The Emotions Suppressed

They stayed in the cinema room for a while longer, laughing at the climax of the movie. Both of them had similar taste when it came to cinematography, so sharing and enjoying the experiences like that was natural for them.

When they came down, they spotted the elven girl sleeping on the couch, and hugging what appeared to be one of Andreas's foot balls.

"Alright, she can stay."

He whispered to Sally. She smiled at him and gave him a silent 'thank you'.

The Lamia didn't want to interrupt her friends sleep, so she followed Andreas to the front doors.

"Where are you going?"

"Shopping." He said while putting on the shoes. "We were supposed to pick up groceries today."

She made big eyes, really excited about it.

"Oh, great. Give me a minute, I'll change into something else."

"Aren't you going to stay in here with your guest?" He asked, getting up and grabbing his cane.

"Ummm..." She was thinking about it. "I'll leave her a note!"

She hurried away before Andreas could even say anything.

It took her a bit longer than what she promised, but ten minutes of waiting for a woman was still in acceptable time frames for Andreas. He knew how long Lisa sometimes took to prepare.

It was a sunny, early afternoon, and the stores weren't that far away, so they decided to get there on foot and tail.

The small, sleepy town Andreas lived seemed almost empty at those hours of the day, probably most people were still at work. But even those few who just walked the streets or were watering their garden plants, were sending weirded out, full of disdain looks to the uncommon travelers. Voigt already wasn't very well liked by the local population, he knew that they are calling him the rat with money and other things, but he didn't care.

Sally however kept noticing how everyone looks at her, and was trying hard not to think about it. She had been in emotional turmoil lately, following the events of last week, settling in new house and an unexpected visit of someone from her past. The Lamia was trying hard to suppress whatever negative thoughts she had, and show Andreas her positive side at all times, but it was getting increasingly harder. Even more so with people around not accepting of her, so she tried to overcome all of that with a simple conversation.

" ... wrote on the note that we went out to get supplies and will be back soon."

Andreas gave an approving nod.

"Good."

"I'm still surprised that she did it. That she crossed the worlds to just find me."

He chuckled.

"Almost seems like you like the scale of the attention she is giving to you."

Sally blushed, and turned away her head, only to stop. She almost hit the lamp post.

"I don't... Look, I like her, but not like that. She is like a sister to me, you know?"

"I get it, don't worry."

Half a mile later they reached the store. Andreas managed to acquire a cart, and they rolled inside, only to be stopped by a security guard.

He was a big, Latino man with what appeared to be a stun gun as well as some sort of radio at his side.

"Hold up!"

Andreas turned to face the security guard.

"What's wrong?" He asked, even though he already knew what was going on.

"You can enter, sir, but that has to stay outside." The security guard pointed at the Lamia. "We have a strict humans only policy and we don't want it to scare away other customers."

Lamia sighed and closed her eyes, trying to settle her own rising heart beat.

"It has a name. She is a person, just like you and I."

The security guard laughed at that.

"Sir, you can give a name and clothes to a dog, cat or whatever hamster you have, and pretend it's a human, but we both know it won't ever be like any of us."

The Lamias veil of good mood instantly disappeared and she was mad, to the point of being seconds away of going overboard and frying the man. Sally had enough of random racism that this world had towards her. She clenched one of her fists and with the other started to make some barely noticeable gestures. Then, she opened her mouth and was about to speak something in the forbidden language that would make this asshole beg for her mercy, when she felt a touch on her shoulder. A weight of an arm, that slowly moved towards her hand and caught her, preventing from continuing any further cast of the spell.

"Alright, we will go somewhere else."

Andreas responded peacefully.

They walked out a few seconds later, still holding hands. On the other side of the parking lot, he finally let go of her hand and spoke.

"Look at me, okay?" She raised her head. "Guys like that aren't worth anything. Certainly not your nerves, not your attention, you get it?"

She gave him a nod.

"Good. There's plenty of other stores around."

"But what if they a have this... Policy?"

Her voice trembled.

"Then I'll pay someone from the streets to do the shopping for us, but I'm not leaving you alone."

Sally couldn't stop giving out a radiant smile for the next few minutes after hearing his answer.