The park was odd—that was for sure.

This wasn’t the first time something strange had happened in the park. Last time I’d been here, I’d been bitten by a werewolf, changed into said werewolf, then subsequently cured of my lycanthropy after a month of trying different remedies, falling in and out of love, and nearly killing two of my best friends. You can understand why I’d be hesitant to return to this park.

But I was confident we’d destroyed every last remain of the werewolf. And it was a nice park—a small forest with bike paths, a pond, a stream. A nice place to get away from it all.

After assuring my parents that I would take care of myself—see, they didn’t know about my entire episode with becoming a werewolf; I’d told them I was mugged—and many utterances of “Adam, be careful!” I was finally able to go.

My bike had gotten trashed the last time I’d ridden it around the park, so today I was just walking down the paths thinking. It was only a week since I’d been cured, and I was still slightly shaken. While walking by the pond, it happened.

I saw a girl coming down a path to the left. If she’d lived in town or went to my school, I probably would’ve recognized her, but I could already tell she wasn’t from around here.

She had blue hair. That was the first thing that stood out about her. And the odd thing was, it looked like a natural blue—not like she’d dyed it or something. There were a couple of streaks of orange in her hair, too. She was wearing a blue top with some sort of symbol on it that I didn’t recognize and black shorts. All in all, somehow the look worked.

I didn’t realize I’d stopped walking. Normally, you wouldn’t stop just because a person was coming down a path, would you? You’d just keep walking along your way, or if you were friendly, you’d say “Hi” or something. This girl just looked so different, though, that I had to stop and wonder who it was.

When she first noticed me, she looked almost as startled as I felt. She looked around, as if unsure if she’d taken the right path, and then looked back at me. “Who are you?” she asked.

I knew I was the only one on the trail, but I still wondered whether she was addressing me or not. “Uh…Adam, “I replied uncertainly. “I’m Adam.”

“That’s an odd sounding name,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was directing this towards me or if she was just talking to herself. We stood there for a moment, just looking at each other, trying to figure each other out. I suddenly realized I was staring, and looked away for a second, so as not to be rude. Then, when she didn’t speak, I tried to start a conversation.

“What about you?”

“What?”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “Shuurin.” It sounded like something out of a comic book to me, but I didn’t make any comment except, “Cool.”

Not wanting to lose momentum, I continued, “So, what are you doing here?”

Shuurin looked around again. “I’m not sure… This doesn’t look like the place I was supposed to be going to. There doesn’t happen to be a dragon around, does there?”

Dragon? I thought. That sounded a little weird to me. “Uh…no,” I said simply. “Then again, I never know with this park. It’s strange. There’s a lot of stuff I still don’t know about it. Like how you got here, for one.”

“I already said I didn’t know,” replied Shuurin with a slightly irritated tone in her voice. “Come to think of it, I might rather stay here than go off and fight a dragon,” she added in a calmer voice.

“Why do you have to go and fight a dragon?” I asked, concerned.

“I’d…rather not talk about it.”

“Oh.”

“What are you doing here?” she continued. That caught me off guard.

I thought for a moment. “Well…I needed to think,” I finally settled on. “I don’t really want to talk about it, either.”

“All right,” replied Shuurin.

So we were silent again. And then she did something I didn’t expect—she put out her hand towards the pond. Slowly, water started to come up from the pond and form into a sphere of water, floating towards Shuurin’s hand. She used her other hand to take a bottle from the pack slung on her back, and then she guided the sphere of water into the bottle.

It was then that the two of us noticed I was staring again. “What?”

I shook my head, bringing myself back to reality. “Uh, well, nobody I know can…control water with their hands,” I finished awkwardly.

“Hm,” said Shuurin. She didn’t seem to know how to reply to that. She was looking at my shirt now. “What’s that?” she asked, indicating the symbol on my shirt.

It was a Disturbed shirt. It had the symbol from one of their albums, “Believe,” on it.

“It’s a symbol from a band I like.”

“Band?” Shuurin wondered. “Like, a band you put around your wrist?”

O…kay. “Well…not exactly. More like…a band of people. They play music.”

“Oh. I get it,” she said. I’d tried not to sound condescending or anything, and I guess it worked.

Silence again. I wondered how the heck she could’ve ended up in the park, concerned that someone would be looking for her.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” I asked.

“I wish you could, but…” Shuurin thought for a moment. “Number one, I don’t want to drag you into this, and number two, I don’t think I’m supposed to be here… I think this is a different world than mine.”

“I think you might be right,” I replied.

“I better get going,” said Shuurin after a moment. “Dragons won’t wait to be killed all day, will they?” She smiled a little.

“All right,” I said. “Maybe… I’ll see you again?”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “Like you said, this park is strange.” She put the bottle of water back in her pack and straightened the straps of the pack. “Bye.”

I watched as she walked down another path away from the crossroads where we’d met. I watched her until she disappeared from view around a turn.

I still don’t understand how or why we met that day. Only that we did, and it’s made my life that much different.

She’d seemed like a nice person. I wasn’t sure if I’d see her again as I watched her leave.

Then again, the park was odd.