Passion | | Sebastian Sallow

Chapter Nine

Sebastian woke up the next morning, lifting his head up from the ground to look around. It was morning time now, and he had no recollection of waking up to take a shift for the night watch. He groaned and rolled over from his stomach to his back, then realized Astoria was supposed to wake him up and didn't, his mind then assumed the worst had happened to her.

He jumped up, his wand in hand, looking around for her. "Astoria?" He called out, looking around frantically.

Astoria came walking out from behind him, she had just come from gathering some water from a nearby creek. "Yeah? Good morning Sebastian." She said, a bit confused as to why he had shot up so frantically.

Sebastian sighed, turning around. "Why didn't you wake me up? You promised you'd wake me up if you got tired last night!" He exasperated.

Astoria chuckled. "Well, I just wasn't tired the entire night." She shrugged, walking past him. Sebastian scoffed and grabbed her shoulders, turning her towards him in less than a second, quicker than Astoria could process what was going on. They were closer than Astoria had expected to ever be with Sebastian again.

"That's a little white lie and we both know it." He said sternly. "Why in Merlin's name would you not wake me up? That was a dumb thing to do."

Astoria sighed, a bit annoyed with him. "Cuz I was fine the entire night, no need to get frustrated with me Sebastian." She shrugged his hands off her shoulders. "And besides, nothing bad happened, it was completely peaceful the entire night and besides, you needed the rest."

Completely ignoring everything else she had just said, Sebastian spoke again. "So did you! C'mon Astoria don't do this to me."

"This has nothing to do with "what I'm doing with you"," Astoria said, putting her hands up in defense. They were bickering like an old married couple. "But it does have everything to do with you being stubborn and not wanting to accept that sometimes you need to let others do things for you instead of the other way around."

"You're the one being stubborn here. Astoria you promised." Sebastian said, narrowing his eyes again.

"And I told you I didn't feel tired all night." She said, turning a bit from him. "I kept my end of the bargain, and besides, you got some rest, that's all that really matters." Before Sebastian could answer, she walked away to wake up Ominis. Sebastian stood there, looking a bit flustered, he always hated how much mental power Astoria had over him, getting him to do basically whatever she wanted him to do or say.

He didn't know if it was because she was smart and knew what she was doing or if it was because of how smitten he'd always been with her. When he was sixteen, he could've sworn that if she had asked him to move a mountain, he wouldn't have rested or stopped till that mountain budged at least a little bit. And even at twenty-four, six years and a break up later, those feelings were still there, although he would never admit that.

His mind was left wandering, wondering if she still felt the same. He pushed the thoughts away and groaned internally. Astoria was literally his ex-girlfriend and he still had feelings for her, it was honestly an embarrassing blow on his part. Not only because they weren't together and hadn't been for six and a half years, but also because a part of him that was still the angry, immature 18-year-old boy wanted to hate her after she left him.

Astoria walked away from him, crouching down beside Ominis and shaking him gently. "Ominis, wake up." She said, gently, not trying to startle him. Ominis groaned a bit and his eyes opened, he could tell it was Astoria who woke him up, not by just her voice, but by the hand that was on his shoulders.

Because he couldn't see his friends, he became accustomed to memorizing almost everything he could to tell who they were. He memorized the sounds of their voices from a distance, the way their hands felt while they were touching him, their footsteps, everything he could. It helped him feel a bit more "normal" while living his life as a blind man. But knowing that his blindness never offset any of his friends made him happy.