In Between

Chapter Eleven: Friendship

The first thing Kieran did as they sped away was assure the girls that he still had a plan to get them home. Apryl wasn't entirely convinced, but she was so tired that she didn't try to press him into explaining. Instead, she curled up on her side and leaned against her sister. For the first time in many years, she was comforted by the fact that Bri was treating her like a child.

Apryl usually hated being mothered—it had been necessary when she was eight-years-old, and their own mother had died, but she'd eventually grown to resent the way Bri acted like the only adult. However, even adults needed to be comforted in the hardest of times, and right now she was scared and confused, and she wanted nothing more than to lean her head against Bri's shoulder and hug her sister like they'd hugged their mother all those years ago.

Apryl was scared for the obvious reasons; there were bad people who wanted to hurt her and Bri, and she was in an unfamiliar world where it was acceptable to kill two innocent girls who had stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time. It scared Apryl to think about the things that went on here—she thought about Marko's twenty-year imprisonment for assaulting a Warrior who had tried to take away his wife. Kieran hadn't told her the woman's sentence, but Apryl was sure that she herself would receive a similar punishment if she and Bri were ever caught.

Besides being scared, there were so many other conflicting emotions inside of her that she could barely name them all. The most notable was confusion, and although she was afraid to think about it, she knew what she was confused about. Apryl snuck a peek at Kieran from the back seat of the car, and she pretended to be asleep when he looked up in the rearview mirror. Yes, he was confusing to her...Everything about him confused her.

From the minute Apryl had met him, he had made her feel things. They'd spent a wonderful day together on the sun-soaked Earth, and Apryl had felt very strange indeed the whole while. Now she was with him in a completely different world, and she was just as interested in it as he'd been of hers. He wasn't any different, though—Kieran was still bright, intriguing, caring, and beautiful. Apryl didn't particularly care about the latter, though she wouldn't deny appreciating his good looks, and she still felt warm and tingly inside when his beauty shocked her into stillness.

She remembered the feel of him hugging her tightly after the portal had exploded and he'd been afraid that she was dead. This had confused her more than anything—what did he really feel for her? Was it purely his sense of duty that had made him so distraught? Apryl didn't like thinking about it ever since she'd seen him with the other girl, Jasmine, who was lovely, and charming, and who had permission to hug Kieran whenever she wanted.

She noticed me looking at him, and it made her angry, Apryl thought. She was relieved that even in her tired, groggy state she managed to shield her thoughts. That was another thing she was confused about—the laws of physics in this word, or rather, the lack of them. So many things she didn't understand...so many wonderful things. Apryl truly felt glad that she didn't have to leave so soon. She wanted to know more about this place and especially about Kieran even if he might someday soon be promised to another.

Hey, get up. You'll want to see this. Draven's mental voice intruded into Apryl's thoughts. She reluctantly sat up and looked out the window at her surroundings. It wasn't difficult to guess that this was the section of the Inbetween that Kieran had roughly translated to her as the Market.

That was exactly what it was, and since it was nearing mid-day, the whole place had come alive with people bustling about in unison and all of the sounds and scents that Apryl traditional associated with marketplaces on Earth. The sky around them remained darker than she was used to, but now it had transitioned to a lighter grey instead of the pitch black that it'd been when she'd first arrived.