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She watched. She listened. She learned everything that she could without actually being a part of the lesson itself. Today she had chosen a bench near a bus station and she watched as various slices of existence wandered within her sphere of observation.
She took mental notes as they went about moving from each point in their lives to the next, never somehow seeing how detached from the art of living they really were. Their ignorance of this fact was in itself almost artful. She checked the bag by her side and then her watch.
She watched an old lady struggling to get onto a bus, but the step was too high and her dress wouldn’t let her lift her leg high enough to clear the step. The driver was getting impatience, as were the people behind the woman. No one offered to help her. They looked at the poor thing as she tried to overcome the contrast in the bus design verses her taste in clothes, and they seemed to blame her. Their faces slowly were moving from impatient to angry, and this was one of the golden moments that the girl watched for. When people left the ethics of proper behavior behind and resorted to a wilder thing. The girl could see clearly now. No one was going to help the lady, to offer to lift her up or even angrily suggest that she just lift the damn skirt a bit. They wanted this, to hate her. She was old, in the way, holding them back. The girl could see their minds joining together. Separately, it would have been different. One or two people, and one of them would have surely helped the lady out, but not a whole group, a group that was beginning to mutter and push, hesitant at first, but drawing strength from each other, encouraging each other, the pieces becoming whole for just a moment, drawing together as animals have been doing forever to when their goal was threatened. This happened rarely, the situation had to be just right for people to regress back to their wilder, crueler roots, but it was a thing of beauty when it did happen. The girl watched closer, trying to catch every nuance just as it happened.
The old lady looked behind her, her face was scared but defiant. She wasn’t going move now. Fear had made her feel her weakness and her pride was going to make her stand her ground. To show the others that she wasn’t just something to be pushed aside. She continued to stubbornly try to get onto the bus. The sound of the mob became louder, meaner. The driver, sighed and the girl could see that he was going to help the lady. He was outside of the pack, so his annoyance came from a different viewpoint. The cattle were fighting and he would never get home if he didn’t get them calmed down. The girl moved quickly, before the driver had completely risen and moved to the old woman. Digging into her bag, she grabbed the item in there and looking at the mob briefly, she chose and then stood off to the left to see and record the results.
Part of her mind rejoiced as a loud sound tore through the station, the vibration of it barely dispersed before it was replaced by the loud keening of humans discovering just how much a part of life they really were or at least soon, had been. The calmer part of her recorded that the gun that she had handed the young lady in the crowd had done more damage to those standing to the left of the young lady then to those who had been on the right. She bit her lip as she considered how to balance out the spray pattern so that no one would feel left out when the police and EMT’s showed and started scurrying around looking for people to spoil and coddle with blood and bandages.
Already she heard the sound of the sirens and cursed the new system of emergency response, but accepted it as just another quirk to be dealt with as she continued her study. Carefully, she stepped back out of the frantic bus station, and made her way towards her home.
The images of the wounded, maimed and dead played about in her head a bit, but that was really just incidental to her work and maybe a bit on the fun side but she had been looking for one thing and for a brief second, barely a moment, she had seen it. Anyone else might have missed it, but she had been watching very carefully as the young girl she had handed the rigged gun to had raised up her hand and pulled that trigger dooming herself and anyone close to her.
The girl reached her car and got in. As she pulled into traffic, she looked in her rearview mirror and chuckled as she realized that she wore the same smile that the old woman had worn ever so briefly as her enemies lay dead or dying on the aptly named terminal floor. A smile that danced and was gone so fast as to say it never was, but the old woman knew she smiled before she rushed to help her former tormentors, and now so did Emily. It had been awhile since Emily had heard the patter of childer feet about the house or the screams as they realized the truth of their new world as presented so generously by Emily and her gift of Blood. She had been looking long and hard for just the right person. She would have to look into finding this woman once everything quieted a bit, and Emily had gotten the nursery ready. Her potential wouldn’t be lost with any luck and if she happen to survived the embrace at all. Either way, Emily was pleased. Cutting off a taxi and sending him and his fare into the opposing lane, she left, letting him and the semi work out their differences on their own. Emily went home, whistling.
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