Cherry Lips // s. black

-FEBUARY-

new cover!!!

<3

"Join the quidditch team, she said. It'll be fun, she said," Carmilla grumbled under her breath. She stuck her hands into her pockets. Dead leaves crunched underneath her feet.

Not only were they in the forbidden forest with no real idea of what they were doing, the sun had disappeared, and the moon somewhere above them, only a sliver left, was blocked by the tall trees and dark clouds. She kept her wand pointed to the only-just-there track in front of them. Lumos really was a handy spell.

Sure, it made everything a lot creepier, but she wasn't scared.

More annoyed. That Aster thought chucking his team into a forest miles deep and telling them to find each other and survive and get back to the castle without dying was a good 'team bonding' exercise.

Whatever happened to board games or rebelling against authority?

"You ever been in here before?" Dalton asked, with that fake casual voice. He was in fourth year, and he had a nose that looked like it had been broken several times before. Judging from the bandaid on it, she wasn't far off.

"No," Carmilla said.

She kept her eyes to the path they were sort of making themselves. There was a little mushroom to one side. They kept walking. More patches of the fungi grew along rotting logs. They were red and yellow, and very soft looking. She'd seen them in Peter's herbology book, when they'd been charming their map in the library. She vaguely remembered Peter saying he needed to get a teacher's permission to study them in the off limits greenhouse for some project of his. He tended to have a lot of plant related projects. 

She put her wand between her teeth and squatted, picking a few of each from the mossy branches and undersides of rocks they were attached to.

Mushrooms had the funniest feeling under her fingertips. Kind of what she assumed a shark would feel like. If she ever got to pat one. She opened her bag and dumped them in the side pocket of it so they wouldn't get squashed between her sketchbook and the charms textbook she'd had in there for so long she was sort of emotionally attached to it now and couldn't take out.

Something stepped on a twig in the shadows beside them, and they kept moving without a word.

"I have," Dalton said, looking at the dark sky. He shrugged. "A few times. You don't have to be scared. You'll be fine with me."

Carmilla hadn't asked.

She nodded, and took her wand out of her mouth. Did he know that she was the thing that he would be scared of? She didn't ask that, either. It didn't bother her that much if they spent all night wandering around in circles. She had a double of Care of Magical Creatures first thing in the morning, and she could take a nap then.

Hopefully Ace was okay.

She was probably plotting and scheming all the training that she would do with her own team if she ever became captain. It was probably smarter than whatever this testosterone fueled nightmare was.

Carmilla felt eyes on her. She kept walking.

Dalton started humming one of those songs that was always playing in the common room. He was probably in charge of the record player. He looked like the sort of guy who would just take over.

The bright blue light coming from the tip of her ivory wand began to fade slowly, and she waited until they were in near complete darkness, with only the moon and those funny little bugs with lanterns in their bodies to show them the creepy tree branches that looked like gnarled limbs.