************Ron POV************

“And what were you doing there in the first place?” Ron asked Jessica as she carefully rubbed Emily’s temples.

“I needed somewhere private to meditate. I didn’t mean to scare her, but when she noticed me she just kinda...well, fell in I suppose,” Jessica said sheepishly. Ron rubbed his forehead and turned back to get a wet cloth to place on Emily’s forehead.

“What did you do to make her pass out like this? I’ve seen her during bad times, but this is ridiculous,” Ron said as Jessica took the rag from his hand and started to wipe Emily’s forehead.

“I looked at her! That was it!” Jessica whined. Ron watched as she worked and cared for her.

“She needs rest at this point, after checking through her mind it seems she has had quite a bit of stress placed on her lately. Tomorrow, I’m going to take her with me to the village and make sure she’s ok,” Jessica said as she stood to her feet.

Without another word, Jessica turned and handed Ron the rag before she suddenly burst out the door and into the darkness. Ron watched her go before he glanced back at Emily.

“She’s strong in strength, but not much mentally. What could have happened to her to have broken her so badly,” Ron whispered. He carefully lifted Emily from the chair and walked with her to the bedroom before carefully laying her down on the mattress.

He laid down next to her before pulling the covers up over the two of them and wrapped his arms around her. Ron listened to Emily breath calmly until he felt sleep overtake his own mind. When Ron was finally calm, he drifted off into a dreamless sleep with Emily in his arms.

By the time Ron woke up, Emily was already awake. She was carefully getting dressed as quietly as she could, but she seemed to have just started dressing. Ron’s eyes grew wide in shock and quickly closed his eyes. Emily was pulling her bra over her chest but was luckily facing the wall or else Ron would have seen.

Sadly for Ron either way, Emily noticed he was awake. She quickly squealed and fell to the ground while she struggled to pull her shirt over her head at the sudden knowledge that he wasn’t sleeping.

“Don’t look!” She cried as she finally got the shirt pulled on. Ron yanked the bedspread over his head as his own face turned red from embarrassment.

When Emily had pulled her pants up to her waist, Ron finally opened his eyes. Emily glanced over her shoulder and blushed before she walked out of the room.

Ron stood up and walked into the kitchen area. Emily was cleaning dishes that had been left out overnight, but Ron could only stare at her. It was like something had snapped while she was asleep, but he couldn’t tell what.

“I hope you’re awake and well this morning, because I’m taking you out on an adventure!” Jessica suddenly said as she practically burst through the door. Emily turned around with a plate in her hand, but almost dropped it when she saw Jessica.

“Mom?!” She screamed as she fell backwards while clutching the plate firmly against her chest.

“Mom? Well, I have yet to have children so I don’t believe I’m ready to be called something like that,” Jessica laughed. Emily could only look her over for a few minutes before she could finally relax.

“I’m sorry...I thought you were somebody else,” Emily said with a hint of a sad smile. Ron watched as she continued to clean the dishes he had left out and considered asking about what happened the night before.

Questions continued to pop up in Ron’s mind about this woman. He couldn’t understand what it was that she was going through, but it had only been a few days and he had already seen so much of her that he could hardly understand it all. The only thing he did know was his own determination to make sure that she wasn’t hurt again.

“Jessica’s the name. I want to take you out today, with Ron’s permission of course,” Jessica said with a wink in his direction before turning her attention back to Emily.

Emily carefully set the last plate on the drying board next to the sink before slowly turning to Jessica once more. She was obviously examining Jessica, but there was such a look of fear and confusion in her eyes that neither Ron nor Jessica knew what to do.

“Last night, I saw you. What are you?” Emily asked suddenly. Jessica’s eyes grew wide at the question before hesitating.

“I’m a water nymph. I was kidnapped when I was ten, but Ron saved me. I had the choice to go back home, but after having spent six years in that godforsaken prison, I decided to stay here. I wanted someplace to go to meditate and relax last night since Gordon’s children were playing in my pond,” Jessica explained after a few minutes.

Emily watched Jessica shuffle her feet uncomfortably before smiling warmly at her. She turned back to the sink and quickly cleaned out three cups before turning back to the cupboard and pulled down some tea leaves Ron had put up there.

Without a second to spare, she waved her hand in the direction of the stove. It lite almost instantly at the temperature Ron normally set it. Jessica watched in awe as Emily set a pot of water on to boil. It was the first time both Ron and Jessica watched her use her magic in a solid way.

“What kind of creature are you?” Jessica asked as she followed Emily with her eyes. Small beads of light and darkness flittered in the air around Emily as she slightly showed off to break the tension that hung in the room.

“I’m not exactly a witch, not exactly an elf, and neither am I a faerie. Nobody really knows what my kind is, so we just call ourselves abnormals. I myself am a special unit mage, I expressed high amounts of light and dark magic when I was born so I was trained to fight when I as 3,” Emily explained.

This was enough for Jessica to fall backwards out of her chair and stumble to the door. A look of pure terror was on her face, but Ron caught her before she could make it out.

“Jessica, calm down! What’s wrong,” Ron gasped out as Jessica released her true form into the webbed hands, scaly blue skin and gills on her face. She created a quick jelly substance from the pores of her skin to wiggle her way out of his grasp.

As Jessica ran off from the cottage with Emily staring in shock at her reaction, Ron could only growl and attempt to stand up. The cottage floor was drenched with the slime that had been created, so each attempt was a failure.

“Damn it! What did you do to make her act like that?” Ron roared at Emily. The magic was gone from the air and had took to the floor to help Ron stand.

“I...I’m not surprised she reacted that way. My kind...we are feared by many,” Emily whimpered as she looked at the ground. Ron had managed to stand up and yanked his shirt off to wipe the goo from his body.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“What do you mean you’re feared? I’ve never heard of your kind, I thought you were a human at first if it wasn’t for the fact that you managed to kill my main protector of my island,” Ron said with disgust as the slime dripped from his arm.

“I suppose I should explain. It’s true when I said that nobody really knows when my kind appeared on this Earth, but when we did war broke out. The abnormals were so strong, so powerful in their knowledge of magic that they were kidnapped and forced to do the bidding of their masters.

In the end, anger had overtaken those of us who were slaves. In an attempt to free our kind, the Elders broke free and started the first Great Massacre. My people...they didn’t mean to go as far as they did, but we were tricked into it. My parents were some of the few who saw through the lies and broke from it, but they paid in the end.

As an abnormal, we don’t seem to have anything particularly special about us besides our exceptional magic abilities. We are capable of blowing up entire kingdoms of people, but many of us have broken away from the old ways and now work as normal people. We look like...well, humans. But we don’t age after we turn twenty seven for some reason, and we live for as long as we are not killed.

Those who stuck to the old ways still constantly murder. So when someone hears we are in their presence, it’s normal for them to run in fear. It’s so easy for my kind to kill, and our past shows it, I have had a hard time making friends. Because of my parents though…my brother and I are being targeted to be murdered.”

Emily finally finished and sat down with a cup of tea in her hands before placing it on the table and stared at the table with her hands crossed. She had an expression that was as hard as stone, Ron couldn’t tell what emotion that was going through her at the moment.

“What made it so Jessica would run, in that particular case,” Ron asked after a few moments of silence. Emily looked up at him and shrugged before turning her eyes back to the table.

“Like I said, we are well known for our power, as well as our hostility. My brother raised me differently in the sense that I have none towards anybody, but I will fight to protect those I care about. Jessica must have had some kind of experience with an abnormal that would made her afraid,” Emily said.

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes longer before Ron stood up and walked out of the door towards the way that Jessica had ran. The slime still covered the ground and her footsteps stood out against the ground, so it wasn’t hard to find her.

“What the hell were you thinking! That girl’s an abnormal, she’ll kill us all!” Jessica screamed from the top of a tree. Ron looked up and couldn’t help but laugh. She still had her gills and everything, but instead of an area of water she had taken to a tree instead.

“Does she really seem that evil to you? If anything, she seems more afraid of us than she is dangerous,” Ron yelled up to her. Jessica only hissed and wrapped her arms tighter around the tree branch she clung to.

Ron rolled his eyes before he shrunk the tree. Jessica cried out in alarm as the height of the tree diminished at a rate she couldn’t handle and fell off before the distance was safe. Ron easily caught her before she touched the ground, then let the tree go back to its natural height.

“What if she’s lying to you?” Jessica whimpered as she buried her face against his chest. Ron sighed and started to walk with Jessica curled up in his arms back to the cabin.

“I need you to trust me right now. If she’s telling the truth, then she has quite a few issues that I believe we can help her with. I need you on my side right now, though.” Ron whispered. Jessica hesitated before slowly nodding her head in agreement.

“I’ll help, but until I trust her I won’t particularly like her,” she mumbled. Ron let her down and the two of them walked the back the rest of the way to the cabin.

************Emily POV************

Emily’s heart was beating faster than she would have liked. She never had to explain her background before to anybody, so the fact that she had opened up the way she did scared her more than the training she went through when she was a toddler.

The one thing she was worried about was how Ron would handle it all. He had only known her for a few days and so much had happened in that time period that she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t decided to kill her just yet, or even set her to a hard labor that would cause her excruciating pain.

After a few minutes passed, she decided to at least start cleaning the floor where slime was slowly starting to dry into a disgusting, crusty substance. She stood up and searched for some kind of cleaning detergent before she threw her hands up in defeat after finding a single wash rag.

“What the hell am I supposed to get clean with a single rag?” She cried out to the empty house in exasperation. Holding the rag in her hand, she glanced back at the slime and shook her head in annoyance.

Without another complaint, Emily grabbed a small bucket that was tucked under the sink and filled it with some of the clean water from the basin. She turned back to the slime and got to her knees before she started to scrub. To her disgust, it turned back into a thick, gooey substance before it finally started to come off the ground.

“It’s easier to work with when it completely dries, you can scrape it off the ground that way,” Jessica said as she walked into the room. Emily looked up and saw her before she quickly glanced back down at the ground, her face a deep red.

“I didn’t know that, but what do you do after? Where do I throw it away?” Emily asked. Jessica gave her an anxious smile when she hesitantly crouched down next to her and took the rag from her with shaking hands.

“You can dump it next to a tree or something, it’s good as fertilizer,” she said. Emily looked up at her in surprise before she grinned.

“Fertilizer? Then I know just the thing!” Jessica was taken aback by her sudden enthusiasm, but went back to her slight polite but fearful attitude.

Ron stood in the doorway and watched the two of them talk amongst themselves. He was constantly examining Emily, which she noticed, but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary with her. She was trying to win over Jessica’s friendship, but after she realized it probably wouldn’t happen she just went back to work and kept talking with her normal attitude.

Emily had hoped to escape from those who were incredibly fearful of her because of what she was, but it seemed she only put herself in a place where it would continue to get worse. She only hoped that what she had told Ron wouldn’t come back to bite her in the end.