Serendipity: An Oliver Wood Fanfiction

Chapter 8

When Alhena awoke, she was not met with the warm sun, which usually snaked its way across her bed, onto her face. She was not met with the smell of dust and old books. She was not met with cobwebs that strung from the window sill, tickling her face, and she was not met with silken sheets and a warm blanket. 

Alhena was met, much to her confusion, with a heavy, hard sensation on the left side of her face. A slight numbness that typically came when a body part rested on something uncomfortable for long enough. 

Pressing her eyes shut tightly, Alhena dragged her face away from the hard object to her left, only to find, it wasn't an object at all. The stars and moonlight were the only things lighting his face through the darkness. His calm, peaceful face. 

His head lay against the stone wall behind them, the back of his hand flopped over her leg effortlessly. As if it were natural to him, familiar. Alhena stared at him, uncertainty flooding through her lungs, stealing away her precious air, and drying her throat like sea water. 

For the first ten seconds, she did not know what to make of her situation. She'd no recollection of the night before. Until the boy stirred, and his eyelids fluttered open. He blinked a few times at her, as if he also did not understand. 

"Alhena?" He frowned, his deep, raspy voice filling the silence around them. "Watching me sleep, are we?" His face lightened, jumping at the opportunity to mock her. Then it all came back to her, where she was, how she'd got there. 

And then another thing hit her. "What did you just say?" She furrowed her brows at him. "I just noticed you were staring as I slept, like what you saw?" He grinned, but Alhena brushed it off. "No, before that." She paused, as he appeared lost in thought for a moment. 

"You just said my name." She scoffed. "You've never said my name before, ever." She cocked her eyebrows, tilting her head to the side questioningly. "It was a spur of the moment." He testified. "A mistake, I very much regret." He placed a hand on his heart, shaking his head solemnly. 

"It seems you broke your oath to call me sonic for the rest of our lives." She folded her arms across her chest. "Never fear, Sonic. It won't happen again, I can assure you." But his humour was lost, as Alhena recalled the problem at hand. 

"We fell asleep." She spoke, quietly this time, only now acknowledging the sinister quietness that seemed to lurk from the other side of the curtain they sat behind. "We did." His face dropped, growing hard and stony. 

They stared at the ground for a few more moments, though to them, it felt like longer, contemplating their next words. "Do we go back." Oliver asked, the use of 'we' leaving an uncomfortable sensation on his tongue.

"I suppose there's no other choice." She studied the dark veins that crept through the marble floor, desperate for a distraction from meeting his eyes. "How..?" He spoke again, and though the question seemed silly, it was understandable.

They'd have to leave the venue, and they didn't know who was inside. What security measures were placed in the building or who guarded the doors, if anyone did guard them. They'd have to find their way home, probably by walking, and then they'd have to face their parents. 

But what seemed to be the greatest challenge of all, was escaping the safety of the curtain they resided behind.

"There's a window." Alhena looked up, pointing at the window above them, spying a latch at its bottom. "We're two storeys high." Again, that words choice. However quiet and dark the building was, it was still risky to try and leave through the front doors. "It's not the first time I've jumped out the window from the second storey." She shrugged, raising to her feet.