Spyridon stood knee deep in the cool water, his cheongsam folded neatly half way up the beach next to both his bass guitar and bojustu staff, leaving him in just his skin-tight black shorts and the bandage around his left arm.

He had been at the academy for nearly a months already and still he hadn't found The Sheep. In fact, he had barely done anything. He had spent most of his time either in his room practising on his bass or out in the forest or in the O/D room practising Wushu or Bojutsu.

His cyan eyes slid shut and he lifted his hands, moving them fluidly through the air. The water around him splashed towards his hands, swirling around him as his hands moved.

After a few minutes he sighed, dropping his hands back to his sides. The water was supposed to come up and meet his hands, not splash around uselessly at his knees. He needed a hell of a lot more practise if he was going to try and master water manipulation.

He had found out about this control of water about four years ago when he was training by the lake near his village. But as much as he practised, he still hadn't gotten much better at it. And that really annoyed him.

He inhaled another slow lungful of air before raising his hands again. He wouldn't let this beat him.

Esha was strolling uselessly through the beach around the island, She had come to the academy Between terms and there wasn't any classes to keep her busy, so she was close to bashing her head against the walls. She saw a figure in the distance, it was standing in the water.

She walked closer to get a better look. She saw him all one colour instead of all the different heat signatures. Why would someone be almost naked in the water? She walked closer.

"Hello, I'm Esha" She said quietly. She noticed the bass guitar and folded clothes.
"What is it you are doing?" She asked curiously, Studying his every move. She stood in the water next to him after taking her shoes and shortened kimono off, throwing them onto the dry part of the beach so any surprise waves wouldn't soak it, but she still let the bottoms of her black skinny jeans get drenched.

His eyes slid open when he heard a voice, the water that had reared up splashing back into the sea with a loud slap.

His eyes slid to the woman, watching her wade towards him silently. His silver-grey ears pinned close to his head in annoyance. Just what he needed, distractions.

His hands dropped back to his sides again and his bare chest heaved with a sigh.

Oh well. He'd play nice for now. She may know The Sheep.

"Spyridon," he muttered quietly, eyeing the slow moving water. "Training."

All right, Spyridon, keep this up and you might drive her away with your fantastic conversational skills, he jibed.

One hand began moving again, fingers moving as if playing piece on the piano. Under his hand the water began ripple, droplets rising a few inches from the surface before dropping again. At least he could manipulate droplets of water. That was a start.

Esha glided toward him and heard his answer, still looking intently at the water. Training? Esha remembered her training, hour upon hour of dancing, until her feet practically bled. She'd enjoyed it though, Spyridon just looked frustrated and fed up.

She was a bit at loss with this person, was he agitated? she did see his ears flip back. "How is your training going? You look..." she hesitated and chose her words carefully "Disheartened".

I can sympathize, thought Esha. When she was in Russia she would practice one move for hours, and still never get it right. 6 hours per day, on her toes for three years.

She watched him hold a few droplets above the surface for a few seconds. That's amazing, she thought to herself. "Your accent, it's barely noticeable. Where is it from?" She asked him.

"It is going better than previous sessions," he admitted, fingers still moving, watching thee water.

Better than previous sessions, yes. But still not as good as he'd like. After so many years of training he'd have liked to at least be able to manipulate more than a few drops at a time. His lack of improvement was annoying.

His eyes shifted to her as he moved in the water to face her. "It has the influence of many languages. But the main influences would be Dakota and Xiyue."

Very few people had taken interest in his accent before. The fact that she did interested him slightly.

Esha smiled "improvement is always good, but the thing I learned is that it can't be forced", she looked at his hand and the water. "It took me 20 years to do this at will and I knew I could do it, and when I gave up I did it as an accident."

She raised her arm and turned her arm to solid stone and then back to flesh.

"I think I recognized your accent because it's somewhere I've been, but where?" She stroked her chin and then shook her head "China. Why did that take me so long to figure out?" She asked herself. "China is a beautiful place, If I hadn't been for...an incident I probably would've stayed."

Esha looked at the water, and then the items that were dangerously close to the tide . before looking at Spyridon again "The tide is rising, we should probably shift our items, to stop them getting wet".

He gave a quiet, unenthusiastic grunt. Twenty years was a long time. A hell of a long time. Even for someone who lived to be two hundred. And he was impatient.

He watched her arm in interest. "Huh... Maybe Mihai can learn a thing or two from you. His manipulation of stone in abysmal." His brother had found out about being able to manipulate stone far before he had found out about his water manipulation. And even with the bonus of time, Mihai hadn't practised his skill.

He bobbed his head in agreement, loose braid jerking with the movement, the thin leather strap tied around the end slipping and falling into the water. The loose braid came undone and he sighed irritably as his hair unravelled and splayed down over his chest and back. "Damn hair." He wondered at times like this why he didn't just cut his hair off. It would be so much easier to deal with.

Yet, he continued to suffer through the continuous torture of having to retie his hair numerous times a day.

"Yes, China is beautiful," he agreed, bending to grope around in the water for his tie. His fingers brushed over one of the fangs. "One of the most beautiful countries I've been in."

He stood again, biting down on the leather as his hands moved to gather his hair over one shoulder. He doubled the long silver strands up and wound the leather thong around it, tying it tightly. The Jinn really couldn't be bothered to braid it again.

His eyes slid to his weapon, clothes and instrument as his hands worked in his hair.

"Yes, it would be best to save our possessions. Waterlogged instruments don't play all that well." The bass guitar sat on the shore must have been at least the seventh he'd have to replace due to water damage in all the time he had been playing.

She heard him give off a small grunt, frustration? She had felt that way for years about not being able to use the power she'd been forced to give up so much for. Her love ones and everyone she knew was dead or dying when she finally was free from her stone form.

"Maybe" She said as his hair fell out of it's braid. Spyridon's hair twisted out of the plait and fell across his chest and back, it shone like sliver in the light. She thought of her hair the way it used to be, She'd actually been able to sit on it but when she'd 'woken' it was basically all dry split ends right up to the shoulder. How it was gotten that way by sitting motionless in a cave, she'd never know.

He fished the leather strap out of the water and held it in his mouth while he pulled his hands though his hair

She smoothed her hair with her hands "It's a beautiful country, but during my time in the place, there was a great famine, and me not aging in ten years was getting noticeable." She said got out out of the water and faced him on the shore, her kimono folded over her arm. "It was a hard decision to leave after 8 years, but I kept looking forward. Next stop, Russia then turkey and after that- Greece, Italy, France, Ireland and all the little countries inbetween!"

She smiled nodded in agreement about the issues with wet instruments, music had never really been her forte. she had no idea about them. "After 60 years of unawareness, there was so much I missed.." 2 world wars, 60 years of technology, the list was absolutely endless.

"I may have to shove him in your direction. He's far too enamoured with his mate to even think about training." His lips pulled into a deep frown at the thought of anyone missing out on training for personal relationships. Spyridon didn't have time for relationships with all the training he did. And he liked it that way. He'd much prefer to sit out by the water and meditate than hold down a relationship of any kind.

His lips twitched amusedly. "If people noticed that you were in the wrong place." Spyridon had spent well over fifty years in the same place when he settled in China. And not one person commented on his lack of physical ageing.

He listened to her enthusiastic babble over what countries she had visited besides China silently as he strolled outwards the shore. He didn't offer anything in return to what she said. He had little interest in sharing personal information and he considered his moving habits personal.

The Jinn picked up the neatly folded cheongsam, brushed the sand from it and pulled it over his head, removing his hair from the collar and clasping the frogs silently.

Next he picked up his bass and rested the strap over his shoulder before retrieving the bo-staff and traipsing up the beach.

Shove? Esha had to stop herself from frowning, She didn't know this Mihai person, but he was obviously close to him. Forcing him away from someone he cared about to do what? train? In Esha's eyes that was...cruel to put it in kinder words. Was this man really so goal orientated? It was mystifying to her why someone would choose to be so set on one thing, she found it quite a repulsive idea.

Was that why he was on a beach "training" with a face like a wet rag?

Did he really honestly value industriousness over happiness? She reminded herself that everyone had a different outlook on life, her was for fun and happiness, she moved countries for the adventure and new culture, when she got bored of it, when she felt like it.

She usually spun a bottle or flipped a coin to decide what direction or dropped a coin onto a map to see where she would go next, let her luck guide her. That wasn't for everyone. She always had a coin in her pocket for that very purpose.

"And you were in the right place, with companions or family?" Esha guessed.
"however everyone I knew was gone or in the process of going, It would've been cruel on myself and my remaining family to reveal myself them, they were over grieving over my mysterious disappearance and had lived their lives without me.

"So if you've got any ideas to my place, then I would love to hear them." She said neutrally to him as he put his guitar over his shoulder. she pulled her shoes on and walked alongside him, slowly up the beach.

"My family, except my younger brother, his mate and possibly my eldest sister all live in Dakota. I had no one but Mihai in Xiyue." His mind slipped to his elder sister. Where would she be? Hell, was she even still alive?

He missed Raye. He hadn't seen her in nearly one hundred and forty years. No... It would be exactly one hundred and forty years come October this year. It had been so long since she left the pack...

"I lived in a village for supernatural creatures. No one noticed the lack of ageing because most of us had a lack of ageing." His eyes slid to her as he settled on the dry sand further up the beach and began unpacking the instrument carefully.

"You don't need family to enjoy a place. I felt most of my family behind when I left Dakota."

He fiddled with his plectrum between his fingers for a moment before plucking a few strings on the bass settled on his lap.

She listened while walking to his family, all somewhere else except for one, he looked deep in thought at the end of his sentence. She had somebody else, her brother but he was long gone and probably didn't know she was alive, no matter how hard she tried she couldn't find him. which basically meant she had no family, Spyridon had one. Sometimes one was all that mattered.

she could imagine how much easier coming to terms with what she had become, and how to live with it would've been.

"But if you look at it in my perspective" she said looking at some seagulls "It was 1917 in India, and my family was everything to me, I was from a very poor family, they were all I had and I was all they had. I woke up and they were all dead or dying having moved on, I was a living statue, and I had 60 years of technology to adjust to." She looked up to his cyan blue eyes "It didn't help that in here" She tapped her head "I was still 16 years old and had the same family orientated mindset. It was like a nightmare to have to deal with on my own, and I didn't know that any supernatural villages existed." She thought about the possibility staying in china with others like her, It would've been great to find it at the time of such confusion and fear in her life. She needed her brother. She was terrified, and was just so...lost.

She sat down next to him as he prepared his instrument, She smiled and listened intently to the cords. She'd come to appreciate music a great deal because her main senses were her hearing, and touch. She realized there was so much more to music. It just stunned her how people could assume that they really heard music, just because they could see it being performed.

It was truly a blessing for her to be able to actually hear music, she felt slighty sorry for anybody that didn't

His eyes slid closed as he began playing softly. An American song, he mused idly. Haven't played one of these in a while.

He wondered why the woman felt the need to share all this information with him. He could care less about what she was saying. So he didnt comment on anything personal.

"It's a widely known piece of knowledge. There are supernatural villages in most countries."

He fell into the music, fingers moving over the fretboard as he began to hum along to the bass tune. Lyrics flowed through his head but he favoured humming over singing. He wasn't one to sing often.

They're out to get you, better leave while you can
Don't wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man
You wanna stay alive, better do what you can
So beat it, just beat it

You have to show them that you're really not scared
You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare
They'll kick you, then they beat you,
Then they'll tell you it's fair
So beat it, but you wanna be bad

The stone person was slightly surprised and disapointed by the genericness of the song he was playing, why not one from his hometown, or something that he created. Music from the soul, like dancing or art. That song was from someone else's soul, and it had been covered several times. Esha felt the vibrations on her skin, and could hear the rich tones, but it was missing something.

She really did't hear anything about a supernatural village, but she didn't interrupt his playing to say anything.

Maybe the lyric she knew well to the song were relevent to him. At times in her lifespan they were like that,You have to show them that you're really not scared. You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare. Proving she was not threatened by everything she was faced with was easy, and not letting someone else make you choose, true or dare? She demanded both, more and everything they had.

she didn't get up in the morning after everything she'd been through to just accept that somebody was calling her shots for her.

He continued to play the song, staring out at the water.

He mouthed some of the lyrics. He didn't like singing in front of people.

After a while, and having played the song through twice already, he spoke again.

"Sometimes I wonder if he wrote that song to Jinn gone mad. I think I'd relate to this song when I go mad." His voice was faraway; obviously thinking of something. "I'm pretty sure Ray'd relate too." But he gave a shrug. "Doesn't stop me from wanting to kill him, though."

Ray.... That's the only reason he was here. The only reason he wasn't in the dojo back in China mauling the newbies was so he could kill the damned Sheep that constantly showed him up in the HA.

Just the thought of that particular Jinn had him gritting his teeth in anger.