Blue - Winrina

seven

"Did you talk to them?"

"Duh," Winter crinkled her nose and looked up. "I got bored. And I watched them, and they talked to me. They were very nice."

"Do you like having friends besides the ones you live with?" The woman wrote something down quickly.

Winter thought about this for a moment before shrugging. "I like having friends. It does not matter where they come from."

Her therapist pursed her lips, nodding and scanning the papers in front of her. "Has anything else been happening lately? Anything I should know about?"

Winter's mind instantly went to the images that had been flashing across her memory for the past week or so. They scared her. But she couldn't say a word about them. She didn't know how people would react.

"I made Psh'getti," she giggled to herself, looking up at the woman, who had a stern look on her face. Winter swallowed the lump in her throat, forcing herself to keep the bad images to herself.

Meanwhile, Karina was putting the finishing touches on her butterfly painting. It made her smile each time she looked at it. Winter had been the one who gave her the idea. She may or may not have added more yellow to the flowers than she would have normally.

She quickly got up to place her canvas in the back of the room. Most of the students had already left the classroom, class had been dismissed five minutes earlier. A few stayed behind to catch up on their projects.

"Karina, right?"

The brown eyed girl jumped when a quiet voice appeared next to her. She quickly regained her composure and looked over at the other girl, tilting her head to the side.

"You wouldn't mind putting this up there for me? I'm short." Irene laughed softly and held up the small canvas in her hands.

"Oh, sure," Karina laughed, carefully taking the wet painting out of the girl's hands and placing it on the top shelf of drying rack. "Irene, right?" She turned back to the girl.

"That's me," the girl wiped her hands on her pants and looked back up. "You're Winter's girlfriend."

Karina nodded with a soft smile. "Yeah," she thought for a moment. "Thanks for being so nice to her the other day. She needed it." A look of soft confusion spread across Irene's face.

"I only talked to her for a few minutes," she chuckled, moving across the room and beginning to wash her brushes in the sink. Karina followed and began to do the same.

"Well yeah. But she's... Winter. She doesn't make friends easily," Karina bit her lip and turned on faucet of the sink beside Irene's, watching as the bright colours were washed down the drain.

"Why?" Irene inquired. "Is she shy?"

"Hell no," Karina laughed and shook her head. "You know what I mean."

"I really don't," Irene looked over and furrowed her eyebrows together. "What do you mean?"

"You really can't tell?" Karina was surprised. Irene retained her look of confusion and Karina bit her lip. "She's actually at the doctor's office right now. She was in... an accident. There was a lot of brain damage." It made Karina blood boil just thinking about it.

"Her past is horrible," Karina shook her head. "So she's pretty... insecure about being around people, I guess. She's afraid they won't like her."

"I couldn't tell," Irene shrugged. "I just figured she was one of those free spirited, artsy types. You get a lot of those in classes like these," she chuckled. "She's cool. I see why you two get along."