Love Potion

The Stirring Announcement

The bedchambers had never been so quiet.

We all set on our beds in the segment-shaped room (theirs more decorated than mine), looking at our knees, saying nothing. I felt weary and rather worse for wear from the serpent's spirit, and my strange tongue stick settled unfamiliarly in my mouth.

After the excitement of the party and back in the gloom of consequence, I felt foolish. Had I really thought an evening of drinks and prank sweets (that are probably not allowed in school) with Killian Viper and his crones a fun idea? I suppose beforehand, I was thinking more of not leaving my friends alone with them. But couldn't I have pulled us all out if I was a little braver? Like Gray? Poor Gray, who was dragged into this because of me - I rather liked him - but good on him for leaving.

It was a disaster. Viper now was probably sure I dreamed of a someone who looked a lot like him - and that perhaps I didn't mind it. What an idiot I was. I knew how bastardly was he, but my mind still dapples in fantasies of him. When he so clearly despises me, or at least looks down on me. I heard him call us all losers two times in the past five minutes.

"Well, that was wretched," Persephone asudden sighed. She was in miserable humour. All of us looked up at her.

"Speak for yourself," Morgaine replied tuttishly. "I found it rather fun."

"Fun?" Persephone cried. "Tatiana was right! You're just - floozying in things you would never be allowed to do at home!"

Morgaine let out a haughty snort. "And what on earth is so wrong about that?!"

"But- they made us say intimate things about ourselves! Like- like reveal who you really like, and you're deepest insecurities!

"They did not make us say anything," Morgaine scoffed. "You could always go 'down' - was that not the game?"

"But - those drinks, and those awful sweets-"

"I think you'll find I did not have a drop of alcohol! I am brave enough to not comply to things I don't want to do! I think that you are just jealous that you don't hold the same confidence!"

Persephone gasped, but it sounded more like a sob. Mollis and Pip looked at each other worrisomely. Morgaine looked frightening, though her skin was still bizarre green.

"They don't insult you like they do to me!" Persephone howled. "Tatiana has always hated me, she and Kenzie and Crox and Muskett trip me up and squeak along with that awful Killian Viper as he calls me 'red rabbit' and - makes snide comments about my appearance! He has nicknames for the lot of us! But you - they don't say anything to you! Because of you're rich, scary parents! And because you're pretty, and smart, and confident! I'm a skinny ginger orphan with old and poor farmers for parents! I'm a human magnet for bullying!"

Morgaine stared at her but didn't say anything. Persephone bit her wobbling lip.

"I-" Mollis started. Everyone's eyes whipped to her. She swallowed. "I think Persephone has a good point. Killian - Viper - is rude to all of us. Even Cosmo." I think she meant 'especially'. "And they forced us to join in with them (which he wasn't happy about), though clearly only to make fun of us, or find out embarrassing secrets from us, or make us do embarrassing things - just remember what those questions were! It's all just knives in the back and gossip in the morning!"

"But," Pip squeaked, "in the end, I - well, both of us - had fun. We've never done something like that before! Those fantastic sweets! No doubt that and the serpent's spirit are-are banned!" She breathed the word as if it was the most glorious thing on earth. "It makes it so much more fun!"