Bitten, chewed up and spat out

[Carmen]

(IO, thankies. *pokes Rogue*)

Maybe it was just one of those days that people get when they just didn't want to face the world. Maybe it had visited her threefold. Maybe she was just having a bad couple of days. Maybe it was her bed getting back at her for scolding it when she couldn't sleep. Maybe her bed had a mind of its own, and was just as hurt when Carmen couldn't fall into the land of nod that she so dearly loved. Maybe she was just being stupid in thinking that her bed had feelings.

Maybe.

All the same, the girl had spent three days locked up in her dorm that she shared with the dear Kasey Bear. Many things pass through one's mind once it's given the time. And boy did she have a lot of it when she wasn't sleeping. Who am I? Why am I here? Where did my hair-tie go? That sort of thought. But after the third day, the girl felt it right for her to emerge, despite the questions Kasey calmly and carefully asked her during the time of her hibernation.

The girl pulled up her knee-high socks once her school skirt was on, along with her white shirt and Hufflepuff tie of yellow and black with a bewitched badger roving about. Now that her shoes were tied on tight and her thick cloak was on to protect her from the cold halls, she set out of the dorm, down the stairs and out of the Common room. It was a strange feeling to be walking about the castle again, without her friends close at hand.

When she was in the safety of the common room, the girl rested assured that her friends were just a few metres away. But now, since she was wandering into the Library with hardly any whispering going on, it felt odd that there wasn't anyone she could talk to. Almost sad, really. But not quite. After closing the doors behind her, the hands that were snugly tucked in her pockets reached up and grasped her long blue hair, tying it into a loop to snag it out of her face. Yes, she had found her hair-tie. It had been wrapped around her wrist the whole time.

Scanning the shelves with her sapphire gemmed eyes, she began to grow anxious. What if the book she was looking for wasn't there? She would never have her questions answered that she so desperately wanted. "Uh-oh…" this stress started showing on her tanned face, those cheeks fading into a light shade of pink.

[Rogue]

Silence was a very large virtue in the castle when one was not supposed to be there. The vanilla she-wolf used to be afraid of entering the enormous place, in fact, she used to shake violently and whimper like a puppy after stepping two paws inside the entrance hall doors. Not anymore. What did she have to fear? Surely those in authority had more important matters to address, than to notice the blur of white slipping around the occasional corridor.

Following a very particular scent.

Rogue's nose skimmed the air as she rounded a corner and began heading past the library. Then, she stopped. Settling back on her haunches, she slowly dissolved upward into the form of a woman; hip-length white hair swiveling about her abdomen with a rag of an old grey dress covering her thin frame.

Cold, amethyst eyes shifted sideways as the lycaness dipped her lips in a deep smirk. Her search was over. Placing bony fingers on the handles of the doors to the library, she pushed them open very slowly, avoiding any creak or groan that may have rendered her tactic of surprise useless. Once they were ajar enough for her to slip through, she did, and on bare feet, she slinked up behind Carmen, inhaling the scent of the girl's blue locks.

Before Carmen felt that eerie presence that one often feels when they are being watched, however, Rogue slid effortlessly behind one of the bulky armchairs on an angle where the girl would not be able to see her. Curling up there, Rogue waited patiently, determined to see what book or books Carmen would choose to get herself lost in.

Once lost, Rogue would make an appearance.

[Carmen]

She had begun to grow so anxious that the girl just had to lift her hand and run her finger under the titles that were located on the spines of the books, just to make sure that she didn't miss the book she was looking for. And despite her intent reading of the books, the girl didn't find anything remotely like the pages she was searching for. Breathing a heavy sigh, there was one thing left to do, other than ask the Librarian for some help. And she really didn’t want to do that.

"Accio 'The lives of Werewolves, Lycans and wolves; a relation'!" she muttered loud enough for her wand to hear it. Waiting for just a few moments, the girl lowered her wand in disappointment. A student must have borrowed the book out, because it didn't shoot to Carmen's welcoming free hand after she had asked it to. "So much for that idea…" The plan for her motifs was to learn as much as she could about the white Lycan, and why she had tormented Carmen in such a horrible way, then helped her to the hospital wing.

That was the most confounding thing of it all. The girl had gotten over the killing of Ozzie, her beloved pet duckling, because it was obvious that the reason she killed the little bird was because of its meal potential. But why did she attack Carmen brutally, along with Forgoil who had come to her rescue, and then save the both of them by taking the two Hufflepuffians to the Hospital Wing? None of it made sense other than Ozzie's little death trip.

Having decided she didn't want another pet, the girl hadn't wandered back into Diagon Alley to find another. No pet could have replaced her pet duckling, who had been given to her for her sixteenth birthday by Forgoil himself. A sad, sad day that Carmen had decided to enter Hogsmeade and the Three Broomsticks pub. Though there was indeed a flash of a person racing behind the girl, she didn't notice it whatsoever. "s***…" she cursed the lack of book she wanted.

All the better for the Lycan woman.

[Rogue]

Rogue watched the ordeal from the edge of the armchair, but as Carmen grew just out of sight, the lycaness rose to her feet and walked over, keeping behind the shelf that was behind the girl. Her lilac eyes scanned the other isle until she spotted the back of the girl's head, and there her eyes remained.

Inhaling softly, Rogue looked at the titles of the books on the shelves. She had only learnt to read a little in her lifetime, but she could certainly make out the word Lycanthrope on one of the books near Carmen, and it occured to her that the girl was not over their last encounter and that she was searching for a way to find out more about Rogue.

The lycaness grew restless, and shifted to make herself visible around the other side of the shelf. Walking toward Carmen she tiltedher chin on a diagonal to the floor slightly, letting a testy smile grace her lips. "Hello Carmen." She said simply, stopping to stand before the girl, her lavender eyes unmoving. Something in the woman's posture echoed danger, and yet at the same time, her expression showed an almost normal humanity.

A confusing combination.

[Carmen]

Once her eyes were lowered, she lifted them again to stare at a book that said 'Through the life of Fenrir Greyback' by Hairey Mhol. What could she do now? Scan through all those books in the shelves in front of her? It was a defeating thought, deminishing the remainder of hope that she had to find out that little bit more about Lycans. She hadn't even known they existed until the first few months of her schooling at Magic Horizons. Thus it was a rather large shock to be attacked by one.

At long last, she heard foot-steps around in front of her, and out arrived a face and form that she hadn't want to see for a very long time. Carmen doubled over in shock, swinging her arms in the air and cried out something that sounded very much like "WAH!". After she blinked twice or three times, her thoughts finally came to their grip and decided that the appearance and muttering of her name was actually real, and not a hallucination.

Grasping onto the chair that was closest to her, as if she was about to fall off a ship, Carmen stared up in shock and awe at the woman in the overly tattered white dress. Why did she have to come and see her now of all times? Well, at least the girl wasn't doing anything embarrassing, other than looking for a book. She just hoped to the gods that Rogue hadn't realised just what kind of book it was that she was searching for.

"What… what… do you want?" It was like she couldn't talk, or had forgotten every single word in the dictionary that she knew the definition of, and could usually speak it other than now. The way she spoke was a little demanding, since her emotions were a mixture of fear and swelling anger. However, Rogue had saved Carmen's life in the end, other than Forgoil coming to distract her.

But Rogue was the one to cause the life to be threatened.

[Rogue]

Rogue turned her head from Carmen as the girl spluttered and half-fitted over the sight of the lycaness. Instead of setting what was most likely a frightening gaze on the girl, Rogue simply began tracing the letters on a particularly large spine of a book. The book wriggled, clearly ticklish, and Rogue pulled her finger back, clearly surprised.

Then, she laughed, and repeated the motion, watching the book wriggled and flutter it's pages. Turning to Carmen as if to say 'how cute' in reference to the book, Rogue's smile quickly faded as she saw the fear written all over Carmen's features. Her eyes shifted awkwardly and she took a step back, considering whether or not to plain out turn around and leave.

What Carmen managed to ask actually took Rogue off guard, and she parted her lips to say something, but nothing much happened after that. A loud thud sounded from a few isles away, which made the lycaness flinch with a rather extreme reaction. She lunged at a nearby shelf, digging her claw-like nails into the wood of it's side as her eyes flashed with an animalistic instinct.

Swallowing, Rogue loosened her grip on the shelf as the librarian shuffled past. The noise had been a stack of books being dropped on each other in a pile by the librarian. She shot Rogue an unusual look but continued on her way, while Rogue edged her way along toward Carmen further, then turned to face the girl again.

"I.." She said, without much thought, then stopped. Looking around with a faint look of uncertainty, she finally settled her lavender eyes on Carmen again. "I came to tell you I am sorry for what happened in that...Place." She finished, hardly knowing that the place she had been to was called Hogsmeade. It was nearly obvious by the way the lycaness moved - and her apparel - that she was a rather wild creature.

In fact, it was almost a perplexing wonder as to why she was apologising for something that should have been quite at home in her nature.

[Carmen]

Though Carmen was clearly angry and fearful of the woman, she couldn't help but stifle a smile at the book she tickled. It was one the blue-haired girl had made the same mistake in tickling, to which it had snapped shut on her fingers. She didn’t have enough time to pull out what it had bitten, and so her nails were stuck between the pages. After a very fierce struggle, Carmen finally won and retrieved her fingers. This was a bit of time ago though.

The girl noticed the look on Rogue's face, which was almost like the expression version of the double-over that the Hufflepuffian had done only moments before. Her reaction was amplified as she physically jumped from a stack of books falling onto the ground, followed by a disgruntled librarian looking over her glasses to inspect Carmen and the Lycan. Clearly not knowing what Rogue was, she continued on her way.

This couldn't be the ferocious woman that had attacked Carmen and killed her duck, because she was obviously out of her element and quite conscious of herself. Was that an apology? It couldn't have been. Rogue didn't seem at all like the kind of Lycan to apologise for a natural reaction -if that was what tearing off her duck's head and cutting off Carmen's hand was. Hogsmeade never looked like the same place again ever since the white wolf crossed her path.

"Oh…" What could she say? 'Oh, that's perfectly fine! Do you want some cake? Here!' No. She couldn't say anything like that. But instead of not saying anything, or not responding at all, the girl nodded in acknowledgment and said slowly said, "Thank you…" as if she was weary of tripping over her own words, as stupid as it sounded. It was nice of the Lycan to apologise for such rash and instinctive reactions. Almost like Rogue was extending a hand of friendship?

It seemed very unlikely, and so she banished the thought. "Rogue, isn't it? I'm Carmen."

[Rogue]

Rogue was quite surprised to hear Carmen say thank you, but she brushed it off with a fragile smile. She raised her hand and entwined some of her fingers in her hair, almost nervously. Looking around, uncertain of what exactly to continue with saying, Rogue noted how close it was to the library door, and considered taking her leave, again.

Deciding against it, she gently unwove her fingers from her hair and pushed it over her shoulder instead. Keeping her hand on one of the shelves, she avoided Carmen's gaze a moment, before lifting her chilled amethyst eyes to look at her. "I know, Forgoil told me your name before we went to the Hospital." She explained quietly, remembering the ordeal as though it were yesterday.

Her nose could even smell the scent of Carmen's blood, and that drove her senses wild with instincts she found very difficult to tame. She swallowed heavily, and looked away once more, studying the title of a book beside her very intensely, over and over again, but never really digesting it properly.

"How do you know my name?" She asked suddenly, raising her gaze, which had now taken on more solidity, to pin Carmen with her pupils. How did the girl know Rogue's name? She had not mentioned it, and Forgoil certainly did not know her.

Had Rogue missed something very important...?

[Carmen]

"Oh.." Carmen's voice naught but uttered. Hadn't Rogue spoken to the green-haired Lycan lately? "I know Xavier... he told me your name." Hoping that Carmen hadn't said anything that would make the woman retaliate, she turned so that her side was now facing that long, streaming white hair. White hair. The Hufflepuffian had a taste for white hair instead of her blue locks, and had changed it once before, but she hadn't the guts to permenantly remove what she'd grown used to.

Even the taunting wasn't enough to deter her.

Her sapphire eyes skimmed over two books, both opposing colours to the last. She hoped that Rogue hadn't seen what Carmen was looking for, and by the looks of it, she would work it out soon. She had to get the Lycan out of there before she started asking questions. But how? And was there really any point to it? There was no real reason to avoid the questions that would be asked, other than the fact that it would be awkward.

Not as awkward as Xavier's though. No matter.

[Rogue]

Rogue nodded, finding it very interesting that Carmen knew Xavier and Xavier knew Carmen. The lycaness could only wonder how, for she had every ability to ask, but it seemed unecessary, and she had something else itching at her throat. "What else did he say about me?" She asked boldly, her eyes now connecting with those sapphire orbs in a tightened, almost stern look. Rogue did not like it when people spoke behind her back, especially those who knew her well enough to tell something of importance. Leading into her next question, Rogue narrowed her gaze and shifted it around the books now.

"Why are you looking in this section?" She added finally, her tone in that space of silence and attack, almost waiting for something to jump out at her. Something to give her a reason to sink her claws or jaws into it. Something sinister. Perhaps Rogue was jumping to conclusions, but the lycaness never had understood very much about the mortal world. She valued her natural form for many reasons, the key reason being that she was far closer to nature than these almost cloned creatures.

Anxiety told her that Carmen was searching for information on her.
That Carmen was planning an attack.