Au Courant Magics (Facade and Iltu)
 

((Sorry, lame title. XD))

She stood at the bus stop, hesitantly clutching her green umbrella. With the assistance of her raincoat, it successfully protected most of her from the worst of the torrential downpour. Her plain rain boots, which matched her coat and umbrella, didn’t allow for any water to soak her socks. Her jeans however, were another story, drenched up to the knee.

She pulled the tan cavanas bag that held her textbooks and change of shoes closer to her body in an attempt to keep it within the safety offered by her umbrella. She didn’t need to be paying more for a new set of books if these got ruined- heavens, it had been hard enough to pay for them the first time. Wrapping her long and thick lavender tail about her legs to keep it from getting wet, (water got it matted it into clumps and the thing was impossible to comb out, much to her chagrin) the young woman lamented her decision to show up so early. The bus wouldn’t come for another ten minutes, and until then, she was stuck in the rain.

Her skin was a warm, dusky brown, and her hair was even darker, nearly black. It hung wavy and unbound to her waist. In a city more heavily populated with humans, she was an interesting sight, what with her bushy tail and eight inch pointed ears with their tufts of violet fur on the points. Here, however, there was a more diverse mix of beings, and she blended in as much as any other creature might. She relished this invisibility; it lowered her stress levels significantly when she wasn’t the object of blatantly curious stares.

She looked up and down the empty street hopefully, willing someone to come along. The knowledge that she wasn’t the only person crazy enough to be out in this weather (on a Saturday morning, no less) would comfort her greatly. No dice, she noted sadly, her shoulders slumping as she realized she was quite alone for the moment.

Humming. Hmph - yeah, right. The damn engine didn't just hum as many would put it. It whirred and coughed, sputtered even; hell, it gasped for its very life!

Rehkar normally refused to take any sort of mechanical transportation whatsoever, ranging from a bicycle to the more complex metro that dominated the horizon. And, on that note, public transportation was a whole 'nother story. The worn leather seats, done up with awry coils and awkward gaps bereft of stuffing; the unsanitary handholds and poles; the fetid, hot breath of an unwanted seat buddy. Bleh.

However, it was a great way to see the city, however corny that was. Rehkar was the observant type, delighting in the variety of people he saw, as well as the misfortune dished to them. It... made him all warm and fuzzy inside. Yeah. Let's go with that.

What dampened his tour of the denizens this day, however, was the weather; rain was the bane of his existence, or so he fancied. He much preferred beach-friendly weather, with or without the itchy sand.

While he contemplated where he would stop for lunch (perhaps that new bistro across from the Terminal?), the bus made an uncertain stop, causing waves to rise up either side of it, plummeting those too near the curb with their filth. As the bus came to an indefinite halt, those who had been waiting boarded, and the driver herself (some old coot who Rehkar admired for all of her senility and eccentricities) apologized for the torrent.

This is where anxiety finally welled in his throat; at the prospect of getting one of those "seat buddies" he despised so, Rehkar placed the newspaper he had been perusing on the seat next to him, at least hoping he would get the cream of the crop of buddies, and not some sickly mother of eight.

He looked away as one after the other shot him dirty glances, filling up the empty seats in the back. Only time would tell.

The murky water displaced by the bus didn’t do more to her than stain her boot, for which she heaved a sigh of relief. Though she’d been waiting at the bus stop early, she hung back and allowed for the new arrivals to climb onto the great metal beast before she did. No need to get in someone’s way, no, she’d prefer to be last and unobtrusive.

Closing her umbrella, she ascended the stairs and entered the vehicle and mumbled a nervous hello to the bus driver before she turned to move into a seat. Her stomach plummeted straight through her feet, out of the bottom of the bus, and splattered on the unforgiving pavement of the sopping street as she realized she had but one option on the nearly full bus.

Sitting towards the front was a man with pale yellow eyes, and by the look of the newspaper he was firmly holding in the seat beside him, he was not keen on company. Steeling herself for the exchange of words to come, she drew a deep breath and approached him on shaky legs.

She attempted to flash him a winning smile, which ended up being more of a terrified grimace. “Ex-excuse me,” what she had hoped would be a confident and in-charge tone had, somewhere between her mind and her voice box, become a falsetto squeak. She dropped her head and stared intently at her shoes, as if the rubber was quite the most astonishing and fabulous thing in the entire universe. Best to give up the self-assured act now. She’d so been hoping she was getting better at not being so… meek. Sigh.

“Is anyone… Can I… I mean, um, um, d-do you mind if I, um, sit here?” At least avoiding eye contact took the squeak from her voice, even if it remained painfully higher than normal levels.

Rehkar eyed the cat-girl (or was she a fox-girl? Or perhaps something else... Hell if he knew anymore; just because he was a shapeshifter didn't mean he was an expert on all of the different beasts he shifted into!) warily, more or less deducing that he no longer had a say in the matter. Every other seat was filled, and, truth be told, he wasn't about to make her stand due to his selfishness.

"Eh, sure." He brought the newspaper to his own lap, allowing the seat beside him to once more become vacant. "Just don't get any ideas..." A suspicious glance once more washed across his pale yellow eyes, a sort of laughter in their depths. He was somewhat of a neat freak in his way, especially in regards to his health. However, his finicky tendencies seemed to be partially selective; his apartment was disheveled, for instance - however, on the contrast, his appearance always seemed tidy.

Of course, he was a shapeshifter, and did indeed choose to look this way.

"Hm..." Rehkar thought aloud, glancing over to his companion briefly to show he was addressing her. "So, where are you headed? Home?" He eyed her bag - was she still a high school student? He didn't even remember what the inside of a classroom looked like.

From his head, where a short crop of golden-brown hair once stood, sprang longer locks of a platinum blond - it sure as hell looked more natural than those boxes of hair dye, with the pretty women on their fronts, at that. Rehkar's delicate chin was enveloped in a faint trace of similarly-colored hairs; there was a more subdued, hermaphroditic air about him - save for the smooth, slightly irritated voice that never did change.

The bus pulled out from the side of the road, taking off into the direction of... Well, places. Destinations. Huh. The world alone made Rehkar wonder whether or not it originated from the word destiny - for, that would make sense after all.

She halted mid sitting motion, her jaw hanging open ever so slightly. “I wouldn’t try to…” Upon realizing how perfectly dim-witted she sounded, she simply opted to not finish her sentence, snapping her mouth shut as she quickly eased into the uncomfortable seat.

Her tail hung over the edge and would have trailed into the aisle if she hadn’t shuffled it under the seat. The problem with it was its sheer size, mainly. It took up ludicrous amounts of extra space and was generally a bother to adjust. She’d shaved all the extra fluff off of it once in order to reduce its mass, and had left her home as little as possible until it had grown back. Beauty before practicality, she’d thought, bitterly grinning at her own petty insecurities.

Upon assuming her seat, she’d shuffled through her bag and pulled out a medical textbook, intending to whip it open to the first page she could and pretend to read to avoid conversation. Starting when Rehkar addressed her, she slammed it down onto her lap with more force than necessary, allowing herself a wince at the sudden sting of pain.

“I… um… no,” she stuttered, “I… I just left there. I’m going to the hospital. F-for a class thing, not because of an e-emergency,” she added hastily, anticipating questions and heading them off before they could be asked. She blinked in surprise as his hair changed—that was unexpected. Was he a true blue shape-shifter? Or merely a creature that had the ability to shape-shift? Perhaps an incubus?

“Where are you going?” she asked in an attempt to be polite. In her lap, she wrung her hands, chewed down nails biting into her palms and fingers.

Although intrigued by her response (and more so by her returned curiosity in regards to where he was headed), Rehkar couldn't help but turn the other way for a second, unsure of how to explain. Then, almost with a shift of pace (no pun intended!), he turned back to the girl, and coolly said, "Oh... About. Here and there. I've no true idea, really; I simply go where the wind takes me... Well actually, wherever my mind takes me. If I'm up for a jog, I'll go for a jog - but I won't know when I'll stop, or where. I leave that up for those around me to decide." He grinned, his teeth flashing a silvery-white.

Without hesitating to ask, Rehkar snatched the textbook from the girl's lap. "Ah. Studying to become a doctor, are we?" Laughing to himself, he flipped through the pages until he came to a page dominated by an anatomical diagram, deciphering each bone in the human body, as well as its purpose. "I never did like the medical sciences, myself. I'm more of a... Painting sort. Y'know, like the kind who paint on canvasses - not the house-painting kind. Something about the stuff just makes me... Ecstatic."

Rehkar returned the medical book hurriedly as he pulled from a satchel beside him some sort of large sketchbook-of-sorts that seemed too large to realistically fit within it. "Here," he breathed, offering it over to the girl. "I'm not one for sketching, or drawing even, so most of my stuff is open to interpretation, and not always something one can explain to another. Sorry it's such a big book; as I said, canvass is the way to go. They don't make it pocket-size, for... some reason or another. I dunno."

He turned to the girl, grinning as her tail went this way and that. "What did you say your name was again? I'm Rehkar."

Hoping his forwardly openness would put the girl at ease, he sat back, allowing her to take it all in. As he did so, his face shifted into a more longer, mature one. He wasn't usually this open to strangers - nor was he all that comfortable around them. Nor did he usually shapeshift so minutely. Ah, well. Old habits die hard, as they say...

Surprised at his reaction, the girl eased her grip on the thick book balanced precariously in her lap. “That sounds… fun,” she said, dithering on the word. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. It was… interesting, to be sure, but she didn’t know how to say that without sounding like a sarcastic snot. Not that using the word ‘fun’ sounded much better, but it was true, wasn’t it? It did sound like an intriguing way to live… If only she had the time for it.

Mid motion, she stopped in a grab for her book, feeling foolish as it registered that he was just looking. As she returned her hands to her lap, a small part of her mind cried out in indignation that he would snatch it way without asking, and that part was promptly overruled. What good would it do to confront someone over such a little thing? Nothing, except rip her nerves into tiny little pieces.

“Y-yes,” she said gingerly accepted his sketchbook (paint book?), slipping the textbook back into her bag. “An emergency medicine doctor. The k-kind that work in the emergency room.”

She began to open the sketch/paint book (what did she call it?) before she paused abruptly, registering the question he’d asked before he’d even handed it to her. “M-my name? Oh, sorry… I g-go by Shani…”

She wondered if it was wise to tell this much to a stranger, and then inwardly laughed at herself. Or tried to. Was she suddenly a third grader, as opposed to a college senior? Still… she wished her inner self had allowed her to use this logic to escape further conversation. He seemed nice enough, but she was terrified of talking to people outside of work, school, or home environments. Too many variables, too many things to say, too many things to not say… It scared her tremendously, and caused her stuttering problem, normally quelled into obedience through years of speech therapy, to rear it’s rather awkward head.

It didn’t help that she couldn’t tell how old he was. She was bad at gauging ages normally, let alone when the person in question was a shape shifter. He could just be making himself look- there! Just there! Had he changed his face? Well, that certainly proved her point.

Shaking it off and turning her attention back to the pictures, she let her eyes roam over the first painting, taking in the abstract colors and brushstrokes. She resisted the urge to let her fingers trace it, allowing her eyes to drift to Rehkar. “Th-this is pretty,” she said sincerely, “I-I’m sorry I don’t know any better… art terms to say that and sound less… t-trite.”

Returning her eyes to the painting, she turned the page, which was rather difficult, given the enclosed space and size of the book.

"Ah, that." Rehkar said, signaling the painting this Shani had just turned from. "That was... interesting to paint. The mere image of it was imprinted in my mind for years after I completed it. Hell, it still is to this day. I dunno..." His eyes glazed over as he blushed. How forward he had been, handing over to this complete stranger his most prized possessions in the world! And how foolish he had acted, giving her name, asking for hers... Being so... Friendly!

Rehkar wasn't friendly. It wasn't his nature to do this. Then again, like most shapeshifters, his nature tended to change along with his many faces. Perhaps it wasn't wisest to just sit around and contemplate all of this; hell, who was he to care? As he had said before, his destination was unbeknownst to him - as was his true "nature," no?

The bus stopped within walking distance of a hospital - was this the hospital? That is, the one this Shani girl was stopping at? He hoped not. Oh boy, did he hope not...

"Well, is this it?" Rehkar nodded toward the hospital a few buildings down. "Darn this bus and its half-reliability!" He laughed to himself. "I'm sorry if I'm making you nervous, by the way; I really don't mean it. I'm not normally so... Open." Biting his lip, he turned back to the window. The hospital, from this angle, looked rather unpleasant - could this be why Shani was so on edge? Could it be that, within those walls, there were such terrors that she was on the verge of forsaking this career altogether?

Oh, of course not! He was just being presumptive. He imagined she was dedicated to this dream of hers, and would stop at nothing to pursue it.

Shani’s facial muscles relaxed enough that she didn’t have to fight to keep a non-petrified expression as she looked through the paintings. She did so quietly, appreciating the artwork with only an occasional comment. She was an odd mix—both the scientific section of her being that viewed the world in stern, unbendable terms that allowed her to actively pursue her career, and another, almost as dominant part of her that appreciated abstractions and make-believe more than she could any reality. It created an odd sort of duality in her, the will to believe in concrete and the will to believe in unexplained fluidity.

She handed his book back to him with something that was almost a warm expression just as the bus reached her stop. “I’m afraid it is,” she said apologetically, gathering up her bag and her umbrella as she got to her feet. She allowed those in the back of the bus to pass her by and exit before she did—a pushover to the end. It drove her insane, it wouldn’t have been rude or made anyone angry if she’d gone ahead in her place, and yet… she was so very timid that she couldn’t manage even that tiny assertiveness.

Rehkar doesn’t seem like that at all, she thought wistfully. She was willing to bet that he was certain of himself and his actions. The way he’d taken her book to look at, how friendly he’d been (she, of course, did not know that that was not his typical nature), how he’d simply allowed her, a stranger, to look at his art… Why, he must not have a social fear in the world!

Pausing as she stepped into the aisle, she craned her head over her shoulder to offer Rehkar a tiny, but genuine, smile. “D-don’t worry about it. I-I a-always get nervous around people. Y-you’re a lot nicer than m-most people I meet on the bus.”

“It was n-nice to meet you. A-and thanks for l-letting me look at your paintings. M-maybe I-I’ll see you again, Rehkar.” With that, she turned away and walked forward. As she stepped off the bus, she opened her umbrella and began the short remaining walk to the hospital, hurrying away from the curb to avoid being soaked by the fifthly water—water that was more like sludge, really.