⚫ When I Dive ⚫ - LU: Jun 23 [crits welcome]

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This is not a happy story. Fairies and butterflies died with the Oldworld countries. Children of the Edmund-Valyn war will have to settle for Autotoxins, war orphanages, and bedtime stories of a fabled spy working both sides of the fight.

Prologue:

I run my hand gently along the curtains draped in front of the massive windows of Heylend House. Their pattern isn't ugly, not even close, but it is something that has long since been out of fashion. Swirls of paisley run up the sides, complemented by dots and stripes in horrible, alternating pattern. They're just slightly off, like everything else in this house. Like the owner of this house.

"Miss Uten," A deep voice comes from behind me. I whirl around to see the elephant of a man, bags upon bags of loose skin hanging from various crevices in his face, deep-set dark eyes shining with intelligence. He's tall, towering over me, but he's got some girth to him as well, his belt straining against his bulging belly that just emerges from beneath a heavy black cloak. "I thought it'd be long before you dared set foot here again. Much longer than this."

I raise my eyebrows. "But it's always such a pleasure to see you," I purr, "I would never miss the opportunity." He closes his eyes in exasperation. When he opens them again, they're no longer dark, but grey and only lightening. His wrinkled, frail old hand tightens around the thick wooden staff he holds at his waist and his knuckles whiten past the full moon.

Swallowing hard, I back away. His eyes are nearly blank now, milky and just brightening. A faint yellow smoke pours from his eye sockets, billowing out in what almost look like clumps. His mouth drops open and I can glimpse the yawning of the cavern that is his throat, how his teeth rot, crumbling from the crowns down, like one sees at a failed dentist's after years of decay. The smell of sulfur falls over the entire room and he careens dangerously towards me, his feet tripping forwards as if he's lost control of his body.

My heart pounding, I start to run. Through the room, out of the house, out of the yard. My feet don't stop stumbling until I'm a half-mile into the woods that surround him. The dusk shadows of trees rise all around me, their branches reaching to my bones and pulling me back. The moon just shines through the dense forestation, a brilliant orange against the midnight sky.

A tremor runs through my spine and I muffle a swear. Not now. Not here. But it shivers again, and again, and I'm losing control of my limbs, I'm flailing about. My cheek hits the muddy ground with a splat but I can't move. My lower body is entirely paralysed, locked in place by a force beyond my control. If I can get to Zone, I'll snap out before dawn. Before the Jkaje come.

As I close my eyes, praying for once to snap into Zone, one single, horrible thought enters my mind. Even if I manage to ward off the Jkaje, Traligh knows I'm alive. Coming here was a mistake. I just hope it wasn't a fatal one.


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LU is a new feature I'm adding. It stands for "Last Updated" and is a nice new way to keep track of the story if it's bookmarked. One glance will tell you if you've read the last edit.

Critiques and comments are totally welcome! Please comment them in quotes, though, so it's easy to tell that they aren't a part of the story. Thanks!

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Chapter One: My Best Friend Almost Kills Me

Terror floods through me as I wait in the darkness, my body lying prone to an easy attack by the Jkaje. Those horrible creatures of light and absence would destroy me if their Glow got within meters of me. I can almost picture them now, stalking on their long, barbed, spindly but graceful legs. Their long, thin muzzles coming down to feed on the darkness that would flood from me. I shudder.

To my immediate relief, there's the sharp popping sound that signifies the transfer to Zone, and I'm out of the forest. I snap awake the second my feet leave the forest floor because only a dead man would be caught still Transferring in the Zone. The psychedelic colours of the roof blind me, but after a round of serious blinking, I remember that I still- somehow- have my satchel with me. I dig into it, feeling around various knives and bottles of serums until I find what I'm looking for. A faint blue pouch of power. I grab a fistful of it, steel myself, and throw it to my eyes.

Instead of stinging, it completely numbs the effects of colour until everything is visible only in infrared. The entire colour spectrum, meant to confuse users of Zone, disappears to dark blue. I take a quick glance down to my hands to make absolutely certain I grabbed the right power, and sure enough, they glow a green-yellow-red against the royal blues of the Zone. Now just to find the right exit.

I crawl along the floor, trying to remain unnoticed by any beasts or other users. I keep a sharp eye out the whole time for any other splotches of any colour other than blue, but there aren't any. Maybe I got lucky this time. After a long period of searching, I find the small, squat dresser and I slip into it, closing the light oaken door behind me.

It was the idea of the creator of the Zone, a man named Isaias, to have the entrance/exit points be wardrobes and dressers based on an old children's fairytale where four kids crawl through their dresser into a magical world. But our Zone is nothing magical. It was created for the warfront, as a way of teleporting soldiers and strategists to various posts. We'd just carefully place a wardrobe into a dump, or by the side of an abandoned road, and POP! Go the soldiers.

We've been at war with the Valyn for as long as I can remember. Certainly longer than I've been alive, so at least fifteen years. A long time ago, during another war that our people were staying out of, the Valyn decided that we wouldn't join them and blew half of our medical resources to bits with Atomagic. They made us into sworn enemies that day. The Valyn just didn't know exactly how powerful the Edmund could be. We will strike them down, one wardrobe at a time.

I crawl from the small dresser and smash straight into my best friend, Mona. She sits crouched at it, a finger pressed to her lips, fear shadowing her face. When she sees me, that fear morphs into something WAY more dangerous for Mona: anger. She takes a long, steady breath to right herself and pulls me up. The rest of our Bunk are still sleeping, curled in their cots. Little Chakalia, the youngest, is eleven. She sleeps with her hair fanned out on the pillow like a crown of sadness.

Mona raises her hand, and I can see it warming, the infrared power still hasn't completely worn off. She curls her fingertips in like when I know she's trying to contain her rage and her power, but it'll only end up hurting her. She doesn't even have close to enough control over her Atomagic and she will kill herself. I think I have enough resistance that it won't kill me. And so I grab her hand, and shove it to my chest.

Pain explodes everywhere and the world goes completely white.

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I wake to Mona's urgent voice. She's calling something, something far away, and it's fuzzy. I can't make out her words and I just try to prop myself up on my elbows. Immediately, pain rushes through my chest and I collapse back down onto the... gurney? My still body lies on a medical gurney, poorly crafted of cheap metal, held together with screws. I raise a hand to my chest and it's burning with heat. There's some sort of medical salve spread over me, though, a green one. It stinks a putrid smell.

"Illiya!" Mona's voice finally comes through and I tilt my head. "What?" Her shoulders relax in relief but then anger enters her tone. "You little mother-" I pull the pillow over my head to block out the rest of the profanity. Mona certainly doesn't have the cleanest mouth. I wait a few minutes, and then after she's done, remove the pillow. She stands there, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, a furious look on her face. Her hands look okay, though, and I figure she's used all of her Atomagic up for the next while. I raise my hand carefully, wincing at the burning that sears through my chest. "Hi."

She gives me an incredulous look. "Hi? That's all I get, Hi? Not Oh Mona, I'm sorry I broke out of the orphanage and almost died being an idiot! I will forever thank you for not killing me out of pure anger when I got back! That would be nice, I think!" She narrows her eyes at me. "And you screeched like some sort of bloody barn owl as you were a DOUBLE-idiot and absorbed my Atomagic, and then Matron caught us with the wardrobe open and a freshly used passage. She thought I was a traitor, Illiya! She tried to send me to the Drowning! I had to convince her that you were hurt enough to be a top priority and YOU just almost DIED! UGHHHHHHHHH I HATE you sometimes!" She rages. I feel a faint smile come to my lips. If I really wanted to, I could toy with Mona...

Matron bursts into the room, her wide figure barely squeezing through the door. The thick, flower-patterned apron that she wears tightly over her clothes stretches as she leans down to lay a damp water cloth against my forehead. "Are you dying of pain, Illiya?" She demands in her rough, sharp tone. I shake my head, and then glance at Mona. Her eyes are wide, and her entire expression reads one word: NO. I shoot her a wink and I can see her just barely bite her lip to contain a curse.I fake a cough

"I can't believe m-m-Mona bloody tried to KILL me!" I cry, forcing tears to spill from my eyes. One talent I learned early on in this place: fake crying. It's the only thing that'll break Matron. She doesn't care if you're bleeding out but if you're crying, she'll notice. Matron's eyes narrow and she whirls on Mona. "You IDIOT girl! I should have you thrown in the DROWNING for what you just did!" Mona tries to protest but it's futile, I already have Matron in the palm of my hand. If I just up and decided to die as well it would be horrible publicity for the whole concept of Training Orphanages for the Cause of Edmund, or TOCE. I have more leverage over Matron right now than I'll probably ever have again. Of course I'm going to exploit it.

"I- I- I," I give Mona a big, pouty-eyed look that I make sure Matron catches. "I thought you were my friend." Matron rounds on Mona, pointing to the Drowning. "Young lady, go and serve your punishment. And if this EVER happens again-" She warns. Mona shoots me a look of pure, undiluted fury before heading off to the Drowning. She'll be fine, of course, she has the largest lungs of anybody I know and can hold her breath for hours, but it'll do exactly what I needed for tonight: pull Matron away from the gardens for ten minutes to let her out. Just ten minutes is all I need.

Matron turns back to me. "Now you shuttle your butt off to bed. If you're not dying you don't need to take up a gurney. Scoot." I don't bother to remind her that we have literally rows upon rows of gurneys waiting, empty, in the hospital wing. I don't need anything else from her right now. So I skip back to our Bunk after she's turned her back and a sly smile crawls to my face. I've just gotten out of daily duties and I've got Matron out of the garden. Now all that's left to do are the Shaft and the Tide. I tuck myself into bed and close my eyes. I should almost get killed by Mona more often.

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Chapter Two: Someone's a Little Too Fond of Pasta

I wait until the clock chimes eight. The day of leisure has been great, just lounging about in my bed and sleeping. I did get down on all fours and check on the wardrobe transport to Zone, but it was still cooling off. There is a catch to Isaias's system; it's not perfect. He didn't make Zone usable up until the next three days after a transport. Rumors had it that that is what he was working on when he died, but there's no way to be certain. Instant Zone travel, and maybe increased control, would be so beneficial to our side, we'd win the war in months. But Isaias moved his lab to an underground location after a spy tried to break in and steal his work, and nobody knows where it is. In a few dozen years, it'll become just another of the Edmund's myths, when Zone runs out of power.

Pushing our window open, I slip from it onto its sill. A massive oak stands strong just outside our Bunk, conveniently, and so I just have to shimmy onto its branches and slide my way down, right into the garden. My source said the plants I'm looking for- a wonderfully useful variety called Hämébu, would be in an overturned flowerpot next to the statue of a gnome girl holding a goose.

It takes me a few tense minutes to find the statue. All around me, plants grow, stalking up in the night, their new shadows creeping over me. Beds upon beds of produce and the occasional flower rise in a pattern. One bed every three feet. Each bed is eleven feet long and seven feet wide. They're easy to maneuver around, and I find the statue sitting exactly where my source said it would be, underneath a young red willow. The leaves are stored in a small pile under the flowerpot. Dust coats the inside, so the pot must have been sitting there for a while. Lucky for me, these herbs don't expire.

As I shimmy back up the tree, leaves held clenched tightly between my teeth, I'm careful not to let them touch my tongue. Any contact with the magic that flows through me could set them off. Teeth don't contain it, but saliva does. I reach my room and collapse onto my cot just as I hear the main gate to the garden creak open and Matron's voice carries through the open window into the Bunk. I made it just in time.

Mona's voice flows into the room before I can even see her. "You are a MAJOR di-" I shove my fingers into my ears as she steps in, spluttering and soaked to the brim, with water dripping from her short dark hair and plastering it to her cheek. Her clothes are long since ditched, probably too wet for her to even wear, and so she sports only her underwear and undershirt, which stick to her skin as if they're lined with honey. She stomps in and sits firmly down on the bed, arms crossed over her chest. She stops moving for a few moments and then shivers start to run through her, her shoulders trembling with every tiny draft that seeps into our Bunk from the freezing outside.

I unstopper my ears and offer her a dry blanket from the stash beneath my bed. "You done yet?" She shoots me a scathing look before accepting the blanket. She wraps it around herself and curls up on her cot like an exhausted mummy. "Why?" She demands almost rhetorically. "Why would you even do that? You knew I was exhausted and you knew I couldn't breathe for more than four hours yet you sent me at two and it isn't cleared until eight." My heart drops. She's right. I almost forget the herbs clenched tightly in my hand. I honest-to-God just almost killed my best friend by drowning her. "I'm so sorry, Mona, I forgot it was still early and I forgot they changed the checking schedule and I just forgot everything I'm so-" She cuts me off. "Did you get it?"

I reel back in shock. "How did you know where I was going?" She smirks. "You really don't give me enough credit. Six hours sitting alone in the water gives a girl some time to think. The only reason you'd send me in for so long- other than forgetting- at the exact time is that you needed Matron to not be somewhere. I just thought back to her schedule, which I saw in her office after she tried to keep me in there all day for being a traitor, and remembered that she gardened starting at eight. Then it clicked. Also, the window's still open. So, what'd you get?" I blink in surprise and walk over to shut the window, then hold out the handful of delicate, crumbling leaves. Mona leans in for a look and wrinkles her nose. "You nearly killed me for dried basil?" I start. "What do you mean, dried basil? This is Hämébu, it's a super-fragile plant and when it's ground it serves as a conductor for-" She shakes her head after taking another whiff. "Nope. Sorry, Illiya, but that's dried basil, pure and simple. Just like the kind they have in the kitchens for pasta." I take a deep breath in, trying to contain my growing rage. She's right. It's not Hämébu, it's basil. It's freaking basil. I just risked Mona's life for a handful of dried basil.

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I pull the lamp closer to me as Mona rolls over in her bed. The blanket slips from her shoulder and I can see her exposed skin, shivering in the new cold. Stretching, I sit up from where I've been at the one desk in our Bunk for the past three hours and walk over. My hand closes around the corner of the old, ragged yellow thing and I gently pull it back up over her, tucking it in at her chin. She blinks a few times, and her lips part as if about to say something, but then she falls back into a deep and heavy sleep. I sigh and return to the desk and poring over the scrap of paper I found in Matron's garbage when I was taking it out a few days ago. It's a part of blueprints for something, with lines crisscrossing the paper that mark beams and structures. Little numbers, maybe lengths, or material types, rest along each and every marking, everywhere from 3 to 400. In the bottom right-hand corner, a section of someone's signature rests in a quick scrawl. It's written in the old-time letters, all curly and looped and connected, not at all like ours. We're taught to make letters neat, even, and spaced to optimise readability. But the signature is all made up of varying lengths and loop sizes and letters that look nothing like how ours do. There's a capital D, and what I think is a K, but that's all I can make out. But then something catches my eye.

It's one line, but it just looks so familiar, curving and bending in a way that I somehow know. I squint at it, struggling to make it out against the rest, but then its number pops out at me: 498. That's a new one. And then it clicks. It's the higher stairwell of the Shaft, and the number is the level of Atomagic Toxins left in the air. The higher the number is, the worse it is.

Excitedly, I return to the rest, running my fingers along various lines and parts of the building. Now that I know it's the Shaft, everything clears and is easy to identify. The area with the least toxins, understandably, is the entrance, where they leak into our world and disperse into the atmosphere. Its number is only a 3. But the most heavily toxic area I've been in is the lower stairwell, not the higher one, and the lower one is just a 160. The higher stairwell is two and a half times as toxic. I peer closer, dread pooling in my stomach, and sure enough, upon squinting, there's a tiny bubble marked simply with the letter J tucked away about halfway up the higher stairwell. That's what I'm looking for, that's what I need.

It supposedly contains three silver strips of a metal whose name is long since lost but is the strongest material on Earth. They can each be used once, for any purpose, but as soon as they touch any material that's not their casing or the gloves inside that are used to handle them, they last for a half hour and then dissolve. Nobody knows why their inventor made them this way, but there are suspicions that they were originally engineered for a specific project or heist the inventor was planning to pull off. There's a widespread rumor that his assistant, a man known only by the name Birn, stole them before he could put them to their intended use and sold them on the black market for some quick cash. Somehow, they circulated briefly into our systems but the Valyn got hold of them and wreaked havoc on some of our defences. After that, the Edmund destroyed all that were still in our systems, and tricked the Valyn into using pretty much all of theirs, so as to remove the invention entirely from the world. But the casing reading "J" was apparently one in a set of 26, 26 designated to survive the removal of them from the forces. My source tipped me off about it two months ago. But he wasn't accurate about the Hämébu, and he might not be right about this either. Also, I barely survived the toxicity of the lower staircase, how the hell am I going to survive this?

I sigh and tuck the parchment blueprints back into my undershirt. I can't risk anyone finding it, or I'd really be in the doghouse. Then I curl up on my cot and close my eyes. Tomorrow, I'll check up on my source. Tonight, I'll just keep dreaming.

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Wow- this is taking a totally different direction than I'd originally thought it would- it's fun to be able to roll with it and not stress about planning!

[alliant]

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Chapter Three: I Do Take a Dive... But Not Into Water

Later the next morning, I sneak out. Matron still is on the fritz about something she found in the garden, apparently, and she's been running around demanding questions of everyone. I sure don't want to be caught up in that, so the best move now is just to hide away. Plus I have a certain source to talk to. So I leave the room before even the sun, my thinly socked feet cold on the hard stone floors. All I wear is my underclothes, and a heavy cloak that shields me in warmth. My actual clothes I lent to Mona until hers dry, as an apology of sorts. She just huffed and accepted them before falling back to sleep. I still can't believe I forgot that it was still early. What if she'd actually drowned? Then how bad of a friend would I be? And for a handful of DRIED BASIL LEAVES, no less! That flipping Tyerel better know what he's doing with this or he is about to get it.

Passing carefully by the only Bunk room separating ours from the stairs is a feat. It rooms some of the worst, most annoying people in the orphanage. A pair named Indigo and Larse. Indigo is seventeen, has a tattoo of a wolf on his left shoulder, and short hair dyed in a bright purple. He refuses to listen to anyone who tells him that Indigo is actually a dark purple, and if you suggest it, he'll deck you. His partner in crime, Larse, isn't much better. He's a scrawny sixteen, with a head of carrot hair and freckles on every surface of his skin. A massive scar runs from the left side of his forehead to his mouth, crossing over his nose, and he refuses to talk about it. There are rumours, though. That he came from another war orphanage and he tried to escape, so they punished him and then transferred him. That Indigo actually gave him that scar, though I know that one's not true, because the scar is at least two years old and Larse has only been here for a year and a half. Unless he knew Indigo before, there's no way he could have given him that scar. The one I'd believe is that he did it to himself, at the last orphanage he was in, to make them transfer him. (it's been confirmed by Matron's files that he came from another orphanage, I snuck in and checked while Mona distracted her a few months ago) Nobody understands Larse but he's rumoured to have an incredibly high pain tolerance as well, and so Indigo uses him as bait when they pull heists like Mona's and mine.

I slide carefully past Indigo and Larse's room, and breathe a sigh of relief. I sit carefully down on the banister that leads to the landing floor. Not only is it more fun this way, but the stairs are made of rotted old wood and with every tiny footstep or even bit of pressure, they emit creaks and groans louder than the rusty washing machine on the 3rd floor. So the banister is always a safer option in the noise level regard. However, what I didn't account for is that yesterday was Cleaning Day, and so it's freshly slicked up. The moment I move a muscle, I'm down, whooshing face-first down the long, winding, thin slab of rounded wood. I frantically try to grab it and stop, try to wrap my hands around it and pull myself to a screeching halt, but I can't. My heart leaps into my throat as I see the ground of the first floor fast approaching, with a huge pile of- EUGH! Is that manure? Sure enough, a heap of animal dung sits in a messy pile in a wheelbarrow at the bottom of the stairs. I clench my teeth and stick my arm into the bars holding up the banister.

Pain shoots through me and I bite down hard on my lip to avoid screaming. My feet dangle just over the edge of the banister, just over the manure pile. I glance down to see my arm bent at an angle that's not quite natural. My wrist tilts to the side it shouldn't. Great. Now I've somehow got to figure out how to set this and avoid anyone seeing it, especially Tyerel. If he sees any weakness in me at all, he'll pounce. I need him as a source for the breakout materials. He needs to get out of here just as much as I do. Maybe even more.

Above me, on the floor I just came from, a door creaks open. I can tell by the faint jingling of a bell that it's Matron's and if she catches me out here I'm absolutely screwed. I glance from the stairwell to the manure pile. No. No, that's a really bad idea. I can't do that. But the creaks from the stairs begin, and she's getting closer, and closer... I grit my teeth and let go of the banister, and slide down into the manure. Thank God for my cloak, which I can pull up around my head, but it squelches as I burrow deeper and deeper into it. I cannot believe I'm hiding in a pile of poop with a broken wrist. This is not where I expected to be at this point, to say the least. The creaks from above hesitate as they see the wheelbarrow, and I try to push myself farther and farther down into it, my nose wrinkling at the stench that creeps up. I cannot believe I'm doing this. But it works. Matron pauses, and then I can tell from the patterns of the creaking that she's heading back up. I can't believe that worked. But I play it safe, and wait another minute until I'm absolutely positive that she's gone, and then I pry myself up. It was disgusting in there.

I creep outside, wincing at the faint creak the door makes as I slip out, and dash down to the river. The garden is locked, of course, but the river that runs next to it doesn't have any locks. I jump in and relish the cold as it washes all the traces of the manure from me. Then I head towards Tyerel's hideout.

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FUN NEW FEATURE!!! Since I've passed 100 views in just a few chapters, I've decided to add a special bonus thing: Any time anything is in quotes, it's not actually a part of the story, but BONUS INFORMATION that you guys get! (It may or may not come up in the story ) As we've just hit 100 views, I'm going to do a short bit on from where one of our newest characters, Indigo, came and what further role in the story he has to play. The next mark for me is at 300 views, and I'll run a poll then to let you guys choose whose Quotestory you want next. (voting in the polls about plot and characters are also very helpful, and I try to respond to reader feedback as much as I can! Keep up the good work, guys, and this story'll keep chugging along! So without further ado...

Quotestory #1: Indigo Monson: The Never-Before-Seen Past

Indigo, born Luka Emer Monson, was raised in a small farming district just outside of one of the Edmund's major capital war cities. When he was born, his mother hid him away so he wouldn't be taken by the Edmund forces and placed in a war orphanage (his mother was very sick at the time, and his father wasn't in the picture). As the years passed, his mother grew sicker and sicker, weaker and weaker, and still she refused to let him go outside or play with the other children, for fear of losing him. Without regular social contact, Luka grew apart from the world, and his social skills didn't develop properly. He became bitter and resentful towards the other children who could run about freely without being herded by their mothers. His jealousy grew to such a point that at night, he would disobey his mother and sneak out onto the roof of their small shed and watch the children as they slept in their hovels next door, watch them with their happy lives with a mother that loved them and was healthy and a father that was there. Luka grew so envious of them as the years went on. He snuck to visit them a few times, posing as a homeless boy, but every time their parents intervened and threatened to call the Edmund Services (their version of police). At that point Luka was broken and he wasn't going back.

On his mother's deathbed, she made him promise not to go out. But he did, and he was sick and tired of hiding. He dyed his hair a vibrant purple and did as the Romans did: partied and laughed until he was dragged away by the actuality of life and the Edmund Services to a small war orphanage just on the outskirts of the capital city. Matron accepted him and warned him to clean up his act, but you all saw where that got him. Indigo's nickname came from his hair, when he refused to tell anyone his real name and the Edmund Services had no record. No longer was he Luka Monson, the repressed boy in hiding from the slums, he was Indigo, the Bad Boy. And thus his new life began with HIM in power, for the first time in his entire being.

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I reach Tyerel's hideout pretty quickly, as it's not far at all from the orphanage. He stands just inside a long-since abandoned dusty old shack that used to be used to store hay for the animals on the outer farms. Dusty brown hair sweeps in a clean fall across his face, longer than mine even. Tyerel never cuts his hair. His dark eyes twinkle at me as I step closer. "Illiya. Nice outfit, I'm really loving the lack of actual clothing." He comments smoothly, glancing over my underclothes. I bite my lip and take step forwards, my heart hammering in my chest. "You have NO idea what I went through to get here. Also, DRIED BASIL LEAVES? REALLY, TYEREL?!" He takes a quick step back, forced confusion flashing across his face. "Basil leaves? I left Hämébu." He says in an off tone. I shake my head and crack my knuckles. "Nope, actually you DEFINITELY left basil." He goes pale.

"I swear to God I didn't." He begs. "I promise, Illiya. If I was going to betray you, I'd have so many better ways to do it. I- I'd let something slip to the Matron of your orphanage. I'd inform Indigo-" That's as far as he gets before I knock him out with a clean punch between the eyes. There's no way he could know Indigo's name, I've only ever referred to him as "the bully". He has another person, an inside person, and I can't trust anyone anymore. Not even Mona.

Sorry for short chapter ending! But I may upload a second one today.

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Hey guys! This is just an update saying I'm pretty sick right now, and that's why the chapters have been short and I haven't changed the poll yet. So far, opinions seem to be pretty mixed on who put the basil there, or whether it even WAS basil, and I'm keeping it up for a while longer. I'll TRY to get a new chapter up today, but it might not happen, so I'm just giving you guys this update! Okay, thanks! Keep well, everyone, the flu is going around! (as I am VERY well aware)