Young Writers Society

"You know, lies tend to work better when you phrase them as statements instead of questions."

Why had she said that. She took a deep breath, wishing for the millionth time that she'd learn to actually think through what she was about to say before she said it. Sometimes, it felt like she was as surprised as everyone else was by what came out of her mouth.

She could be kind. Gently try to steer the conversation towards unraveling whatever it was that he was trying to keep from her. Establish some rapport and get them to want to give her information.

And what did she do? Call him a liar.

Great job there, Jer.

She wasn't sure how to recover from it. "But, I don't particularly care about your math lessons... er, failed? math lessons, I suppose?"

Nen came to a sudden stop.

Aska, who had fallen into step right behind him, went stumbling right into him. A moment later, his already loosened helmet went crashing down to the ground. It was a disaster waiting to happen. The moment that Nen realized she had seen right through his lie, he rushed to get Aska's helmet for him. Aska, who had to be terrified of being terrifying, immediately shot down to grab it too.

They collided as their fingers grabbed opposite ends of the helmet.

Aska pulled back. He almost went walking right into the girl - who Nen really needed to ask the name of soon - but Nen grabbed onto him with his tail and jerked him forward.

It was an absolute mess and probably made another terrible impression, but it hopefully had an accidental benefit: it was something to change the conversation.

Nen finally picked up Aska's helmet and handed it back to him.

"Sorry," he apologized with a sheepish smile. Aska muttered a quiet apology of his own.

Then he spun around to face the castle doors again, letting Aska out of his tail. A few moments later, they had reached the end of the garden.

Jerica blinked as they muttered their apologies and started towards the castle doors. She gave them a moment to get well ahead of her before she cautiously followed them again, not quite sure what it was that had triggered that... dramatic... of a response.

She expected him to get huffy and claim he wasn't lying. That was to be expected from non-liars who tried to lie and got called on it. But they'd reacted like she'd just told them that she kicked puppies for fun. She wasn't sure she wanted to be close enough to get caught in that mess of anxiety if she said something else that offended them.

And she made a note to not tell them most things about her.

"So..." Jerica said at last, feeling awkward with the tense silence that had settled around them. "The library, huh?"

"It's really nice," Nen said, grinning. He opened up the castle doors and stepped inside. As Aska followed him in, Nen reached over to keep the door on the left open. "I don't think I've ever seen so many books before! There's all sorts of topics, too. I've been able to find so many medical books there."

"...I like the stories," Aska shyly added.

"There's some great ones of those, too," Nen agreed. "It's even close enough to the kitchen to grab snacks."

Jerica followed them in silence until they got to the library, then walked in and nodded. There were a lot of books here. More, even, than they had back at the Palace. Levin wasn't a king particularly concerned with intelligence. He'd rather spend his gold on collecting toys than useful things like books.

"What about books about breaking curses?"

Nen faltered.

They were standing inside the library now. The many rows of bookshelves spread out in front of them, but he had been in the middle of walking over to the couches over by the roaring fireplace to the very right of the library's doors. Aska, who had likely been waiting for the perfect moment to slip away, had ducked into one of the nearby aisles to grab a book.

"...We tried looking for those," Nen admitted. His gaze fell down to the floor. "We weren't able to find any - not on our kinds of curses, at least. I don't know if Tieth kept them out of here on purpose or there just isn't any books on the topic, but..."

He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Alright," Jerica said, undeterred. Any magician worth their salt wouldn't leave ammo on how to undo their spells just lying around in the sight of their prisoners. But, there had to be something they could use. "What kind of witch is Tieth? Any books on that?"

Nen bit his lip.

And then he immediately stopped - he had been like this for more than half of a year at this point, but he still forgot he had sharp teeth that could easily cut through his lip now.

"There's books on what she is," Nen said, sitting down on one of the couches, "but they're nothing more than stories. She's...not a normal kind of witch. Tieth is a dragon. And the only books here are books on the Dragon King, which isn't really anything but a kid's story."

"Alright," Jerica said again. It was clear that they were frustrated with this pursuit. It was hardly surprising that she wasn't the first person who came up with the idea of reading her way to rescue. But, she might be better at figuring it out than they were. "Let's get all the books that have anything to do with magic, witches, dragons, medicine, and anything else that might be tangentially related. There's three of us and one of her. It can't be that hard."

It was, in fact, hard.

Nen had been friends with one of the most stubborn people he had ever met. He knew that it was best to let ideas like this run their course - even when said ideas were definitely wrong. So Nen wasn't surprised when their reading and book collecting had revealed nothing an hour later.

Nen and Aska had months to go through the books in the library. And while he hadn’t read all of them yet, he knew that the books there wouldn't have what they were looking for.

Nen lowered his book down and rested it on his chest. He was over by the fire now, sprawled across one of the couches. Aska was sitting incredibly poised and still on one of the smaller, cushioned seats. If it wasn't for the occasional flipping of the page, it would have looked like someone had just left a suit of armor there as a decoration.

Jerica was getting progressively more and more frustrated. She'd wildly flipped through the stack of books in front of her, skimming them as quickly as she could for the slightest hint of anything at all which might be useful to her. And she wasn't finding anything. She had near a dozen books opened in front of her on the floor before she angrily stood and walked back to the shelf.

She started tearing book after book off the shelf, flipping them open to the title page and fanning through them, then shoving them back on the shelf with a loud thud. She continued down the length of a shelf, getting angrier and angrier with each book that she checked and failed.

And then, her stomach rumbled. Loudly. Oh. I'm hangry. She sighed.

Nen was going to offer a word of warning about upsetting the furniture by being rude to it, but then he heard the tell-tale rumbling of a hungry stomach. He sat up a little and peeked over the edge of the couch at Jerica, who had offered up her name half an hour ago when Nen finally remembered to ask her about it.

That was exactly the distraction he needed.

He hopped to his feet, leaving the book on the couch as he gave a little stretch.

"I'm going to grab some snacks," he announced. They could have just gone to the kitchen with Jerica, but it was much quicker if Nen took the shortcut he had discovered a few months. Spurned on by his own hunger and longing for some nice, sweet food, Nen darted to the very back of the room. He was in luck, too - he had remembered to leave the kitchen window open that morning just in case he wanted to grab a bite to eat.

He opened one of the library windows and hoisted himself up onto the windowsill.

"Be right back," he said.

With a flap of his wings, he flew across the short divide between the library and the kitchen. It was only a short flight; the landing was one of his better ones. Then he slipped inside the kitchen, trying to figure out just what to bring back with him.

Aska, meanwhile, faced the sudden realization that he was alone with Jerica.

Jerica watched as Nen flew out the window, still too dazed from all of this to even really process or care the fact that he had wings. She blinked. At least he was planning to come back with food.

Hope it's normal food.

Jerica glanced towards Aska, realizing that she wasn't alone in the library, even after that dramatic exit. She thought about going back to her mission but she was too hungry to focus. So, she looked at him instead. "So... anything interesting?"

Aska hesitantly closed the book he had been reading.

After a moment of suffocating silence passed, he quickly shook his head.

"No," he whispered. It was just a story about the Dragon King that he had read a hundred times before. Even though he liked the story, he had guessed that he wouldn't be able to find anything helpful there. His guess had been proven right after twenty minutes of reading it. "Did, um, you?"

"No." She sighed dramatically and strode towards him, then threw herself down on one of the many couches. She flopped across it lazily, looking every bit like the teenager she was, but had to push on the hilt of her sword so that it stopped jabbing into her side. Not quite a normal teenager. She let her head tip back so that she was staring up at the ceiling, but kept speaking to Aska. "Why'd Tieth curse you in the first place?"