Jia Li’s hopes were dashed and her smile faltered as Kay immediately commented on the large bruise that marred the dryad’s face. It was kind of strange, having someone grab her face in order to get a better look. Even her father had done that. Then again, she’d been covered in blood at the time, so his not wanting to touch her had been understandable.
“I don’t suppose you’d believe that I fell, would you?” She joked, trying to lessen the severity of what had happened. She looked at Kay, and when it became obvious that the siren wanted to know exactly what had happened, she stepped away from the door. “You may as well come inside. It shouldn’t take too long to tell you what happened. When the siren entered, Jia Li shut the door.
After positioning herself on one end of the couch in the living area of the dorm, she faced her friend. “You remember how I said I was going home for the weekend to my dad’s and to work a couple of shifts? Well, I sort of didn’t make it right away.” This topic was really uncomfortable, and she was trying to decide just how to describe it without glorifying it or making it seem like it was a big deal. It was over now, but the vision of Jack lying in a pool of blood had haunted her dreams.
“I hate cars… I mean, I know hate’s a strong word, but I seriously don’t think it’s strong enough to describe just how much I hate those vehicles, so I just don’t use them. I use trees.” She was pretty sure the other knew she was a dryad, and if she hadn’t known, she did now. “Besides, trees are way faster for me, but someone saw me when I was in an area where the trees were more spread out. A bunch of humanists jumped me.” She’d been so terrified, and from the way the oldest of the five had spoken, she had been so sure she was going to die. “Obviously, they weren’t very nice.” Her fingers gingerly touched the bruise along her cheek. “They had bats and everything, but I’m lucky they didn’t use them on me. I’d probably be in way worse shape.”
Jia Li thought about that statement for a moment, unfortunately reliving what had happened a little. “Actually, I’d be in way worse shape if Jack hadn’t seen what was happening. Those guys wouldn’t let up enough to enable me to get to a tree, to disappear, but he helped me. I mean, he acted like a total jerk in the process, but he fooled them into thinking he was one of them until he got me close enough to a tree to escape.”
Her green eyes met the siren’s blue ones. “Kay, in all of the years that I’ve been alive and in the area, I’ve never had anything like that happen before. I mean, I heard about stuff like that on the news all the time, but no one ever thinks something like that will happen to them. I didn’t even see them until they grabbed me, and I didn’t have any way to escape. I’m a dancer, not a fighter, and dryads don’t really have any real protection from things like that. I mean, you have your voice, and if they didn’t know what you were, you could have influenced them that way. I think Jack has some lightning power because I saw him use it once, but I guess it wasn’t very effective when he helped me…”
She realized that last comment wouldn’t make much sense to her friend, so she explained. “He told me not to come back or he’d burn down all of the trees on campus.” Jia Li actually laughed when she told that to Kay. The dryad didn’t believe he’d actually do something like that, and she hadn’t believed it when he’d told it to her. The only reason she’d been so ready to run was because there was a lot of danger involved.
“I know it was stupid, but I found a bat, and I went back. I wanted to help him get away. I didn’t want him to get hurt. Besides, if he’d been hurt, he may have needed to go to a hospital or something.” Her stomach clenched as she remembered the scene upon which she’d stumbled when she’d finally made it back. “I was too late, though. They were gone when I’d come back, he was just… lying there. They’d stabbed him… like… a lot, and I thought he was dead.” There’d been so much blood, and she’d actually burned the clothes she’d worn that had been stained with it. They weren’t salvageable, and she didn’t need the reminder.