The Broken Ones

Chapter 16

Felix:

The night was filled with strange noises creeping from every corner, or so I had thought. There was a high chance it was simply my imagination playing tricks on me after everything that had happened. I had hoped for that, at least.

We debated before going to sleep whether or not we start a fire. We could freeze our asses off all night or risk being eaten alive by angry demons. We took the risk and lit a fire. I was so tired I didn't even have time to worry about the dangerous at hand.

Still, throughout the meer one day we had been in the forest, I continued to struggle internally as well. Even after the comfort Taylor managed to provide for me, the nagging feeling of the withdrawals still clawed at me. My fingers continued to twitch, one time so violent it woke me up during the night. I had awful dreams that were unexplainably weird. Luckily, I wasn't experiencing any hallucinations. Or maybe I was, and this was all simply happening in my head. The thought made my head spin.

The next morning came far too quickly. It was pleasantly sunny, however, the golden rays beaming through the trees and casting an orange glow throughout the morning forest. Everything seemed a lot less threatening. It was almost hard to imagine memory-eating demons running around these grounds.

With morning came hunger and we realized then that we had no food. Well, no decent food. Tyson supplied us with a bag of gummy bears, a jar of peanut-butter (but the chunky kind), a loaf of bread, some jam, chips, and a note that read, "Love you, kids! Have a fun first day in the monster-infested forest! Xoxo, Mamma Tyson."

Gotta hand it to him, he sure knew how to piss people off.

After breakfast, which consisted of a gummy-bear-stuffed sandwich on Kat's end, a simple peanut-butter sandwich on Taylor's end, and an intense argument on whether or not I could catch a few fish and fry them up for us to eat on my end. I ended up sticking to chips.

We packed up our things and started along the trail once more, Kat reading an entry from the book:

"Sometimes, in the Non Nomen Forest, you may stumble upon most peculiar creatures. Few are able to shift into different forms, forms of their likings, others stuck with the body they were graced. Most are harmless as you can find them minding their own business. Some, however, you may want to be on the lookout for, for example, a Fairy Cavernae. These are Fairies that mainly reside in cave's, but are best left alone, for they have a strong temper when meddled with. However, most fairy's are harmless if not seen as a threat."

"I want to meet a fairy," Kat giggled in excitement.

Taylor screwed up her face at the mention. "Disgusting. I will die if I ever have to-"

"Oh my God, a fairy," I said, pointing to Taylor's left.

She spun around violently in a position as if she was about to fight twenty people at once. Kat and I broke into fits of laughter. She rolled her eyes at us with a small blush forming across her freckled nose.

"Whatever," she puffed, her arms crossed in a pout.

I chuckled at her. Before I could stop myself, I slung my arm around Taylor and gave her a kiss on her forehead still grinning widely. And then my smile fell. I was almost scared to look down at her.

"You're even more disgusting, Felix," she said, throwing my arm off her shoulder. She didn't mean it in a hurtful way, or in any seriousness, she just didn't adapt to affection like normal. Which was fine. I had to come to terms with that, and in a way, I had. But still . . .

See, since I had met Taylor, I immediately developed a crush on her. Everything she did drove me wild. To this day, I can still say I have the biggest so-called "crush", but I couldn't deny that a part of me wishes I hadn't had this silly little tickle towards her. Because in the end, I knew there were no feelings back. That the way I felt about her was one-sided and I could never do anything about it. I didn't take it offensively. I wasn't even mad-how could I be? That was just her. And that was a part of her I knew she struggled with. I had to come to terms with the fact that liking her-strongly liking her-was a simple feeling that would be best kept away.