Kara finished up what remained of her eggs. She was incredibly tired, due to the disastrous occurrence at the castle yesterday. Not only that, but a prince hated her, and some water fairies wanted her dead. That was more than enough to make anyone tired.
She put her hair behind her ears, then winced at the amount of knots, wishing she had a hair tie with her. Lily already had her hair tied back, but hadn't brought any extras.
"I would've," she claimed, "but we were kind of in a hurry at the time."
Kara sighed. She had a point, but her hair was much longer than Lily's, so it always ended up in her face. Not only that, but it wasn't all that clean, and there were no showers to be spoken of around here.
Oh, well, she thought. Maybe someone in Lymeria knows a spell for cleaning.
A scream caused her to nearly fall out of her chair. Lily heard it too, as she looked outside of a nearby window in alarm.
"What the-who was that?"
Kara was already up out of her chair. "Foster." Lily got up too as Kara headed for the front door. "Oh. How do you know it's him?"
Kara rolled her eyes. "Lily, who else would be in trouble right now?" Before Lily could reply, she ran outside, throwing open the door. The morning sunlight nearly blinded her, but she squinted against it as she ran. She could see Sylvan and Peony up ahead in the closest clearing. Foster was there, but he wasn't screaming. He was limp and listless, lying in a crumpled heap on the ground.
Oren was beside him, trying to wake him up with magic. However, nothing seemed to work.
He was so still that Kara felt as if her heart had stopped.
There was blood around him again, staining his shirt, but it was purple tinted instead of red, and Sylvan and Peony watched with worry on their faces. Kara raced up to Sylvan, her heart pounding, and immediately yelled at her. "What did you do? What did you do?
You were supposed to help him!"
Sylvan's eyes were impossibly wide.
"We were, but then something went wrong!
I don't understand, we did the spell perfectly..." Kara started to cry. "Your stupid spell doesn't matter! He's dead, isn't he? You idiots killed him!"
" "No." Oren was still by her ex's side.
He pressed his ear against his chest, then stepped away from him, looking glad to be away from his immobile body.
"He has a heartbeat," the Gifted fairy told her. "It's faint, but definitely there."
"Then help him!" shouted Lily. "You can't just leave him there to bleed out!"
Peony shook her head, running her fingers through her violet curls. "Fairies can recover from wounds much faster than any Flightless can. Since he is a fairy now, we will give him the proper treatment for the gashes and such when he wakes up."
Kara eyed him warily. "When will he wake up?"
Peony waited for a few minutes.
Time seemed to stand still.
Just as Kara had begun to lose hope, Peony turned to her, speaking quickly and softly. 

"Now."
At that time, Foster's eyes flew open, and he gasped, his eyes wide. Blood lined the edge of his mouth, and he wiped it away hurriedly as he tried to stand.
Kara glimpsed something there in his blue eyes that frightened her.
The ring of gold around his iris had gotten bigger, enough for her to see it from where she stood. She went to him, but then backed off when Oren and Peony beat her to it.
She knew she didn't have to do that anymore. Being single meant she had no obligation to help him up, and that was sort of nice.
"What happened?" he rasped as he swayed on his feet. "Ow, everything hurts..."
"The spell we cast didn't work," Sylvan told him. "Somehow your wings returned after they'd disappeared, and it injured you."
She headed back to the house, looking over her shoulder at him. "Come with me. You'll need to be patched up, and get a clean shirt."
Foster looked worn out. At this order, he became furious. "No," he spat. "No, I won't go with you. Not in any Gateway, not in that circle, and especially not in that house!
Every time I come here, I either get hurt or kidnapped, and I'm sick of it!
Just leave me alone, all of you."
Foster took off, but before he could get very far, Kara grabbed his arm. "Wait," she gasped. "Foster, wait. You're in no condition to just walk off. You're bleeding, for crying out loud!"
Foster's strong pull against her lessened, and he looked directly at her, his face crestfallen. "Since when do you care?" he muttered.
"We're not dating anymore, so you don't have to pretend you were worried about me."
"I'm not pretending," Kara insisted.
"I do care! Honestly, I do!"
"Then prove it."
Foster's voice was icy, and his eyes were as well. Rage welled up inside of her, as it had before. "You know what?" she said.
"I don't have to prove anything to you.
If you can't take my word for it, then fine, hate me or whatever, but know this: I don't hate you. I don't think I ever really could.
Listen, you have to forgive me, or you'll always be like this, always mad at the world.
Please try to, okay? I want to be friends again. I want it to go back to the way it was, before all of this." Foster seemed to be taking all of this in, his expression showing that he was weighing his options. "Well, it can't," he mumbled. "If you think it can, then you're naive. It's not possible."
"Then what?" Kara was frustrated now.
"What do you want me to do, Foster? This can't keep happening every time something goes wrong."
"It's not every time. It's every time you're involved in what goes wrong."
He stepped closer to her, so close that it was almost frightening. "Do you want to help me, Kara? Do you honestly want things to get better?"
Kara was stunned by this, but managed to find a reply. "Yes. Yes, of course I do."
"Then the best thing you can do for me is let me go. Let me be away from you."
He shook his head. "I know you feel bad about what happened, and I know you want to apologize, but the truth is that it was my fault that we fought before we went home.
It was my own jealousy, my own selfish needs that tore us apart. So, honestly, Kara, you're not the one at fault here. I am, but..I need some space, and a lot of it, before I can talk to you again. You need to understand that."
Foster pushed her hand away, and stormed off, heading back towards the house.
Kara tried to speak, but any words she could muster felt wrong, or not as comforting as they should have been.
She had messed up, too.
Foster just couldn't see it, and she couldn't rest until she had a reasonable apology for him.

The walk back to Sylvan's house wasn't long, but it certainly felt like it was at the moment. Kara wasn't sure whether she should be mad or concerned about Foster. Probably both.
Lily noticed this alarm from her friend and spoke, straightening her white hairpiece as she did.
"Is something wrong, Kara? You're been really quiet."
When she didn't answer right away, Lily sighed. "Is this about Foster?"
Kara sighed too. "Yeah."
"It doesn't make sense to me.
You know he's not worth your time."
This caught Kara's attention. "No, I don't know that, Lily."
"Yeah, you do. Honestly, all he ever does these days is get on your nerves.
You should really send him home."
Kara's eyes widened, her irritation gone.
"Send him home? I would if I knew how, but...I don't. The spell book I used to use is at my house."
When Lily grew quiet, Kara's suspicion got the best of her. "Wait...why did you ask me that? I thought you were okay with Foster being here."
"I was. I still am. It's..not really about that."
Lily crossed her arms, not meeting her best friend's gaze. She fixed her hairpiece again, this time out of nervousness, then spoke up once more.
"It's about me this time.
Kara, I think I need to go home too."
Kara turned back to look at her. They were at Sylvan's now, so it was okay to stop.
"What?"
"I mean it. This world...I liked it at first, but now it kind of scares me.
The other night, I heard Sylvan and the others talking about this Hurricane guy and the monsters that help him. They talk about those body snatching things like they're nearby and they're going to hurt us. What does it all mean? Can't they protect us from them?"
Lily's voice was shaking. Kara hadn't realized it before, but she was scared.
She felt like an awful friend, but she knew she would feel worse being here with just Foster. Was it selfish to want her to stay? She wasn't sure, but she had to say something to her.
"I don't know if they can, but I do know that I don't want you to leave. Lymeria isn't scary if you're smart about what you do, Lily.
However, talking back to Gifted fairies, pissing off royalty..none of that's smart. Those are good ways to get killed here. You have to make better choices."
Lily looked offended. "Better choices? Kara, don't act like that.
I've just been getting used to this place.
Those fairies wanted to kill me because they had some personal problem with humans. Besides, you were talking to them that way too.
It wasn't me causing trouble, alright?"
Her voice broke.
"I'm not trying to...cause trouble..."
Kara looked into her friend's eyes.
She was on the verge of tears. "Lily, wait-"
"No. I've been trying to understand this, all the magic stuff and the huge freaking destiny you have, but it's really too much sometimes.
I'm just your friend, the dumb human friend of some great daughter of a fairy.
I'm nothing special here."
Lily was crying now. She wiped at her eyes as fast as she could. "You should hear them, Kara, hear the fairies here calling me a Flightless and a weak, stupid girl. It's degrading, and it makes me wish I was at home and I had never agreed to come here. Yes, this place is beautiful sometimes, and yes, there are nice people here, but it's not my home, and it's not my heritage. It's yours, and...I don't belong here. I never have."
Kara couldn't believe what she was hearing. "That's not true. Lily, you can't really believe that. Of course you belong here. I invited you because you were one of the only people I knew I could trust! Anyone else would have run their mouth off about this world. I knew you wouldn't."
"You knew I'd cover for you? Really?
Kara, I'm not that reliable."
Lily looked furious now. "You didn't pick me for that. You picked me because I was the only one there at the time." She rubbed at her eyes. "No..no, that's it. I can't stay here anymore.
If I stay, you'll get tired of me.
Someone with a destiny like yours doesn't need a worthless nobody like me around."
That was when Lily turned back to the forest and took off-not towards Sylvan's house but towards the wilderness, towards the trees with age old marks etched into them.
Kara yelled her friend's name and ran after her. Running into the woods here was like suicide. Didn't she know that by now?
Apparently not. She disappeared into the woods, moving faster than ever before.
Her cries were the only way to follow her, and even those faded eventually.
Kara stopped running, gasping for breath. "Lily," she said, practically in tears now.
"Lily, where are you?" She tripped over an upturned tree root, then knelt to the ground, too tired to continue running. Her tears came fast, and she broke down.
Even though Lily couldn't hear her, she had to say something on her behalf.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. You were right all along. I shouldn't have brought you here.
You should be at home, with your brother and your parents, not stuck here with me."
She sobbed, choking on her words.
"I'm sorry, I'm so, so, sorry."
Her apologies met with empty air.
A chilly wind wrapped around her, piercing through her clothes and going straight into her bones. She shivered and warmed up her hands with her breath, but it only got colder.
Kara closed her eyes in misery. She had lost her bearings, so she had no idea where she was. She was lost, and had driven her only two friends away from her. She had never felt so alone in her entire life.

Lily ran and ran, tripping over roots and leaves and whatever else lay in her path. That didn't stop her from sprinting away, though, leaving everything she'd once known far behind her. She still wore one of the pale nightgowns she'd been given by the queen.
Lily knew she should've followed Kara and gotten new clothes from Sylvan, but she hadn't due to this exchange with Kara. As soon as she gathered some attention here-and she already was-she would forget all about her, so what was the point of staying?
At least the gown sort of kept her warm.
It was freezing out here.
Frost coated the trees that loomed all around her. Lily involuntarily shook.
She couldn't recall if it had been this cold before, or if this was new.
Laughter came from behind a tree on Lily's right side. Fearful, she remained where she was, in no hurry to ask who was there.
That was the stupid thing to do, anyway.
Those was usually the last words of characters in her favorite horror movies before they died because some killer came after them.
Well, Lily was no idiot, so she didn't say a word, but someone else did. The person had a low voice, but not enough to be given a gender. It was disembodied, for the speaker was nowhere in sight.
"Lily," a voice crooned from somewhere amongst the trees. "Lily, my child, why are you out here?"
"Th-that depends," she said, still very scared. She usually didn't stutter, but if she was scared enough, she was a stammering mess.
"Wh-Why are you out here, and h-how do you know my n-name?"
"All will be answered soon enough, but first, we must be properly introduced."
A figure appeared before Lily, one that left her breathless out of terror.
It seemed to take shape out of the shadows beneath a pine in front of her. It had slender, curled horns, and a scaly face with defined, yellow eyes that were slitted like a cat's.
A black cloak clothed the creature.
Its legs and feet could not be seen, but its hands had curved claws upon them that looked dangerous. Lily felt the strangest sense of dejávu. She had seen someone like this before, but that had been months ago.
This person seemed to be of the same variety, but it was hard to tell who the monster was possessing. "You," Lily cried. "Are you th-the one th-they call Hurricane?"
"I am." The monster smirked, showing razor sharp teeth. When Lily gasped, the thing only chuckled. "My dear, I have a job for you."
Lily felt as if she were speaking to a demon. Was she? Maybe. She made sure her voice was steady before replying. "Oh. Uh..I'm p-pretty sure I don't need a job right now."
"Oh, but of course you do."
Hurricane drew close, and his clawed hand grabbed hold of her face, scraping the edge of her chin and cheek.
She struggled, but he held her still. Up close, she could see Hurricane's face better. He had a defined chin and pointed, elf like ears. A ridge of scales ran from the center of his forehead down to the bridge of his nose.
His eyes were like smoldering suns.
"All Flightless need an occupation.
Otherwise they grow restless. That is how crime breaks out. Jobs provide order, and that is no exception in this realm.
Do you want to cause trouble?"
Lily saw no way out of this that wouldn't result in injuries for her, so she took a shuddering breath. Hurricane's claws were digging into her face ever so slightly, and it was like being pricked by needles. "No."
"Then listen to me. Your job is rather simple."
At these words, Hurricane's eyes had changed to a dark gold. There had been blue flecks before, but none of those remained now.
He grinned, and a mouthful of teeth, like those of a piranha, were revealed.
Lily fought against the urge to scream. A burning sensation had begun in the places where he'd hurt her. It was almost like being given anesthesia at the dentist's office.
"What..makes it so simple?"
"Oh, you will see. It's a job I've chosen specifically for you."
The being waved its hand, and a snarling, human-like thing emerged from behind him.
It didn't emerge, exactly. It dropped to the forest floor, and stood up like a bear might, with unsteadiness and momentary flailing of limbs. Its dark hair was messy, and its eyes blazed with yellow light. At first Lily thought it was a beast, but she soon found she was mistaken. It was a man, but his skin was pale, and he looked sickly. He drew closer, partially toppling over, and releasing groans as he tried to walk over.
Lily recognized the man, and backed away as he drew nearer. He had the same, goat-like eyes as before, but they were much more golden now. "Everett?
Wh-What are you doing here?"
The shape shifting guard that had been with the queen sniffed the air, then growled at her again. Lily recoiled, trembling.
"What's wrong with him?" she asked.
"Can't he hear me?"
"No." Hurricane laughed again.
"He can only hear my orders since he works for me at the moment. Now, about your job..." He tapped his fingers together, as if he were deep in thought. Once he stopped, he turned to look at her, grinning. "I lied.
You don't have one. Humans are worthless creatures. Kara never realized it, but she condemned you to die the moment you emerged from your Gateway and stepped foot on Lymeria's soil."
Hurricane cast a glance at Everett, and an unseen connection was between them instantly.

"Everett," he murmured. "Kill her."

The man under Hurricane's spell stepped towards her, not unlike a zombie.
Lily shrieked and fell backwards.
The trees seemed to be closing in, trapping her here. Everett chuckled when Hurricane did, and when his merciless overlord snapped his fingers, the lost soul picked up the pace and pursued her more rapidly.
Lily picked herself up and ran as Everett's panting turned into inhuman roars.
He was changing shape, as she had guessed he could earlier due to his animal eyes.
When Lily looked behind her, she saw a dragon unfurling its wings, a dragon with glittering blue scales and dark eyes that were the same color as Hurricane's.
Lily barely had time to react before she felt claws sink into her back and pin her to the ground. Everett took in a breath, and smoke rose up from his nostrils.
She could feel the heat emanating from his dragon form, and she closed her eyes, knowing that he was about to breath fire. She braced herself, but Hurricane's voice made her open her eyes in confusion.
"Everett, stop. I have an idea."
The dragon paused, then looked back at him, waiting for an order.
Lily's breathing was ragged.
She could feel Everett's claws stabbing into her upper back. Scarlet droplets of blood were slowly staining her gown. It felt like he'd nearly severed her torso in half.
"Please," she managed to say. "Please.
Let me go. Please, just let me go!"
Tears welled up in her eyes.
"What did I do to deserve this?"
"Plenty of things."
Hurricane looked at Everett, laughing slightly as he said it.
"Everett, kill her in a different way.
Make it...slow." The azure colored dragon grunted in affirmation, then turned back to her.
He retracted his claws from her back, and she cried out from the pain. Lily tried to get up, but there wasn't enough time for her to get away before the shapeshifter's jaws met with her neck.

Kara was hopelessly lost.
Of course she had to run after Lily. Maybe...maybe Lily had already gone back to Sylvan's. Maybe there was no reason to worry. However, there was plenty of reason to worry about herself.
She was lost in the Vineheart Forest, the forest that was notorious for being filled with witches and animals that could pose a very immediate threat to her.
She had to find Sylvan and the others. Foster...she had to find him too.
He would do something drastic unless she stopped him. Suddenly, the tree in front of her burst into flame.
Kara backed away, surprised more than anything else.
A thing that she knew was a demise beast appeared from out of the fire.
How that was possible, she didn't know, but the beast flashed a toothy smile at her.
"I am a messenger of Hurricane.
He wants you to know this: he has your weak friend. If you do not come with me now, your friend will meet with an..unfortunate death."
"I've dealt with one of your kind once,"
Kara said forcefully.
"He's met with an unfortunate death.
You think I'm scared of your empty threats?"
The creature shook his head.
His horns were large and stuck straight upwards. "Oh, they are not empty.
Your friend is being held captive now.
Have you forgotten about her?
Maybe this will jog your memory."
The beast had a sparkling object in his hand. He tossed the object at Kara, and she caught it, but after a second of seeing what it was, she nearly dropped it out of dread.
It was Lily's white flower hairpiece.