curious

♜ XIII ♜

"I should have brought my motor bike," I mumble after hour two of Jane and I walking around in the woods.

Jane shakes her head and sighs. "I don't get it. How are we lost? We've lived around these woods our entire lives, and we're lost. We must've taken a wrong turn somewhere."

"Jane, if we took a wrong turn, we wouldn't be this lost..." I trail off, looking around.

We both sigh and keep walking.

"Aris?"

I stop walking and turn to Jane. She is standing next to a stone statue of someone that looks oddly like Jordan. I hum, titling my head. "I didn't know Jordan had her own statue in the woods. An odd place to put your statue, isn't it?"

"Aris..." Jane trails off.

"You don't really believe she's turning people to stone too, do you?"

Jane sighs. "I don't want to, but I think she is."

"We should keep going," I say, and we keep walking.

About ten minutes later of walking in silence, still being lost, and looking around for any sign of actual life, I stop abruptly. Jane stops next to me.

"Did you see that?" I ask.

"See what?" she asks.

"There's a white rabbit running around."

Janes sighs and shakes her head. "There's no white rabb—"

"There!" I say, pointing at the rustling bush.

"There's no-" Jane cuts herself off as a white rabbit hops out of the bush and starts sniffing the air.

"Curious," I whisper.

It looks at us before it starts sprinting off in front of us. I smile at her and start running after the rabbit. We run in all different directions, through trails and patches of grass that aren't trails.

It goes into a bush, so we come to a stop. The bush doesn't rustle anymore.

We hear a roar and snap our heads up in front of us to see a beast roaring in pain with Carlos holding a thorn while smiling. "There it is. You did it," Carlos says.

When the beast stands up straight, Jane nudges me. We smile at each other before spraying the water on the beast. He growls when the water hits him, but turns into Ben a few seconds later.

"Hey!" Carlos says, smiling widely as he runs to Jane. They face each other and start talking at the same time quickly. I watch them with a tilted head as they finally both say, "I'm so glad you're all right." They both smile and hug each other.

Carlos pat my shoulder. "You're in one piece."

"All right," Jay grunts, helping a limping Ben with facial hair down onto the flat ground. "You good?" he asks.

"Yeah," Ben grunts.

"Take a seat right there," Jay says, pointing to a stump on the ground before setting Ben down on it.

They both laugh. "Oh, that was funky," Ben says.

"It was," Jay agrees. "There's..." he trails off, gesturing at his jaw.

"Huh?" Ben asks, running his hands along his jaw. "Oh, wow."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Jay says, pointing at his teeth.

"Oh," Ben says, feeling the fangs in his mouth. They both start laughing again.

Jane nudges me and smiles before turning to Ben. "I think you need another blast." We both start spraying him with the rest of the lake water.