This world is strange, and for the most part, it’s terrible. No matter what Mnemosyne knew of it she always was aware there would be something or someone who would shatter her views.
And one of those had to include the young girl beside her. Kirie apparently. She was younger than her, yet quite taller, pale and skinny, almost like a ghost, and she’d seemed to shrink away from Mnemosyne; eyeing the curls along her bangs and in her pigtails with unconcealed suspicion.
She needed to get the the bottom of this girl’s worries, if anything, it looked like she had a story Mnemosyne needed to investigate. But that meant making herself available to speak to; even if that meant borrowing a hat from a passerby and stuffing her hair into it until the strange girl loosened up.
She hadn’t been able to wean much of a story from her she just sat in silence as Mnemosyne introduced herself, but hopefully her position as a Senshi had been enough to assure her of her safety.
It must have been, because after only an hour or so of simply sitting beside the lost looking girl, she felt the weight of a head gently hit her shoulder.
She sighed and pulled her arm around the strange girl’s shoulders, gently stroking them until she awoke. She was a senshi. She protected the innocent. And that most certainly included this lost girl.
๑ - She hated how much of her life had become consumed by this stupid fear. What she had been afraid of in her old home town were monsters and disasters- not these spirals. A year ago, they had only made her feel dizzy and uncomfortable, but now they terrified her. She had become just as terrible as Shuichi’s mother- completely mortified by the sheer sight of something as simple as a curl in someone’s hair.
She couldn’t speak, shrinking away and curling her hands into fists as she struggled to try and keep herself from letting out an incomprehensible shriek. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real-! The stranger’s hair was fine, the curse of the spiral that had possessed her town had no way of infecting other people out here. Even then, it’s impossible for her not to think of the stranger’s limbs contorting into twisted circles, waiting with each passing second to become like the countless corpses she had seen rotting in her home town in her last few weeks there.
She could hear Mnemosyne introduce herself- but only as a distant voice in the midst of a panic that wouldn’t leave. Her heart didn’t want to slow down, and she still found it hard to breathe. She didn’t notice the time go by as the woman sat patiently next to her, waiting for sanity to come to her once again. Even then, she was hit with a wave of exhaustion brought on by the previous adrenaline rush, and found herself dozing away on Mnemosyne’s shoulder.
She probably had only slept a few minutes- right? She didn’t want to pull away even when she realized what situation she had put herself in. It felt like so long ago when she had last had human contact...