[Incomplete/Abandoned] Eyes Like Stars || A Heartless Marissa Meyer Story

Chapter 6- Good Morning and Goodbye

Jack could feel himself waking up, but his sluggish brain seemed to have some protest to the idea. He kept his eyes shut and his body still, trying to hold onto the peaceful feeling he'd gotten from whatever dream he'd been having, but to no avail.

Jack opened his eyes and shifted his hips, realizing his little sister was no longer curled up in his lap. All at once the events of the day before came back to him and he remembered the strange and sudden quest his sister had decided to take on.

At the moment the girl seemed preoccupied by her new toy, the metal pail she'd pulled from the treacle well. Jill wandered around the clearing as she had the night before, except now instead of picking flowers she was gathering other items. She tried putting one of the leaves from the hedges into the bucket, tried dirt, tried grass, even some of the small pebbles near the well that had been weathered away over time.

But to no avail. The pail seemed as though it was rejecting them, like it had a mind of its own. Sometimes the leaves and grass were blown out, like the clover flowers had been. Other times the dirt shook through the bottom, although the pail never showed any holes or perforations in the bottom.

It's too early for this

But that's just how it had always been for Jack and Jill. So Jack pulled himself to his feet and stretched. In a flash Jill had appeared by his side.

"Can you pull up some treacle from the well Jack?" Jill pleaded.

"Why?" Jack asked, "Are you hungry or something?"

Treacle was strong stuff. Even for Jack and Jill, who lived on the stuff exclusively, they never ate it more than once in the day.

"No, no," Jill reassured her groggy older brother.

She held up her metal pail in front of her.

"I want to see if I can put it in here," she told him.

"I doubt it will, it came from the well after all," Jack reasoned, but nonetheless he lowered the sturdy wooden bucket down into the depths of the magical treacle, bringing it up brimming full of the thick sweet stuff.

Jill leaned her hips against the stones of the well, reaching over for a handful of treacle from the bucket and transferring it deftly into her pail. When it hit the metal the treacle began to bubble, and as the two watched it seeped straight through the solid metal on the bottom and back into the well.

"Well, that's that question answered," Jill stated with finality.

"Which question?" asked Jack, who by now was starting to be pretty well awake, especially knowing how many things were about to change starting today.

"I wondered if the bucket would like anything here," Jill said, "apparently it doesn't. We're going to have to go somewhere else to find the things."

Jack was feeling a bit jet lagged from the speed of this whole operation. He was intelligent, sure, but it was still too early in the morning for this.

"So we're following the instructions of a magic pail to find mysterious ingredients that are going to help a queen without a heart?" Jack sighed. Oh well, if she wanted to go he wasn't going to be able to stop her so he might as well go along.

He was going to protect her after all.

"Yep!" the little girl confirmed, a bright smile on her face.

Jack couldn't help but smile back, and he took the few steps to his pack, the gear he'd gotten from their magic treacle well. He buckled the straps and hoisted it onto his back. It was heavy, too heavy for a fourteen year old for sure, but no matter. Jack had magical treacle in his blood, and a quest to protect his younger sister.

--

There wasn't much need for lengthy goodbye's with the sister's they'd given about as much information as they were liable to, and the sisters had never been much for idle chit-chat.

Jill seemed ready to go. Jack wondered if she knew what they were getting into. Not that he knew himself, but he had a sort of gut feeling that these days were one's he would miss. He wasn't sure what was waiting, but he knew he'd follow Jill there.

So the brother and sister stood for a moment in front of the entrance to the ever-changing maze that was simultaneously so familiar and yet so new. The smaller girl with a pale complexion and ice blue eyes, and her taller brother with his warm skin and dark hair. One ready to take on a quest for the sake of a story, and the other there to watch over her in that journey. Both of them strong, both of them naive. The sun and the moon, the children of Hearts.

And together they took their first step into the vast array of hedges, on their way towards the adventure that awaited them.

A/N: I spent like a week and I was planning to draft, like, a story outline, because I know what's going to happen in my head but I'm afraid I'm going to forget it. But I at least know the plot has to get moving, so here we go. I'm sending my sheltered innocent children off into the world. Also, I know it's short, but I don't want to let on where they're headed until the next chapter. I'm trying to build suspense here, haha.