Young Writers Society

She shrugged, "Well, I've been to worlds where vamps don't exist and I still got hungry enough to rip someone's throat out, so risk what you will. I'm just warning you that you might be taking some chronic bad luck or something equally unpleasant with you."

She finished off her candy bar and once again went fishing around in her pockets for snacks. For once, she found nothing more. She grimaced and considered doing a bit of shoplifting herself.

"What if I didn't really have good luck in the first place?" Lunis said, voice fading out slightly. He wasn't exactly in the mood to part with his stolen loot.

Emily shook her head, "Witches magic isn't really a joke. Well, I mean, it can be, but not hexes. If you don't have good luck now, then if one of those things has a bad luck hex, it could kill you, easy. This guy I knew died like that, actually, had the bad luck to fall into a hunters trap and the worse luck to find out that the hunters knew him. I can't imagine they were quick with killing him, poor guy, I just wish I could remember his name." She wandered along the walls. There had to be something here, some kind of clue, as to how they got here or why.

Lunis sighed, setting the bag on the floor. "The one person who might've been out to kill me doesn't want to anymore," Lunis said, glancing not-so-subtly at Nubes. "But I'm not going to test that."

The leopard smiled. That is, up until the panther decided to hop back on the bike, grabbing onto Nubes's shoulder in the process. Nubes lurched towards Lunis, but some quick movement on Nubes's part stabilized the both of them.

"I thought you weren't going to test that," Nubes said, staring up at Lunis and blinking slowly.

Focusing on the ground in front of him, Lunis tapped his paws against the pedals. "Would you really kill me over a bike?" the panther said. When Nubes remained silent, the panther rolled his eyes. "Look, if you help me figure out how to ride this thing, I'll help you too."

Nubes gave a small shrug, trying his best not to imbalance Lunis. "I don't particularly care, but sure," he said.

Emily glanced between the two of them, "You don't necessarily have to be killed by a person. Wrong-place-wrong-time kills happen all the time because of those little suckers." She waved a hand as if swatting away the conversation, "But whatever, you do you. Also, are you two a couple? I need to know because revealing exactly how dense I am is best done up front, I've found."

Nubes chuckled. "Lunis isn't exactly boyfriend material," he said, ignoring a glare from the panther.

"And I already have a boyfriend," Lunis grumbled, pedaling a little faster to get closer to Emily and get on Nubes's nerves. When Nubes started leaning away from the bike, Lunis changed his mind.

"We share a bed sometimes, but that's about it," Nubes said. "You aren't dense - it's just an odd friendship."

Emily nodded, "Cool. And yeah, I am," she laughed, "It literally took me two years to realize that two of my mortal friends were married. 'Course, that could have had something to do with the fact that they were completely incompatible, but then, I'm not really one to talk. The last time I dated I was around twenty, like, actually twenty, and it was with another vamp in around the same physical and literal age group. It's really hard to find people my age nowadays, physical or mental..." she trailed off, then shook herself out of her reverie, "Anyway, I'm rambling again, so, uh, what's your boyfriend like?"

Tapping his chin with a claw, Nubes said, "Well, unlike Lunis, he's likeable."

"Which you would know, because you seduced him, then held him hostage so you could try kill me a second time," Lunis growled.

Nubes ignored the comment, choosing to think for a few more seconds. "Friendly, respectful, doesn't have too much of a spine, cares about people, the one person who genuinely loves Lunis. I like him."

The panther opened his mouth, probably to retort, but stopped when Nubes summed up his thoughts on Lunis's boyfriend. "Yeah, he's pretty good," the panther mumbled, looking away.

Emily eyed the vending machine down the hall, "He sounds nice," she said, "excuse me for a moment."

She rushed over to the machine and fished around in her pockets for currency this time. Coins. Rykvorian coins. Danm.

She eyed the silver things, engraved with the image of the goddess Atara, and got an idea. Her fingers danced in the air above them, crackling and popping with magic. And suddenly she had eight quarters. She laughed and inserted them into the slot, selecting her new snack.

She skipped back to the others, chewing on the much softer Earthly chocolate.

"Yeah, yeah, so, we should still figure out what's going on and stuff," she said, mouth full.

"I'm not sure how we're going to do that, honestly," Nubes said, frowning. "We can't seem to find anyone, none of these stores appear to have anything remotely useful, and I cannot imagine why we would end up in a place as comfortable and friendly as-"

"What is that?" Lunis said, pointing to the chocolate in Emily's hand. "Do you have more of it?"

Nubes set a paw against his forehead and sighed; Lunis always did like his sweets.

Emily shook her head, "It's chocolate and it's mine. No, I don't have more of it. Get your own candy." She took another bite, squinting at him suspiciously.

Ugh; this conversation was a distraction from what really mattered (getting out of here/finding out where here was), but Lunis wasn't going to get back on track until he had his candy. So Nubes had to wait.

"Where did you get it, then?" the panther said.

She gestured vaguely in the direction from which she'd returned, "You need money to get anything," she warned, "Specifically American dollars, apparently. At least we narrowed down what region of the world we're in, though."

She took another bite of her candy bar.

Lunis raised his paws (while keeping the bottoms of his pads on the handlebars, because he wasn't in the mood to fall off again), showing off his claws. "Why do I need money?" he said.

"Because the machine doesn't work without it," she responded.