Just Can't Sleep [Lilo]

[lilo]

Lilo mostly did what she did best: ignored most other people and remained focused on her own little world. She could feel Akinyi's eyes on her while she flopped into her molten pile of despair, and she was vaguely aware of the confusion. That, she was used to. People usually didn't understand Lilo's mind; there were even times when Lilo didn't really understand Lilo's mind. But that was neither here nor there for the moment.

What was here and there was Akinyi's plan. Lilo shifted, not rising up off the floor but at least moving to a position wherein she was laying on her back and looking straight up at the other girl. Lilo's eyes narrowed suspiciously for a few moments while she mentally ran through all the possibilities for what Akinyi could possibly be. Lilo being Lilo, "alien" topped the list, with "changeling" coming in a very distant second.

"You sure you're not an alien or something?" she asked, drawing out the words and layering suspicion into each and every one of them. "Because you keep asking a lot of funny questions, and you don't seem to understand stuff. Now you want me to head into your room..." the gears were turning. This was never good. "Wait, Water! I've seen that movie too!" she raised a finger, pointing at Akinyi. "You're secretly planning on an elaborate set of circumstances that will lead up to you using the water to somehow melt my face off! And I thought we were friends."

She started wiggling, attempting to move away from Akinyi but still not fully convinced that getting up was in her best interest.

[Deleted]

The word "alien" translated strangely in Akinyi's mind. She mulled over the answer for a moment. She was about to reply that yes, she was foreign and from a different land, but that was when Lilo began to get very upset and start shouting things.

Finally growing frustrated, Akinyi put her hands on her hips and marched over to Lilo, putting a foot on her stomach so she would stop squirming away. She hoped the girl was listening and not just plotting some way to explode everything.

"You are very mean," she said. "You make fun of people who are different from you and who come from other places. That is not something that friends do. I am...alien. I am not from this country. I do not think you are, either. Do I say mean things about you?"

She frowned and moved her foot away. "I do not know how to melt people's faces. If I do not like someone, I usually tell them. Then we fight and whoever wins is the one who is right. I have been right a lot." She grinned, and to call it an evil grin would only be a slight exaggeration. "I do not want to fight you." She spread her hands out. "But I cannot let you continue saying mean things about people. I want to be your friend, but I can't if you hate me for being alien."

She held her hand out to help Lilo up. "Do you want a friend? Or do you want a fight?"

And hopefully some of what she had said--and most of it had been hard to describe, too, for someone who didn't understand the language well--had sunk in.

[lilo]

"What? You're the alien---ha!" Lilo shot up to a sitting position, finger extended, "you're admitting it! You're totally a---wait--," her face crinkled as Akinyi continued to explain. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lilo knew of the more traditional meaning of the word alien. Considering that she was a native of her own country, in a very literal sense, she'd heard it from time to time among those that didn't realize what a real alien was.

Needless to say, this took a lot of thinking for Lilo. Thinking meant not talking, at least for the moment, which gave Akinyi the opening she needed to explain more. No face-melting, definitely from somewhere far away from here. Well, that explained the name. Most of the people around here had really boring names. Then there was an extended hand and something about friendship and fighting.

"Why can't I do both?" asked Lilo, dead serious. She took the hand and hefted to her feet anyway. Lilo was pretty sure that she was technically older (and therefore wiser and more mature) than Akinyi, but Lilo's small size meant that she was right in the same general build. Which worked. Sort of. "Besides, it's not my fault you were acting all suspicious and stuff. There's all kinds of stuff out there, and most of it's here," she pointed down at the floor, then nodded. "Not my fault you're so weird."

Lilo paused, considering Akinyi. She nodded. "But I like you. We really should hang, but, uh... there's the whole running and hiding from the people who are upset at the explosion thing..."