Okay, so I've finally gotten this chapter finished. I apologize for taking so long to update...I'm afraid I've rather made a habit of updating slowly. Hopefully I can overcome it in the future.
Oh, and a warning...I think I went a little overboard on this chapter. I think Crystal is a little OOC in the second half of it, and a little bit too, um, wacky. I think I messed up how she would behave in the situation I put her in. However, I really am not in the mood to rewrite this chapter, and I don't have any other ideas for it, so you're gonna have to take what I give ya!
By the time Lucy had managed to help me to my feet (to this day I don't know how she did it; all I can say is that there was a lot of flopping, pain, groaning, pain, tugging, and pain), my face was throbbing.
"Are you sure you're alright?" Lucy asked for the tenth time (okay, yes, I'm exaggerating, but it seemed like the tenth…though she probably kept asking because I was only groaning in response).
"No, I'm not alright!" I snapped, and immediately regretted it. First, because it made the pain shoot ten-fold through my face; and second, because I was afraid I might have hurt her feelings. I gritted my teeth and muttered, "Sorry."
"No, don't be." She said, completely unfazed. "I'm used to one of my brothers getting that way when I try to help him. It's just different in your case because you're actually letting me help you."
I would have chuckled, but I was catching on to the fact that if I moved any part of my face, it hurt a lot. Instead, I shivered and rubbed my arms, trying to get enough friction to warm them. Even though I was wearing a sweatshirt over my pajama top, the damp chill of the night air was getting to me. "Mmph guh," I managed to say, forcing the sound through my teeth and barely moving my lips.
Lucy's brow wrinkled. "Pardon?"
I shook my head and grabbed her arm, then motioned in the direction of the tent. She understood, and we moved towards it, albeit slowly. Lucy probably would have tried to reach it in leaps and bounds, but I was in no mood to try to keep up with her and step into another gopher hole. Thankfully, she seemed to understand this, and we cautiously tested the ground ahead of us before we stepped on it. Due to this slow and meticulous method, we managed to run into only one tree and two bushes before we reached the tent. And that led to another adventure altogether.
That is, reaching the tent led to another adventure. You see, the particular tent that had been chosen for the campout was equipped with a rain-sheet-cover-thingy-ma-bob (I know, my descriptive abilities are simply dazzling). Anyway, this thing completely covered the entire tent, including the entrance, and it zipped up from the inside. Therefore, it was difficult to get through it even when you had not broken your flashlight by throwing it through the air. To make matters worse, I had pinned the cover down to the ground when I had left the tent earlier that night. Just brilliant, huh?
Lucy and I could hear muffled voices coming from inside the tent when we arrived, but they ceased when I began to fiddle with the rain cover. For a moment I stopped rattling the thing while I tried to find the stake that pinned the cover so effectively to the ground, and then the voices started again. This time, however, they spoke in whispers. The whispers had a slight nervous edge to them, and I rolled my eyes, knowing that I was the cause of their nervousness. However, I did not speak; partially because of the extra pain it would cause, but mostly because I wanted to see what would happen if I did not identify myself. Call it the evil streak in me.
With Lucy's help, I finally managed to penetrate the rain cover. We ducked through the opening and I began fumbling for the zipper that would allow us to enter the tent itself. I growled impatiently under my breath when my searching fingers could not locate it. A couple of gasps came from inside the tent, followed by rustling noises. Then I moved my head closer to the tent wall and squinted at it, trying to see the zipper in the dark. My forehead touched the wall, and just as I finally found the elusive zipper, there came a "Shh!" from inside the tent. The next thing I knew, something hard connected with my head through the tent wall. I had been caught off guard, so I fell backward into Lucy's legs with a grunt and knocked her over. She fell on top of me with a yelp, while several shrieks and a crash issued forth from inside the tent.
I moaned for what must have been the tenth time that night while Lucy scrambled off me, accidentally kicking me in nearly the same spot on my face that had been injured by the rock.
"Oh, sorry!" she gasped.
By now, my face felt like it had been run over by a truck…a big semi truck with an oversized load. However, I didn't have time to dwell on this fact because at that moment the zipper began moving along the tent wall. A sliver of light that grew steadily bigger appeared through the crack in the zipper's wake, and when the zipper had moved to the middle of the tent wall, a head poked out through the crack, partially blocking the light.
"Crystal!" the person to whom the head belonged gasped. She quickly drew her head back into the tent and yanked on the zipper, fully opening the tent flap. As Lucy helped me up, the first girl was joined by two others, and three sets of hands reached out to help me into the tent.
Once inside the spacious tent, I flopped down on a blanket and someone shoved a pillow under my head. I shut my eyes and winced as a cool hand brushed my injured face.
"What happened to you?!" someone questioned in a worried tone of voice.
"She fell," Lucy answered for me. "I think something poked her in the jaw."
I opened my eyes and muttered, "It was a rock. A hard rock, rough rock, extremely painful rock. Made me see stars, but they could've been explosions. My face will probably need stitches - not to mention be scarred for life, I shouldn't wonder."
The girls exchanged glances over my body as I tightly closed my eyes again.
"She can't be too terribly hurt if she's talking like a Marsh-wiggle," said the first girl.
One of the others disagreed. "But look at her! She looks awful!"
"Thanks a lot," I grumbled under my breath, though I knew that if my face appeared half as bad as it felt, I probably looked like a bomb victim.
"Seriously, she's right. Crystal probably will need stitches. We need to get her inside and wake up Mom and Dad. They can take her to the emergency room."
"Ungh!" I moaned when one of them started to push me into a semi-upright position.
"Come on! We have to go inside!"
I opened one eye half-way and saw a face mere inches from mine. "Can I at least see what my face looks like? I know we have a mirror around here somewhere…" My voice trailed off as my eyes began searching the tent.
The girls, Lucy included, all stared at me like I was from another planet.
"What?" I asked defensively. "You've all been going on about how awful I look; now I want to see what you're talking about."
One of the girls shook her head slowly as she said, "Crystal must have hit her head twice."
No, one of you hit it, I found myself thinking.
"Now that you mention it, we did run into a tree on the way to the tent." said Lucy.
They all tried to convince me to get up and come to the house with them, but I stubbornly refused until one of them finally brought out the mirror and shoved it in front of my face. I was feeling slightly dizzy, but even if I was half blind it wouldn't have interfered with my ability to see the state of my face. I won't give you all the details, but one long gash glared from where it ran down the left side of my jaw, numerous bruises discolored the rest of the lower left quadrant of my face, and my cheek and lips were swollen to twice their normal size. There was also a nicely sized bump sprouting on my forehead. Of course, the dirt that was smeared over it all didn't help my appearance, either.
"See? You are almost definitely going to need stitches." Said one girl.
"I'm gonna look like Frankenstein!" I wailed as they pulled me up and started to drag me out of the tent. "Wait!" I said when we were nearly out. I snagged an object with my hand, turned it around, and before any of them could stop me, pushed a button on it. A blinding light flashed in our faces.
"Crystal! What are you doing?!" asked one of the girls, the one supporting my left side.
I blinked rapidly to clear the white spots from my vision, then turned my camera around, pushed another button, and nodded, satisfied with the picture's result. "I'm capturing the moment. Making a memory."
The girl on my right grumbled. "You're making me frustrated."
"Relax girls. She's probably hallucinating from the pain." Said the girl standing next to Lucy.
"It does hurt a lot…" I trailed off.
The girl at Lucy's side wasn't finished, however. "She's not herself. It's not her fault she's acting like a lunatic. In fact, she's-"
"I'm standing right here!" I cut her off.
"You mean to say that she's gone quite batty because of her injury." Lucy finished for the girl next to her, ignoring me.
"Yes! And batty people don't listen to reason or act normally."
"My head hurts." I moaned, and slid out of the girls' arms. They gathered above me as I lay on the tent floor and were about to pull me up again when Lucy slapped her forehead and muttered something about being an idiot.
"I thought I was the crazy one," I muttered absentmindedly.
I think my mind really was going at that point (if it hadn't already). As their faces became blurry and colors swirled in my vision, I felt something cool on my lips and the most delicious thing I had ever tasted slid into my mouth, past my tongue, and down my throat. Just as everything began to fade to darkness as I slowly began to shut my eyes, my face began to tingle and the pain started to subside. I heard gasps above me, and then there was no more pain.
"There." I heard Lucy say.
I opened my eyes and saw three astonished faces and one smiling one above mine. I smiled back at her and asked, "What's going on?"
"You can't feel it?" Lucy asked.
I wrinkled my eyebrows, puzzled. "Feel wha- oh, my goodness, feel!" I sat up straight, eyes wide, and felt my face. "It feels fine! What happened?" I grabbed her skirt. "What did you do?" Finding the mirror, I held it up and examined my face. Not a scratch remained. In fact, even the zits that I had discovered with displeasure that morning had vanished. "It's a miracle!"
Lucy just stood there and laughed, delighted with my reaction to the healing that she had given me.
"Seriously, what did you do?" I asked eagerly.
"I gave you some of my cordial."
"Your what?"
"It's made from the juice of the fireflower. Father Christmas gave it to me a few years ago." She grinned at me, dimples appearing. "I must say, you look much nicer without bruises and blood all over your face. Although, we should probably do something about all that dirt."
My mouth opened and closed several times (I'm afraid I looked rather like a fish) and my face flushed in excitement. "Oh…my…goodness!" I finally managed to get out. "You're really her!" I literally squealed.
"Who?" asked one of the other girls. The poor things, they were so confused. I had been the same way only a minute before, so I knew how they felt.
"Ladies," I said proudly. "This is my new friend, her royal Majesty, Queen Lucy the Valiant of Narnia."
Their mouths, as mine had, gaped wide open in astonishment.
Lucy gave them her dimpled grin. "It's very nice to make your acquaintance."
They nodded, still speechless.
"However, I'm curious," Lucy said to them, trying to break the awkward silence of the moment. "How do you manage to keep Crystal from injuring herself often? Because she seems rather clumsy. Edmund is going through a growth spurt at the moment and isn't used to his long arms and legs. He's constantly breaking things or hurting himself. I could use some ideas from you to help him."
"So you didn't believe me earlier when I said I wasn't a klutz!" I sputtered indignantly as the other girls started giggling. Oh, there are definitely some things that needed straightening out tonight.
Okay, that's it. See what I meant about a certain character going off the deep end? LOL. Review and let me know what you think, I could really use the feedback. I really appreciated the reviews that I got for the first chapter. Thank you reviewers!
Oh, and my apologies to three of my most loved reviewers...I wasn't ready to introduce your characters in this chapter like I thought, but they'll definitely be named in the next one! I promise! It would be kind of hard to not do so...I got really tired of using the word "girl" over and over again. This girl, that girl, the girl next to Lucy, the first girl, the girl on my left or on my right...see what I mean? LOL.
~ Lady Jill