Aster shrugged. ''If there are ghosts in these woods I bet their more scared of us then we are of them.'' Her face twisted into a faint sneer. ''I mean, their screaming right?''
And, besides, if the person screaming wasn't a ghost, it was his responsibility to go and make sure they were okay!
Without giving Aster an explanation, he darted off into the woods after the two girls - hoping that the owner of the scream was alive and not dead.
xXx
Now that he realized he wasn't alone, Van scrambled to make himself seem a little more calm and collected than he actually was. He wasn't able to do a whole lot, but even the bit he did made him feel slightly better.
He crossed his arms.
"I have a reason," he said, only to realize a second later that he couldn't actually convey the reason without seeming like a coward. And pride was something he had in bucketfuls, so he wouldn't be confessing what had happened anytime soon. "I just don't feel like sharing it with you-"
Before he could finish his sentence, a boy wearing strange clothes came skidding into the clearing. The girl was already wearing strange clothes, but at least those clothes were familiar - these clothes were strange, colorful and didn't look like anything he had seen before.
He raised an eyebrow.
"What are you wearing?" he asked.
The boy with the strange clothes stared at him, then looked down at his own outfit.
A second later, he was crossing his arms.
"Why does it matter to you?" the boy asked.
"Because you look stupid," Van replied.
The boy frowned. "You look stupid," he shot back. "Everyone here but the first screaming girl looks like they're from a weird Halloween party, even though it's June!"
Asternia shivered another scream pierced the air. Two screams in one day. Rather they were the screams of a ghost or a human, she didn't like them. She didn't like this forest, come to think of it.
The weird - probably mer - girl, Meketaten, was standing dumbly off to the side, watching with wide eyes, unhelpfully. Not that Megara wanted her to help. She didn't look like she had a single useful skill to her name.
What Megara did do was put on an act. The usual, helpless little girl, slipped into so naturally one would question how they thought they'd seen her act before.
"Who are you?" she asked the little boy in rags. The nervous fear in her voice would make her instructors proud. She used the current anxiety she had with the fact that Briar probably poisoned her again to seel it. That would be the worst way to die. Shown up by Briar one last time and disgraced in the Ringly family history for it.
"You weren't acting scared earlier," he pointed out, a twinge of irritation gnawing at him. Something about her seemed familiar, even though he was pretty sure they had never met before. She had to be rich, and he didn't interact with rich people.
Unless he was stealing from their pockets, of course.
The strangely dressed boy frowned at him.
"You're being mean," he said.
Van let out a groan. "She's the one acting like a totally different person! She's not really scared - she's pulling the wool over your eyes, kid."
The boy's frown deepened. "I'm not a kid."
"I say it as I see it," Van said, giving a shrug. "You're a kid to me."
"But you're a kid!" the boy protested. "You can't call another kid a kid."
Now it was Van whose frown deepened. "I'm not a kid."
Meketaten huffed, "None of us are kids! I'm old enough to look after the children while the nurses are busy! And I can sit in on council! You're all my age so none of us are kids!"
Megara had to try really hard to keep up the facade and not laugh, but she managed it. Oh, yes, they were all very much kids. That's what made Megara the best assassin in the city. Well Megara and Briar, but Briar hardly counted. Megara did all the real work.
"You're all kids," the boy declared. Charlie decided that he had 1) never met anyone nearly as annoying as the boy and 2) that he didn't like him in the slightest. "I'm the oldest one here - I bet none of you are even over ten!"
''I am not a kid!'' Astra declared in her most grown up voice. ''I am 26 years old.'' her voice faltered when she recalled that she'd been hiding from her brother a moment earlier in a game of hide and seek. ''Okay, I'm 9 years old.'' she admitted reluctantly.
Last edited by EverLight on Thu Dec 19, 2019 1:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
@EverLight, the characters aren't supposed to realize they're adults/older teenagers until they get their memories - Astra might get the feeling that something's wrong or get another memory, but she wouldn't know that she's 26 or question how/why she's a kid.
Meketaten looked somewhere between infuriated and annoyed. She huffed and crossed her arms in that way people did when they were too mad to come up with words.
Megara looked the boy over skeptically. She could believe that he was fourteen. The starving kids on the street corners were usually much smaller than they should be and very, very weak. As the only people around to witness a lot of Megara's chores, they practically made it too easy. A blow to the back of the head and they'd wake up hours later with no idea who'd hit them or why.
"You might be the oldest, but that doesn't mean anything," Megara said to him. There was no way he was the smartest. He didn't look like he had half the amount of money it would take to get him to sit in on a single reading class for five minutes. She'd be surprised if he could read, let alone match her in any of her studies.
"It does," he protested. "It means I'm wiser. I know the streets of London like the back of my hand-"
"I knew you sounded British," the strangely dressed boy triumphantly declared, grinning.
The grin promptly faded when Van shot him a look.
"I know the streets of London like the back of my hand," he repeated - pretending like he hadn't just been interrupted. "I know how to pickpocket, pick locks, and steal without anyone noticing. I have more skills than you'll ever had, so don't compare me to you!"
"But those skills are bad," the boy interrupted.
"Do you live on the streets?" Van asked.
The boy narrowed his eyes in confusion. "No."
"That explains it, then," he said, shrugging. "You'd never get it."
The boy looked offended--
--Nathaniel stared at me from behind the bars of his cell.
"Do I want to know why you can pick locks?" he asked, his voice weary.
"It's called living on the street," I replied. "You pick up little tricks here and there. But you wouldn't get it, would you?"
He had the audacity to look offended. "Is that an insult-"
I rolled my eyes, the cell door swinging open as I finished my job. "It's called calling you out, Natty boy - I could tell you were rich the moment we first met. You haven't spent a night on the street before."
There was a moment of silence as he got to his feet.
"I did, actually," he quietly said, brushing off the sleeves and cuffs of his jacket. "I did it when I was twelve."
I faltered. "...Oh."
Neither one of us said anything else as we left the building--
Van froze as the vision played itself out in his mind; it was as if he was in that strange, familiar-but-unfamiliar prison, instead of in the forest. But the vision faded, and he quickly shook away his confusion at both his height, deepened voice and the stranger he felt like he should have known.
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