Cana thought of herself as someone who was friendly and outgoing and could make friends with anyone, but there was something about the new kid that rubbed her the wrong way. He was grumpy and rude, which she could deal with if he wasn't so strange.

She sidled over, eyes narrowed as she watched the Master trying to talk to the small black-haired boy with the dark, dark eyes.

"I'm sorry I can't help you," Makarov said with a sigh. "But you're always welcome to stay at the guild. There's a place for you here, if you want it."

The kid's lip curled scornfully and he turned away, stopping short as he almost ran smack into Cana. "What do you want?" he snapped.

"Cana, this is Gray," Makarov said mildly. "Gray, this is Cana. Maybe you two could be friends."

"I don't think so," Gray muttered. He had a strange, unfamiliar lilt to his voice.

"Where are you from?" Cana asked, tilting her head curiously.

He eyed her suspiciously, but eventually spoke as if the word was physically dragged out of him and it pained him to say it to her. "…Isvan."

Cana's mouth dropped open and she studied him with eyes as wide as saucers. "That's not even part of Fiore!"

His eye twitched. "Aren't you a smart one?"

"You have a weird accent."

"So do you!"

"No," she disagreed, "mine is normal. You're the weird one."

"I am not weird," he said stiffly.

"Does everyone strip in Isvan? Some sort of weird cultural thing? That seems kind of uncivilized."

"What?" Gray looked down and spat out a string of words that were spoken with the vehemence of curses even if Cana didn't recognize the foreign sounds.

Stomping off, he collected his shirt from where it had been discarded near the door and shoved his way out of the guild.

"What a weirdo," Cana said, crossing her arms over her chest with a huff.

"If he comes back, maybe you could try being friends with him," Makarov suggested.

"Why?" Her nose wrinkled. "He's weird. And, like, really rude and mean."

"He's angry because he's sad," Makarov said gently. "He could use a friend right now, and you could too. It's getting a little sad seeing you be the only kid around here. And he might be a little different from you, but I think you'll find that you have more in common with him than you think, even if you come from different parts of the world."

Cana mumbled sulkily in what might be taken to be grudging agreement. None of it made sense to her. If someone was sad, then they would be sad not angry. Grown-ups were weird. Although not as weird as that kid, who might as well have come from a different planet.

Gray did come back, although Cana couldn't say why when he was still so grumpy and mean to everyone. Cana halfheartedly tried being friendly from time to time because the Master had asked her to, but was soundly rebuffed each time. Which was just as well, because she didn't really want to be friends with him anyway. As exciting as it was to finally have another kid her age in the guild, it sucked that it was such a freak.

Even aside from his frankly regrettable attitude, he had a thousand strange quirks that made Cana eye him sidelong. The stripping, for one. She still hadn't gotten a straight answer of whether that was some weird Isvan tradition or just one of his personal idiosyncrasies, but it was creepy either way.

His accent could actually be almost pretty if he wasn't just sneering and making rude comments—which he was, ninety-nine percent of the time he opened his mouth—but it was still strange to her ears. She almost didn't notice when it began to gradually taper off and wither away, only cropping up when he wasn't paying attention or was particularly riled up. But Cana knew better. He might be learning how to sound like the rest of them, but he didn't belong here.

He had strange habits and superstitious rituals that didn't match up to ones found anywhere in Fiore. Cana had seen superstitious people before, but at least those things made sense even if they weren't real. Thirteen wasn't really unlucky, but everyone thought it was, which was fine. Gray? Gray had no problem with thirteen but was averse to four. What kind of weird thing was that?

Even mannerisms and greetings were a challenge. Cana had tried shaking his hand once as a show that she was going to try to set aside their differences and make friends, and he had stared at her hand like he'd never seen one before. What kind of place had people that didn't even shake hands?

He looked for foods that didn't exist, and turned his nose up at staples as if they were the weird foods. He used idioms and expressions that Cana didn't understand, and would only stare at her blankly when she said something perfectly ordinary that somehow made no sense to him. Occasionally he would give a terse explanation if she asked about the meaning of a word or expression she didn't understand, but most of the time he would just roll his eyes and walk away.

Well, Cana was done. He was rude and annoying, and came from some backwards, uncivilized country. Who knew what else he was hiding? Maybe people in Isvan were cannibals or sacrificed children to cults or something! How was she supposed to know any different? Judging by his ugly attitude, she wouldn't be surprised.

So when she went out to play one day and stumbled across him in the woods, she was already wary. He was kneeling on the ground, staring at…something. Cana stared too, trying to figure out what it was. Some kind of icy shrine wedged at the base of a tree, glassy flowers and flat sheets of crystal that might have had words etched into them.

"What's that?" she asked suspiciously.

Gray's head jerked up and whipped around. "What are you doing here?"

"Some sort of shrine? Do you have weird gods or something? Or are you part of, like, a cult? What do Isvan cults do?"

He growled low in the back of his throat. "It's a memorial," he said stiffly.

"A memorial? For dead people or something? Shouldn't you have, like, a gravestone or something? And real flowers? What good is ice? Or, it would even be more normal to–"

Gray jumped to his feet, snatching up the strange ice and throwing it to the ground with all his strength so that it shattered into a thousand crystal shards. Fury was carved into every line of his face, but angry tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.

"I'm human!" he yelled in her face. "I'm human, just like you!"

He shoved his way past her roughly and stormed off deeper into the woods, disappearing into the trees and leaving Cana to stare after him with wide eyes. What an outburst. Still…something about it made Cana shift uneasily, as if she'd done something wrong.

If that had been some kind of memorial, maybe for someone he had lost, then it had probably been insensitive of her to say those things. If he had come here to grieve or remember, then she had only made things worse.

Her gaze dropped to the glistening shards of ice shimmering among the leaves. Ice was an unconventional way to memorialize someone, but it was Gray's magic. A magic that, she realized, he might feel as close to as she did to hers. And maybe that made it even more personal than going to a graveyard or church.

It had looked like there had been some ice roses, and the flat slabs with writing could have been makeshift memorial stones, so maybe that was understandable. And even if they hadn't been… Was it really her place to judge how he chose to remember the ones he had lost?

Cana swallowed hard as the truth of his words finally came back to hit her. He might be a jerk, he might be from a strange country, but he was still a person like her.

She gave him two days to cool off before approaching him again.

"Come on," she said firmly, planting herself in front of the table he was sulking at.

"Go away," he snapped.

"Look…" She faltered and shuffled her feet. "Can I just…show you something?"

"…No thanks."

"If you come with me, I'll leave you alone afterwards and you'll never have to deal with me again."

That gave him pause, his dark eyes narrowing in thought as he weighed the pros and cons. "Fine."

Standing up, he pushed his way out of the guild and eyed her expectantly. Cana found it hard to meet his cool, unfriendly gaze, so she watched the ground instead. They walked in silence as Cana led him back out to the forest, to where his memorial had been.

She had spent the past two days trying to recreate it, but she hadn't gotten a good look at it before it was smashed and found that she couldn't get ice to behave without melting like he could. Instead, she had made a little construction of wood and polished rocks and shells and feathers, whatever pretty things she could find. She had gathered some colorful flowers to lay at its base and, because she thought it only fair to include something personal to her magic like he had done with his, she had stuck her favorite tarot card right in the place of honor.

"I'm sorry I made fun of your memorial," she mumbled.

Absolute silence hung over them, aside from the birds chirping in the trees and leaves rustling in the wind. Unnerved by the complete lack of a response, Cana darted a glance up to try gauging his reaction. Gray was staring at her construction with an absolutely blank expression, his face unreadable and carefully wiped clean of emotion.

Cana cleared her throat awkwardly. "Will you…tell me a little about Isvan?"

Gray's gaze slid sideways to rest on her. He was wary, mistrustful, and didn't understand the request. Even Cana could tell that much, despite how little his eyes gave away.

She dug the toe of her sandal into the ground and watched the crinkling leaves with unwarranted fascination. "I don't know… Maybe it would help me understand better."

Only silence greeted her, and she realized that he wasn't going to tell her anything. It wasn't a surprise, really. He almost never talked about Isvan, even when Cana pestered him with nosy questions and made snide remarks about the strange things he did or didn't do. The only things he talked about less than Isvan were his personal feelings and his family and life before Fairy Tail. And given how Cana had not exactly been the kindest to him, she couldn't exactly complain that he didn't want to talk to her.

Still, she had tried. That had to count for something.

Leaves crunched underfoot, and Cana looked up in surprise. Gray wasn't looking at her, but he walked slowly up to her memorial, stared at it for another few seconds, and dropped to the ground to sit cross-legged in front of it. Reaching out, he ran his fingers along the petals of the flowers and down their stems, encasing them in a sparkling coat of ice. Cana knew instinctively that they were preserved for good, and that her fragile and feeble gesture had just been immortalized.

"Isvan…?" Gray mumbled. His voice had a dreamy, faraway quality. When Cana hesitantly crept over and sat down beside him, she saw that his dark eyes had the same quality to them. "It was…my home."

That hint of a lilting accent was back again, resurrected from wherever he stored the bits and pieces of his homeland that he tried to hide from the world. Cana stayed quiet and listened in fascination as he began to talk. He didn't say anything major or deep or personal, definitely nothing that connected to his family or whatever had happened to them, but small, everyday things. Why four was unlucky. How they greeted each other instead of shaking hands. What foods they ate that he couldn't find in Fiore. Where some of their expressions came from. How differently the houses and buildings were constructed. How much colder the weather was.

What he didn't say was that he missed it, but Cana heard that loud and clear. And the more he talked, the more she realized that they weren't so very different after all.

Note: There's basically zero cultural variation in FT, but it would be cool if there was XD

emmahoshi: You are very right :) People and communities are more complex than a simple "good" or "bad" or any stereotypes, and you can meet a lot of nice and interesting people if you keep an open mind and don't just assume things or pass judgment before getting to know them. I think it's something we should all keep in mind, honestly :)