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Winter

Winter stared into her teacup and at the dark dregs of tea sitting at the bottom. They've done this task many times before, but this was just some revision to "ease them all into the new school year". Winter supposed that was a good idea, but divination was just an easy subject in general, so it wasn't really necessary. Since it was such a difficult practice, usually even the teachers can't tell when the students were just making the stuff up. Which they did. All the time.

Winter looked up and beamed at her partner sitting across from her on a three-legged stool. Winter had gone for a pouf herself, but Jacin hated how squishy they were, so he went for the nice, sturdy stool.

His ice-blue eyes were narrowed in concentration, or annoyance, Winter couldn't tell, as he peered into his own teacup. A strand of blond hair had come out of his ponytail and was now hanging across his face, though he didn't brush it away.

Winter tapped his wrist, forcing him to turn his attention to her. She held out the teacup she'd been holding. "Ready to hear your future?"

Jacin snorted. "I already know my future: "waste an hour of my life doing something stupid and useless". Oh, wait, that's right now."

"If you hate divination so much why did you choose it in your electives?" Winter teasingly replied. Jacin glared at her and she giggled.

Winter knew full well why Jacin had picked divination, despite his obvious distaste for it, and honestly it made her feel a bit guilty.

Jacin had picked all the same subjects as Winter in order to be with her and protect her at all times. Protect her from what? Two things, mostly: leering boys and herself.

Winter thrust the teacup, which Jacin had drunken out of earlier, under his nose and he sighed. "Alright Trouble, what's my future?"

Winter grinned at his use of the nickname and glanced down at the dregs again.

"You have an acorn, so that means unexpected gold, and I think that thing there is a skull, so that means you have danger in your path. So… you're going to find some cursed gold!"

Winter tilted her chin at Jacin, proud of her prediction. She expected him to laugh at how ridiculous it sounded, instead, he frowned out the window of the divination classroom. "In this school, I wouldn't be surprised if I did."

Winter shifted uncomfortably on her pouf. She knew better than anyone about the darkness that lurked in the shadows of Artemisia's shining beauty. She'd seen students fall screaming to their deaths from the astronomy tower, strangled to death by the devil's snare in the greenhouses, and plucked from the ground and carried deep into the dark reaches of the forest by the trees themselves. No one else had seen these things, but Winter knew they were real, as clearly as she knew the classroom she was sitting in was real, which, admittedly, wasn't very clearly at all. Winter had struggled to discern the real from the fake ever since she was thirteen. The only thing she knew was real was the blond boy sitting across from her.

Shaking away her dark thoughts, Winter nudged Jacin in the arm. "And me? What's in my future?"

Jacin threw a disinterested glance into the cup. "You're going to get in trouble by the time the next lesson rolls around and drag me into it too somehow."

Winter grins up at him. "It's not my fault you keep taking the blame for me."

"It's your fault for getting into situations where I have to take the blame for you."

"What do you expect? There's a reason that Scarlet-friend calls me "Crazy"."

As soon as the words are out of her mouth, Winter curses herself, but the damage is done. The humorous light that had been brewing in Jacin's eyes fades away and his face tightens into a scowl.

He gripped the cup that told Winter's future tightly and glared into it. "Let's just… focus on the lesson."

Heart sinking, Winter looked back into her cup as well, though her heart was no longer in the task. She'd been so close, she could sense it, so close to seeing Jacin's smile, the sunrise smile that she loved more than anything except, well, Jacin himself.

Winter wasn't sure exactly when her feelings for him as a friend grew into something so much bigger, more special. She just remembered realising that she loved him, had always loved him as far as she could tell. She loved his sunrise smile, she loved his jokes, she loved how protective he was of her, sometimes she liked to fantasize that his protective nature was because he loved her too, but she feared it was more because he was just a best friend doing what best friends do.

Winter closed her eyes and heaved a heavy sigh. When she opened them again, she frowned in confusion. Had the dregs of tea always been red?

The red dregs started bubbling and spreading along the bottom of the cup, steadily filling it with red liquid. Winter realised with horror that it was blood. The cup was filling with blood.

She dimly heard someone speaking, though she couldn't tell who. The blood was at the cup's brim now. Any more and it would overflow.

And it did overflow, spilling into Winter's lap, staining her uniform and pooling onto the floor. She felt herself begin to shake uncontrollably as the blood continued to spread, lapping at Jacin's shoes and staining her pouf. The cup slipped from her now numb fingers and smashed to the floor, adding its red contents to the growing flood in the divination classroom. Someone was shouting, but Winter couldn't hear what they were saying. She tucked her knees up to her chest, trying to escape the blood, but she knew it was only a matter of time before it rose so to submerge her pouf. She couldn't take it anymore. She opened her mouth and screamed.

A pair of hands grip her shoulders tightly and a voice cuts through Winter's terror of the blood that will surely drown her. "Winter! Winter calm down! Focus on my voice. It's not real. Winter, it's not real!"

It's not real, Winter told herself, it's not real, it's not real, it's not real. But it felt real. Oh, so real.

Winter squeezed her eyes shut, as tight as they would go. She took a few shuddering breaths, focusing on Jacin's hand's gripping her shoulders and on his voice insisting that none of it was real, that she was fine.

When she hesitantly reopened her eyes, she breathed a sigh of relief that the blood was gone, her uniform wasn't stained, Jacin's feet were no longer submerged. The only remnant of the vision was the smashed teacup on the floor.

Winter lifted her gaze up to meet Jacin's eyes, which were narrowed with worry and concern. "The teacup was bleeding." She murmured softly.

"Miss Blackburn!"

Winter's head snapped around to see the teacher crouching next to her. "Are you alright? Do you need to go to the infirmary?"

Winter opened her mouth to reply that she was perfectly fine, but Jacin butted in. "Yes, she does need to go to the infirmary. I can take her."

The teacher nodded with satisfaction and turned to head back to her desk. Jacin gently tugged on Winter's arm and she obediently let him pull her towards the door.

Once they were safely out of the classroom, Winter gave Jacin a small grin. "You were just trying to get out of divination, weren't you?"

Jacin rolled his eyes but smirked back at her all the same. "What, you don't want the chocolate the nurse will give you?"

"Just try and keep me away from it!" Winter laughed and sprinted ahead. She'd gotten better at recovering from the hallucinations over the years, though they still plagued her horribly. They had plagued her ever since she was thirteen and she saw her father, a teacher in this very school, dead. Murdered. No one had ever found out who, or what, had done it.

A/N: And we've finally met Jacin! That's the entire gang! We've finally made it! Not only that, but we've learned about Winter's love for Jacin and her hallucinations in this story. Our next star will be… Scarlet! Please review!