It was an hour after she’d left the diner and Alex was finally doubled over in pain from her headache. The wretched throbbing of her head and rising body temperature told her that peaking time was near. Good thing she’d made it to the beach. She was kneeling in the water, hoping that it would cool her down so that it wouldn’t be as terrible as the last time. From the thighs down her jean overalls were completely soaked. Her shoes were laid back along the beach with socks tucked in them so they wouldn’t get wet. So far her white t-shirt had yet to get wet.

Her head was griped in her hands as the pain was becoming unbearable. Thoughts drifted back to when Degla had told her. That this was a talent. Yeah right. A talent that didn’t allow her one moment’s peace with anyone longer than a half hour or so. It was getting worse to, or at least the outbursts were. She wasn’t sure if that meant she was losing control of it or if she was becoming stronger. The ability to control this demon talent was still not within her grasp. She had to start looking it up. At the rate this was going she felt she would just blow herself up from keeping it inside. Perhaps that was why these fits happened. Because she wasn’t using it often enough to keep under control, or she didn’t know how to relax it away.

Body temperature was so hot by this point that the water around her started bubbling with delight. Blue eyes slowly seemed to reflect the fury within that was trying to escape. Red hair seemed to become a brighter red with each moment.

Finally it peaked and she screamed out in pain as she basically blew fire out sky high in a mushroom shape like an atomic bomb would give off. After a few moments the flames had subsided and her body temperature was returning to normal. Her heart was pounding hard though her head no longer hurt. She was just dizzy now as she stumbled away from the water. The area of sand in which she’d been kneeling on had turned black though the tide was quickly taking care of that taking black sand out and leaving the normal dusty color behind.

Alex lay back on the beach away from the tide next to her shoes. Chest was heaving in and out from breathing heavily and trying to calm down from the adrenaline rush of the fire.

Nienna had gone home to find a note saying that everyone was gone, so she simply sat around for a while, shut the shades and tried to relax. It was dark in the house and she didn't particularly like sunlight. Perhaos that was what earned her the nickname 'Vampire'.

She'd tried to relax and couldn't. The dogs were asleep, the cat was outside, and the silence was deafening. She tried listening to music but nothing would quiet that voice inside her head. It told her something was wrong. It told her it needed to be fixed. She tried ignoring it again.

Sometime later, she laced up her shoes for a walk and headed outside, opting for some fresh air and a little bit of exercise. And she felt ready to go to the beach too.

About a half hour after that, she stood, jaw nearly coming off her face as she saw something burst out into flames.

She ran across the sandy beach, sneakers slowed drastically by it, and she nearly tripped on her jeans a couple of times. Her fingers curled on the edges of the sleeves on her sweatshirt and she bit her lip before calling out to a person she thought she could make out in the distance.

"HEY! Hey, are you all right?!" She shouted, voice tired and very concerned.

She was still trying to get a grasp on vision as it always went blurry afterwards. It was surprising they didn’t burn right out of her sockets sometimes. In fact, it was surprising that she just didn’t turn to ashes with as much as she had to put up with. The only thing that left any hint was that her overalls were slightly singed in various spots, but other than that she looked perfectly fine for just blowing up a minute ago. That was a talent all in itself in her opinion.

”I’m fine.” She finally mustered out to say to the questioning person. Eyes had not registered who it was yet as she sat up finally and rubbed her head for a moment. Common you stupid eyes. Focus for once. She turned to see a person running towards her, or rather a blob at this moment in time. However she wasn’t pleased with what they focused on finally.

”Nienna!?” Her face flushed bright red with the fact that Nienna just saw her explode like that. Of course it wasn’t natural for anyone to do that and she wondered what kind of reaction she would get from the girl.

"Like hell you're fine!" she seemed very flustered about this. Wouldn't she be hurt... from the explosion? What in the world...? How could she have survived, anyway.

Alex was sort of a blur as Nienna was running, but she was far-sighted, so when Alex shouted her name and she stopped, she saw who it was. "Alex?! Ohmigodohmigod! Are you seriously okay?" She seemed all too disturbed, and greatly overwhelmed/freaked out about this. But you can't blame her. Not every day does she see explosions like that. And more importantly, she doesn't see explosions like that ever day and see people survive them.

She continued running towards the other girl now. This was not how she wanted her day to go.

Nienna was thoroughly panicked and Alex didn’t blame her. She used to have the same feeling when this happened. Only since Delga had she started to learn more about it and assumed that she wasn’t the only one with this problem. She hoped she wasn’t the only one. However by the way Nienna was freaking out, Alex assumed she knew nothing about ‘talents’ or any part of that world. Alex couldn’t do much better though; she still had a lot to learn about it.

”Yes. I’m really fine.” She was still trying to reassure Nienna that nothing bad had happened. It would have been a lot worse if it had happened unexpectedly in the middle of town. A lot of people could have been hurt or even killed and she would never forgive herself if that did happen.

Nienna skidded to a halt right beside Alex, kneeling beside her. No, she hadn't known anything about this supposed 'magic' world, or that any of it existed until Wick had come along. Then she assumed he was the only one of his kind, and definitely not a joke after the second meeting with him. Her shoulders slumped slightly, as they did when she got increasingly nervous.

"You're sure? That was like... hell..." she frowned, looking Alex over, "are you sure you're not burned at all?"

No, she hasn't drawn the conclusion that the explosion was Alex's fault yet. You can't blame her little unnish mind.

”Yes I’m sure. Honestly, I’m fine.” Alex finally concluded that Nienna really didn’t know anything about the ‘other’ world and she would try and leave it at that as much as possible. If Nienna knew that she was the one that caused that massive explosion, might freak out and leave her and never want to see her again. It seemed to happen a lot.

”So….how much did you see exactly?” Her heart was pounding. It might be better if she knew how much she exactly saw. If she only saw an explosion and then her laying on the beach it might not be as bad as she thought. She could blame it on something else most likely and Nienna would hopefully go along with it.

"Uhm, okay," Nienna took a deep breath, looking over Alex again. "But your clothes, they're... they're uhm... burned?" Singed was most likely the word she was looking for, but she was never good with words anyway.

"I just saw... an explosion. That's all. Swear to God it freaked me out."

She almost breathed out a sigh of relief that the explosion was the only thing she saw. But that would lead on to there might be more to the story than she necessarily wanted to tell. So she sighed inwardly, not letting it show how relieved she was to know she had not seen much.

”That’s it. Just my overalls got singed a bit. Nothing touched skin.” She replied to the question of burned pants. Freaked me out to. But she wasn’t going to say that as it always freaked her out.

”What are you doing out here?” She was curious as if Nienna had followed her of if she’d just gotten bored and headed out here. But if Nienna had followed her she would have seen everything and spoken up earlier. So perhaps it was just coincidence that she showed up when she did.

"Wow, geeze. Well, at least you're all right. Excuse my language, but that was some freaky shit."

Now that the drama was over and she was no longer panicked, she felt like melting right here on the cool sand. It was a habit of hers to get an adrenaline rush and then just get all tuckered out and weak feeling. She frowned slightly. She wasn't the one who should have felt tuckered out and weak feeling.

"I was just, y'know, taking a walk. What a coincedence."

She laughed at her comment and finally took her gaze away from Nienna and out across the beach where she’d just ‘blown up’. At least any traces of sand turned black and been taking out with the tide. No traces of evidence left other than what Nienna saw.

”Yeah. What a coincidence.” She lay back down on the ground and stared up at the clouds moving by in the sky. Her heart was still pounding from the incident, but she was trying to calm down as quickly as possible. At least she had on the outside. It was up to the inside to follow suit and calm down as well. She was still slightly hot, but her body temperature was coming down back to normal rather quickly.

”Come out here often? It’s a lot quieter than in the city.” Diverting from the situation, she started up a different conversation.

"I'm sorry that happened though. That's... freaky." She couldn't find anything else to say, and felt mildly guilty she wasn't more sympathetic. It was odd that she could be so calm about the whole situation, though. Nienna would have freaked out entirely, hyperventilated and had another one of her panic attacks.

"Well, sometimes. I love the water, though... especially late at night..." even if I am afraid of the dark, she thought, rather cynically amused. "Nobody notices when I'm gone, so yeah." They usually just left her with a note saying they were going to be gone and feed and/or take the animals for walks. Either that or she was gone all day and nobody noticed or cared. That's why she came out here.

"What about you...?"

”Don’t worry about it. Not like it’s your fault.” She said laughing. Her head was nodded in agreement to the fact that it was nice here near dark though it did attract some nasty characters the later it got. That’s why she tried to not stay for too long after nightfall. She’d often thought about sleeping one night on the beach, but she always seemed to turn away at the idea.

”That’s sad that nobody notices you. Don’t they care where you are at?” Worry was on her face as eyebrows furrowed.

”I come out here because it’s calming. It relaxes me. At least it’s better than the noisy city, though I don’t think I’d sleep out here. Lot of weird people after nightfall.” She stated like this was nothing new.

"That doesn't mean I can't still be sorry. I mean, whoa, what is it with you people and not accepting sympathy?" She of course was joking, or trying to. After all, she's very scared of fire... she has been most of her life, and explosions are definitely not things she'd like to see.

"Eh, it's okay. They don't really care, but I've learned to live with it." It really wasn't okay. The cuts on her arms and legs made by a razor blade proved that. But, of course, she wasn't going to admit that to Alex.

She winced. "Ee-eee, tell me about it." She then shuddered, and shivers went down her spine. "Eww. Nasty people, yes. Hopefully you haven't had to deal with any?"

(I am so sorry for the delay! Sorrysorrysorry!)