They meet for the first time when Allelujah is sitting on top of the play equipment, waiting for his friend Marie and his older brother Hallelujah to show up. There's no one else around, so it's quiet, and it's easy to hear the tiny sniffles and hiccoughs coming from somewhere underneath him.
He jumps down from the top platform, ignoring the fireman's pole, ducks under the slippery-slide and peers around the noughts-and-crosses to find a little blonde girl sitting in the woodchip with her elbows scraped, her skirts ripped, a bruise on her cheek and her knees pulled up to her chest.
He's not really thinking very much (Don't talk to any strangers, at all! Are you listening to me?!) when he kneels down and asks gently, "What's wrong?"
The girl jumps and recoils so quickly that she hits her head on the metal structure behind her. Allelujah cringes and crawls forward a little to check if she's alright, but she scurries away again, pinning him with wide, tear-filled eyes with her hands clutching the top of her head.
The first thing he thinks is that her eyes are a very pretty colour.
"Hey, are you alright?" he asks, once she's calmed down a little. She nods and sniffs again, and he smiles. "That's good. What's your name?"
She flinches, and Allelujah doesn't understand why until she leans forward and starts writing letters carefully into the dirt.
"You... can't speak?"
She leans back and shakes her head sadly, eyes on the ground and hands gripping the skirts of her frilly dress white-knuckled.
N I L L
"Nill..." Whatever reaction Nill is expecting from Allelujah, it's certainly not a good-natured laugh, and she curls in on herself again, surprised. "It's nice. I'm Allelujah! It's nice to meet you, Nill."
It seems to be a long wait, but finally, she smiles nervously and nods.
That's more than good enough for Allelujah, and he grins. "My other friends are really slow. Do you want to play?"
He's not sure if she'll want to (because that's what those injuries are from, right?) but there's no pause this time before she nods again. Allelujah scrambles to his feet excitedly before she can even begin to stand, but he hits his head on the low metal platform and crumples right back down to his knees again - so they spend the next fifteen minutes doing close to nothing, with Nill fretting over Allelujah, and Allelujah trying miserably to walk straight, before Hallelujah and Marie finally show up.
ONE. [chibified]
He jumps down from the top platform, ignoring the fireman's pole, ducks under the slippery-slide and peers around the noughts-and-crosses to find a little blonde girl sitting in the woodchip with her elbows scraped, her skirts ripped, a bruise on her cheek and her knees pulled up to her chest.
He's not really thinking very much (Don't talk to any strangers, at all! Are you listening to me?!) when he kneels down and asks gently, "What's wrong?"
The girl jumps and recoils so quickly that she hits her head on the metal structure behind her. Allelujah cringes and crawls forward a little to check if she's alright, but she scurries away again, pinning him with wide, tear-filled eyes with her hands clutching the top of her head.
The first thing he thinks is that her eyes are a very pretty colour.
"Hey, are you alright?" he asks, once she's calmed down a little. She nods and sniffs again, and he smiles. "That's good. What's your name?"
She flinches, and Allelujah doesn't understand why until she leans forward and starts writing letters carefully into the dirt.
"You... can't speak?"
She leans back and shakes her head sadly, eyes on the ground and hands gripping the skirts of her frilly dress white-knuckled.
N I L L
"Nill..." Whatever reaction Nill is expecting from Allelujah, it's certainly not a good-natured laugh, and she curls in on herself again, surprised. "It's nice. I'm Allelujah! It's nice to meet you, Nill."
It seems to be a long wait, but finally, she smiles nervously and nods.
That's more than good enough for Allelujah, and he grins. "My other friends are really slow. Do you want to play?"
He's not sure if she'll want to (because that's what those injuries are from, right?) but there's no pause this time before she nods again. Allelujah scrambles to his feet excitedly before she can even begin to stand, but he hits his head on the low metal platform and crumples right back down to his knees again - so they spend the next fifteen minutes doing close to nothing, with Nill fretting over Allelujah, and Allelujah trying miserably to walk straight, before Hallelujah and Marie finally show up.