The afternoon sun rose in the blue sky, the sea waves crashing against the beach echoed in the distance, and the salty ocean breeze tried to keep her cool against the scorching heat of the sun. The sweet taste of the watermelon in her hand wasn't really helping her get rid of the bad taste in her mouth from this whole situation.
Nora didn't know what to think at the moment about the dinner from a few days ago. First of all, they had lied to Connie's family about the gems and about their family. Of course, it was either lying or telling them the truth, a truth that most people wouldn't believe and could label them as crazy—she could admit that. Still, she disliked lying even if it was for a very good reason, but there was no choice—or so she told herself as her gaze fixed on nothing in particular, trying to think about something else but failing.
Then there was what worried her the most: Adrian's situation. She couldn't fully believe what he had said at that dinner, but at the same time, she didn't feel like he was lying... although she didn't feel like he was telling the whole truth either. It was confusing, like everything surrounding him.
At that moment, she was seriously reconsidering if she really knew him. I mean, what did she really know about Adrian?
He was someone who didn't take most things seriously unless the matter was serious. He was someone who joked even if he was dying. She knew that he wasn't indifferent to things; he was just busy with his own matters. What matters? She really didn't know. She knew that he performed experiments with his powers but not the nature or the purpose of them.
For a moment, she looked at the slice of watermelon and took a bite, trying to think about the sweet taste of the fruit and not about this situation, but it didn't work; she expected that. So she continued with her mental diatribe.
She knew he had powers, but what were his powers? He called it magic, but if you thought about it deeply, she herself could also call it that. However, her powers were inherited from her mother, powers she already knew she would have because her mother had them before her, and they were all related powers like healing and protection. But Adrian really didn't know how to describe it. He used a fire the color of silver that had no heat but could burn, moved objects with the motion of his hands, could create real things from nothing at his will, could heal to some extent, could create objects that seemed real but weren't, could create illusions indistinguishable from reality, seemed to know what would happen in the near future just like Garnet, reality and logic seemed like suggestions to him, and the last thing she knew—but that generated the most conflicting feelings in her—was that he... had a way of telling reality how it should work, as if he was the one deciding what would happen. That was what saved them from the time travel that that damn clock caused. She hadn't thought at that moment about how much power he really had, and now that she thought about it, she couldn't find an end to it.
She knew that about his powers, but they didn't seem related to each other beyond doing impossible things unrelated to each other. The closest she could define would be creating and controlling. And she herself didn't know if that was all he could do; she could just as well take his words literally—"a mage."
Aside from that, what else did she know about him? She knew that he was always there when needed, like a hero, but he didn't act like one. So, what else did she know about him?... She knew nothing else. That really frustrated her—not knowing almost anything about a friend she considered close. She could say she felt like a bad friend for not realizing it, even if she wasn't.
She didn't know he was going through such a... such a miserable situation.
Nor did he show it; his attitude showed no sadness, always calm like stagnant water, always unshakable like a mountain or a dead man, but was he really like that? So unshakable? What if the truth was that he was suffering in silence?
Was his smile genuine, or was it just a way to hide his pain?
She really didn't know, and that's why she was frustrated—frustrated with herself for not realizing something that was right in front of her eyes. Frustrated for not knowing how to help a friend.
"I still can't believe he's going through such a situation," she spoke to the void as if she wanted an answer, although she knew she wouldn't get one. "The worst part of all this is that I don't know how to help him," she said in a low voice as the world seemed less colorful than usual to her eyes. She closed her eyes and sighed, hoping that the soft sea breeze would carry away her worries.