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Random~~~~Avani~~~~Hazel
It was such a strange feeling! Ever since I could remember--although admittedly, my memory didn't go very far back--I had always been with my Mom and my aunt and uncle. Well. When you get right down to it, Sky was something of my sister, being as Mom raised her too and all, from an egg. You know. So it was very odd, it was, when she actually told me to go away! Oh dear. I make her sound so unkind! Um... Well, it wasn't like that. You see, ever since the war ended--look at me, I talk like I was there! I wasn't even born!--mom, and I guess the rest of my family--well, she was pretty angry at her mother. Her mother put her into the war, and I guess she wasn't happy about it. She also has this thing about dogs, and I suppose they'd gotten a Dalma and a couple Lucain while she was away. That was basically the final nail in the coffin for her. She adopted an enormous Seraphent (and I mean bigger than usual, even), packed up her worldly possessions and her crew (me, this Shinzo named Hazel whom her parents got for her, and of course Aunt Skycutter and Uncle Krii), and took off, unwilling to return.
We were traveling through Roraldi, of course, and as it happened we were running low on food. So, trying to help me "grow up" a little (so she said!), she sent me off into the forest to forage for some edible plants and fruit or something. I've always felt oddly at home around plants, so I figured I could do it. But just to watch out for me, you know, she sent Hazel along with me. And because he was being annoying, she sent Random along too. Ever since that... incident... we'd been forced to put up with him.
"Good lordy, what an infodump!" he howled mysteriously as we walked along the path. The trees were too thick for flying, and I worried I'd get lost if we went above the canopy. Nobody "gets" Random, I should note--we call him that for a reason. He always says these weird, mysterious things, and we think he's crazy.
Of course, every time you think about Random being crazy, he always says (and here he went again): "Crazy? I'm the only sane man in this godforsaken teenaged girl wasteland!" Hazel flicked her tail at him to shut him up.
"Don't mind him, Avani," Hazel said to me. Since we were friends, she was using her natural voice around me--the big, resonant deep one. If I ever make enough money, I'll pay for her to fix that. I feel sorry for her.
"Are we in the scene yet?" Random complained.
"In the--huh?"
Up ahead, I noticed two odd creatures. I had never seen any others like them before, and yet--and yet, somehow, they were so oddly familiar! I nosed forward between the trees, watching them move.
They looked like me, I realized. Just like me--was that possible?
[11, 1]
