.

She nodded at what the other girl was saying. She got it but she'd never experienced it before. "I know.." Aisha said quietly. "I just... it hurts. What if I try and she is just mean again. Should I even try?"

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

Amrita gave Aisha a sad smile.

"One thing you'll learn here at Amity is that you should never, ever give up. Especially if you believe in what you're fighting for." This place had a great talent in beating down those who attended. Those who gave up, never made it...or worse, became the enemy. "Keep trying, Aisha. It'll be really hard at first, but if I'm right, and she's open enough to change, she will." There was a small pause, and Amrita's sad smile turned to something a lot darker.

"And, if she doesn't, come have her talk to me."

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha didn't catch the dark tone. She instead continued to nervously play with her hoody sleeves.

"I don't know. I..." she blushed, which on her was a slight orange glow under the skin. "I realize I guess that I don't even know her very well. What she is.. or where she comes from.. what her home was like. Maybe we weren't that good of friends after all..."

The trap was easy to fall into, doubt and confusion.

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

"You don't have to know everything about each other to be friends." Amrita tsked a bit. "There are things about me that not even my closest friends know. It doesn't make them bad friends for not knowing, and I'm not a bad person for not telling." Except she was pretty sure that sometimes, every now and then, she was a really bad person. Terrible, really. But, that was for her to know, her poor Hunter victims to find out, and everyone else to remain blissfully unaware.

"Besides." She reached out, and flicked Aisha square in the forehead. "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. Too many people will do that for you."

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha grabbed her forehead, jolting in surprise, but she managed a small smile.

"I know.. I guess I don't even know the basics." Aisha's eyes had finally lifted and the orange glow in her eyes and mouth had stabilized.

"Sorry.. I made a scene." She rubbed her nose. "I can't even really cry..." Being dead and everything. At least it didn't ruin her facepaint.

enoh love

 

[Enoh Love]

"That's why you're in school, right?" Amrita piped up, grasping at straws. "Gotta start somewhere, and here's a pretty good place." Despite being born in Halloween, there were still several basics that she didn't grasp until she was at Amityville - it was the sad truth when it came to the outlying clans that actively avoided the major cities.

"It's okay. I've had my fair share of them too." She joked rather easily about herself, and gave Aisha another small pat on the back. "Have you ever seen someone cry, though? Like full on sobbing? It's so weird! And messy. Don't envy the water works, they're actually kind of gross." She waved her hand in dismissal, grinning as best as she could with half a mouth.

"Actually, the living in general are just strange. Their insides pulse, did you know that? Like this." She began to tap on Aisha's back, in the mimic of a heart beat.

iloveyouDIE

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Aisha laughed a little, "Yeah... My papa is a doctor, back home? I know you probably think of like those crazy grass skirt witch doctor guys but.. he went to school and stuff. He's a real doctor too. I was supposed to be his assistant.. that's why I was made."

Aisha bit her lip a moment. "But I don't like healing much.." She whispered to Amrita her secret. Her loa, she could feel, sort of clenched in her chest. "But I've seen injured types of everything. It's really diverse there."

Which is why this was hard.

enoh love