Not Your Average Children's Tales

In the Dwarf's House

I knew booking a hotel way ahead was the practical thing to do – it should be in any mature, young adult's itinerary before going anywhere. Even when you were only going on a one-day trip to the town next door, apparently.

"Please, there has to be something that you can do. Look, it's only like... a few hours away, until the train starts again. Can't I just sleep it off here or something? I'm too tired to look for someplace else and getting nothing."

Here I was, casting my scrunched features over my screen whilst scrolling through available hotels for tonight. To say that it was a stupid, failed attempt, was an understatement. The guy working the door whose cheeks almost looked like they swallowed his whole face, glanced at me. "Do you need one of my friends to take you somewhere nearby, though, I heard there's one hostel that might be available?" He began.

His group of friends stopped their laughter and chatter in the opposite side, which was only one wall away, all turned their heads at me while their hands still clung into their phones showing a game they were all playing. "Yeah sure, I was actually going to get something to eat as well." The one in square-sized glasses whose curly hair came out slightly on the top of his head, but his stare gave out warmth that immediately went straight over my head.

The offer sounded nice, and I almost said yes, if it wasn't for the war raging on in my head debating about stuff that hadn't happened yet. "Food? You know, now that I think about it, I am hungry. Mind getting me something too?" My eyes wandered over the stack of cards where the boys were sitting. "Also, does anyone know how and want to play those cards?" I suggested.

Cheek Boy actually looked up at me, away from the computer that he'd been pretending to stare at for the past hour, probably because of the security camera over our heads. "You know how to play?" He questioned.

"Yeah, don't you?" I left my purse on the plastic chair and got up to head towards where the other guys were at, picking up the stack of cards before going back to my previous seat. "Shall we?" With a smirk tugged at the corner of my lips, I began shuffling cards.

The other guys were already sat around me, watching me with their mouths half-opened as I shuffled those cards in seconds and spread them neatly to each of them. Glasses Guy cleared his throat, taking in the cards before him. "What's the catch, though? We have to at least play for something."

"You're right," I mused, another sly smile pulled up at my lips. "Sounds cliché, but let's do truth or dare. For whoever loses."

"A girl after my own heart." Glasses Guy said. "What's your name, again? I just thought that..." he paused, scratching the back of his neck as he looked down on the musty white floors. "since we're all going to be here a while and hang together, we should get to know each other."

"Marissa." I introduced myself, looking at my own cards then over the opener laid out on the table. Cursing under my breath as I reached my hand out to take one card on the stack in front of me.

"Suits you," Glasses Guy took his turn and threw one card on the table. "I'm Harry, by the way."

"As in Styles?" I joked, snorting a chuckle. Noticing that it was my turn again, I checked to see that there weren't any good cards in my hand. Over my senses, the guys were bartering lighters to flick at their own cigarettes hanging by their lips. My heart skipped a bit, reels of my mother going off about that one sex ed talk centered on who you were hanging out with, struck a nerve.

I shook off the thoughts, laying out my card in the open before reaching a hand out to take in the cigarette not offered yet in my direction. The guys barely flinched, assuming that they were probably used to witnessing their other girl friends smoke. Judging by the surface, they seemed to be the kind of crowd that went out every Saturday to party all night and sleep in the next day.