Petals on The Moon || Reyna Ramirez-Arellano x Fem!OC

LXXXIX

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

Dear Diary,

"Is your leg okay?" I asked as I walked alongside Suki. Jason and Sebastian led the way, the two of them sharing the recent horrors we've all had to endure. "Did the WD-40 work?"

"Yes," she said, her leg moving slightly better than before. But she couldn't clean it in as much depth as she really needed to, considering we had a mission to fulfill. "Thank you." She smiled a little bit, which initially confused me until she said, "I'm surprised you only gave him a bloody nose."

"Oh, that wasn't me." Suki hesitated, her black eyes narrowing as she stared at me. "He was hitting on this edgy girl at the restaurant. She head-butted him and threatened to um, 'take the goods'."

"Ah, well." Suki nodded aggressively. "That is the way of these things."

"Guys!" Jason called, turning to us. He pulled out the new flash light he bought. "We're here."

We were on the edge of the bayou, towards the far, unpopulated edges of New Orleans, and it was at least midnight with how high the moon was. Inside the dense murk, I could see fireflies darting by and hear the droning of bugs. I imagined if it was this bad during winter, it was only a thousand times worse in the summer. While the trees were leafless for the most part, they were still creeping with an eerie ivy and moss that swayed in the wind, resembling torn linens of some sort.

I turned on my own flashlight and looked at the mud and sparse grass growing between it. Old leaves littered the ground, as well as the flooded water and an uncomfortably large snakeskin. I picked it up and held it for everyone to see. "Guys, this is a partial, and it's still three feet long."

Sebastian shrugged and gestured to it. "Not a cottonmouth. We're probably safe."

"How can you tell?" I asked.

"There's no bands on it," he replied, turning away. I put the skin down as Suki turned on the third flashlight. Sebastian finally pulled his out and looked at the swamp. "Alright, guys. Got on your mud boots?"

We all looked down at our tacky rubber boots that we had to tuck our pants into. Suki was missing one, considering her leg wouldn't be able to function very well that way. If she needed to make a quick getaway, she'd trip on the boot or lose it entirely. And with it on when the leg was in normal-form, it still impacted her range of motion. So, like anyone would do, she had a boot on her left leg with her pants tucked into it, and the right pants leg was just rolled up to her thigh.

She noticed me staring. "I look goofy."

"That's not what I was looking at," I said. "Just wondering how you figured out how to store juice boxes on that thing."

Right now, she had her whip secured to it, but at home, it was nothing for her to randomly offer me cranberry leg juice. "I'm innovative."

We stepped into the muck. Right away, I knew I was in for the worst time of my life. My feet sank five inches deep in the mud, so we all had to march like madmen to get anywhere. A frog jumped at Jason and he shrieked and nearly took Sebastian down, resulting in a brief screaming match.

As we walked, Suki looked up. "Guys, I can't see the moon anymore."

"I can smell it," I said. "Not the moon, I mean. The rain's coming."