The girl was something. God, was she something...
Where life had seemed dreary and monotonous before, now it seemed vibrant, full of life, full of something more. This world, usually so devoid of hope, seemed to be brightened just a little bit by the light the girl threw off.
She'd been through so much - felt the kind of emotions that drive a person mad and ruin them from the inside out. Could she be blamed for what she did? With something like that inside of you, clawing at your insides to get out, would there really be any other way? No, it didn't seem that way...
When they had met, the girl had been so downtrodden, so utterly lacking in anything normal for a girl her age. And now, now she was positively radiant. She smiled and laughed and told stories and secrets with the innocence of a child who has found its first friend, a friend who can do absolutely no wrong.
"Hey 'Lissa?"
"Hm?"
"Let's go for a walk, it's pretty outside today," the girl said with an eager smile.
Melissa couldn't help but grin at the girl who stood in front of her now.
"All right, Med, let's go."
She stood and ruffled Medli's hair lightly; she turned her eyes up towards Melissa with a soft laugh and threw her arms around her in a quick embrace before pulling her towards the door.
---
They walked, hand in hand, down one of the lesser traveled paths in the only big park the city had. Melissa hated the city; it symbolized so much of what she hated, but it put her close to the people she needed to keep an eye on, and that alone made the place worth tolerating, at least. For Medli, it was a neverending journey of discovery. She was fascinated by big cities, and had spent an entire night the previous week telling her about how she had circled the area for three hours before finally finding a spaceport to dock in.
She squeezed Medli's hand lightly. Friendship - wasn't that all we all ever wanted? A place to belong, someone to talk to, someone who'll listen... a pair of arms always open and willing to comfort.
Melissa couldn't help but be inspired by the way Medli had changed in her presence. Nor could she help but be surprised at how readily she had accepted what Melissa believed about the worlds they lived on - not particularly popular opinions, to say the least. But the girl hadn't accepted them just because Melissa was the one who spoke the words, no, and that was what was most surprising.
For three days after Melissa had shared with Medli all her secrets, like Medli had done for her, they had not spoken. She had hardly even seen the girl save for meals. For a brief while Melissa had been seized with a sickening fear that the girl suddenly hated her - why should that matter? Why should she give a damn what this runaway thought of her? But when Medli had spoken to her again, when she had sat down at the table and spoken in that soft, even, lucid tone of voice, she understood why.
She had found her equal.
When Medli had finished explaining how she had researched and thought and then researched some more about the things Melissa had said about the world, and the System, and the government, she had reached across the table and taken Melissa's hand. In her eyes Melissa finally saw what it was that the air of innocence hid: an ordered, frighteningly calculating mind that dug through everything for shreds of sense and meaning.
Melissa had nodded, thanked her, and excused herself to her room. For the first time in years, she cried. We become so accustomed to the way we must live, she had thought to herself, that we begin to shut out the pain of loneliness until we forget it even exists. And now someone had shown her what she had wanted... and that someone was the last person she would have ever expected.
Melissa was quickly snapped out of her reflections by the girl's hand slipping away from hers. With a little shout of glee, Medli ran off the path and towards an open section of the park filled with all sorts of flowers. Melissa smiled and wondered what she'd seen to get so excited over. Slipping her hands into her pockets, she walked after Medli.
She came up behind her, where she sat cross-legged on the ground, her eyes scaning over bunches of flowers.
"'Lissa, look! These are some of my favorites! They grew all over the place back at home, in the Field..."
Melissa looked down at the little bunches of blue flowers. "What are they?"
"Forget-me-nots, aren't they pretty?" She turned a bit and looked up at Melissa with a grin.
"Very," she said, sitting down next to her. She ran a hand through Medli's thick brown hair, letting it fall onto the girl's back lightly.
"In German, it's one of my favorite words. It was one of the first words I learned when I was little - I was really weird, I learned backwards from my brother, German and then English, aren't I odd? - and I've remembered it ever since..."
Melissa smiled as the girl rambled on about her language and continued playing with her hair, coaxing her into telling her more stories about her childhood - they were hard to come by, and Melissa found that she constantly wanted to know more.
Medli took a deep breath. "But anyways, the flowers." She giggled.
"Yes," Melissa said, shifting in the grass to face Medli better. "What're they called in German? You didn't say."
"Vergissmeinnicht." The word slipped from the girl's tongue with an ethereal fluidity.
Melissa looked down at the little blue flowers that were swaying gently in the wind with a tiny smile. They seemed to her such a perfect innocenty purity in the middle of this terrible city.
She reached down and picked one of the most brilliant flowers and scooted closer to Medli. She took Medli's wrist in her hand and met her gaze.
"Medli."
"What is it, 'Lissa?"
Melissa pressed the flower into the girl's hand and clasped their hands together. She met Medli's curious eyes.
"Vergissmeinnicht."