A Queen and Her Kings

A Sleeping Prince and The Art of Kicking Ass

Cassandra tossed a bright red apple up in the air before catching it and taking a bite out of it. She knew that if she had lunch in the cafeteria with everyone else, no one would stop staring at her or the others. They had made quite a scene when they had arrived, and while people had been good about leaving her and the Court alone during class, she had no doubt someone would try to pull something at lunch; and after dealing with Ace and Deuce's shenanigans, she was not in the mood to deal with anymore stupidity today.

Sighing, she took another bite out of her apple as she made her way back to the small clearing she and the others had found a ways into the woods. She had left to go get some fruit off the trees that grew near here. Her school bag had been emptied of everything except her phone so she could use it to carry all the apples, pears, plums, cherries and raspberries she had taken off the various trees and bushes. Griffin had grabbed the 'mysterious magic purple food bag' as Grim and Skip liked to call it on the way out the door that morning, but Cassandra took the time to pick the fruit herself because those trees were likely school property, and that meant students weren't allowed to take the fruit themselves. Which would piss off Crowley, and since Cassandra knew he couldn't prove she had been the one to take the fruit, it would be a win-win situation of getting free fruit and being able to make the life of the person she liked least in this world worse.

Smiling at her ingenious idea, Cassandra finished off her apple and tried to throw it into a trash can a few feet away. The apple core hit the rim of the bin, and bounced off it before hitting a tree and soaring a few feet before it finally hit the ground. Cassandra frowned.

'How the bloody hell can I throw a wooden stake through a man's eye fifteen feet away, but I can't get a stupid apple core in to a bin that's not even half as far?'

Sighing, the tribrid went to pick up the core and put it in the bin the normal way, when she felt something press down on her foot. Looking down, she saw a very interesting sight.

It was a brown squirrel, looking up at her with big, brown eyes. Cassandra smiled.

"Well hello there little one, what are you doing here? Don't you know you shouldn't get close to me? Aren't you afraid of the big, bad tribrid?", she asked, baring her fangs for the creature to see. That usually sent all animals except for fellow predators running, but it seemed this one was braver than most. The cute rodent just kept staring up at her. Cassandra chuckled.

"Brave little guy, aren't you?", she asked as she knelt down to be closer to the small woodland creature. As she did so, the creature pulled something out from behind it. It was her apple core.

"Oh? Did you get that for me?", she asked it, not really expecting an answer as she reached for the core.

"Well, thank you- oh!", Cassandra said, startling as the little rodent ran up her arm and onto her head. What was it with animals and her head? Was it really that nice up there?

The creature then jumped off her head and onto the rim of the bin, before dropping the apple core into it. Cassandra whistled.

"Brave and smart, you already act better than a lot of the humans I've met.", Cassandra said with a large grin. What an interesting creature.

'Maybe it's because of some sort of Disney logic-style law of the universe or something. Wouldn't be the most surprising thing I've seen.'

The squirrel then jumped down from the bin and scurried back over to the tree, making it half way before he turned back and stood blinking at Cassandra, black eyes seeming to have a pleading look in them.

"You want me to follow you?", she asked. The squirrel didn't answer, he just stood there. Cassandra sighed. Well, she was too invested now to just leave.