**"So you're asking me to cover for you the whole morning?"**

**"Not the whole morning, unless things go on longer than I expect them to,"** Emelina responded to her brother, folding her arms with a frown. It had been easy enough to come up with a lie, an excuse, to feed to him so he would cover for her. It wasn't like the store was busy and require two of them at the front. He had quite happily believed that she was meeting with some friends from college who were just popping by. As if that would truly happen in such times. But her brother had always been a bit of an idiot. And she was a particularly good liar. **"I'll repay you in some way."** As much as it pained her to say that. 

**"You better,"** Theodore grinned. Eli narrowed her eyes slightly as the particularly annoying bright orange that hung around him got slightly more visible. She really needed to invest in some more expensive sunglasses. These were good enough for now but the swarm of colours that seemed to come with each human being had a bad habit of making themselves seen even when she wore the sunglasses. **"Well, I guess I'll do that for you. But if you get caught I'm not going to help you get out of that one."**

**"I wouldn't expect you to. Believe me, mother isn't going to find out about this,"** Eli gave a slight nod at that. **"Well, I'll leave you too it. I'm sure you'll be able to cope with the crowds queuing to buy what we have on offer."**

**"I will if I must, but it will be difficult alone!"** Theodore replied, clutching a hand to his heart dramatically as he moved behind the counter. Eli merely offered an unamused snort as she began to head out of the shop. It was quite nice to leave and get away from the small space where books lined every wall. It wasn't that she had anything against books merely that seeing them every day but Sunday tending to get a bit old. Then again, at least it was normally quiet. The lack of people was a nice break for her eyes and brain. 

The annoying ability to constantly see the colours that somehow represented people, at least she thought they did, had come in handy however. Being able to notice other Emergents was certainly rather useful. After all groups were much more likely to survive if everything went downhill. And the one thing she put above everything was her own survival. It had taken her a while to work out what the extra layer that clung to some people like a second skin, well more like a fourth or fifth, was. The extra brightness had been off putting but enough to increase her curiosity. With a little more investigation she had managed to put everything together and worked out what that meant. Well at least what its presence meant. 

She was yet to make any sense of the jumble of colours. She knew that each colour meant something and that each layer of it meant something but she didn't know what. It was rather frustrating. Eli did not like not knowing. She was confident in her ability to work it out, it just seemed like it could take quite a while. It was more of a nuisance than a benefit at the moment. 

The Water of Life was only two doors away, quite a short walk, and she was sure she was likely to be early. That was something she was perfectly fine with. It would give her time to observe each person as they entered, trying to learn more about them even if she had already met each one. She had, after all, been the person to organise this little covert gathering. Of course that was purely due to the nature of her abilities and the fact it allowed her to see whether they were Emergent, or not.

As she entered the bar Eli lowered her sunglasses for just  a moment. A quick glance around told her that she was the first to arrive due to the only one blinding aura belonging to the bartender. Brian she believed his name was. Something like that. She quickly pushed back up the sunglasses so they covered her eyes. There was only so much she could take, even when there were only a few people. 

She turned to face Brian, forcing a slight smile to cross her lips. **"A lemonade, please, but nothing else. Merely something to drink while I wait."** She could only look at him so long, even with her eyes shaded, and thus averted her gaze. The colours that surrounded him were difficult to describe as they constantly shifted and clashed with each other. She was sure she had caught a soft blue in there among many other, vibrant colours.

It was all very curious but unimportant, as she had no idea what any of it meant.