[Chayden]

Qereset found himself smiling again at the girl's strange pronunciation of his name. He corrected her gently, "Kher-eh-set. You were really close! But it's not English, so it's okay that you didn't know how to say it."
The Pure was relieved that she seemed genuinely excited to play with him - at least she wouldn't feel cheated when he asked her to lead the way out of here. Well, that's if he was lucky. He padded slowly after her, not trusting his feet to carry him properly. It would be good to get back into the water; he truly did owe his life to it.
Qereset lowered his paws to the water slowly, relishing the calm that washed over him with the waves. He called out to the Arkuhna, wanting to get her attention so that she wouldn't miss his trick.
"Hey, Rengi, watch this!"
It all happened in an instant. Qereset let out as much air as he could and relaxed. His molecules heated and rushed apart - liquefying instantly. The particles rained down into the sea, hitting its surface with a ssh. He melded perfectly with the ocean, swirling around Rengi's paws before jetting away and returning to his Kuhna form in one fluid motion.
"Pretty cool, huh~?"

[Kat-Wolf]

Rangi pranced into the ocean, splashing up liquid in a haphazard fasshion as she bounced around in the low tide. Eyes sparkling, she turned around to face the Pure, and watched closely.

Her body shook with surprise as the male disappeared in a wave, melding with the water. This was definitely not the trick she was expecting to see! Maybe an underwater flip, or even some sort of dive or something... But literally being the sea? The Arkuhna gasped, never seeing anything like it before.

A current threaded it's way between her paws, but she figured it was just Qereset, moving around in the water. She squealed when he surfaced again, practically jumping with enjoyment. "That was awesome!" she responded, her wet frame glittering. "How'd you do it? I wanna try!" Rangi dipped her foreleg beneath the flowing tide and shut her eyes, willing with all her might for her flesh to liquefy. When she looked into the salty brine again, the feline was dismayed to find her white paw, solid and opaque as ever.

"That was really cool!" she repeated, half wading, half paddling over to Qereset, the water, which would have been an easy stroll for the ordinary human, pressing up against her ivory chest. "I didn't know Kuhnas could do that! Can you show me how? Is it only something special Kuhnas can do? Is it something you learn?" Rangi babbled off like she was playing Twenty Questions, searching for an answer.

[6.6]

[Chayden]

Qereset breathed deeply, sad that he could not have simply stayed one with the waves. He would have to remember that notion for the next time it seemed as if he had no escape - permanently becoming water seemed to be a rather fitting way to die, and would leave no trouble for anyone else. No one would have to fuss over the body he left behind...
He chuckled at the expression on Rengi's face. "Well, nobody ever taught it to me! My old family told me that it was something special I got to do because of the way I was born. They said that this body had a Preluhna for a mommy and a Hydrokuhna for a daddy, but I don't know what that has to do with anything. My mom always said that it doesn't matter where you come from."
The Pure frowned, puzzled and saddened by the memory of the Palmies who had abandoned them. He dipped his paw into the waves as Rengi had, holding it out so that she could see as he turned it to water and back again. If only everything could be so simple as that paw...

[Kat-Wolf]

"Oh! I know... A Hydrokuhna can do that thing with the water... where you sorta... turn invisible-ish... Maybe you got that from your daddy!" Rangi piped, trying to remember what she had learned about the aquatic breed. "It's called hydro... hydro... hydrodynamical or something..."

Despite her accepting demeanor, the female was rather taken aback at the Pure's use of words. This body? His old family? Did he have another body, before? Simply a child, Rangi really couldn't comprehend such notions, and she tilted her head quizzically. "Were you ever... in... a... different body?" the feline asked, confused at such a concept. "I've always been an Arkuhna..."

However, he questioning attitude changed back to excitement as Qereset's paw melded with water right before her eyes, then back into its solid form again. "That's so cool!" she squealed, grinning from ear to ear. "I don't have any cool tricks like that in the water... but I can color the sand! Sort of... What's your favorite color?" Rangi looked to him hopefully, wanting to impress the Kuhna, as he had done with her.

[6.8]

[Chayden]

"Mmm... My dad..." Qereset mused, finally letting his paw drift to the sand. There, too, it melded in, though not so literally as with the water. His pelt simply allowed him to be camouflaged in the sand, especially when underwater. He had to accept the fact that he would never understand the basic complexities of this Pure Kuhna form.
He snapped out of his momentary lapse when Rengi spoke again. "I was born as a human..." Qereset whispered, ears held back in sadness. It really hadn't been that long since he had been with his true parents, and the wound was still raw, despite his efforts to forget about them. "And I drowned really close to here. But the sand got all mixed up with me and the sea, and I... I came back, I guess. It was pretty scary, but I wasn't afraid to go back into the water because I can't drown again." It only made sense to this child because he had gone through it himself. Had their roles been reversed, he would undoubtedly be just as confused as Rengi was now.

"You know how to color the sand?" he echoed, willing himself to stop having mini mood swings. He didn't want to disconcert the Arkuhna at all... "You should show me! I thought that it always stayed that color!" He paused, considering. Then he told her, "I think my favorite color is green, because I had a green blanket that I used to sleep with, before it got lost." Or maybe it's still there, and I'm the one who got lost...

[Kat-Wolf]

Rangi listened to the tale with a mixture of confusion, interest, and a slight twinge of fear. He... came back to life? Like a zombie? The Arukhna involuntarily shuddered, but quickly shook the feeling off, not wanting to hurt her new friend's feelings.

"Oh..." The feline shifted in the shoulder-deep water, her mind spinning. "So you weren't... born like me?" He had never pushed up against his mother's soft belly, nor felt her as she tenderly licked him on the head with a rough tongue. No, he had been cradled in the arms of a human, run through a house on two legs... The concept of such a vague idea honestly befuddled her.

Not letting it spoil her chipper attitude, however, the Kuhna bounced with excitement, happy the conversation had taken a new direction. "Yeah!" she answered enthusiastically, her jade eyes shining. "Well, sort of. I'm not very good at it yet. But I'll get better when I get older! It's sorta like your hydrodynamic thing... sorta..." Trailing off, Rangi bounded to the shore, listening as Qereset answered her question. "Green! Right..." The small feline stared at the sand, glaring at it with all her might, concentrating as much as her little distracted mind could muster.

And it worked, to a degree. The salty white particles became a rather faded emerald. The color was not very pretty, nor was the area of the 'painting' very large, but Rangi was enormously proud, nonetheless. "When I grow up," she mused happily, still keeping the color of the sand, I'm gonna be able to paint the entire beach!"

[7.0]

((I feel really bad. Pre-exam week stress has pretty much taken over my life right now, and the actual exams will next week. I apologize for the awful lateness of this post D: Hopefully, after these doom-filled times weeks blow over, I'll be a bit more timely in my replies. ))

[Chayden]

[D'aww, don't feel bad! I've got exams, too, starting the 18th. :/ Here's to not failing! /shot]

"Yeah, I guess I wasn't really born," Qereset admitted with a shrug. "But I'd never thought of it that way before." Thoughts ran through his head of sitting at a table, eating bland cereal with a spoon. Such an ordinary thing it had been! But he would never be able to do it again, now...

The Pure followed her to the sand excitedly, wanting to find out what she meant when she said that she could paint the sand. He assumed that it would be something like the way that the waves could make golden sand brown when they washed over it...
To say the least, he was amazed. "You can do stuff like that with just your head? How?! That's super cool! Do you, like, think of anything special?"
His eyes were rooted to the spot where she had made the green appear. It wasn't the brightest color ever; in fact, if he hadn't known better, he may have just brushed it off as a patch of some kind of algae. The only thing that was different was the texture. It wasn't slimy-looking like the algae always was. It actually appeared to be the sand that it was. "Is that magic?"

[Kat-Wolf]

[Gahhhhh this is so late :c Exams, and then we spent the weekend in a place that I thought we'd have internet access in but didn't. Sorry!]

Rangi blushed, her blood running hot beneath her fur. "Yeah," she answered, the pride slipping into a streak of modesty, feeling quite embarrassed with all the praise. "kinda. I guess it's like you being a Pure Kuhna and able to turn all watery... Since I'm an Arkuhna, I'm able to make colors n' stuff." The sand remained the faded, almost sea-weed like green, the small patch of particles that would undoubtedly be sucked away in the oceans twirling currents.

"Something special?" she repeated, mirroring the feline's words. "Well... I think of all the pretty green things I like. Like, I think of the grass outside in the park, and the leaves in the trees, and those shiny green stones... ehm-err-rulds, I think." Still far from educated in such terms, the young kitten fumbled for the right wording. "I guess it's magic, just as much as your Hydro thing is." The naive child grinned, letting her paw pads sink into the soft sand below.

[Chayden]

(omg miiidteeerms D: Finally, they're over!!! C:> I'm alive again~ <3 /loves on)

Qereset cast the Arkuhna a smile, trying his best to be reassuring. He'd figured, by that point, that everyone must have their own ability, something special that only they could do. Out of nowhere, he was overwhelmed by the desire to find them all out, and perhaps even learn more from more experienced creatures...
"Magic, yeah!" he parroted, kicking sand about as he trotted around her. He was beginning to really enjoy Rangi's company. The Pure Kuhna was glad to have met her. My luck seems to have changed for the better, he realized happily. By now, the two might even be... friends.
"Hey, Rangi?" he piped up after a moment of silence. "Do you think we're friends? Because I really rather like you." Ordinarily, the boy's face would've heated up with embarrassment at such an expression, but he felt remarkably cool. Perhaps that was a benefit to having friends? He couldn't say for sure, seeing as he'd never really had the chance to make friends with the other children. His life had been a lonely one of moderate isolation, sadly enough.

[Kat-Wolf]

[Mmkay so... This is actually my first weekend in the past six weeks that I don't have to do anything. I've been out of town, dealing with spontaneous power outages, trying to keep my grades up... And I just haven't had time for Evelon lately. Hopefully, things are calming down and I can get on here more often. I'm so incredibly sorry for the lateness of this post. This is rather embarrassing that it's so overdue.]

Rangi giggled as a spray of sand hit her legs, watching the Pure Kuhna prance around her, seemingly happier. She was glad-- for some reason, when they met, there was always a core of sadness beneath his chipper veneer, like he was hiding something heavy in his heart. Either the heaviness had shrunken, or he was really, really good at hiding it.

"Friends?" she asked, her green eyes shining. "Of course! I was hoping that we'd be friends all along!" She smiled, shifting in the loose footing, her paws kneading the soft ground below. "I like you, too," she answered, her face glowing. Water dribbled off her pelt and into the sand beneath her, creating darker splotches in the ivory expanse.

[7.4]

[Chayden]

[D'aww, don't be embarrassed! I'm patient. ^ u^ And I take forever with replies, too |D]

Qereset couldn't help but let his mood brighten further when Rangi agreed that they were friends. Thinking about it, he realized that he'd never really had a friend before. As a human, his only friends had been his fish and the space under the covers... As a Kuhna, he was... free.
Narrowing his eyes playfully, he slunk back to the waves and flicked water at the Arkuhna with his paw. "Take that!" he challenged, skipping away into the waves, inviting her to play. "Betcha can't catch me~!"
He had decided that he wouldn't become the sea this time. The Pure was suddenly itching for a real competition. You see, even though he had gone through so much already, he was still a child. And children, as a rule, are filled with boundless energy that could turn to nastiness if not expended properly.
To put it simply, he was excited. <3