Fire's Mage (Book One) Kyoko of Fire Country

Chapter Twenty-Four

There was a certain amount of time that anyone could stay in another presences, how much they could stand the other person and their personality. If they can't stand said person, less time spend with them was better.

Kyoko sat in a tree, a clearing hidden by a number of tree. She found clearings were easy to find along well-travelled roads, since those who needed them built them and left them behind for others, as to not alert anyone who had been there.

There was no smoke in the air, which meant it was still safe to fly over the group, it also meant that no one had to leave their village behind, the volcanoes were barely visible since most of them were around the edge of the country.

Birds flew over her head, one had been staring at her since she landed on the branch. Must be nesting, she was just glad that it hadn't decided to attack her.

"Stupid..." she heard Adrianne mutter as she walked under her tree, Kyoko could feel her annoyance raising. She had been in Adrianne's presence for far too long, she felt like she was moments away from snapping, along with snapping Adrianne's neck and fleeing. Joining another village like Winston had done, but that would mean leaving her siblings behind, along with the few friends she had made since she finished the Academy.

Like Karina, Kenny and Klara. Jamie, Luisa and the Fuinseog children.

Adrianne wasn't worth being forced to pack up the little she did have and moving to a new village. A new country. Wouldn't be worth it even if she didn't have anything to her name, even if she did carry everything on her person. Which she didn't, Kyoko wasn't the paranoid; yet.

But she guessed that might be one of the worse things you can tell someone, that they weren't worth anything to you. That everything that did was meaningless, momentarily annoying and then easily forgotten.

Still, being glared at for hours on end was annoying. For a near week was testing the limits of her patience. There were times she wished a tree would fall on her, more so when the idiot had twisted her ankle in a pothole, or that she had fallen off the cliff when she had leaned a little too far forward.

Kyoko couldn't even recall having to heal Stanley, which had surprised her since he had been going through a bottle a day, finished one only to pull another from his bag. It was surprise that he hadn't tripped or walked into anything.

Unlike the three times that Winston had gotten her to heal the idiot; from the time she cut her, another from when she twisted her ankle and the last time when she had broken her arm.

Kyoko didn't even want to know how Adrianne had cleanly snapped her arm bone in half. It was the first, and last, time Winston had asked Adrianne to do a perimeter check. For the last five days moving hadn't given any peace either, since randomly rocks would appear underneath her feet and she had put her shield up for the last one, making it bounce back to the person who had thrown it. Which was the reason Adrianne now had a bruise under her right eye.

"Rest time is over," Winston told them, brushing dirt from his pant leg. "Sheikh in front of Stanley, Adrianne next to him and I'll stay in the rear."

"And worthless?" Adrianne asked him.

"Has been told her position," Winston told her.

"But you haven't told her, her position," Adrianne told him.

"He meant you," Kyoko told her.

"Kyoko knows her position without me needing to remind her, Adrianne," Winston said picking up his bag, and carrying it on one shoulder. "Sheikh has been moved, we're a few hours away from our checkpoint."