Clenching her fist, Aliza shouted:
"Yeah, it's dramatic! It's gonna be dramatic when we're speaking about something like this! Fuck, you're so immature, it pisses me off!"
"Yeah, yeah. Listen, your input is, uh, duly noted, alright? Really. But that's all it'll ever be. Input. What I end up doing is up to me and me alone. So don't interfere. I've got it all under control, trust me."
You could hear the smug and dismissive smile on his face as he spoke, and he two were silent before Aliza let out a sigh. Soon after, the footsteps were heard again, only, this time they were getting more distant.
Linnie sat up, wordless. He heard Liora sit up next to him, but he barely acknowledged her presence at all. The feelings within his chest were... beyond anger. Neither were they sadness.
Shame?
It was actually a familiar feeling to the boy. The feeling that he'd disappointed someone. Perhaps himself. It was in that moment that he realized, that, despite his best efforts to make a good first impression on another human being, he had failed.
He tried hard to be nice, civilized... cute. An image fitting of his small, frail body. He'd even suppressed his deep urges, hunting only when Alwyn asked him to, like with the moose. Well, usually.
There were the small animals—rabbits, mice, things like that—that he would occasionally catch himself eyeing. But what was the harm in that? Linnie just couldn't help himself. They were asking to be... 'killed'?
There was no such term in the place where he came from. No, because despite how he looked, this boy, Linnie, was still very much an animal. A grown-up, intelligent, emotional animal. But an animal nonetheless.
And he had messed it up. Messed it up so badly, in fact, that they thought he was a literal psychopath. Less... than human?
"Ah... haha—ha," Linnie choked. He raised his hands to his face, wiping the warm tears from his eyes. Turning to Liora, he asked her, "a psycho? That's what you guys think I am?"
He was embarrassed, never having cried in front of anyone before.
Liora reached out, slowly touching his hair with her fingers. Brushing it away from his face, she frowned. The girl was uncharacteristically calm.
"I mean, I don't think so? I barely know you, right?"
Her voice was soft, like she was trying to comfort the boy, but Linnie's tears only fell harder, and the repeated sharp breaths that came with crying had started.
"Hey! So what if you're some monster, Linnie? What's wrong with that!?"
"...'What's wrong'? I don't wanna be a monster! I wanna be a human!"
"What about me? I'm a monster—literally! Do you hate me? Wait... you haven't secretly hated me all this time, have you!?"
She said it with an angry face, yet, her tone was anything but.
"No—well, you act just like any other human I've met, so it's different! Well, a little more wild, sure, but that's all fine! I'm the one who actually acts like a damned monster."
"Of course I act like a monster, dummy! Didn't I just drink your blood? Humans don't do stuff like that. And look! Look at my fangs! It's not like you've got fangs."
She comically stretched her lips to show her teeth, her fangs shining in the moonlight. Her insightful words were kind of... unlike her? Well, for the bubbly, absent-minded girl Linnie had come to know, he would've expected a lot less tact.
But he didn't think much of it in that moment. Those words were exactly what he needed to hear, after all.
Linnie sniffled, wiping his nose. "So, what? We're both monsters? Yeah, that makes it so much better, tch."
The sarcasm was thick. But the girl grabbed the boy's hands, and continued, with bright eyes.
"Yeah, it makes it better! If we're both monsters, then why's it matter? I mean, what's so bad about the two of us being monsters, anyway? Isn't it cool to be different? To be feared? It's like... power!"
Linnie didn't really understand that last bit, but the unsettling feeling inside him was calming. Well, he wasn't going to answer her honestly. He didn't know her long or well enough to admit why he was truly feeling so miserable.
That he just wanted people to accept him. Other humans, that is. Which is why she couldn't give him what he wanted.
Because she wasn't human.
Quite the hypocrite, one might say to themselves. Scoffing, even. Oh, but what young boy isn't a little bit selfish and hypocritical?
"I guess... but didn't you hear? Aliza said Alwyn was gonna have to kill me or 'snuff me out' or whatever. Aren't you scared? That they'll turn on us... for being monsters?"
"Forget about that! I haven't been travelling with you guys that long yet, but even I know enough about Alwyn to know that someone like him wouldn't have taught you magic in the first place—or even taken either of us in—if he didn't plan on going through with it."
Sensing that Linnie wasn't picking up what she was putting down, exactly, she continued.
"He's just that type of annoying guy, okay?! There's no way he cares about all this monster stuff, right? I mean, I can see it in his eyes!"
"I guess? But what about Aliza?"
Linnie sighed, but his tears started slowing down. He had calmed down a bit, thanks to Liora.
"Why do you care about what she thinks? Even if she did think you were some monster, it's not like she's an issue. Even I could kill her if I wanted to! I'm just kidding—hey! She doesn't hate you, idiot. Didn't she say she loves you like a brother? That's like, the best kind of love, I think."
She gave a dramatic thumbs-up as she scratched her head awkwardly.
Despite only being a year older than the boy at most, and contrary to her childish, almost animalistic personality, she might've been a lot more mature than she let on. Much more than the naive and wild Linnie, at least.
They hadn't had a lot of time to grow close, the two apprentices, but perhaps Linnie was warming up to her...? Just a little bit. A kinship, maybe. Between two monsters.