Sonmi's Couples, Characters and Writing - Posting Welcome

[horchata]

Wow, sionalover, your stories are getting so long! :3

[Sonmi-451]

Wow, sionalover, your stories are getting so long! :3

I guess that's a good thing.

[Sonmi-451]

Conis (m) and Clara (f)

"Conis, I'm sorry, but I don't feel that way about you," Clara tells me as she looks at me with unbearably sad eyes, and I feel my heart fall out of my body and shatter on the cold tile floor. "You're like a best friend, or a brother to me, not like a boyfriend. I'm sorry," she repeats quietly, just driving her rejection even deeper into my heart. After all of the time we've spent together, and her helping me overcome my mother's death, I thought that maybe we had a chance, that the look I saw in her eye when I caught her staring over at me was mutual interest.
"Well, I guess I'll go then," I mutter quietly as I stare at the floor, and I cross the room to the door of Clara's apartment without another word passing between us. I've opened the door and am just about to leave when I feel Clara's gaze on the back of my neck to turn and meet her eyes, which are so incredibly sad still. Briefly it crosses my mind that she doesn't have a reason to be sad - I mean, it's not like she's the one who just had her heart broken - but all other thoughts except for the fact that I don't know what I'm going to do with myself now are pushed out of my head by my heartbreak.
I then step out of her apartment, for what is unfortunately probably the last time and trudge down the hallway towards the elevator, my head hung lower and my heart even lower.

"Clara?" I exclaim in amazement as I peer closely at the brown-haired girl in front of me, who immediately whips around when I speak. I gasp in surprise when I see that it actually is Clara, and a jolt of recognition shoots through her eyes as she looks at me.
"Conis?" she says, and I nod my head in confirmation, a sad smile spreading across my face. The year that it's been since that fateful night at her apartment has only made her more beautiful, and, as I look her up and down, her words of rejection echo around inside of my head and hurt my heart.
"Wow Conis, you've changed a lot," Clara tells me, with a tone to her voice that makes it sound like she thinks my change is a good thing. And I guess she's right: along with celebrating my twentieth birthday last month, I also celebrated the fact that I am now six-three, five inches taller than when she last saw me.
"You've only gotten prettier Clara," I reply, giving her the most pain-free smile I can, and her face falls some. I guess I shouldn't have brought up our previous relationship so early on into this conversation, but oh well. Our previous relationship - and why on earth she rejected me - has been haunting me for a year now, and maybe I finally have an opportunity to talk to her about it.
"So where are you flying to?" I ask her, to break the silence that draped our conversation for a moment, gesturing to the plane ticket in her hand.
"Oh... I'm flying into Portland so I can go to Corvallis, to go see my older brother play for the Beavers," Clara answers with a shy smile, and my eyes shoot open in surprise.
"Hey, I'm flying to Portland too," I tell her, giving her another grin. "Maybe we can sit together on the plane," I suggest, looking down at her and noticing her glancing around concernedly.
"Maybe," she replies lightly, although her tone is distant and obviously very worried and she doesn't even look at me when she answers, as she's too busy looking around at the airport.
I am just about to ask her what she's looking for when boarding for our flight is announced over the intercom, and we both make our way up to give our ticket to the steward to walk through the jetway and board the plane. I let Clara go first, gesturing for her to walk in front of me, which she does, and promptly makes her way to the very back of the plane to take the window seat in the last row to the right.
Since I'd much rather sit next to Clara than a stranger - and because I might actually get to have a real conversation with her now - I take the seat next to her, and we both watch the plane fill up in front of us in silence. When everyone has boarded and sat down - thankfully no one sat in the seat next to me - and the plane is up in the air, I stare at my hands in my lap for a few moments until my curiosity finally gets the best of me and I burst out, turning to Clara, "Why did you dump me, that night a year ago? What did I do wrong?"
Clara sighs, and her beautiful face is immediately covered by a mask of sadness and weariness that makes her look ten years older in just one second. "Conis," she begins, meeting my gaze, "you didn't do anything wrong. I was the one who did something wrong."
I look her in the eye uncomprehendingly for a few moments before I realize that she means she regrets something about that night, and I ask her, my curiosity getting the best of me again, "What did you do wrong?"
"Well, I guess I did two things wrong," Clara amends, to elaborate, "Number one, I let you go, and number two, I didn't tell you how I truly felt."
"You mean that you didn't dump me because you didn't want to be with me?" I question, staring over at her hopefully and apprehensively. If she says yes, I still may have a chance at getting the girl of my dreams back. If she says no... well, she's already broken my heart once; why shouldn't she go for two?
"Conis, I wanted to be with you more than anything," Clara replies, a slight smile on her face at the amazement that has begun to overtake mine.
"Then why didn't you say yes to me?" I ask her. It all seems pretty simple from where I'm standing: if she wanted to be with me so badly, why didn't she be with me?
"Because saying yes to you would have gotten both of us killed, Conis," Clara bursts out, her eyes locked on mine. When I look over at her in complete confusion for a few moments, she elaborates, "My dad's an assassin, and he likes to think that I'm daddy's little girl, so he'll kill anyone that gets involved with me and probably even me in the end."
My mouth hangs open as I stare over at her, and, after a couple seconds, I finally come to, close my mouth and reply, "Couldn't we have just hidden from your dad?" I would like to say that my voice didn't shake at all, but that's unfortunately not true; after all, if Clara's dad could scare someone as brave as Clara as much as he clearly does, then he must be some scary guy. "And, why would he kill you for getting involved with someone?" I add, as I think about what she's said.
"You can't hide from my dad, not with the contacts he has," Clara replies matter-of-factly. "He would find you and kill you no matter you went. And, as to why he would kill me, he's kind of a psychopath," she finishes, and I nod my head in shocked understanding, even though i don't really understand any of it at all.
"So what do we do, then?" I ask out loud, to immediately tack on, "I don't want to spend any more time without you, because this last year without you was the worst year of my life, so what should we do?"
"I don't know," Clara responds frankly, pursing her lips in thought. After a half-second, she looks back up at me, meets my gaze and says, "All I know is that I don't want to spend any more time without you either, because one year was one year too long for me too." She gives me a sincere smile, and, despite the fact that we're talking about very dangerous, potentially fatal things here, I can't help but feel my heart swell with joy and give her a beaming grin in return.
"Well," I finally begin, after a few seconds of content silence, "I guess we're dying together then," which kills off all of the content, happy tone to the air.
"Yeah, I guess so," Clara agrees, and I look over at her to see a little bit of fear in her eyes. However, that fear is very short-lived, and is soon replaced by a burning determination that I see the full force of when she turns to me to meet my gaze and tell me, "But maybe that's a good thing, because living without you isn't really living at all for me."
I'm staring at her in amazement and am about to ask, "Are you serious?" when I catch myself and tell myself that of course she's serious, that she wouldn't be telling me these things after not talking to me for a year if she didn't mean them. Instead, I just tell her, "I've missed you, Clara," and lean over to wrap my arms around her and hold her against me.
"I've missed you too," she murmurs into my chest as she works her arms around me, and we just lean into each other for one perfect moment.
Suddenly, a voice calls to our left, "What would you like to drink?" and Clara and I quickly pull away from each other to turn and see a smiling flight attendant standing there with a pen and paper.
"Sprite, please," Clara answers coolly, which prompts me to say not-so-coolly, when the flight attendant turns her expectant gaze on me, "Uh... I'll have Sprite too, please."
The flight attendant nods her head in understanding, and Clara and I tell her simultaneously, "Thank you!"
A few moments later, she comes back with two cans of Sprite, two little cups partially filled with ice, and two napkins, which Clara and I accept with a murmured word of thanks.
We then open our Sprites and pour some into our cups at exactly the same time, and, struck by a sudden inspiration, I raise my cup and say, "To the time ahead of us. Even if it is short, it is at least it is spent together."
I give Clara a smile as I do so, and my action prompts her to raise her cup as well and say simply, giving me a grin of her own as she does so, "To us."
I nod my head in agreement, and tap my plastic cup almost solemnly on hers before tipping it back and drinking to the fact that Clara and I are finally together, even if death is waiting for us not too far off.



Jackson Freiborn, Vanessa Demion Blood, Lilian Blood (Cursed Ghost) and Trick-or-Treaters

"You know the rules, Lilian - even though it is Halloween, you are not allowed to go outside or scare any of the neighbor children," I tell my daughter, who happens to be a ghost left on this world with me, to have her groan in disappointment.
"But Mother, can't I scare one neighbor child?" she protests, and I immediately shake my head no.
"Lilian, we had to move because you scared a neighbor child, remember? Well, I like it here, and I do not want to have to move again, so you are to be on your best behavior. Do you understand?" I ask her, to have her glare at the wall in defiance. Sighing deeply, I stare into her mind - I happen to be literally looking through her head as well - and compel her, by using my powers of mental manipulation, to look at me and nod her head yes.
When I've released her from my control, she shakes her head and huffs in disapproval. "I hate when you do that," she mutters, and I am about to tell her that I wouldn't have to do that if she would cooperate when the doorbell rings.
"Lilian, go," I whisper at her, and she silently nods her head and glides away to pass through the wall between the hall closet and the main entryway and disappear from sight.
I then retrieve the candy bowl from the kitchen - I personally don't understand how mortals like this stuff, when all it is is an overpowering concentration of sugar - and check my appearance in the mirror hanging on the right-hand side of the hallway - I'm as supernatural and haunted as always, with my crystal-clear silver-blue eyes, bloodstains on my pale skin, white-pink hair and hangs just barely visible underneath my top lip - before answering the door with the scariest smile I can muster.

My blood immediately chills as I take in the appearance of the woman answering the door. She is incredibly beautiful, with incredibly pale skin, very unusual white-pink hair, and captivating silver-blue eyes, and also a few years younger than I am, as she looks to be about twenty, but something about her doesn't feel right. The fake blood on her face looks scarily real, and the pair of vampire fangs glistening in her smile look too natural and dangerous to be fake.
However, as soon as I realize what I'm thinking, I immediately shake my head and tell myself to snap out of it. Of course the blood and fangs are fake; I mean, it's not like she's an actual vampire, because those don't exist!
Feeling reassured by my logic, I brush past all of my bodily warning signs to put my best smile on my face and motion for the kids I'm escorting to speak, which causes them to cry, "Trick or treat!" in unison.
When the woman seems almost perturbed by the kids' volume, I give her an apologetic smile and tell her, "Sorry about that. They can be rather loud."
"Oh no, it's quite alright," she answers, in the most melodious and hair-raising voice I've ever heard. Its smooth, incredibly beautiful tone with something almost predatory behind that makes me think of a leopard that purrs at a capybara to lure the rodent in and then attacks and kills the capybara as soon as it's close enough. The worst part is that I have the feeling I'm the capybara.
My thoughts are broken by the sound of glass clinking on wood, and I look around to find her placing the bowl of candy that was in her hands on a chair by the door and telling the kids, as she gives them a beautiful, deadly smile, "You may each have three pieces of whatever you would like."
As I watch her, I can't help but wonder why she wouldn't just hold the bowl and let the kids pick out of it that way, or even just hand the kids whatever candy they asked for, as she has at least ten varieties of chocolate and not in the bowl, but I'm not complaining about her setting the bowl down, because that gives me time to talk to her while the kids pick.
"So I've seen you around some in the last few months, and I've never had a chance to ask you your name," I begin, to have her turn her stunning and utterly frightening gaze on me. For a moment, I get lost in her eyes and completely forget what I just said to her, and only manage to remember when she moves her eyes away from mine to gaze over at the children and I snap out of it.
"Vanessa," she replies quietly, as she watches the kids almost hungrily. "Vanessa Demion Blood. And yours?"
"Jackson Freiborn," I respond, giving her my best smile. "It's nice to meet you," I tell her, to which she nods her head in agreement or recognition, which I can't tell.
"You have a very Halloween-sounding name," I can't help but say after a few moments go by in silence, a smile spreading across my face, which causes her to turn her gaze back onto me and stare me down almost fearfully for a moment.
After a moment, she apparently sees what she's looking for and relaxes some to answer, a small smile that's almost sad coming across her expression too, "Yes, I suppose I do."
Suddenly it occurs to me that I haven't heard her use a contraction yet, and, as I gaze over at her, I murmur, my stomach sinking and all of my bodily warning signs coming back in full force, "You don't speak like you're from this time. You speak like you lived a hundred years ago."
She whips her gaze back onto me again to look me up and down with that same wary look in her eye, and, like before, she seems to find what she's looking for after a moment and stop scanning me so thoroughly. "Well, I suppose you could say that I am rather antiquated."
"In what sense?" I question, as I watch her watch the children.
"I should have died a long time ago," she responds softly after a few moments, her eyes suddenly sad, and I am about to tell her that she shouldn't have died a long time ago and that it's a good thing she's alive because she's such a lovely woman - I have been completely and utterly entranced by her almost supernatural beauty and mystery and sense of danger that she instills in me the whole time I've been talking to her - when one of the children screams in horror and points wordlessly at something in the house.

"Lilian, what are you doing?" I hiss, so silently that the mortals can't hear me but that she can, at her, as she floats in the middle of the hallway, in full view of the children.
"Having fun," she replies nonchalantly, as she rattles her chains and waves at the children and Jackson. "You had to know that I wasn't going to behave, not when I can get so much amusement out of terrifying these mortals."
By this point, all of the children have begun to scream, and, while Lilian might like the sound of their cries of fear, I don't like it at all; in fact, my head has begun to hurt.
"Vanessa, what's going on?" a scared, shaking voice comes from behind me, and I whip around to find Jackson's gaze flitting between Lilian and I in fear. Gesturing at Lilian, he asks, "That's just a hologram, right?"
"Jackson," I begin, meeting his gaze and forcing most of his fear out of him by controlling his emotions, "do you believe in monsters?"
"What kind of monsters?" he questions in reply, his voice not shaking nearly as much now. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to realize that most of his fear is gone, which means that he won't be able to connect me to its disappearance.
"Ghosts and vampires," I answer, to have him look between Lilian and I one more time before his eyes shoot open wide in realization.
Before he can say anything, I silence the children by breaking into their minds and removing Lilian from their memories, then step forward to take Jackson's arm in my icy, iron grip and guide him into the house with a murmur of, "I think you should come inside."

"I can't believe it," I murmur, shaking my head. "You're real." I look back up at Vanessa to find her watching me with an amused smile on my face, and then look over at Lilian to find her watching me almost with disappointment. I guess she's not happy that she didn't get a chance to truly scare me witless before Vanessa told me about what they are. In fact, Lilian glides away in boredom after a half-second, her expression truly let down.
"You actually believe me?" Vanessa asks, with more than a bit of surprise to her voice. When I gaze over at her in surprise myself, she elaborates, "You are a man of science. I did not think you would believe in the supernatural so easily."
"How can I not believe when you're sitting right in front of me?" I question in reply, to which Vanessa doesn't answer.
A few moments go by in an awkward silence until Vanessa breaks them by gesturing to the locket around my neck and saying, "That is very beautiful. Where did you get it from?"
"My wife," I answer shortly, my mood immediately falling.
Vanessa, of course, notices this and asks quietly, "How long ago did she pass?"
"Two years," I murmur quietly, and Vanessa nods her head in understanding, and I know that she does understand. She told me about all of the men she had the misfortune to fall in love with over the years, and how they always died and left her alone because they refused to become a vampire, or, when they actually wanted to, she refused to change them.
Suddenly I realize that I want to be one of those men that she's loved, but the one that actually succeeds in staying with her forever, and I look up at her to meet her gaze and tell her, "Vanessa, if you would make me like you, I promise I would not leave your side ever, and I would be with you always, because I have grown to love you with all of my heart in the few short minutes I have known you. Despite the fact that you are not technically alive, and despite the fact that I didn't think your kind existed up until twenty minutes ago, I feel closer to you than to any other person I've met. I want to be with you, Vanessa, and I want to be like you too, so that I can be with you forever."
"Jackson, you will a half-life, a sort of hell on earth, with no end if you become a vampire," Vanessa warns, but I brush right past her warning.
"It wouldn't be a half-life or a hell if I spent it with you," I reply, and she lowers her gaze as she realizes that she's not going to dissuade me.
After a few long moments, she looks back up and asks me seriously, "Are you sure this is what you want?"
"All I want is to be with you, so yes," I answer with conviction, meeting her gaze evenly, to have her sigh.
"Well, if you are so willing to be my human sacrifice, I suppose I cannot help but be your end," she murmurs quietly, and rises to her feet to motion for me to do the same.
She then glides towards me, and, just as her lips meet my throat and her fangs pierce my skin, I murmur, "You are my beginning, not my end."

[Wesley]

Sorry but I've decided to not take any more story requests as of now. I'll finish up the ones I have, but then I want to work on stories for more of my pets.

Do you think one day you could do another story for me? I want to give you time to write stories for your pets, so please, I don't care how long I have to wait! I also understand if you'll never be able to do it. ^-^ But, maybe one day... you could do a story for Rain & Thunder's daughter, Eougha? C:

[Sonmi-451]

Do you think one day you could do another story for me? I want to give you time to write stories for your pets, so please, I don't care how long I have to wait! I also understand if you'll never be able to do it. ^-^ But, maybe one day... you could do a story for Rain & Thunder's daughter, Eougha? C:

Sure, but it will probably take a while since I am currently writing a post-apocalyptic story about my zodiac sign and another dog.

[Wesley]

Do you think one day you could do another story for me? I want to give you time to write stories for your pets, so please, I don't care how long I have to wait! I also understand if you'll never be able to do it. ^-^ But, maybe one day... you could do a story for Rain & Thunder's daughter, Eougha? C:

Sure, but it will probably take a while since I am currently writing a post-apocalyptic story about my zodiac sign and another dog.

I don't care how long it takes. <33 If you could right a simple story about her puppy-hood and child-hood years, I could put something together and write the second part of the story covering her love life when she gets older and everything. <33 Thank you so much! :O

[Sonmi-451]

Serena (f), Xavier (m) and Jake (m)

"You're way too pretty to be sitting at this bar alone," a voice from the left of me came, and I turned my head to find a tall, handsome, well-dressed man, who was probably at least three or four years older than my twenty-two, with dark features and burning eyes that just freaked me out taking a seat next to me.
However, since I didn't want to be rude, I forced a smile onto my face and then turned away from the man, hoping he would take the fact that I wasn't interacting with him as a hint to go away.
Unfortunately, the man either wasn't as observant as I had hoped or just didn't care, as he told me, "My name's Jake Anthony. Yours is Serena, right?"
I whipped my head over to look at him in shock in suspicion, as I had no idea how he knew my name. "Yeah," I answered slowly, searching his face warily. "How did you know that?"
"You're wearing a nametag," he replied, a small smile crossing his lips as he gestured to my chest, and I glanced down briefly to find that I in fact was still wearing my nametag from my day of volunteering at the elementary school.
A few moments went by in an awkward silence, me doing my best to watch the football game on the TV screen above me and pretend like Jake wasn't there, before Jake asked me, scooting his chair a little bit closer to mine, "So do you come here often?"
"Not really," I responded through clenched teeth, as I resisted the urge to scoot away from him. "Just waiting for a friend, actually." A wave of relief washed over me as I remembered that Xavier was on his way to meet me here right now, and that I would be saved from Jake as soon as Xavier arrived. I then said a prayer in my mind for Xavier to speed as fast as he could and get here as quickly as possible.
"Oh," Jake replied, and his tone almost seemed more excited. Obviously he thought my friend was going to be another young woman he could hit on. A half-second passed in quiet before Jake told me, "Here, let me buy you a drink," and then waved the waiter over to order a vodka cranberry without giving me a chance to say that I don't drink and that the dark pink liquid in my glass was a small strawberry lemonade.
The waiter returned with the shot glass a few moments later, and placed it in front of me after Jake waved him in my direction. I stared at the liquid dubiously, thinking about how everything I had heard about vodka was that it was incredibly high in alcohol content and also burned your mouth and sinuses badly. A quick sideward glance towards Jake showed him watching me expectantly out of the corner of my eye, and, with a small internal sigh, I reached out, picked up the glass and took a sip.
The first thing that ran through my mind as I held the vodka in my mouth is that I couldn't spit it out, no matter how badly it burned my mouth. And it did, so badly that I felt like I had just coated my throat and sinuses in oil and then lit them on fire. I forced myself to swallow, coughing a bit as I did some, and took a long sip from my glass of strawberry lemonade to try to cool down my flaming mouth and nose.
Xavier, hurry it up before he orders me another one, I thought to myself as I set the glass down, trying to catch my breath and ignore the pain in my mouth.
Jake, who had been watching this whole thing with a small smile on his face, asked me, when he saw that I was done, "You don't drink much, do you?"
"Not at all," I answered truthfully, and took the time to glance around the Red Robin briefly to become even more desperate when I didn't see any sign of Xavier. Turning back to Jake and forcing myself to calm down - having a panic attack just because I took one sip of vodka wasn't very smart or realistic, even though there was a lot more for me to be panicking about, like Jake's obvious interest in me - I asked him, "Was it that obvious?"
"Kind of," Jake replied with a smile, his eyes locked on my face the whole time, and the pure desire I saw in their red depths not only repulsed me but made me look away before I felt compelled to scoot away from him.
Suddenly my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I stood up to pull it out of my back pocket and shoot Jake, who had been watching it all with renewed interest, a glance of distaste that he thankfully didn't notice before checking my phone to find one new message from Xavier.
Be there in five; sorry I'm running late, the message read, and my heart plummeted as I processed the words in my mind. I now had to survive five more minutes of conversation with Jake, which I wasn't sure I could do.
"Is that your friend?" Jake asked, breaking me out of my thoughts and causing me to look up to see him gesture at my phone.
"Yeah," I answered shortly, not feeling up to adding any more details unless they were asked of me.
Fortunately, Jake actually did what I wanted him to for the first time in this conversation and didn't ask anything else about the message Xavier sent me. Instead, he questioned, "So what do you do for a living?"
"I write," I replied simply, shrugging my shoulders. There was no reason for him to know that I was the mind behind the best-selling novels Kodiak, Project Number Thirteen, Perfect and the Triple Crown trilogy, especially if he didn't ask about it.
"Oh," Jake said, and perked up considerably. Obviously he thought he had found something he could talk to me about that would keep our conversation going. "What genre?"
"Fiction. Sci-fi, specifically," I responded, meeting Jake's gaze confidently and almost confrontationally. As long as I could keep us talking about writing, I could, for the most part, prevent Jake from hitting on me any more and burn the five minutes until Xavier got here with relative ease.
"That's cool," he replied, with the first non-fake and non-devious smile I had seen cross his face so far. It then occurred to me that this obviously wealthy and well-educated man might actually be a sci-fi nerd, and I couldn't stop a hint of a grin from darting across my lips at the thought. Jake fortunately didn't seem to notice and asked, "Have you gotten any novels published so far?"
"Oh, a few," I responded vaguely, waving my hand dismissively as my heart began to pound with fear. I hadn't want to get into this territory at all, because it would undoubtedly result in my identity coming out, but I didn't see any way I could get out of it now; I guess I just had to drag the conversation out as long as possible and hope that Xavier would show up in time to save me, like he had done countless times before.
"Any that I would know?" Jake met my gaze inquisitively, and again I was repulsed by the desire in his eyes.
Quickly looking away for a moment as my hands locked on the bottom lip of the bar in front of me, to help resist the urge to scoot away from him, I then forced myself to look back up at him and reply, "Well, it depends on if you read sci-fi or not."
"Well, let's say I do read sci-fi," Jake began, and I knew that my suspicion that he was a secret sci-fi nerd was correct. "Anything I would know then?"
"Well, the first one that I got published is called Kodiak, and I sold a few copies," I said, feeling kind of good when Jake's jaw almost hit the ground in shock. "Then I wrote Project Number Thirteen, and a few people bought it too, and then I released Lightning, the first book in the Triple Crown series, and people seemed to like that one pretty well, so I released the rest of the series, Sparks and Checkmate, a little bit later, and I just wrote and got my newest novel Perfect published two months ago."
"So you're Selena Marshall, the best-selling child prodigy novelist who got her first big hit with Kodiak at the age of fourteen?" Jake asked me, his expression completely awestruck, and my smirk got a little bit bigger as I nodded my head yes.
However, the grin evaporated off of my face incredibly quickly when I saw the heightened interest in Jake's eyes, and I groaned in my head. Great, I grumbled to myself. Now that he knows you're rich and famous, he's not going to leave you alone for the world!
"That's amazing," Jake exclaimed, shaking his head. He then looked back up at me to tell me, "You know, I've been reading your books ever since they first came out, and I'm a huge fan. I just can't believe I'm actually getting to meet you."
If it were any other person saying that to me, I would be grinning and trying to be humble - like I had done with every other person who had said that to me - but with Jake saying it, I just became more wary of him and more anxious for Xavier to show up and rescue me from this conversation.
A few moments went by in silence, during which time I kept my gaze firmly locked on the TV screen above me with after catching Jake staring at me very intently out of the corner of my eye, until I felt a hand on my arm and looked over in surprise to find Jake gazing at me with so much desire in his eyes that I felt an urge to throw up and slap him simultaneously.
"You know, Serena, I've been incredibly attracted to you from the moment I first laid eyes on you," he murmured, and then, without warning, leaned forward to kiss me on the lips.
The first thing that I tasted was plastic - like the rest of him. Grimacing and almost snarling as he got even more confident and tried to French-kiss me, I reached my hands up, placed them on his chest, and shoved him backward as hard as I could, thanking God for all of the time I spent at the gym and the fact that I had always had a relatively strong upper body.
"Stay away from me," I snarled at him, my eyes locked on his fiercely as I backed up and turned to find myself staring into someone's neck, which was above a very familiar Arizona State T-shirt.
"Xavier," I cried, and tried to throw my arms around him in relief and happiness, but didn't get a chance to because he immediately brushed past me, his glittering golden eyes locked on Jake.
"Xavier, don't!" I called out to him, knowing exactly where this was going, but I was too late, and found myself watching Xavier punch Jake square in the jaw.

"Well, it looks like the charges of sexual harassment and assault would balance each other out, so, if you don't want to press charges, we can just call it a day and you can leave," the police officer told Xavier and I as we stood in the police station. Jake was standing on the other side of the room, with an ice pack to his face to reduce the swelling on his jaw that Xavier caused, and occasionally shot both of us looks of pure loathing. Neither one of us really cared though, because we had each other now.
Xavier had wrapped his arm around my shoulder as soon as the police officers released him from questioning and hadn't removed it since, and I was perfectly fine with that, as I liked being in close proximity to Xavier's warm, tall and muscular body.
"Do you want to just do that?" I asked Xavier as I turned to look up at him, and, like I knew he would, he immediately nodded his head and replied, "Sure," like he had been doing for me for fifteen years now.
Xavier and I had been best friends since third grade, and he had always done whatever I suggested, no matter how bad of an idea it was, because he was just that devoted to me. He had also always been there for me when I needed him; a few times he had even set aside his own life to help me. He had held my hand and bought me a teddy bear and lots of ice cream when I got dumped in ninth grade, and then helped me reject the guy that first dumped me when I released Kodiak, became famous in a matter of weeks, and the guy wanted me back. He had always come to all of my soccer games and cheered for me, with his own handwritten poster that had a picture of me and said, "Go Serena, #16," no matter how bad I sucked or how bad we lost. Xavier also helped me edit and publish all of my novels, and ran my personal fanclub and my and all of my novels' Facebook pages, as well as helping me manage all of the money I had by deciding with me what charities to donate to. Through all of the turnovers of other boys in my life - break- and make-ups with boys, my mom having a new boyfriend almost every month - Xavier had been the one that stayed, and I respected and loved him for that.
And it was obvious he loved me too, in more than a friend way, so much so that I had been waiting for him to ask me out since sophomore year of high school. In fact, I had thought that tonight might finally be the night that he was going to ask me out, considering we met at my favorite restaurant Red Robin and he had already told me beforehand that he was going to be paying - he himself was very successful, as he was the starting running back for the Denver Broncos, after putting up huge numbers and shattering many school and NCAA records at ASU; I happened to go to all of his games now - but all possibility of that happened had been derailed by the fiasco with Jake.
Sighing slightly, I had turned away and was just about to leave, expecting him to follow me, when Xavier told me, his tone oddly strained and excited, "Serena, there's something I want to do before we leave."
Immediately I whipped back around to look at him closely, trying and failing to read him, and finally giving up and asking, "What's that?"
My heart began to race as Xavier got down on one knee, and my mind went numb when he pulled a small velvet box out of his left jean pocket. Is he honestly doing what I think he's doing?...
"Serena, you and I have been best friend since third grade, for almost fifteen years now, and during that time we've become inseparable," he began, his eyes locked on mine. "We're still inseparable now even, as we don't go more than a day without seeing each other generally. Because our relationship has already been tested and made strong over those fifteen years, I didn't see a reason to wait any longer to do this." Xavier paused there, to open the box in his hand and reveal a beautiful golden ring, with one large, gleaming amethyst, my birthstone, favorite stone and the color he always said my eyes were, nestled brilliantly among the metal. "Serena Nicole Williams," he started, his gaze glued on mine, "will do you me the honor, the privilege, the incredible favor, of being my wife?"
I stared at him and the ring uncomprehendingly for a few moments, my body completely numb and my mind, which was normally so quick, completely frozen. Finally what he said to me cracked through the layer of shock covering my mental faculties and kicked my mind into full gear, at which point I realized what he had asked and a huge smile spread across my face.
"Well, after all these years of you saying yes to me, I guess it's finally time I said yes to you," I told him, and then waited for him slip the ring onto my right ring finger before standing on tiptoe to kiss him the best I could and end up being literally swept off of my feet, the whole time thinking that it took too long to finally say yes to him as the applause of the police station filled my ears.


Pet's name: Foresty (m) and Pet's name: Moony (f)

I walk by him every day and, even though we don't talk - we probably never will talk, at the rate things are going - I always try to get him to notice me. I dress up nice just for him, in colors I know he likes, I let him cut in front of me in line, I even stop right in front of him, just to see if he will react, all to no avail, as he never does notice me. Sometimes I think the only way I'll get him to notice me is if I get a huge parade following me, but even that might not work, giving his apparent lack of awareness of his surroundings.
"Boys are the most idiotic creatures on the planet," I mutter under my breath, shooting all of the boys around me vicious glares that scare the ones who happen to be looking in my direction. But if they're so stupid, then why do I love one?
Sighing deeply, I turn away from all of the minor gods and demigods in the rowdy cafeteria - I always hope the children of Aphrodite will get hit in the routine food fights, because they're always so mean to me, but everyone seems too scared or too enchanted by them to even think about throwing food when they're around - to find myself dumping tomato soup down someone else's front. I recognize the scarily familiar white robe and tan-and-green mantle and my shock and horror are only amplified, as well as joined by mortification, when I realize it's him.
I just stand there, frozen by my surprise and fear, for a long moment before it occurs to me that I should be doing something to help him and turn around to grab a cloth napkin off of the table behind me - Aphrodite's children won't accept anything less than the finest cloth for their 'delicate complexions' - and hand it to him silently, the whole time wishing that my dad was an invisible man instead of a vampire so I could just disappear.
"I... I... I'm... I'm sorry," I finally manage to say in a whisper, my eyes on the floor as I feel myself begin to blush furiously, heat filling my cheeks and undoubtedly turning me beet-red.
"It's quite alright," he replied in a low, soothing voice, and I look up at him to be dazzled by the downright gorgeous face in front of me.
He's relatively pale, with skin the color of aspen bark, and dancing green eyes reminiscent of a forest of laughing trees. A wreath of branches sits atop his noble head, and I can't help but gawk slightly at how amazingly handsome he is up close.
He looks down at his now-stained white robe with a bemused smile on his face and murmurs, "Oh well. It can always be washed." He glances back up at me to give me a warm smile, and, at that moment, every part of my heart and soul that doesn't already love him is committed to him by the fierce persuasion power of his smile.
"L-l-let me wash it for you," I find myself saying before I realize what I'm doing, and he looks down at me in surprise.
"That would be too much trouble for you though, my dear," he answers, and my heart melts yet again. "I can do it myself."
"But I am the one who spilled soup on you to begin with," I begin, my voice getting bolder and my confidence building with every word I say, "so I insist."
"I will come to your residence tonight to drop it off then," he agrees with a smile, and is in the process of turning away when I recover from my shock enough to realize that we might not have to wait till tonight.
"I have this last hour off, if you have it off too and would like to come over now," I call out to him, and he turns around to study for a millisecond before what I said registers and he responds, his smile returning, "I will come over now then. In fact, if you'd like, I can give us a ride there right now."
Immediately I nod my head vehemently and reply, the first smile I've allowed myself stretching slowly across my face, "That sounds great."
He then offers his arm out to me, like a true gentleman, and, after I turn around to grab my backpack and try to control the sheer elation running through me, I accept his arm and walk out with him, leaving a silent and stunned cafeteria behind.

Just as he is about to take his mantle and then his robe off, I realize there is one serious problem in this plan. "Do you have anything you can wear while your robe is being washed? I don't think any of my clothes would fit you." I size him up by looking him up and down, and I can already tell that nothing I have is going to fit him, considering that I wear a small and he probably wears an extra-large because of his broad shoulders and height.
"I don't have anything with me, no," he says, shaking his head, to then add, giving me a smile as he does so, "I don't mind not having a robe on for a few hours though. I don't get cold that easily."
I force a smile onto my face - I wasn't worried about his reaction to him going shirtless for a while; I was worried about mine, because it was only by the grace of God that he didn't hate me for being a complete idiot already - to agree through gritted teeth, "Well, I guess I can just put your robe in the washer then."
I then turn away from him to give him some privacy to change, and I hear the muffled thump of his mantle as it hits the laundry room floor.
He murmurs, "Here," and I reach out, not daring to turn around, to grab his robe, which is surprisingly light considering it's soaked with tomato soup, put it in the washer and press the button to start the clean cycle.
I stay turned away from him for a few more moments, not sure what to do, until he finally asks, "What's the matter? I'm not that hard to look at, am I?"
You're exactly the opposite, I think to myself before taking a deep breath to brace myself for what I am about to see and finally turning back around to be met by a very glorious but also incredibly distracting sight.
He has an eight-pack at least, and the muscles in his arms and shoulders ripple every time he moves his arm ever so slightly. All of this is just accentuated by his pale skin, and I find myself having a hard time breathing as I stare at him in awe.
However, I am somehow able to tell myself that I can't get distracted now, and I force myself to meet his gaze and ask him, "So what do you want to do now?"
"Well, there is one thing I would like to do," he begins, to take a step towards me and cause my eyes to shoot open in surprise. Is he really doing what I think he's doing...?
Gently he cups my chin in his hand - his hands are cool but pleasantly so, like the depths of a forest on a summer day - and tilts my head up so that I have no choice but to look him in the eye, and tells me, "I have been watching you in the hallways at school for quite a while now, and, while I do not know who you are, I know that you are incredibly beautiful and incredibly intelligent and that you certainly do not deserve the hatred and humiliation you receive at school every day."
"But I'm weird, an outcast, and I don't fit in with all of the children of the more popular gods, so therefore I must be bullied," I but in, feeling very uncomfortable with where this conversation is going, even though I have been dreaming about having this conversation with him for quite a while now.
"What are you talking about? No one deserves that, and the children of the more popular gods are wrong for doing that to you!" he says quietly but emphatically, and I am stunned into silence long enough for him to add with a bitter smile, "Many gods and demigods think we are holier than the humans, that we are so much better than them in our nature and share none of their vices. What those gods and demigods fail to realize is that we are exactly like the humans, because we are a direct reflection of their nature. In other words, we are not holier than anyone, and we certainly aren't as holy as we think we are."
I don't know what to reply to this, but, during the whole time he had been talking, my confidence had been building, so much so that, after a moment of silence, I ask, "So what was it that you wanted to do?"
"This," he murmurs, and then leans in to kiss me gently on the lips. As his arms lock around me and my arms lock around him, his fresh evergreen scent filling my nostrils, I realize, with a smile, that I am the moon to his forest and he is the forest to my moon.

[Sonmi-451]

Rose Petal (f) and Doom Heart (m)

"We're dead, aren't we?" I asked Doom Heart softly, as I looked over at him in the low light. Even though I couldn't see him very well, I couldn't help but think how handsome he looked, with his armor that used to be gleaming, his hair sticking up in clumps from the sweat dripping down his face and his bloody sword. Well, perhaps 'handsome' wasn't quite the right word; 'murderous' or 'warring' or 'dangerous' was probably a better descriptor of him, but I still thought he was very attractive.
"I'm afraid so, Rose Petal," he replied, as he looked down at his sword and then wiped it in the grass to help get some of the blood off of it.
"Ironic, isn't it, that we're going to die in the name of God at the hands of people who think they're killing us in the name of God," I murmured, and he nodded his head in agreement. The cross around my neck suddenly seemed to become much heavier, as if it had heard my blasphemous words and was now determined to make my last moments a little bit more uncomfortable as a punishment.
"Ironic, isn't it, that people are getting killed in the name of God at all," he added on, and now it was my turn to nod my head in agreement as we sat there, awaiting our deaths by Muslim swords.
"Doom Heart, this isn't God," I said after a few moments of silence, and looked up to meet his gaze. "This is Urban II's politics, this is human greediness at its finest, but this definitely is not God." After pausing for a half-second, I questioned him almost desperately, "Why in the hell did we ever get ourselves involved in this in the first place?"
"Because we thought it was God, and that the Muslims were pagans who should be destroyed," he answered, completely truthfully for both of us. "My God, how wrong we were! To think that we thought war was God and Muslims didn't know who God was, when really they worship the same God as us, just by a different name! I guess that means that this war is mass ignorance at its finest too."
"Doom Heart, I don't want another war like this to happen and sweep away hundred of thousands of people under a false cause," I told him. "So do you think people will ever stop being ignorant, or stop being greedy, or stop being political and selfish?"
"Because humans are human and therefore inherently imperfect," Doom Heat began, "no. There will always be wars like this one, as long as humans exist, because humans will always be imperfect and war is a product of human imperfection."
"What do you mean?" I asked him, puzzled by his comment.
"Well, war is caused by greediness and ignorance and politics, and all of those things are humans' imperfections personified, so if humans were perfect, greediness and ignorance and politics wouldn't exist and therefore war wouldn't either," Doom Heart explained, and I nodded my head slowly as I mulled it all over in my head.
After a few moments of silence, I finally replied, "You know, I don't think I would want to live in a world of perfect humans though, because that world would be so boring and there would be nothing to do and nothing to fight for or believe in. There wouldn't be any purpose to life, I don't think."
"Well, we're about to go to a perfect world," he said in response, but, as soon as he realized that we actually might not, considering that we killed people in nothing but the name of human imperfection, he quickly amended, "That is, if God decides to overlook our ignorance and let us in anyways."
"And if not?" I couldn't help but ask, as I stared over at Doom Heart and noticed how majestic he looked, bathed in the moonlight like he was. He looked like a saint, Paul or Peter perhaps, except for the armor and sword.
'Well, hell can't be that much worse than here, right?" He met my gaze, and I found myself nodding my head in confirmation, because he was right; there wasn't any way hell could be that much worse than where we already were.
Suddenly the sounds of a scuffle and a cry in Arabic came from not two hundred yards away from the boulder we were hiding behind, and Doom Heart looked over at me and I looked over at him for what was probably going to be the last time.
"Goodbye, Doom Heart," I murmured quietly, my eyes locked on his, and then, before either one of us knew what we were doing, I felt his lips on mine and his arms wrapped around me, holding me to him.
After a few moments of heaven - most likely the only heaven I would ever know - he pulled back, and he stared down at me for a long second before finally telling me, "Goodbye, Rose Petal," and then getting to his feet, leaving his sword on the ground and not bothering to try to be stealthy or quiet.
When he was completely standing up, he offered his hand out to me and pulled me to my feet when I accepted it, and, my hand still in his, I looked over at him and asked him, "Together?"
"Together," he confirmed, and then bent down over me to give me one last gentle kiss before pulling back and starting to walk out from behind the boulder, making me walk with him.
As we went out into the open and saw the Muslim soldiers running towards us and waited patiently for our deaths, I couldn't help but think that everything that had just passed between us - our realization that we were going to die, our enlightenment about God and war and humanity, and even the kiss (especially the kiss) - were all from God, even if everything else we had known and done before that was not from God at all.


Pet's name: Ness (f) and Pet's name: Skai (m)

"Hello, Ness," comes a hiss from behind as I stand at my kitchen table, looking for a book in my bookbag, and I jump about three feet in the air in surprise.
Whipping around quickly, I find Skai standing there with a smirk on his face and the spirit assigned to guard him whirling around him and snickering too, and I hit him playfully on the arm as I exclaim in mock-annoyance, "Stop doing that, Skai! You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days!"
"Then I'd have a great excuse to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation," he tells me, his smile fading off of his face as his blue eyes become intense, so intense that I am compelled to look away before I get holes burned through me.
"You'd only be able to do that if I drowned or choked, not if my heart stopped," I say quietly, as I fumble around in my bookbag to waste time and get past this awkward moment. Skai has been hitting on me ever since we had met, when we were both ten, but, even though I do like him like that, I just don't want to ruin our friendship that has worked so well for so long because I love him so much that I don't want to risk losing him if being romantically involved doesn't work out for us. Besides, I almost feel bad that he loves me, because he could do so much better if he would just look away from me and notice all of the village girls drooling over him.
"I'd still do it anyways, Ness, just so that, if I couldn't save you, I at least got to kiss you before you left me," Skai whispers in my ear, and I swallow deeply as I continue to search my bag clumsily for the book on Dracula, Skai's grandfather, that I have been reading out of curiosity.
"Why do you keep rejecting me, Ness?" Skai asks me almost angrily, and I whip around, utterly shocked by his tone. Skai has never been snippy with me before, and I've basically rejected him many times before anyways. "I know you love me, although perhaps not quite as strongly as I love you, and I can give you everything you want, so why do you keep pushing me away? Is there someone else that you love more? Or am I just delusional in thinking that you love me?"
I find it hard to think with Skai's piercing blue eyes locked on mine and demanding answers, but I'm able to reply, "Skai, I love you too much to go down that road."
"What do you mean?" he immediately questions, his almost dazzlingly handsome face screwing up into a confused and worried grimace.
"I don't want us to date and then realize that we shouldn't be dating or get into some big fight or something like that and ruin our relationship forever. I don't want to lose you, Skai," I end in a murmur, my gaze glued to his, and, after a moment of us just staring at one another, he turns away, his expression becoming confused and hurt again.
A second more goes by in silence, with me watching Skai worriedly and Skai staring at the ground as he thinks, before Skai looks back up at me to take my hands in his and tell me gently, "Ness, I don't want to be just your friend anymore. I don't think I can be just your friend anymore. In fact, I came here today to do something that would most definitely put me out of the friend zone." Here Skai slips a hand into one of the pockets in his coat, and my heart skips a beat as I see the velvet box sitting in his hand when it pulls it back out.
Skai then removes his hat from his head, gets down on one knee, and opens the velvet box to reveal a beautiful silver ring with a singular sapphire - my favorite stone, the one that Skai always said my eyes looked like - which he offers up to me almost reverently. "Ness, I have known you for twelve long years, and I have loved you for every single second of all of those twelve long years, ever since I first laid eyes on you. So you will you finally, like I have been hoping and praying for and dreaming about for all those twelve long years, be mine?"
I stare at him in shock for a few moments, his proposal having coating my mind in fast-drying concrete. Finally I come to my senses enough to ask him, "But what about the decree that you can only marry another part-immortal, because you're expected to carry on the immortal bloodline?"
"Ness," Skai begins, a smile stretching across his face as he rises to his feet to stare down at me, his blue eyes twinkling and perfectly complimenting his wild black hair, "you are a part-immortal. My grandfather, when looking through the genealogy of the oldest families around here, found out that your mother is actually the moon goddess, and that you were just raised as a normal human because that is what your mother wanted and thought would be best for you."
"I'm..." Now my tongue is on even grounds with my mind, as it doesn't seem to be working either. "I'm... I'm a demigod?" I finally manage to spit out in pure shock and amazement, and Skai nods his head, a smirk crossing his face at my surprise.
"I can help you figure out what powers you have and how you can use them later, if you'd like," Skai tells me, and his eyes flit down to the velvet box containing the ring that's still in his hand.
Oh, right, he was kind of in the middle of pouring his heart out to me and asking me to marry him when I attempted to shoot down his proposal with that question, wasn't he?
"So, what do you say, Ness?" Skai asks me quietly, as he meets my gaze again. "Will you be my wife?"
As I stare up at him and think about all of the things that could go wrong if I said yes, I can't help but remember all of the things that have gone right between us in the last twelve years. Not once have we had a fight over anything larger than Skai wanting to take me out to dinner and me refusing to let him pay for it, and, even though our relationship wasn't romantic back then, I realize that its solidness and validity won't be negatively affected if it does become romantic, because we've done and been through so much together and know each other so well that we would be able to save it, if somehow it was put in jeopardy. Besides, it's time I was finally brave enough to actually try something new and stop clinging to the familiar, and it's time I finally was selfless enough to risk letting go of Skai in order to bring him closer.
I look up at Skai, filled with a new determination and happiness and excitement, and, like I've wanted to for twelve years but have never been brave enough or selfless enough to, I tell him, "Yes."

[Sonmi-451]

Pet's name: Matted Love (Dove for all intents and purposes) and Pet's name: Charlie

"We've got to get out of here!" I yell over my shoulder at Dove to find her right next to me, panting an extremely small amount for the distance we've already ran.
However, I don't get a chance to think about that fact very long, as she shoves me forward and tells me urgently as she begins to run again, "He's not too far behind! We've got to keep moving!"
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, I hear the crashing through the undergrowth that could only be him - a part of my mind, the part not completely occupied with staying alive, wonders if he would shoot us like he did the rest of them or strangle us out of anger if he caught us - and I start to run again too, eager to put a million miles between me and him.

"I think we've lost him for now," Dove manages to gasp as she bends over, with her hands on her knees, in an attempt to catch her breath. We had just been running for around two hours straight, if my watch is correct, so we probably put at least five miles of distance between us and him. It's not nearly as much as I would want - being on the moon and him on Earth wouldn't be a large enough distance between us and him - but it will have to do for now, because it's now dark and because I don't think I could run another minute.
Glancing over at Dove, I find, with almost jealousy, that she's almost completely caught her breath now, as she's standing up and isn't breathing nearly as heavily as I am.
"How did... you catch... your breath... that quickly?" I ask her between ragged breaths, and her eyes lock on mine in the darkness for a moment, an unpleasant emotion - distaste, maybe even loathing - flashing through them before she replies.
"I'm a cross country runner. What we just ran is maybe a little more strenuous than our daily workouts," she responds, and I hear in her voice what I saw in her eyes - distaste, maybe even bordering on loathing. She really doesn't like me, does she?
Unfortunately for her, I'm the only life form in probably a ten-mile radius that doesn't want to rape her or kill her and eat her - as we're surrounded by wild animals and him, the scariest animal of all - so I guess she's stuck with me for the time being, unless she would like to be suicidal and go out in the forest by herself and walk into his open arms.
I actually don't mind being out in the woods with her at all; in fact, out of all of the girls that we originally kidnapped by him, along with me - it's incredible to think that, after twelve hours, Dove and I are the only ones still alive of that party of ten - she's probably the one I would want to be stranded in a forest with after running from a serial killer. Dove is far more resourceful and practical and brave and level-headed than any of the other girls, and she, in my opinion, is nicer to look at than any of the other girls too.
The crunching sound of forest matter being crushed under someone's feet catches my attention, and I look up in surprise to find Dove walking off into the forest, away from the small clearing of trees we had stopped in.
"Where are you going?" I call after her, slightly alarmed that she didn't even bother to tell me when she was going to leave.
"To go get firewood," she answers shortly, and I nod my head in understanding.
"Do you need help with that?" I ask her, and she shakes her head as she responds, in a cynical and annoyed tone, "No. Just stay put and don't get yourself killed, alright?"
She looks over her shoulder to meet my gaze once more, to make sure that I understand, and I nod my head again and watch her turn back around and walk farther out into the forest as I realize that she sees me as nothing more than a burden, just something to slow her down and make it harder for her to survive. And maybe she's right; so far, I really only have been a burden. Multiple times, she had to stop and wait for a few seconds for me when we were running, and had to pull me up after I tripped over a low-lying branch more times than I can count, and I have a feeling that she wasn't running as fast as she were if she were alone so that she wouldn't lose me. In fact, she would probably be a good two or three miles away from here if it weren't for me slowing her down when we were running.
However, I don't want to be a burden, and I don't want her to not like me because she sees me as just a burden, so, determined to show to her that I'm useful, I find two logs nearby that would be good to sit on and drag them to about the middle of the small clearing, with some space in between, so that way we can light a fire in the middle of the logs and stay warm while sitting.
Just as I've finished arranging the logs, I hear Dove coming back from collecting firewood, and look up to find her struggling to carry the pile of wood in her hands.
Immediately I run to her, tell her, "I've got it," and take the wood, which proves to not weigh that much at all, from her, our hands brushing at the transfer of the last piece. Our eyes meet for a moment, and she looks away quickly, but not so quickly that I can't see the expression in them: one of grudging respect, and I can't help but smile to myself as I walk back over to the two logs for sitting on and deposit the wood in between them.
It looks like Dove is starting to think that I'm not such a burden after all.

"Where did you find these?" Dove asks me, gesturing to the blueberries in the palm of her hand.
"There's a small pond I almost fell in not too far from here, and there was a bush right there," I reply, shrugging my shoulders nonchalantly and hoping that the satisfaction I'm feeling at finally proving to be useful doesn't show.
"Well, that was a pretty good find," Dove tells me, and something that partially resembles a smile flits across her face.
"What's so funny?" I question, my eyes locking on hers in the darkness to find, unfortunately, an almost savage pleasure in her eyes that lets me know that what she's thinking is about me and isn't very nice at all.
"The thought of you, smooth Charlie Jameson, falling into a pond," she responds, and I see all of the distaste she originally had for me still present in her gaze.
Although I'm disheartened by that, it just makes my desire for her to like me or at least not so openly dislike me even stronger, and I ask her quietly after a few moments of silence, "All of the other girls begged for their lives, when he was about to shoot them." He got distracted and Dove and I were able to break out just as he was about to shoot her - it's incredible how easy it is to talk about the events, when my mind is too shell-shocked to really register everything; it's like I'm talking about complete strangers when I detail all of the horrors we went through. "Why didn't you?" I look her in the eye seriously here, and she regards me almost warily for a second before answering.
"Because begging for my life wasn't actually going to save it, and, because I was going to die either way, I wanted to die on my own terms, silent and rebellious to the end. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he'd broken me." She shrugs here, and looks away after a moment to stare into the fire contemplatively, her eyes reflecting the flames.
That means that Dove is far braver as well as far tougher and more resilient than the rest of us kidnapped by him; in other words, she's just an all-around better human being than us nine who either begged for our lives - in the case of the eight girls who are dead now - or were going to beg for our lives - in the case of me.
Suddenly I remembered something, about how there were no sounds when he took her back to his room - there had been screaming from the other eight girls - and I couldn't help but question, "What happened when he took you back to his room? Did you just stay quiet for that too?"
"No," she responds, surprising me greatly, "because he didn't do anything to me. He took my shirt off, said that I wasn't pretty enough, let me put my shirt back on, and then we just sat there in silence for the allotted time, so as to make you think that he was doing something to me." She adds, with a bitter smile on her face, after a small pause, "Just one of the benefits of being completely forgettable, I suppose."
"Oh," I say quietly, incredibly surprised, and find myself saying, before I really know what I'm doing, "I don't know how he thought you weren't pretty enough, and I don't know how you think that you're forgettable. If anything, you were the prettiest girl out of the bunch, and definitely not a girl anyone would forget anytime soon."
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I expect her to rise from her seat on her log facing me and punch me, even though what I said is true - she most definitely is the prettiest girl out of the group, and very unforgettable too, with her long hair pulled carelessly but attractively into a ponytail and her sharp blue eyes that stared out of her intelligent and exotic-looking face - but instead she just scans me carefully for a long moment before finally telling me, "Thanks, I guess."
"No problem," I say, watching her carefully myself for a second before noticing that she's shivering violently. I hadn't noticed the cold at all really, but I guess that Dove, being so much smaller, is much more affected by it than I am.
Almost instinctively, I rise to my feet and find myself walking over to her, sitting down next to her and wrapping my arms around her to keep her warm. When she doesn't react and doesn't even seem that stiff and unwilling, I bend over her, put my lips next to her ear, so that I'm not touching her skin but am very close to, and murmur, "You know, you're supposed to huddle together to share body heat and stay warm." I then find myself having a difficult time pulling my head away, with the knowledge that her neck is right there and that it would be so easy, so easy, to just lean it and kiss it, but eventually I'm able to.
After a long moment of silence and Dove looking away, she finally murmurs, "I know," not bothering to even turn and look back at me, and here I get annoyed and pull away from her so that way I can look her straight in the eye.
"Dove, why do you dislike me so? I've done basically everything I could over the last few hours to make it so that I'm not a burden to you, and that I'm actually useful, and still you don't like me! So what is it? Why don't you like me?" I ask her commandingly, the will in my voice almost forcing her to keep looking me in the eye.
"Because you're a player, and you only ever date girls for their bodies, that's why," she replies sharply. "It's always the same pattern with you: you find some pretty girl, date her, undoubtedly sleep with her, and then dump her when you get tired of her, and that, that using of girls, doesn't sit well with me. It doesn't sit well with me at all."
"First off, I never slept with any of my girlfriends. I made out with them, sure, but I never slept with them," I tell her, feeling that I need to defend myself on that issue, "And I only dated all of those girls because, the whole time, I was hung up on this one girl but knew that she wouldn't want me, and so I dated other girls to try to fill the hole in my heart that loving her had given me."
"Who's the girl?" Dove asks me quietly, but I can tell by the expression in her eyes that she already knows and is just looking for confirmation.
"You," I tell her in response, my gaze glued to hers, and she swallows with difficulty but doesn't really look surprised at all, which confirms my suspicions.
After a moment of silence, during which time Dove stares into the fire and I stare over at her, trying to read her, she looks back up at me, looks me in the eye again, and begins quietly, a strange, longing expression on her face, "You know, I've never even kissed a guy before..."
That's all she's able to say, as that's all the invitation I need to lean forward, take her head in my hands, and kiss her. Her lips are soft and warm against mine, and, after a second, her hands - shaking and tentative as they are - make their way up and lock around my neck, holding me against her. Unfortunately, we both run out of breath soon after, but all of my disappointment at not being able to kiss her any longer is completely gotten rid of when she gives me a small smile, her eyes on mine, and tells me, "I think I kind of like you now, Charlie."
She then huddles up against me, which prompts me to wrap my arms around her, and falls asleep a second later, her chest rising and falling reassuringly. I watch her for a few moments, struck by how beautiful she is, before realizing exactly how tired I am, giving her a kiss on the forehead, and then falling asleep myself.

"You weren't very smart for keeping that fire burning through the night, were you?" he asks me, a wicked grin on his face and his black eyes boring into mine as he holds a gun, a small pistol, to be exact, against my forehead. I know that I'm about to die - Dove, in her hypocrisy and apparently in order to break my heart before I'm killed, ran off into the woods as soon as she heard him approaching - but I've decided to follow Dove's words, and die quietly and with my dignity. Like she said, I won't give him the satisfaction of breaking me.
"Scream for the girl to come save you. Go on, do it; that way she can watch you die," he bids me, as he walks to my left and holds the gun against my temple, and I shake my head wordlessly in denial of his request.
"Go on, do it!" he commands, more urgently and annoyed this time, and gives me a shove for good measure.
However, I merely shake my head again and say, "No," as I stare straight in front of me and wish that he would just go ahead and kill me already, so that way there's less of a chance Dove actually will see me die. After all, even though I don't respect her for running away when I needed her, I don't want her to be permanently scarred by seeing me die, and I also hope that she'll be able to get out of this alive, even though I obviously won't.
"Fine. Have it your way," he tells me, and, as I hear him cock the pistol next to my head, I realize that this is it, that I'm about to see whatever follows death. Hopefully it's heaven, or at least a nothingness of sorts, because I don't really want to spend any more time in hell, after experiencing it here on earth.
His finger tenses on the trigger and I close my eyes, waiting for my brains to get blown out, to hear a gunshot not from right next to my ear and open my eyes in shock to see him lying on the ground next to me, with a bullet wound in his heart. I then look up to find Dove standing there about fifty feet away with a rifle in her hands and a look of pure loathing on her face as she stares at his body.
"Dove!" I cry in surprise and happiness, running towards her to embrace her in a hug. When I pull back, I look down at her worriedly to make sure that she's ok, and, when she appears to be so, I ask her, "Why did you come back? And how did you get a gun?"
"My father and I used to hunt in these woods, and, when he died, one of his rifles got left out here because no one knew where it was but me. I made the fire last night as a trap, because I knew he would see it and come to it, and then, when I heard him approaching, I ran out, got the gun, and came back to kill him, because I wasn't going to leave you, Charlie. I wouldn't even have left you early last night, when I still didn't like you," she tells me, and gives me a smile here.
I have leaned in and am about to kiss her, completely overcome with happiness, when all of a sudden an SUV bursts into the clearing to stop ten feet in front of us, and a woman that I recognize from parent-teacher conferences as Dove's mother jumps out.
When I turn my gaze onto Dove questioningly, she says, "There was also a cell phone hidden with the rifle, so that way my dad and I could call someone if we got lost."
"Oh," I exclaim quietly, and am about to say more when Dove's mom embraces us both in a huge, almost rib-cracking hug.
When she pulls back, she tells Dove, "I was so worried when you didn't come home from school yesterday that I called the police, and then when I got that call from your dad's old phone, I didn't know what to think. It's a good thing I picked it up and drove out here as quickly as I could!"
She then turns to me and says, "Your parents are frantic looking for you too, and apparently eight other girls went missing with you. Do you know what happened to them?"
Dove and I look at each other for a moment, and my gaze flickers onto his dead body laying off to the side. "Yeah, we do," I reply slowly, "but I think we should save our story for the police."
"Oh," Dove's mother murmurs, and here she notices the body lying on the ground behind us. "Oh!" she exclaims again, but in a much more surprised and frightened tone this time. "Well, I should probably get you two out of here and to the police station, so that way you can tell them what happened and they can come out here and deal with... that." She gestures to the body, and we nod our heads in agreement with her plan as she ushers us into the car. She then gets in herself, and, as she backs up and begins to drive away, my hand finds Dove's and I give her a tired and small but sincere smile.
Despite all that we had seen and done, the memories would fade some, the nightmares would come and go, and we would get past this tragedy... together.

Celaeno x Maia

The doorbell rang, its tinny sounds cutting through the noise of the cafe, and I froze, stuck where I was. Not because the doorbell rang, but because, for the first time in my life, I could actually feel someone's presence before I could see them.
The cafe fell quiet as other people felt the visitor's entrance and turned to see them, and I took a moment to steel myself before coming out from from my hiding spot behind the front desk and turning to face the newcomer.

My attempts at steeling myself with mental reprimands did nothing at all to stop my jaw from opening wide and my mind from going completely blank at the person standing before me. He was tall and slim but undeniably muscular, as the few inches of bare chest that were revealed by his tailored white shirt that was open at the top proved, and he had darker skin that hinted at Latin or Greek heritage. His face was stunning, his cheekbones bold, his nose perfectly sized and centered on his face, his lips full but not feminine, his dark brown hair incredibly thick despite being close-cropped and perfectly quaffed. His eyes, those two brilliantly red balls of fire that burned into me like two miniature stars, just put the icing on the cake.
As I looked him over, numb with amazement at his physical perfection, it occurred to me that he literally glowed, that there was a soft but definite aura of light around him that just sealed the idea that he was a heavenly being, an angel, perhaps. No, not an angel. A star.
"I would like a latte, please." His voice was low and melodious, with some sort of accent that hinted at Latin - not Spanish; it was too old and majestic for Spanish - and Greek and perhaps even Arabic, and would have easily burned its way through the noise around it with its incredibly powerful energy if there was any noise to burn through, and I nodded my head mechanically, trying my best to focus on the simple task of writing his order down. Unfortunately, my hands weren't working very well, so the task took twice as long as it should have.
The man said nothing, however, and just watched me patiently. When I finally managed to write down the last letter and ask him for the money he owed - two dollars and eleven cents - he paid with a respectful silence. Our hands touched once during the process, a mere coincidental brush of the skin that sent shivers of feeling running my arms, but he didn't seem to notice. No, he was too observant to not have noticed, so he must just have not cared. Somehow, that thought almost made me feel worse.
He turned away, (hopefully) oblivious to the internal struggle going on within me about his lack of reaction to our interaction, obviously meaning to go stand by the door and wait for his order like the other customers, when I remembered that I needed his name and called out to him, "Sir, I need your name."
He turned back around at that, his red gaze locking onto mine and making it nearly impossible to continue. But, for the sake of making it look like I wasn't a complete idiot and was able to resist the temptation of him, I prevailed to add, although my voice sounded weak and most definitely distracted and/or intimidated, "So I can call you back up here when your coffee is ready."
"Of course," he answered smoothly, making up for my lack of grace a million times over with the grace that just exuded from his every pore. "My name is Celaeno."
His name was just as beautiful and mysterious and exotic as he was, and it just intensified the realization of what I already knew, of what I had known from the first moment I had laid eyes on him: that I wanted him desperately but that he didn't even belong in the same universe with me.
Avoiding these thoughts the best I could, I dropped my gaze again and wrote his name underneath his order slowly, finding no need to ask for spelling despite the fact that I had never been a particularly good speller of names. It was as if I had known his name long before I had actually known him, although he was actually starting to look familiar now, for some reason. I knew I hadn't ever seen him like this before - I would never have forgotten if I had seen him like this before - but I had the strange feeling that I had seen him before, when he had a much different appearance and maybe was even in a different form entirely.
Shaking my head slightly to clear my head of all such thoughts - of course I hadn't seen him before; what on earth was going through my deranged mind? - I stared over at Celaeno for one last moment before tearing my gaze away and turning to the next customer.

As soon as I received my coffee from the other woman behind the counter - who shot me an incredibly interested look that I didn't care about - I retreated to a table in the corner, sat down and just watched her over my coffee. She was beautiful, so beautiful; all of those nights I had spent gazing down on her had done her true radiance no justice. She caught me staring at her a few times, which caused me to look away for a few moments to make it seem like I had not been staring at her, but I had the feeling that she was oblivious to my observation of her and merely had looked over at me because she couldn't keep her eyes off of me.
That was the problem with going around as a human: I attracted far too much attention from the actual humans. I could feel a half a dozen gazes on me at any given time while I was in the cafe, and in crowds it was just worse. People literally would form a circle around me and just stare, their manners completely thrown out the window by their surprise at my appearance. She was not as bad as those people, as she at least tried to hide her attraction to me, but I knew that she wanted me, and that only made me want her even more desperately.
After about an hour of watching her, during which time my coffee had completely cooled off and I had drawn an audience of giggling teenage girls, I decided that the most beautiful thing about her was her eyes, those pinpricks of blue-green brilliance that lit up the day rather like I lit up the night, when I was in my original form. It took me another hour to decide that the second most beautiful thing about her was her hesitant, innocent nature, despite the fact that it my heart ache keenly because I knew that I was going to partially ruin that soon. After three hours, I had settled upon her lips as her third most striking characteristic, because they were full but not overly puffy and just begging for another pair of lips to be matched up against them. As I thought about that, I couldn't help but raise a hand to my own lips and trace them lightly, wondering what it would be like to touch them to hers. Incredible, obviously.
Sighing deeply, I pulled my hand away from my face and reached up to run my fingers through my air, causing the gaggle of teenage girls sitting on the other side of the room from me and very conspicuously watching me to all make noises of interest and longing. Fortunately, as the hours passed by slowly but in a blissful haze of amazement observation, the girls left, one by one, until finally, at six fifty-nine PM, a minute before the store officially closed and long after all of the other customers and even the other employees had left, I found myself alone with her.
She was wiping the front counter down with a damp rag, oblivious to the fact that there was someone else in the room. I got to my feet gracefully and silently, even managing to push my chair in noiselessly, and crossed the room to stand in front of her. It took only a millisecond for her to realize my presence, and she jumped a good three feet in the air when she did so.
"Celaeno!" she exclaimed in surprise as she stared up at me, her eyes longing and almost fearful, and I felt a small burst of pleasure rush through me at the fact that she had remembered my name. "What are you doing here still? You bought your coffee almost six hours ago!"
"I wasn't able to leave you, I'm afraid," I told her quietly, my gaze glued to hers, and it was then that I was seized by such a desire to kiss her that I had to ball my fists to restrain myself. Far away, she was beautiful, but she was absolutely and almost dangerously irresistible up close.
"What do you mean, you couldn't leave me?" she asked me, her expression torn between morbid curiosity, apprehensive hope and definite fear.
"Maia," I began, inhaling deeply with pleasure at the way her name rolled off of my tongue, "there are many things I need to tell you. Will you come on a walk with me?"
She nodded her head slowly in confirmation, and happiness welled up inside of me. "There are many things I want to ask you too, so yeah, a walk sounds great," she answered. her eyes never leaving mine, and then walked out from behind the counter to head towards the door.
I was a step in front of her, and reached the door just in time to open it for her, in an act of chivalry that she deserved a million times over.
She murmured quietly, "Thank you," as she stepped through the door frame, her gaze on me the whole time, and I told her sincerely in reply, with a small nod of my head, "It is my pleasure."
I then stepped out of the cafe myself, and turned to Maia to ask her, before she could say anything, "Do you know a good place to watch the stars from?"
She seemed taken aback by my question and by the fact that she didn't get a chance to talk, but recovered quickly to respond, "Yeah. Follow me." After a moment of internal debating, she took my hand in hers, sending incredibly pleasant and incredibly intense electric shocks up my skin, and began to guide me down the street towards the place where we could gaze up at the real forms of my family and me.

"So, why exactly did you have me take us here again?" I asked Celaeno as I stared over at him. His red eyes, thoughtful as he stared at the night sky, seemed to burn brighter in the dark, and his glowing aura was more obvious too. In other words, if he was gorgeous in daylight, he was absolutely stunning at night.
Celaeno turned to me and gazed down at me, just as thoughtfully as he had been while looking at the sky, for a long moment before finally replying, "Because I wanted you to see my family and I for what we really are." He gestured to the stars above us, and immediately I understood what he was talking about, because I had suspected it all along.
"You're a star," I breathed quietly, my eyes locked on his, and, after a moment longer, he nodded his head in confirmation, his eyes becoming almost sad and most definitely a little fearful.
The first thing out of me was, "But... how? Stars are big balls of burning gas. They can't take on a human form and come down to earth!"
"And there it is: the distinctly human belief that, just because you know the appearance of something, you know everything about it," Celaeno said, with a hint of a bitter smirk on his face, and immediately I wished that I hadn't said what I did. However, Celaeno didn't give me much time to regret my decision, as he continued, "Stars are incredibly powerful, Maia, as this whole planet's existence proves, and so, if such less powerful beings as you humans can exist with a consciousness, why cannot stars?"
"So every star is actually a conscious, living being?" I blurted out in surprise, before I could realize what I was saying, and Celaeno nodded.
"Not all stars actually use their consciousness very often though; in fact, some never use it all, and solely live and die in the form you humans know them as: great big balls of burning gas," Celaeno responded, and I couldn't help but think idly for a moment on how terrible a life that must be, just doing nothing but existing for all eternity. I didn't understand why anyone would ever choose that; I guess I wouldn't have made a very good star.
"It is quite a boring and pointless existence; trust me, Maia," he added quietly, and I looked over at him in surprise when I recognized, for the first time, that he was using my name without me giving it to him.
"How do you know my name?" I questioned him in a whisper, my eyes locked on his as I compelled him to answer with all of my will, although I had a feeling that, if he really didn't want to answer, he wouldn't, and there was nothing I could do about it.
"Through the same way that I know you are twenty-one years, seven months and eleven days old, and that your favorite color is fiery red, and that the name of your first grade teacher is Mrs. Marshall: you told me, Maia." His eyes bored holes into mine, but I didn't back down, mostly because I was clinging to his every word and probably would have fallen down if I tried to look away. "On nights like these, when you had a secret to tell but no one you could trust it with, you came outside and spoke to the stars, and I listened eagerly. On nights like these, you poured your heart out to me, Maia, and I accepted it with open arms."
I stared at him, my mind and body completely blank and empty with shock, for a long moment of silence before finally asking, "Why are you here on earth, visiting me, of all people?"
"Because, when you unknowingly poured your heart out to me, I couldn't help but give you my heart in return." His eyes never left mine, and their enchanting, burning pull made it even harder for me to understand what he was saying.
However, I finally caught on, and murmured in complete amazement, "You love me?"
"With all of my heart and soul, if I have such things," Celaeno confirmed, and then, like I had been hoping he would do from the moment we had met, he leaned forward and kissed me gently.
His lips were warm and soft on mine, and the arms that curled around me were incredibly strong. He just radiated power and heat - I could feel the former all around him and the latter by touching him - and I couldn't help but think dazedly, as he held me against him, that it definitely was the best kiss I had experienced so far.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and he pulled back after a few moments of bliss to just stare down at me, his long, dark lashes framing his fiery eyes as a small, contented smile played on his lips.
Finally my mind unfroze, and I found myself asking, "So what do we do from here, about you and I and our relationship?"
A shadow crossed Celaeno's face, and immediately I knew I had hit upon a tough topic. "That is the issue, Maia: you and I cannot have a relationship. In fact, it probably would have been better for both of us if I had not come down here today like I had, but I just couldn't bear to stay away."
"So that's it? You just came down here to reveal yourself to me, kiss me once and then leave, not even bothering to think about how this encounter might affect me?" I was - very surprisingly - incredibly angry at Celaeno, even though anger wasn't an emotion I felt very often and certainly hadn't imagined feeling towards him, and I pushed away from him, not wanting to touch him when he was so close and so apparently attainable but actually forever out of my reach.
"What do you mean, how this encounter might affect you?" Celaeno questioned, choosing to ignore my anger and question in favor of asking me a question himself.
"I..." I began, pausing as I debated whether or not I should tell him and reveal to the world - and to myself - the truth I had been hiding. It wasn't much of a debate, though, as I almost immediately chose to reveal myself, like he had to me, and continued, "I love you, Celaeno, and I have loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you, and now the thought of living without you seems unbearable."
"Oh," he exclaimed quietly, staring down at me with his eyes wide with amazement.
After a few moments of silence, I asked him, "So will you stay with me now, now that you know that I love you like you love me?"
"If I choose to stay on this planet in this form for more than twelve hours, my heavenly form will cease to exist and I will never be able to return to the stars and to my family," Celaeno said, his eyes locked on mine thoughtfully. "But I think you might be worth it," he added, a small and loving smile curving his lips as stared down at me.
I couldn't help but smile myself at that, and he and I just stood there, gazing at each other, for a while before an idiotic question that I couldn't help but ask popped into my mind.
"Will you... will you still glow, if you choose to stay?" I blurted out before I really had a chance to think about what I was saying, to immediately wish I hadn't spoken at all when I realized what I said.
"Yes," Celaeno answered, his smile becoming slightly amused, and we stood in silence for a few seconds longer before I and my impatient curiosity finally couldn't take it any longer.
"So will you stay with me?" I asked, my eyes locked on his, and, for an incredibly long moment, he just regarded me, a million emotions running through his blazing red eyes.
"Yes," he finally responded again, and, as he bent down over me to kiss me, I knew that a star had gone out in the sky as one entered my life.

[BPeppers]

I LOVE Scarflight and Beau's story! Thanks so so so so so so much! <33