ACOTAR - In The Modern World

Her First Friend

Feyre did not want to talk. 

Lucien, she could manage. He seemed nice enough, with hair the shade of deepest autumn reaching down towards his waist. He had it strung back in a low ponytail, baring a pale face with a gruesome scar running through his eyebrow and down his left cheek.  

It was period one, and Lucien had sat next to Feyre in an attempt to get her to talk. The classroom mirrored Feyre's enthusiasm about basically everything - beige walls strung with a pathetic attempt at posters, desks scribbled with names and dates of students long gone, chairs that moved on uneven legs. They were positioned towards the back, Lucien on her left shyly making small talk, and Ianthe on her other side watching Tamlin, sat in front of her, as he fixed up his shoulder-length golden hair.

Lucien gave a little cough and Feyre drew her eyes away from the back of Tamlin's head. "So, what do you think of Prythian School?" 

Feyre slid her gaze towards Lucien. "It's different. I don't really belong here. I'm different. Everyone here - it's like their hearts are-"

"Made of stone?" 

"Exactly." Her thoughts turned to the violet eyes that had borne into hers in the form room. They had seemed shielded, firm against the politics of the school. "Compared to where I come from, I guess this should seem like heaven. My last school - it was awful. Yet despite that, I miss it." She sighed. Ianthe was watching her with avid interest, sucking up any gossip to spill to her girls at the break. 

Understand glimmered in eyes of hazel as Lucien nodded his head. "Did you leave anyone... special there?" 

"Uh. Well, my sisters. I just hope - I just hope that they can survive there long enough until I could return. Well, possibly return. The scholarship offered by," Feyre indicated Tamlin, "changed my life, but not their's. I may have been the younger sibling but I cared for them, I looked after them, and now-" She shut her mouth. She had already let too much information go, and now who knows what Lucien would do with any knowledge she gave him. 

"But, romantically?"

Tamlin's fingers stilled in his hair as the words left Lucien's mouth. Oh, he was listening - listening close. 

 She exploded. "I don't see how that's any of your business. I only just met you. This is overwhelming enough, and I could do without having question poked at me right now."

Feyre fumed at herself. Her stupid, stupid temper. Why she couldn't just keep a lid on it, she didn't know. All these people, all possible... allies. She'd never had a friend before. 

No other word was muttered unless commanded through the next few lessons, and as the day went on Feyre found herself watching Tamlin closer and closer. 

Maybe a friend wouldn't be such a bad idea. Maybe that was something she needed. Issac Hale had never been much of a friend - more a distraction, a necessity, a way to see to her needs. And her sisters... not even close. They treated her like dirt, really, yet she loved them is strange kind of way. 

Gentle Elaine would never hurt a fly and adored gardening. She was the stark opposite to Nesta. Crossing Nesta would not guarantee you much longer to live, as her ruthless fire scared off even the largest of the poverty-stricken thugs in their backwater village. The village she would never see again.