Riley's Box

Part 49

"I have a feeling that we're going to take a break," Invidia said, as she sat down on a nearby tree stump. 

"We can't admit defeat!" Prida replied, placing her hands on her hips. 

Invidia sighed. She looked exhausted. 

Apparently, the Sins could get tired. 

"Stop it, Prida. We've been walking for ages and all we saw were some damn flying rats and a bear," Invidia said. 

"Well, actually..." Guttur went to correct her, but Invidia cut him off. 

"Put a sock in it, Guttur," she said, as she glanced down at her nails in vexation. 

Guttur frowned. He looked as though putting a sock in it was very much not something that he wanted to do. 

"But socks taste gross," he grumbled. 

He probably had a point. I wasn't about to test his theory, though. 

I turned to Guttur and met him with an empathetic gaze. 

"It's just an expression. She doesn't actually mean for you to put a sock in it," I explained. 

His eyes lit up as it all began to make sense for him. 

"That makes sense," he said, with a small smile. "Thanks, Riley." 

My lips pulled up at the corners. 

"You're welcome, Guttur," I replied. 

At least he hadn't called me Pig. I appreciated that. It probably wasn't the worst nickname in the world, but I much preferred being called Riley. 

Or Riles, my mind thought. 

I never thought that I was the kind of teenage girl who would be 'boy crazy', but I knew something with certainty. I was crazy for one boy, and that boy was Jason Zircon, my best friend and companion. 

"It's okay," I thought, as I turned my attention back to Invidia. "Perhaps you're right. We'll return to base." 

"Base?" Jason asked me. "Oh right, your room. Base. Cool." 

He smiled; I smiled back. 

Invidia cleared her throat. Someone was seemingly beginning to grow impatient. 

"What do you plan for us to do, when we return to 'base', as you so eloquently put it?" she asked me. 

"I'm going to draw up a map of the possible places where the shadow spirit could be. We've already ruled out the forest, which means we need to move on," I said. 

"To the beach?" Avidicci asked. 

I gave a nod in his direction. 

"Can you all meet us back at the house?" I asked. "I speak from past experience, when I say that it is best to move forward with a clear plan." 

There were some murmurs of agreement. 

Prida was the next one to speak. 

"Alright," she agreed. "We'll meet you back at the house, Riley," she said. 

She then flipped some of her purple hair, over her shoulder, and started to walk out of the forest. 

There was just one teensy, tiny problem. She was going the wrong way. 

"Prida!" I called out to her. 

She whirled around to look at me again. 

"Yes?" she asked. 

"You're going the wrong way. The way out of the forest is that way," I said, as I nodded towards a nearby signpost. 

Prida released a dry laugh. 

"Heh. I knew that," she said, before she started to walk out of the forest in the right direction, this time. 

I knew that we were going to be able to find the shadow spirit. It was only a matter of time. 

Nevertheless, I also knew that before we could do that, we needed to have a clearer plan in place. 

Evidently, the shadow spirit probably had become clued into the fact that they would get discovered, if they hid out in the forest. 

I had been there a while ago, and I supposed that one way or another the shadow spirit had felt my presence. 

That was probably enough to deter them from returning to the forest any time soon. 

Either way, it was a good thing that we had ruled one of the locations out. 

It was time to move onto the next one. 

Jason and I swiftly returned to his car and sat down in it. He started up the engine and the car roared to life. He then drove us back home, parked up outside, and the two of us rushed indoors and up to my room. 

We didn't spare a moment to answer my mother's expression of curiosity. 

I hoped that my dad would keep her entertained enough for her to not come and bother me any time soon. 

Alright, so that was a little mean. She wouldn't really be bothering me. 

However, I had a lot of work to do and I knew that I couldn't afford any distractions. 

Well, apart from Jason. He was a pretty good distraction, I'm not going to lie about that one. 

"I have to do this Jase," I said, flopping down onto my bed, once the door to my room was closed again. "If I don't, how will I ever feel truly content that I did the right thing? If the spirits remain here...then people are in danger." 

"How do you know that? What exactly do the spirits do?" he asked me. 

That was a good point, and I supposed that I really should have asked the Sins more about this at an earlier point in time. 

Aside from the whole destruction of the planet thing, I wasn't sure what else they were up to, but that sounded bad enough! Did they really need to be up to anything else? I didn't think so. 

I kept a calm expression, as I faced Jason again, but in truth, I felt turbulent under the surface. 

"They hurt people. They want to hurt our planet. That's exactly why we need to stop them," I explained. 

Jason nodded his head understandingly. 

"Alright, I've got it," he said. 

He then reached down to grab my sketchbook and held it out to me. 

I sat up on the bed, so I could receive it. 

"Let's get started on this plan, then," he said, with a reassuring smile. 

So, I started to draw.