Prejudiced Present

Sally got her arms up, cheering for Andreas, and using her tail to almost simulate jumping.

"That was amazing, Andreas! I can't believe you just did that."

He was sitting on the ground and massaging his leg. It took out a lot of effort from him to kick the ball like that, and he knew that the current pain is just a fraction of what's to come.

"It wasn't. I was at the side mirror. But that awful ball always did what it wanted, not what the players had in mind."

"But you hit it. And made this horrible guy go away. For me. Thank you."

She approached him, and helped him get up. Then, she realized something.

"But how are we going to get into the city now?! We have to get there today."

Andreas pulled out the painkiller box from his pants pocket and took two of them, praying that they'll start working soon.

"We could call for the other Uber, taxi, or whatever, but it's a gamble, so I think our best odds are with catching a train."

"Oh, I wanted to get a ride on the train ever since I was a child!" She said with excited voice.

"A child?" Andreas asked, confused.

"I-I mean ever since I found out about them." Her tone changed completely, like she was hiding something.

But Voigt didn't care, it was her secret and in that moment he had bigger things to worry about.

"Here, let me help you get up!" She added in a hurry.

Despite him taking those pills and massaging a leg before getting up, Andreas had to lean heavily on his cane, cursing his way through the pain to the train station. Luckily, it wasn't that far away.

He bought two tickets, and after that, they were waiting in the safe distance from the tracks. Andreas noticed that other people were either completely avoiding them, standing as far as it was possible, or just straight up pulling out their phones and making pictures of the Lamia and accompanying her human. He didn't comment or say anything to that.

Sally was keeping quiet until they managed to get in and settled in one of the train cars. She looked around. Her bent tail was only taking one extra spot, there was so much space for other people.

"It's so empty in here."

She commented.

It was true, there was noone else in sight. Andreas knew the reason for that.

"People are in the other sections of the train."

He pulled out his phone and started to search for local news. As suspected, their pictures were already uploaded to social media.

"Why?"

"What, why?"

"Why aren't people here, with us?" She completed the question.

Andreas was going to shrug it off, but figured that it was probably just better to tell her right away.

"They are confused, scared, and don't know how to react to you, so they just choose to isolate themselves from us."

"What?"

"They've probably never seen a Lamia in their life. The reaction is understandable."

She was thinking about it for a moment.

"But you haven't seen one before we meet yesterday either. And that wasn't your reaction."

Andreas sent her a sad smile.

"That's true. But not everyone is the same. I'm not from here, not even from this country, I don't have the same way of thinking. And you dropped Lisa's name, a name of someone I know, so it was easier for me to accept someone like you."

He turned his head away again, looking outside to the urbanized landscape.

"Speaking of, what is your relationship with Lisa?"

She fired bluntly.

Andreas turned his head in her direction slowly, the smile completely disappearing from his face.