Catch The Stars

Chapter 3

Don't Dare, Don't You Even Go There:

Living up to it's name as a farmer village, Jennie wakes up the next morning to the sound of repeated and unrelenting crowing.

Like the rooster wants to make sure that every single soul in the village is awake - Jennie grunts and presses the home button of her phone - seven in the morning.

All in all, it wasn't a bad night.

Jennie must've fallen asleep somewhere around four, that means she managed to stay asleep for three whole hours, which is more than she could've hoped for in the previous weeks.

So maybe the change of scenery did help, but it was only the first night and Jennie knows better than getting her hopes up.

She gets out of bed to take a shower and brush her teeth before going downstairs to see what her grandma is up to. She knows from what her mom told her that her grandmother likes to wake up at six every morning to make the most out of every day.

But when she walks into the kitchen, she isn't there. She also isn't anywhere else in the house and Jennie frowns, grabbing her jacket to jog down the stairs and check if she's in the garden.

It's still so early and chilly that fog is hovering above the ground and the sun is hidden behind a thin sheet of clouds, turning the sky a milky shade of orange and pink.

Jennie shivers and stills when she hears- nothing.

Everything is so quiet. There are no cars engines disturbing the silence, no people rushing to work or some other sort of appointment they need to be at.

She can hear the faint tinkling of the bells that are attached to the cows in the village, birds chirping, a tractor driving down a road out of Jennie's sight.

It's just the peaceful scenery of wide, green fields, clusters of trees and small houses and the mountains in the background.

Kuma is running around in the garden, disappearing inside the sunflowers only to come running out again like something scared him. Jennie snickers and pets him when he runs up to her, playing around with him for a while until she hears some noises coming from the back.

"Grandma?" She shouts, her voice cracking, her eyes wanting to slip black closed, refusing to be awake (for once) at this time of day when she's supposed to be on vacation.

"Back here!" Comes her voice from behind the house.

Jennie yawns and puts on a pair of random slippers next to the door, making her way to the back of the house where her grandmother is-

Feeding chickens.

"We have chickens?" Jennie asks intelligently, watching her usher the animals out of their house.

She smiles and closes the gate to the house once all of them are out. "We sure do. You didn't know?"

"No." Jennie mumbles, scratching the back of her head and stumbling away when one of the chickens starts getting too close for comfort.

Kuma seems to be kind of scared, too, since he's currently hiding behind Jennie's legs, watching the animals move around warily.

"Well, now you do." She wipes her hands on her floral, breezy pants and straightens her back with a mildly pained expression. "Good morning, by the way."

"Oh! Sorry, good morning grandma," Jennie rushes out. "Can I help you with something?"

"No, no." She shakes her head and links their arms together to walk back to the front. "You're here on vacation. I'm not going to make you work."