[Aponi!] Ryuusei

[Aponi Lebennon]

Aponi laughed at his question. Aaran, a boy? Noo! Of course not! No, he just happened to have a boy's middle name that she incessantly called him, and just happened to be breastless, and just happened to be a boy didn't make him a male at all.

Exept, it did. But if she did anything other than laugh, then she'd give him away instantly.

"Our Sophie? Have you ever met anyone less male?" She giggled. It was a rather silly question. Aaran had told her, that his mother's power, the equivalent of her trait, was growth. She had actually affected him, so that even though he was supposedly a boy (Aponi didn't rightly know sometimes), so that while he may have been a boy scientifically, he was anything but that socially, and also on most of his anatomy. His arms were virtually hairless, as were his legs. His facial hair never grew. He was quite curvy and his shoulders were narrow. He was very girlish.

So she was obviously more of a bumbling idiot than she had realized. An excuse was in order. A good excuse and she had jsut the right one.

"I assume I've been mixing up pronouns. It's one of the things I never REALLY got straight when I learned english." She said offhandedly. The lie was a good one, and convincing too. She smiled, in glee but it simply looked friendly.

"Sophie is a nervous girl. She's been through a lot. You'd think that would make someone hardy... But she is so frail, and emotionally fragile. But she loves to see people happy, especially people she cared about. "Aponi almost wept. This was quite true of Aaran. He'd taken the blame for her messes a couple of times already, and he'd even been hit by a man once in New York. Aponi sure as hell sorted him out.

"And, she really liked you." Aponi smiled, once again closing her eyes as she did, to look more...happy.

[Ithica Pettineo]

She was laughing. Laughing was definitely a good sign. If she had gotten nervous and vehemently denied it, Ithi would have started to cry. Or passed out. Or both. He smiled apologetically at her, feeling embarrassed by his assumptions. "I'm sorry, Aponi. I'm just paranoid." He looked down at his hands, scratching at the raw skin nervously.

"Less male?" Ithi paused, thinking back to everybody. He knew that she was just making a point, but he didn't want to just agree with her. It was, however, hard for him to judge 'less male' since he wasn't the most masculine guy in the world. In fact, he was more like a girl than he was a guy when it came to personality. And that just sucked. "Tinkerbell is feminine," he agreed at last, running his hands sheepishly through his hair.

At her excuse, Ithi waved off her mistakes. "Oh, it's fine." He was fluent in languages - due to his memory and his father's travels - and he understood how easy it was to mix and match them. "What language came first?" He asked, trying not to sound as accusatory as he had been with his other questions. Because this time he was interested in her, not in the secrets she was hiding.

He nodded as she explained about Soph. Ithi licked his lips and resumed scratching his hands again, feeling quite guilty at having assumed that they were both liars. "She's a lovely person," Ithica glanced at Rosie, who was merely just staring at both demons with a bored and slightly confused expression.

The doll, having only met Sophie once (and that wasn't the best of encounters), knew exactly what Aponi meant when she called Soph 'nervous' and 'fragile'. She would have said something, but the last time she had criticized Soph, Ithica had tore off her head. And it wasn't that it hurt because he had unanimated her before hand, but he had animated her while sewing and gluing her back together. The half-demon was, she thought, secretly a sadistic bastard.

Ithica looked up at Aponi, unsure of why she was using the past tense. Perhaps it was just because it wasn't her first language. "I... care about her. A lot. And she makes me happy." It wasn't such a hard thing to do, but Ithi's troubles weren't as much when she was around, and his hands didn't feel so dirty. He wanted to say that he loved her, but what was the point in saying it if he was not sure it was true?

"Poni? I'm sorry for acting the way I did when we first met. I just thought you were hurting her." He fidgeted uncomfortably as skin got caught beneath his fingernails. "But now I know you wouldn't do that now." He smiled once again at her. "It was a stupid assumption."

[Aponi Lebennon]

Aponi slowly digested everything Ithica had been saying and nodded where apropriate. SHe could in fact speak five languages, however, English was actually her first. She would say the strangest language, just to throw him off. She smiled and replied;

"The first language I could speak fluently was 'pache. My father lived with their people for a long time." The latter half was true. Levii Lebennon had indeed lived with the early forefathers of the Apache people, and had in fact help consturuct the dialect that had later become their language.

"My second was Mayan. My father also knew those people. Then English, then Italian, then French." She smiled, closing her eyes. She was very glad he felt so strongly about Aaran. It was good and healthy, and she kissed him on the cheek, as a sign of appreciacion.

"Ithica, I think, I should go. I... i think I need to get back to Sophie. She's ill. Very ill at the moment." Aponi sighed and frowned, and looked at him with glistening eyes. She actually wanted to stay and talk to the man - he was pleasant conversation, allbe it a little dopy. Ahs eshe didn't want to give the impression that she didn't like being enar him.

"I'll drop by some time, that ok?" she asked with a genuine smile.