Newt imagines 2

The Queen of Summer

There were so many new noises. The morning lullaby sung by birds taking their first flight of the day, the rustle of leaves and the crunch as they called under someone's boot. The muttering of boys and the occasional whack of sticks. "Good morning." Newt said stepping over my legs heading for the ladder to downstairs.
"Hey." I groan rubbing my eyes, light shining through the plastic parts of the roof, leaving small patches of darkness.
"Sleep well?" Newt said.
I nodded yawning. "As good as can be expected."
He chuckled. "Yeah it's a bit like that. Come down Tommy is on breakfast."

I went down inquisitive as to what breakfast involved in the woods, I was incredibly disappointed; Thomas was poking at an already smouldering stack of sticks whilst Minho was tipping out the crumbs from a cereal box. I looked at Newt quizzically. He shrugged and went over to see what Thomas was doing. I went and sat on a red scruffy sofa, one with tattered edges, holes and springs sprung out in odd places. Gally was next to me scowling. "It's always like this when Thomas cooks, always." He tapped his fingers on his knees impatiently. Soon all four of us where sat on the sofa, heads cocked, watching Thomas trying to work, his cheeks rosy and flustered. "Why don't you guys just cook eggs?" I said as Thomas slapped a several day old fish onto a rock for carving.
"Where do we gets from?" Gally said gesturing to the woods surrounding us.
"Where do eggs even come from?" Minho puzzled to himself.
I raised an eyebrow at Newt, who was chuckling.
"Just steal a chicken." I said shrugging amazed at how complicated this was to them. "It will lay eggs every night, so you have eggs for breakfast."
All but Newt looked in awe, Newt just smirked, flicking at the others faces. He was proud of bringing me here. "We'll go on then!" I say. "Go get a chicken!"
Newt clapped his hands. "You heard her go get a chicken, and we'll cook when your done."
"What about you two?" Thomas said coming closer, stinking of rotting fish and smoke.
Newt placed a firm hand on my shoulder. "I'm going to show y/n here round the glade, take her to the cliff, explain stuff like the grievers."
I gulped, what the hell was he on about? Yet the others all seemed to nod like it was perfectly normal to be blurting out bizarre words.

The others left leaving me to be super awkward around Newt. He ran a hand through his hair, sweeping it out his face, then he picked up a large log, his muscles tensing. I felt a small tingling feeling in my stomach, like the bubbles in champagne. He tugged a grubby piece of paper out and rubbed it on his trousers. "Here we go...." He said opening it out. I moved closer peeping to see what it was. It was a square in the centre with Xs surrounding it. "Our first job," Newt explained. "Is to check on all the traps Gally set up."
"Ok cool cool." The words stumble out my mouth.
Newt smirks and picks up the knife Thomas had been using. He flips it around in his hand, and then points the handle towards me. "My lady?" He smirks even more.
I take the handle sticking my tongue out at him.

"So the clearing around the homestead is called the glade, it also includes the first couple metres of forest around it. The rest of the buggin' woods is the deadheads, then out of that is the no-go-zone, although Thomas calls it the maze cause he gets bloody lost all the time..."
I giggled. "Isn't that where you picked me up?"
He nodded. "Yeah turns out not everyone is a griever." He stopped in front of a tree with low branches, Newt disappeared around the back. He jumped down from one of the branches, spraying up a cloud of leaves, I laughed leaves covering me. In his hand was a rope. He laughed at me and came over, his gentle fingers plucking the leaves out my hair. "There we go..." He muttered to himself, stepping back. "A bun..." He whispered looking at my hair. Newt snapped back into the real world and began to let out the rope. A small, grubby bag descended from the branches above. Newt grabbed the bag and ruffled his hand through the bag. "Ah bloody!" He cried out.
"What is it?" I jumped over eager to help.
Newt snapped his hand back, pulling out a mouse by its tail. The poor creature was wriggling and crying out, trying to curl up its tail to bite Newt. He grinned and stuck it into the shoulder bag he had grabbed from the homestead.
"Are we eating mouse?" I gasped.
Newt shook his head and stuck his hand back into the bag, rummaged around, crispy bronze leaves falling out around his arm in pieces just larger than dust. He pulled a dead bird out, no bigger than a blue tit. "Bird and mouse!" He smiled. Was this good for them? "Now onto the next trap."
He walked off, I assume towards the next trap.
"What are grievers?" I say jogging up after him.
"Everyone out there." He gestured into the thicket of the woods, but I knew he meant beyond that. He meant the police currently searching for him, his father.... His father who wanted him home.
"Was I a griever?"
Newt shook his head. "Your too pretty to be a griever." He stated it so simply as if everyone knew it - I certainly didn't, and hearing it from him made goosebumps ripple up my arms.
We reached the next trap, it had nothing, neither did the third or the fourth. We were lucky with the fifth, that had a young brown mouse. Somehow I got the impression they didn't eat a lot here.