Chamaeleonidae

He took a moment to try to understand the words coming out of his mouth, but he just couldn’t do it. What language was he speaking and why couldn’t he understand it. He was however, put at ease when the boy spoke to him in Korean again. 

"Of course I do." He smiled, moving to take a seat near the other boy. I’ve been playing since I could walk." He was exaggerating, it more like since he six. 

Chiao looked down at her skin smirk spreading across her lips. "It's more useful when I'm completely naked. I can actually pretty much vanish into the whatever I am standing in front of. Other than that, I can just do this," She shrugged, skin and hair flashing between different colors. Reds, blues, greens, pinks before finally settling on her usual skin and hair tone.

"I'm curious, what can you do other than play guitar?" She said, laying her scarred instrument delicately across her knees. Her fingers idly stroked it, her eyes still focused on the tall boy in front of her. Incredibly tall boy, like twice her size tall. She only hoped that he was as friendly as he seemed and wasn't some sort of freak who needed human sacrifice to fuel his ability.

The tenor of the voice confused her, and she strained her ears to try to make out which pitch seemed more appropriate. Was she talking to a computer set to boy/girl? There didn’t seem to be any true identifier there, and that bothered her, even with the compliment.

“I wasn’t exactly hiding in the bushes,” she replied smoothly, “If I had to guess, you just wanted an excuse to talk to me?” But Narae was smiling, clearly amused by this stranger’s attempt at a run in. Boy or girl, the compliment didn’t mean any less to her. Though the similarly androgynous name nearly got her pouting again, with how little that helped.

Bowing her head just enough to be courteous, in case Chiao had done it and she just hadn’t seen, she introduced herself, “I’m Narae. And I’m sorry I hit you with my cane.” Now a smile lightly curled at her lips, the blond adding as an afterthought, “Are you a freak too?” It came out much blunter than probably was proper, but by phrasing it that way, she identified herself as gifted just as much as the others at the circus. Or if it was a customer, they could just believe she was handicapped, and meant freak that way. To her, it really didn’t matter. Not when none of these people could haul her off to a government lap for testing.

Brandishing her cane with a much lighter touch now, she tried to guess where Chiao stood and went to lightly poke her, hopefully somewhere in the torso and not down low. It would be just her luck that this person was a dude, and she’d stab him in the balls on their first meeting. If it was a chick, and she got her in the boobs, hey; that was just foreplay.

She stood in her place, trying to decide how to go about such an odd situation. She felt the need to prove to herself that her perception of others was still as good as it had once been. She felt the familiar stickiness that had always seemed to coat her fingers when she felt the need to pluck something off of someone else. Her lips turned into a playful smirk, though she knew the other couldn’t see it if she actually turned out to be blind.

God, if she was blind, Chiao was going to end up feeling like a massive dick.

“Freak, now there is an interesting word,” Chiao mused, reaching forward and lightly playing with the other’s hair. The fact that they had the same color of hair somehow amused her, though she had a feeling that it looked much better on the other girl.

That was a rather annoying thought.

“I’d go with yes since I am a member of the circus,” She chuckled as the cane poked her in the upper stomach. She put her wrist down, pushing it out of the way. “I don’t need a stick to fend you off. Or win. I plan on winning. Though I don’t like this handicap of yours, why don’t we get rid of it?” She smirked, leaning forward and grasping the other’s glasses and snatching them off. Something about her told her that the glasses were what was blinding her, not the girls eyes herself.

Safe to say, that night had probably been one of the most exciting of Narae’s life, right up there with the time she chased a bear out of her grandmother’s trash, with much less actual danger to her own life. Her path took her from one act to the next, eyes bright like a child’s behind her glasses as she took in everything her senses allowed her to. For the first time, she tried and succeeded with meditation, watching acts without overshadowing them with her own thoughts. She was just another audience member, and she loved it so much…until she didn’t.

Being used to different treatment for her “condition,” being an average, everyday customer at a freak show kind of irritated her, so she found her way to her tent, vision starting to flicker again, with images of the night playing out like an instant replay in front of her, until she got so annoyed that she had to put her glasses back on. Great. Would these visions follow her all night?

And when she had to take off her glasses to look for the right tent color, bringing a disappearing man to life again, she scowled and extended her cane like a weapon, going to take a swipe at the imaginary target. Unable to look at it, but feeling much better for having hit it, she shut her eyes and pretended to fence with it, her body finding a mock-stiff position as she hit high-low-high-high with a sense of relish, imagining the others there in place of the skinny invisible boy, before she finally slid her glasses back on while she fought, so she wouldn’t have to keep her eyes shut.

Of course, wrapped up in her own little world like she was, Narae didn’t pay mind to the fact that other freaks would likely be returning soon from their acts, and she continued to hop around like a bunny with ‘roid rage, teeth bared in an almost frightening grin as she blocked, parried, and thrust, pretending merely to score points, rather than hurt her imaginary opponents. She’d have to live with these people after all –couldn’t go getting her hopes up like that.

Why? It was the same sea of faces in awe of her as he skin and hair changed color. Some of the faces bombarded her with questions about how she was able to do that because ‘you can’t expect me to believe that you can actually change the pigments at will!’. She wasn’t sure how many people asked her to take her clothes off so that she could fully disappear (though she had a feeling that it was also so they could figure out whether she was male or female, the ignorant pricks). It had taken her all of a measly hour to leave her post and search out the solitude of her tent.

She knew that she should probably be worried about Junsu finding her, but what could one healer do? If anything, she knew he could not outrun her. If she was scared of anyone, it would be their current security team. Fei wasn’t so scary herself (her bestial appearance adding onto the sex appeal so much that it actually made Chiao uncomfortable), but the massive wolves that followed here were enough to make anyone jump in line. And Yoochun? The man was basically a human taser. Hongki and the others leaving with Hyori had compromised her will to stay, each passing day fed her growing urge to just disappear.

The silence seemed to consume her as she stared at the pages of her book, words scrawled in ink not catching her attention like she knew they should. Even with the sounds of the circus winding down in the distance, everything seemed so still and so dark, silence pressing in on her with such force she found it hard to breathe.

“zznnggg!”

A strange noise startled her out of the trance she had fallen into, causing her book to slide from her hands and bounce from the bed to the floor. “What the..” The noise was so odd and so comical that Chiao could not stop herself from pushing off of her cot and padding across the floor of her tent. She quickly pushed aside the flap of the tent and moved in the direction of the noise, before stopping and staring at the strange scene that was unfolding in front of her.

A girl was sword fighting with the air, white cane of a blind man being her weapon. The glasses on her face suggested that she really was the one that the glasses belonged to, and yet something about the way she moved seemed to be off. She moved with such surety that she couldn’t help but be blind. Chiao moved forward into the path of danger to see if her thoughts were right. The cane came crashing down and she moved her arm up, forearm all that was in the way of that cane cracking down on her skull.

“Watch it, beautiful. You might just hurt someone with that,” Chiao chuckled, ignoring the slight throbbing in her arm from where the cane had come down harder than expected. She still held her ground, however, not wanting the other to realise that she had been hurt in even the slightest. Her voice was deep enough to be masculine, yet high enough to still be feminine.

Chanyeol wanted a nice, quiet, place to relax, and to maybe finally strum some tunes. It had been a long time since Chanyeol had actually picked up his guitar and played, and he figured that today of all days was the best day to do it.

He walked around the circus, looking for the perfect spot for his one man show, where he always visioned thousands upon thousands of people coming just to watch him play. Suddenly though, Chanyeol heard noise coming from one of the tents. A noise that sounded strangely familiar. A guitar. 

He let himself be entranced by the music, his body moving itself towards the tent. 

"Oh." He opened the tent slightly to look in, only to see that no one was in there. He shrugged, though he kept hearing the guitar, so he decided to explore a little to see where the music was coming from.

He looked around the tent on either side before reaching the back of it where he found a small boy sitting against it, a guitar propped up on his knee. He stood outside for a moment to take in the music, a calm expression crossing his face. Music was always something that calmed Chanyeol, so he took that time to listen, a strong sense of nostalgia hitting him. It reminded him of home in a sense, as well as his journey. 

Her guitar was far from beautiful, scorch marks and scratches marring its wooden body. That guitar had been with her through so much that she couldn't bear to replace it, and who cared how it looked if the songs it sung were still as beautiful as the day that her family had bought it?

The sudden words of a deep voiced male caused her fingers to stumble and her to jump in shock. Her ability kicked in as she jumped in fright, skin and hair turning to the color of the tree bark behind her. If it wasn't for her clothes, she would have completely blended in.

"What the fuck!" Her startled words were in Mandarin, as Korean seemed to fade from her mind as she tried to calm her racing heart. She let out a breath, finding herself unable to pull her skin and hair back to their usual colors. "I did not hear you.." She responded slowly to him, eyes searching his face.