Countdown to the End (Gale) {Fairy Tail FF}

27 Days

~Levy~

I awoke to the sound of wood crackling and popping as it burned and the smell of meat cooking. It wasn't a familiar smell, but it made my stomach growl uncomfortably from hunger.

“Good morning,” Lily smiled at me as soon as I had opened my eyes. He was sitting beside me, and faced the fire that was only a few feet in front of me. It was nice and warm, making it hard to force myself awake and to sit up.

“Morning,” I yawned, rubbing my eyes. “What's cooking?”

“Something Gajeel caught,” he shrugged. “It was cooking when I woke up a few moments ago, so I'm not sure.”

“Whatever it is, it smells amazing,” I said, taking a deep breath.

“They're tree lizards,” Gajeel said, from the other side of the fire.

“Lizards?” I asked, looking wearily at the skewered meat cooking.

“If you don't want it, go find your own damned food,” Gajeel said, frowning.

“I'll eat it,” I told him, mirroring his frown. “There's no need to get so angry.”

“I'm not angry!”

I gave Lily a skeptical look, raising my eyebrow. “He sounds angry to me.”

Lily chuckled, nodding. “He does.”

Cursing, Gajeel grabbed one of the sticks from the fire and began eating. “Hurry up and eat if you're gonna. We need to get going.”

I took one of the sticks and hesitantly took a bite out of it. “It's good!” I said, surprised. “It tastes a lot different than I expected.”

“I agree,” Lily said, “it's quite good.”

“Then eat,” Gajeel told us. “We're almost there. We should be able to finish in time to make it back to Fairy Tail tonight.”

“You think so?” I asked. “That's sooner than I thought.”

“If everything goes smoothly, then yeah,” he nodded.

We ate in silence after that. I took the opportunity to look around, not having the chance to before because of the dark. The trees around us stretched above our heads by several feet, and their leaves fanned out, meeting the leaves of the surrounding trees to form a sort of ceiling. On the ground there were many species of plants, all ranging in color and size.

“This forest is actually very beautiful,” I noted.

“It's known for its extraordinary flora,” Lily said.

“Extraordinary what?” Gajeel asked, giving the Exceed a blank stare.

“Plants,” Lily explained. “Apparently, there are several rare species that grow here.”

“I bet there are a ton of rare books in that library,” I sighed, my thoughts drifting in anticipation to what we might discover once we found the ruins. “I’d love to explore it a little bit before we take the artifact to our client.”

“We'll have time after we find the artifact,” Gajeel said.

I gave him a startled look. “You wouldn't mind?”

He shrugged, looking down at the clean stick in his hands, “not like I got anything better to do.”

“Great! I look forward to it, then,” I told him, smiling.

~Gajeel~

Why the hell did I just agree to that? I hate that kind of thing, so why'd I offer to stay while she looked around a damned library? I frowned into the fire as I thought, watching the flames dance hypnotically as they burned the wood. I sometimes found myself staring off into space like I would the flames of a fire, thinking about things—usually the Shrimp.