moonshadows

“Tyrande Whisperwind to the office, please. Tyrande Whisperwind to the office.”

The girl with neatly-tied teal hair slipped into the principal’s office. “Reporting!”

“Ah, there you are. We have a new transfer student, here, uh…”

“You can’t pronounce it,” the tiny girl with glossy black hair said cheerfully. “Just call me Tessa.”

“Could you show her around?” the principal continued smoothly. “She scored so highly that she’ll be joining your class.”

“Of course.” Tyrande half-bowed. “I’ll make sure she’s right at home.”

The principal beamed. “I knew I could count on you.”

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“…locker rooms down that hall, we have a basketball court and a tennis court and a baseball field.”

“Blind rage! Blind rage!”

“What’s that?” Tessa asked, pointing the direction of the shout.

Tyrande frowned. “Bullying. Stay here, I need to get a teacher to break that up.”

The shorter girl tilted her head curiously, turning it this way and that until she caught two struggling figures in her peripheral vision. Then she charged. The bigger boy yelped as she headbutted him in the side, sending all three of them tumbling to the ground. After a moment of groping, Tessa got a hand in hers and bit down on it. An enraged scream rewarded her, and then the voice of the bigger boy laughed.

“Got yourself a girlfriend, Blindrage? Or is this your little sister?”

“Garrosh!” A new voice made all three combatants freeze. “Principal’s office, now!”

The boy whose hand she wasn’t holding got to his feet and lumbered off, leaving the abashed girl holding the bitten hand of the boy being bullied.

“Sorry,” she said in a small voice as the hand was ripped out of hers.

“Leave me alone,” the other boy snarled, groping around for something that had clattered to the floor.

Tessa’s hands found it first, a typing device similar to the one she had in her own bag. Her fingers slid across the display – eternal night without the sunshine of your smile – by habit and then, blushing, she found the other boy’s hand and slipped the device into it. A flicker in her peripheral vision turned out to be Tyrande, helping the boy to his feet.

“Are you okay, Illidan?” she murmured, and got a grumbled assent before he shuffled off. “What were you thinking?” she demanded of the smaller girl. “Didn’t you see how big Garrosh was?”

“Nope,” chirped Tessa. “Who was the other one?”

“Illidan Stormrage.”

“Oh, so that’s why the bully called him Blindrage. Is he cute?”

Tyrande blinked. “You were just looking at him, didn’t you see…?”

“Nope! But he sounded kind of cute. Does he always write poetry?”

“Well, he’s always writing, and the joke is that he writes bad emo poetry, but…wait. How did you know what he was writing?”

Tessa tilted and twisted her head until she got a flash of Tyrande’s face. “Well, I only got to see one line, but ‘eternal night without the sunshine of your smile’ sounds pretty poetic.”

The older girl realized her mouth was hanging open, and shut it. “You’re blind.”

“Mostly.”

“I’m sorry, most of my tour must have been useless for you. Let’s start over.” She grinned, then the grin faded as she remembered the smaller girl wouldn’t have seen it. “Let’s be friends,” she said, putting the grin in her tone.

Tessa grinned back. “Okay.”

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“Illidan always sits in the first seat of the first table on the left,” Tyrande said as she guided the mostly-blind girl into the lunchroom. “There’s always empty seats around him because he drives everyone away.”

“How come?” the younger girl asked, twisting her head around to try to map out the room.

“He…hasn’t been the same since the accident that blinded him a year and a half ago.”

“Second stage of grief?”

Tyrande grimaced. “Honestly, I think he’s stuck in the fourth. Not much makes him happy anymore. It’s hard, watching him…he used to be so confident and outgoing…we were childhood friends, so seeing him like this…I try to encourage anything he takes an interest in. Please don’t let him get to you; I think it would be very good for him to have a friend that knows what it’s like.”

Tessa let go of the older girl’s arm. “Here I go.”

The trek across the blank expanse between door and table was no more nerve-wracking than any other until her outstretched hand encountered a shoulder. A warm, nicely muscled shoulder. “Leave me alone,” growled the voice from that morning.

“Sorry,” she chirped, swinging around to sit next to him, lunchbag clutched in her other hand. “I didn’t see you.”

“Very funny,” he snapped. “Come to mock the blind kid? Well, you can just go away.”

“Why would I mock myself?” Tessa asked innocently, prying open a container of roughly-chopped vegetables. The crunching of a carrot meeting its end was very loud in the sudden silence. “Sorry, I should introduce myself. I’m a new student, from Thailand. Call me Tessa.”

“You…you’re blind, too?”

“Not completely; I still have fifteen percent, according to the doctors, but it’s all around the edges.” She twisted her head, trying to catch a glimpse of his face.

“I don’t believe you.” The hard edge was back in his voice. “I think you’re making fun of me.”

“Who is she?”

The change of subject took him by surprise. “Who is who?”

“The one whose smile is your sunshine.”

Something rustled. “How did you know that?” he grated.

“I read it on your reader this morning. Sorry about biting you, I thought I had the other guy’s hand.”

“Why did you interfere?” Illidan asked after a long silence.

Tessa made a noise indicating uncertainty. “I got picked on in my old school for being little. Learned that if I attacked first, bullies wouldn’t pick on me so much because the teachers didn’t believe I started it. It really came in handy when my sight started going, because I couldn’t see if they were about to do anything. I guess I thought it was a good idea to get my reputation started here.”

“Then you don’t want to sully it by sitting with me,” he said bitterly.

“What if that’s the reputation I want?”

“You want a reputation for being an emo loser?”

“I want a reputation for being the crazy little blind Thai girl who’ll tackle your kneecaps if you make fun of her or her friends.” Another piece of carrot crunched between her teeth. “D’you want to be one of those friends?”

“What will you do if I say no?”

“Well, I think it would make things pretty awkward if I’m friends with Tyrande and she’s friends with you but you’re not friends with me.”

Illidan glared fiercely but ineffectively. “How can you be so cheerful?”

“I’m sitting next to a cute guy who writes sweet poetry; it’s pretty easy.” Tessa giggled. “Okay, so I only got a glimpse of you and the poetry. I liked what I saw, at least.”

“Are…you hitting on me?”

“Am I doing it wrong? I’ve never done it before.”

“Stop,” he said sharply. Several deep breaths followed. “Look…this isn’t the first time a girl’s hit on me. But no one has since…” Another deep breath. “I can’t just laugh off losing my sight like you can. I’ve lost everything I had. Even my brother pulled away. I’ve had to learn everything on my own.”

“I admire you for that,” Tessa said quietly. “My grandmamma died of cancer when I was ten; losing my sight is like that. Watching the world go grey around me, knowing that someday it will all be gone…there were times I wanted to just put my eyes out and end it, and times when I clung to the scraps I had left. Near the end…grandmamma was just a shadow of herself. There were days when I wished she would just die and get it over with, and days when I wished she would live forever, even if it was laying there on the bed, following me with her eyes.” Rapid clicking distracted her. “Are you writing?”

“Taking notes,” he muttered.

The tiny girl listened in silence for a minute. “Will you let me read it when you’re done?”

The clicking stopped. “You actually want to read it?”

“Of course!”

Illidan wished he could see her face. “You’re serious. You’re not going to go tell everyone the emo kid is writing lame poetry?”

Tessa tilted and twisted her head. “That’s the third time I’ve heard the word ‘emo’, but I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s…uh…a style, like grunge or hipster. Black clothing, black hair, heavy mascara, wallowing in how the world is pain and suffering and death.”

“Oh.” An awkward silence fell. “Um…aren’t you going to eat?”

“I didn’t bring anything,” Illidan muttered.

Tessa felt around until she found his hand and brought it to the container of vegetables she was snacking on. “It’s carrots and broccoli and some cauliflower. I have a sandwich, if you like peanut butter and jelly.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because I have no one else, and because you know what it’s like.”

“I…don’t want to take your sandwich.”

One hand deftly cracked the plastic container open while the other guided his hand. “Mom cut it in half.”

Illidan’s hand trembled as the blind girl put half a sandwich in it. “Tell her…thank you. For me.”