"Clarie?"

Clarissa Lux looked up from her desk, her translucent blue eyes startled. Her porcelain features relaxed into a smile as she realised it had been her best friend, Lela, who had called her name.

"The bell just went, you ditz," she said affectionately, slapping the back of her head gently to wake her up, and managing to muss up the back of her perfect soft blonde curls. Lela, in contrast to her perfect, pale and angelic friend, was the dark, mysterious one. Her long straight brunette hair swung over her shoulder as she slung her bag over it, tugging her friend to her feet and out of her daydream.

"What's the matter with you?" Lela asked absentmindedly as they left the classroom and joined the people leaving through the gates. They lived only two streets away from each other, and always walked to and from school together. It had been that way for years; the two had become the closest of friends before they could even talk. "You've been acting strangely all day. Stranger than usual, I mean."

Clarie's return smile was just a little offbeat; Lela frowned. With her large brown eyes her face was very expressive. There was something wrong with her friend. They always shared everything... why was Clarissa keeping so quiet about whatever was making her so distant today?

The remainder of the walk was in silence, apart from their ''see you tomorrow''s as they went their separate ways to their homes. Each was thinking; Lela puzzling, and Clarie reminscing.

~*~

Later that night Clarie curled up on the window seat of her sparse bedroom with her legs drawn up to her and her arms around them, her head resting on her knees. Her long blonde curls fell down the back of her old-fashioned white nightgown.

She had not been merely dreaming all that day. She had been thinking; thinking of the old times, the good experiences; thinking of a way she could stop the bad things from happening. And she knew that Lela's good times were running out, because something was on its way.

She raised her head to gaze out of the window at the glowing orb of the moon in the velvet black sky. It was very late... but that didn't matter. Those like her never slept.

She had sensed that Lela thought Clarie was keeping something from her. Well, she had been, for all their lives. She looked over her shoulder, and one of her tears rolled from her pale cheek and dropped onto the white feathers of her angel wings.

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