For All Those Sleeping [Editing]

Jade

Chapitre IX

 The endless waving grasses wilted in the breeze. They had gotten much taller than I last remembered. Although the wind that caressed the field was gently, standing straight up against it was obviously futile. Every once in a while I would see a blond (even less common, a red) head poke up and shout something. I’m proud to say that I refused to search for the alleged door in the ground. The only reason I was here with them is because the Knights thought that I’d get in too much trouble if I went to Flèche with Jace. It was a somewhat valid assumption, but still rude!

“Would you please help us Leo?” Sierra’s voice sadly moaned from the grasses.

“Why should I? If anything, I should be reading that book since I’m the only one who can! Who’d put the door in a maudit meadow?”

“I don’t feel like putting in effort either, but I’m out here!” Maelstrom tried to persuade.

Now that I think about it, I hadn’t heard his voice complain about or criticize anything for a while. Not only did I not remember him looking around the book-filled aisles, but I swear he didn’t even enter the library with us! The last thing I recall him doing with us was walking through the gates of Rois.

“Maelstrom, were… were you in the library with us?”

Proving my worries right with an arrogant smile, he held up his fist with a chain clutched in it. “Nope. I did some sightseeing and found this. In a house. They had some pretty nice stuff in there!”

I wondered when the last time Maelstrom stole something from Rois. With Rois and Armes being so chummy, maybe he, out of all people, found it hard to maneuver around. Did he ever witness the terrors of the TDP on his tail?

Sierra instinctively grabbed at her side. “Are you saying that you stole from a Roisite?”

“I was suggesting it,” Maelstrom corrected, “but you said it, not me.”

The first thing I saw was the look in her eyes. She was a Knight and he was a Thief. Even if we were supposed to be working together, neither of them would go against their normal habits. It was an extremely odd urge I had since I couldn’t call myself great friends with either of them anymore, but I felt I needed to be their buffer. I was only a few steps into my sprint when the grasses grabbed my ankles and pulled me down. The dirt must have been unnaturally packed because the sting I felt on my arms and hands hurt like a salope.

“Are you okay over their?” Zephyr called. “You went down like a boulder.”

“Yep, just fine,” I sarcastically muttered, lengthening the vowels. “Just got my feet tangled in these wonderful yellow things.”

A few seconds of frolicking feet later, Maelstrom lifted my crippled body into a sitting position. Apparently the fall made my muscles regain the memory of getting wounded. Let me tell you, my nerves were on fire right now.

“You’re bleeding!” Ophelia softly exclaimed. “Does it hurt?”

“Not too bad,” I lied.

The girls stereotypically made a huge fuss about the scrapes that tore through the fabric of my shirt. Ophelia took out a cloth and a bottle labeled “alcool” and dabbed both over the open cuts.

“Is this really necessary? I’ve had worse within the past few days,” I grumbled while swatting the cloth away.

“I’m just trying to make sure they won’t get infected…”

“Hey everyone, look at this,” Zephyr mused. An inward growl climbed out of my throat, but looked towards whatever he was gaping at in front of me. “This is where Leo fell.”