Life was going well.  Too well.  Amber didn't trust it.  Weeks ago she had returned to New York City after years spent in self-imposed exile in the woods after her adopted father Abyss and her adopted sister Aura had abandoned her.  Amidst a great deal of confusion and anxiety, she had gradually began re-integratinginto the human world.  Ghost had accepted her back at the Mansion and Gemma had helped get her registered to complete her GED.  It hadn't been easy thus far and it certainly hadn't been without its stresses, but she was actually making progress.

There were still challenges, of course.  For one, the struggle of being something half dead and of balancing her human side with her dino side would never go away.  The most she could ever hope for was one foot in the human world and one foot outside of it, but even that was becoming easier to come to terms with.  She was what she was and the sooner she accepted that the more at peace with herself she would be.  Peace was something longed for but also something she feared she'd never have.  There was also the constant loneliness that, despite now living among so many other mutants, she wasn't certain would ever go away.  Her sister was the only person she had ever truly felt at home with and her sister was gone, vanished and abandoned.  

For the moment, she tried to put all of that out of her head as she rushed from one class to the next.  She was late and as much as she was trying to keep human time, that was a skill she was still struggling with.  It wasn't like she needed to know it was exactly 2:05 when she lived in the woods.  That's what time it was now and that's why she was late.  So preoccupied with trying to get to where she was going as quickly as she was able, she didn't notice the other person in the hall and, not paying nearly as much attention as she should have, ran right into the other person.

It was 2:05 PM, and Margo was late to her last class of the day.

Honestly, she didn’t know why she even bothered at this point. She was graduating from high school in less than a week, and she had already been accepted into and committed to the college of her choice. There was no point in even going to class anymore… but here she was, doing just that.

Margo ran down the hall. She didn’t see the other person until they’d somehow collided with each other, sending Margo’s textbooks as well as her person tumbling onto the ground.

“Hey! Sorry I ran into you.” She gathered her books back into her arms before standing up and offering the girl she’d collided with a helping hand. “You late to class too?”

Books went flying as Amber was knocked to the ground.  "Ooph!"  The stranger seemed to be in a similar state, on the ground with books strewn about.  "Oh no, I'm so sorry!"  Anxiety through the roof; this was definitely one of those things you weren't supposed to do in polite human society.  Why did she even bother trying?

Accepting the hand up, she helped with the mutual collection of books, sorting out which books belonged to her and which books belonged to the other girl.  "It's not your fault, I wasn't looking where I was going and I really should have been."

It was easy to let the overwhelming anxiety regarding such an error overtake her but she tried to remind herself that something like this was probably minor.  "Ya, I'm late for class too."  It was so hard living as a human.