A LEAP OF FAITH

Chapter 13: Lightening the mood.

One by one, the hall of elements woke up. Each of them were still incredibly tired, especially after doing all of the spells they did the day before.

Most just wanted to sleep for the rest of the day, but Sugar insisted that they kept going.

"Guys... we need to get up..." she mumbled, trying to shake Kiren awake.

"Go away, Sugar, let us sleep." He groaned, rolling over onto his stomach.

"Kiren, we can't just sleep here all day, we need to actually do something." Sugar sighed and walked over to her sleeping bag. She had grabbed Ebony's backpack as they were running out of the circus. Had she not, the map would have been gone. "Let's see..." she mumbled, looking around on the map. "WE HAVE TO GO TO SPACE?!" She yelled, waking mostly everyone up.

"WHAT-?!" Sharlet bolted up, running over to the map.

"Says right here, there's a giant staircase, leading up to some island in the sky." She pointed at a particular spot.

"Shoot, you're right..." Sharlet muttered in shock.

"That staircase is gonna take forever to climb." Kiren groaned and stood up, opening his backpack. He quickly ate a few berries and downed a bottle of water.

"Goodness me, I've never been to space before," Ari mumbled.

"No way, we haven't either!" Kiren said sarcastically, along with a roll of his eyes.

"Hush, orange boy, I didn't need your input." Ari scoffed.

"Orange boy-?" He turned around.

"You heard me." Ari chuckled under his breath, thinking back to Maverick. He thought the little 'nicknames' he had given them were quite funny. However, Ari thought everything he did was funny. He wondered if Maverick would ever come and kidnap him, or any of the others again.

"Up and at'em, guys, we need to get going." Sugar nudged the side of Mugi's stomach with her foot. He reluctantly sat up, going up to rub his eyes instinctively. He winced when he touched the flowers, he had forgotten that they were there. "Give us a minute, Sugar, it's too early for your blabbering," he mumbled.

"Don't be such a grump, Mugi." She rolled her eyes and stood up.

"I am not a grump. You're just aggravating." He scoffed, brushing his bangs out of his face. Most of them had terrible bedheads.

"You need to use my brush?" Sugar chuckled, motioning to her backpack.

"I'm fine," Mugi muttered, trying to flatten out his hair.

"Yeah, okay." She rolled her eyes playfully and walked back over to Sharlet.

Mugi took off the hair tie that sat on his wrist, bringing his hands up to the back of his head. He tied most of his fluffy hair back into a ponytail, just how he always had it.

Malcolm tossed and turned in his sleep. Kiren glanced down at him, gently placing a hand on his side to calm him down. His eyes shot open, his breathing heavy.

"Another nightmare?" Kiren asked softly.

Malcolm nodded, "Yeah..." He rested his head on Kiren's shoulder, trying to steady his breathing.

"Maybe if you talked about it, it'd help," he suggested.

"No, it's okay..." he muttered. Kiren wondered why he never wanted to talk about his dreams... or anything about himself, really. He had opened up about his parents a bit, but that was about it.

"Malcolm, we can't grow closer if you don't tell me what's going on in your life, dude. You can trust me, y'know?" He whispered, giving him a side-hug.