Lotus

Chapter 6

"How do none of us know where the healing center is," asked Kosan. "There are three of us here. Statistics say that at least one of us should at least have some sort of inkling about where it is."

"Sorry to disappoint, but that doesn't seem to be the case with us," said Gemini. I laughed a little at that.

"But that can't be," replied Kosan, who then turned to me. "You should know where to go. You were headed there before we found you."

I shook my head. "I was just as lost then as we are now."

"Then where have we been going?"

"You tell me. I've just been following you."

Gemini stifled a snicker at this, then tried to conceal it with a cough.

"Are you laughing at me?" Kosan directed this question towards Gemini, but he looked back and forth between him and me, jokingly accusing us of doing something wrong. Gemini shook his head, and looked away. "So you are laughing at me?"

Kosan opened his mouth to say something else when we heard a voice behind us. "What are all you guys laughing at? It must be a really funny joke."

I jumped, my nerves going haywire at this unexpected, new voice. Kosan, Gemini, and I then turned around fairly quickly to find out who had spoken. My mind began spitting out all sorts of terrifying images of what the voice might be, and I braced myself for the worst.

It took a moment for my buzzed brain to process what I was looking at. It was a teal SeaWing, with a rather creepy air about him. He had a tattoo of a long fish-like creature on his shoulder that had several rings of sharp teeth at the head.

What a weird thing to have a tattoo of, I thought. After a moment, I realized that I had seen this dragon earlier. Outside of the school, he was circling above us all, and he seemed almost like he was looking for something. Standing in front of him now made me rather uneasy, so I shifted backwards as obscurely as possible. I didn't want to offend him, but I also wanted to get as far away as I possibly could from him.

Kosan awkwardly cleared his throat. "Yeah...it was a, uh, pretty funny joke." He forced a bit of a smile, and waited to see if the SeaWing would respond. He didn't, instead choosing to just look at us. Kosan cleared his throat again. "Hi, I'm Kosan, and these are Gemini and Kamala," he said, gesturing towards us. "I don't think we've met yet." He looked back at the SeaWing.

After another moment of staring, he finally opened his mouth. "I'm Lamprey. I believe we are in the same winglet: Topaz." He made eye contact with each of us, then started to slink away. "It'll be...good...to get to know all of you," he called back at us after a moment he was gone.

The chills I got from him looking me in the eye caused me to shiver fairly violently, due to having to hold it inside of me until Lamprey left. The boys also began to relax their tense muscles from talking to him.

"Well that was...weird," Kosan said.

"Very creepy," I agreed. Gemini nodded that he felt the same way. It took us a good minute to fully process what had just happened, but even then, it didn't make much sense. I shuddered again at the thought, and tried to push it out of my mind.

"Well," said Gemini. "Should we keep looking for the healing center?"

"Yeah," said Kosan. "Anything to get the thought of being in the same winglet as Lamprey out of my mind."

We chose a random hallway, and decided to walk wherever it took us, as long as it was away from Lamprey.