Chapter 4: Murmurs

I was so annoyed. As cute as the cat was, and as beautiful the music Yuhi was playing was, I absolutely hated having him here with us. He was taking my Mana away from me! MY Mana, not his! He barely even knows her! I walked quickly ahead of the group to try to get away from him before I hurt him.

I ran away from the group as they lollygagged around, which was fine, by all means; we had the whole day to get to the forest and it would only take half of it. After I distanced myself, I slowed down to a more leisurely pace. I walked, consumed in my own thoughts about what's happened over the past week. I remember what Mana said in her room only about five days ago. Wow, that was it? I remember how she was sad that nothing would ever be the same again. I believed her and I had felt it too, but I didn't expect the change to come so dramatically so soon! He was taking her heart and away from me and I couldn't stand it!

All of a sudden, I felt two hands on my side. I jumped, screamed, and turned around to find Sereg and scream at him some more. "DON'T DO THAT TO ME, DANGIT! THAT TICKLES!!!" I glared at him.

He was holding his sides from laughter. "Isn't… that the…. Point?" He chocked out. I walked off, but he grabbed my foot and pulled me to the ground. I fell and snow flew out around me. "Hey, listen…" He crawled next to me and held me. "What's wrong?" He kissed my forehead.

"Nothing," I huffed.

"Nothing?"

"I said nothing!" He looked at me. I looked aside. Then, guilty under his stare, I looked back. "It's just…" I trailed off.

"Go on," he urged.

I groaned. "Well, with Yuhi here, it's weird and I hate it! Mana's giving a lot of her attention to him and… and… I don't like it!" Tears welled up in my eyes and he drew me tighter to his chest. Tears flowed down my face. "It's never going to be the same again, no mater what! She's always going to be distanced from me! I'm starting to feel the distance, and I hate it and it's all HIS fault because he stole her heart and he's holding it in his hands and I JUST HATE IT!!!!!!!!!" I bawled into his shirt.

He ran his hand through my hair and comforted me. "If you haven't noticed, which apparently you haven't, nothing's been the same since you and I have been together. You and Mana have been drifting apart ever since then. She went from being the only girl in my life to having to share the role with you. She was also went from your best friend, to your second best friend. That's what happens, and it can't be helped. Yes, he holds her heart, but she willingly gave it and she also holds his who willingly gave it. I wouldn't doubt that things start to get better since she can relate more and it's not as awkward."

I looked up. "Really? You think so?"

He nodded. "Yes, I really do. Besides, he really does love her."

I sniffed. "How do you know?"

He smiled. "Because he looks at her the same way I look at you." He leaned down and kissed me.

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There are no words to describe how I'm feeling right now. I can't believe it. All of my life, I have been rejected and shunned and laughed at, and only after a few days of knowing this one girl, she had completely accepted me for who I am. But, the sad thing was, is that she doesn't exactly know all of who I am. And I'm still scared that she might reject me. And I didn't want to hurt her. But we had gotten this far and it was farther than I had ever been with anyone, in the sense of them accepting me, that is.

We got bored walking, so I pulled out my flute and started playing and Mana danced to the music. After a while, I noticed that Eva had run off. "Shouldn't we go after her?"

"No." Sereg and Mana answered at the same time.

"Okay…" I shrugged and continued on playing. Even later after that, I noticed that Sereg had run off after her. I stopped playing and turned to Mana. "Where'd they go?"

She spun around me. "Oh, just taking off. Eva doesn't like new people. She's probably talking to Sereg about it and she's probably going to end up talking to you about something along the lines of "Don't you dare hurt her" or something."

I chuckled. "Why would I dare do such a thing around her?! I don't want her to kill me!" She gave me a mean glare and punched me. "HEY! I wasn't serious!!!" She ran and I chased her, tickling her. Then, all of a sudden, I felt something; something evil. I snapped up and my eyes widened.

Unaware of anything, Mana got up and jumped on me, but I just stood there. "Hey, what's wrong?" She asked, still hanging on me.

I shook my head. "Nothing." I smiled. No point in making her worry. "Let's just hurry up and catch up with the others, okay?" She jumped off and I grabbed her hand and we kept on walking.

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Mana and Yuhi walked up to the cave walking a few feet apart, not too far behind us, though we did already have the fire going and food cooking. Yuhi took Sereg off to the side to talk about who knows what. Mana helped me cooked dinner and I picked at her about Yuhi. "So," I said, "What's up with you and Yuhi?" I nudged her.

She blinked at me. "Huh?"

I glared at her. "I saw you guys go off into the forest last night. I also noticed that it took you several hours to come back, and when you did, he was carrying you, asleep."

"Oh, that." She meekly smiled. "Well, I'm not even sure that there really was anything, y' know? He seems so distanced today." She sighed.

"HAH! I knew it!!!" I gave a victory pose, but that didn't even get her to smile. I walked next to her and put an arm around her. "It'll be alright. Sereg's sure that he likes you, it'll just take some time. I mean, the relationship did spring up quickly, so it'll take some getting used to, that's all. He has a lot on his mind, too. So just don't worry about it, 'kay?" I nudged her and she hugged me for a long time. I smiled. She needed that.

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I told Sereg about their presence. I told him that I could also put a spell around us so that we would be protected from them for another day, at the most. They were probably looking for me, wondering why I had abandoned them. They probably were planning on torturing me to the brink of death, then healing me to do it all over again. Fell monsters. I couldn't stand what thousands of years had made them. Ever since the king had been lost, over a thousand years ago, they turned into the mongrels they are now. No one knows what happened to the king's descendants, but they were out there somewhere.

I made sure I was at least a mile away from the group. I started chanting demonic words. My wings fluttered out of my back and I floated several yards off of the ground, glowing a bright purple. I remained like this for hours and continued chanting the words until finally the spell was forged and sealed. Tired and exhausted, I slowly made my way back to the camp.

The fire cheerfully lit the cave in the darkness of the night. Everyone had fallen asleep and they had left me some more food, in case I was still hungry. I was starving, but too tired to eat. I looked over at Mana. She was peacefully sleeping with Chiyo cuddled into her arms. I wanted to go lay next to her so badly, but I couldn't risk hurting her. I just couldn't. So I wrapped my cloak tightly around me and laid down in the back of the cave, which wasn't too far away from anyone else, considering they basically went as far back as they could.

The next thing I knew, Mana was sitting right next to me with her cloak draped over her shoulders and a sleeping Chiyo in her arms. She just stared at me. I stared back. I finally couldn't take it. "What?!" She poked me. I looked at her funny. "Y' know? I don't know what you're used to where you came from or how you were raised, but how I was raised is that you don't kiss someone and tell them you care, then distance yourself."

I inwardly cringed. "Mana…" I grabbed her hand. "I… I just…" I took a deep breathe. "I don't want to hurt you. You mean too much and I don't want to loose you."

She grabbed my hand and moved closer to me, pulling herself under my cloak and throwing hers over the both of us. "Yuhi, by distancing yourself, you are hurting me. So don't, okay?" She laid her head on my bandaged chest and I wrapped my arms and pulled her closer to me. Two tears rolled down my face. I didn't deserve her, I know that, but I'm not letting her go for anything. Not even my past.

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Nobody wanted to get up the next day, I mean, besides the fact that we were all definitely not morning persons, we were dreading going into Layaquin Hathnarai, which, from I finally dragged out of Sereg, was a very dangerous and deadly forest that few ever get through alive.

Knowing that we would need as much time as possible to make it through the woods, I started getting everyone up. Finally, after ten minutes of strenuous work, everyone was up except for Mana. Time to resort to my cruel, but very effective method. I pulled off the covers, dumped snow onto her, then tickled her. She bolted out of bed and glared at me. I pointed at the innocent Yuhi. She didn't know a difference and she started attacking him. I snickered and started warming some food from last night, hoping it was still good. It should be, considering how cold it was.

Yuhi, face red from Mana slapping him, sat down by the small fire to warm up. Finally woken up, Mana grabbed Chiyo and sat next to him and laid her head on his shoulder. She was asleep within seconds. Yuhi looked at her head then back at me. "Not a morning person?"

I shook my head. "Not at all." We breakfasted and set off into the woods. dun dun dunnnnn (a/n: sorry… I'm eating sweet tarts, I'm at my best friend's house, and it's my birthday…. Hyper much?)

"Layaquin Hathnarai." We stood on the edge of the forest. "The Forest of Murmurs. Very dangerous. Very, shall I say, mind boggling. You'll be lucky if you don't go insane. Stick together and be careful. Don't listen to the voices and don't follow the light. Watch out for anything moving. Or anything not moving." Sereg stared at us to make sure we understood.

"Heh. So, basically, watch your ass, right?" I glared at Yuhi. He smiled and put his hand in the small of Mana's back and gently led her in. I intervened and extended my arm out to her. She grabbed it and we walked in together, leaving the guys behind us. The trees quickly became thicker and the sounds of voices more evident. We went through most of the forest without encountering anything, which was really strange. The sky was darkening and the time was nearing the evening.

"This is too odd," Sereg said from behind us. Just our luck, as soon as he had said that, something jumped out of a cluster of bushes and trees and wrapped around Yuhi. Yuhi struggled to get the thing off of him, but it was too long. It intertwined itself in Yuhi's limbs and all over his body. I had no clue what it was and it looked really, really odd; the thing, miniature dragon, I was guessing, was at least six feet long, grey in color, red eyes, and about foot long, thick whiskers protruding from its nostrils. Whatever it was, it looked SO cool. Then it started breathing fire. Mana's shriek brought me back to the realization that, even though this creature was cool, Yuhi was getting attacked by it and, even though I didn't like Yuhi, Mana did, thus, I was obliged to help the guy, but I didn't know what to do. Mana ran over to him and started tugging on the creature. Annoyed, it unwrapped itself and snapped after Mana. She did a quick ice spell to bind it. It floated there for a second, frozen in solid ice, then the ice around it shattered and the creature started to attack again. I was baffled. It was a fire creature, Mana bound it with ice, it should be killed, or at least completely frozen. Then something hit me, I remembered something that Sereg said about the forest. "Everything is opposite," I remembered him saying. Of course. Normally, the phrase "You can't fight fire with fire." is true, but since everything's opposite in this forest, then that statement becomes false, meaning that in order to kill a fire creature, you have to use fire that means… "Fires of the Earth, come to me!" Fire leaped out of my hand and towards the creature attacking Mana. Now, what happened was completely inevitable and I can't believe I was stupid enough to not realize that Yuhi was going to jump in front of the fire to push Mana, who was completely safe from my spells, to protect her, meaning that not only did the flame kill the creature, but it completely singed him and his shrieks of pain rose much higher over the shrieks of the dying mystery creature, which was a mystery in itself. Then Mana started to shriek.

She ran up to Yuhi, put his head in her lap, and looked at the burns. It looked like it burnt the front of his chest, which was bandaged. "Sereg!!! Help me carry him! Hurry, we need to get him out of here as soon as possible! I can't help him now, it's too dangerous." Tears brimmed her eyes. I inwardly smirked. I really didn't like the guy, to begin with. The only reason I would care if he lived or not is for Mana's sake.

We ran out of the forest and just ignored anything that looked like it would want to attack us or looked threatening or anything of the sort. Without a care in the world, Chiyo jovially trotted along with us as we hurriedly tried to find our way out of the forest. We made great time. At one point, we stumbled across a river and I suggested using the water to wash some of his wounds really quick, but they both yelled at me something about the river being poisonous and causing you to go into a deep sleep where the trees would then devour you or something. Yeah, right.

We finally made it to the edge of the forest, but we didn't stop there. We made sure we were a little ways away from the forest so that nothing would wander out of it in the night while we were resting. By pure luck, the forest ended in a valley of a mountain, meaning more caves. We found a perfect little cave a ways away from the forest and we rested there.

Mana had us start a fire and melt some snow for Yuhi. She carefully peeled the bandages that melted to his skin and his cut. Chiyo helped us gather the wood for the fire then watched Mana, who shooed him away so she could concentrate. She bit her bottom lip as she cleaned the burns and wrapped them with her cloak, the only thing that she could think of to use. Luckily, Yuhi's cloak hadn't gotten in the way, thus didn't get burned that much.

I stood quite a ways away from Mana and Yuhi and glared at him as he captured all of her attention. I really did wish he would die. I hated that he took her away from me and I would do anything possible to keep her to myself. "You want him to die." Sereg quietly said as he walked up to me, reading my mind.

I looked stunned at him, "What the hell do you mean?! It's not like I actually meant for him to get in the way!"

"I never said you did this on purpose, all I said was that you want him to die. Don't deny it, you can't. It's written all over your face, I can see it in your eyes."

My face flushed with shame. I knew he was right and I hated it. I hated how he could always read me and I hated how he was always right. I did want him to die and I wanted it with all my heart, and I couldn't help it, no matter how hard I tried. In the end, I still wanted him dead. If that's what it took to get my Mana back, then so be it. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to resort myself to cold-blooded murder, but I'm not going to wish for him to get better.

Mana started the healing process. She started to glow blue and floated over him. This time, he glowed purple as well, but the glows intertwined and turned into one purple-ish blue glow. It was weird, but I thought nothing more of it.

Mana, exhausted, collapsed next to him with his hand in hers and Chiyo laying between them.

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The next morning, Mana was surprisingly the first one up and was changing the bandages on Yuhi with the left over of her cloak. She washed off his chest, re-bandaged it, then started the healing process again. He did look remarkably better for only one night. My hopes failed and I was grumpy the rest of the day.

Finally when we got to the next resting place, this time under some rocks that formed a mini-cave, Yuhi woke up and was able to walk around a little bit. Yuhi and Mana were yelling at each other about whether or not he should get some rest.

"YUHI! I SWEAR, IF YOU DON'T LAY DOWN RIGHT NOW AND GET SOME MORE REST, I'M GOING TO HARM YOU SO BADLY, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO LAY DOWN!!!"

"I TOLD YOU, I DON'T NEED ANYMORE REST! I'VE BEEN ASLEEP FOR THE LAST DAY!!!"

They were both fuming, but I was fuming more than the both of them together. I finally blew up. "IF YOU BOTH DON'T SHUT UP AND SLEEP, I'M GOING TO HURT THE BOTH OF YOU MYSELF!" They shut up, but I stormed off.

I was looking over a cliff at a river in the valley below us when I heard Mana behind me. "Why don't you like him? Why do you have to be so cruel?"

"What do you mean?" I growled and continued to stare at the river bellow, instead of turning to face her. I'd rather fall of the cliff than face her crying.

"You know exactly well what I mean." Her voice quavered. "You hate him with every fiber of your body and you want him dead because he's taking me away from you." Her voice was low and angered. Tears streamed down my face. "Well, I have news for you, he's not taking me away from you; you are. You're the one who keeps watching over me like I'm a child, like I can't take care of myself, like I need help. And you're also the one who took Sereg away from me, which also distanced yourself from me. But in case you haven't noticed, I can take care of myself. And with you and Sereg always wanting to be with each other, which is fine, I've been lonely. You can't have everything. You can't stay as close to me as you were before and still be as close to you as you are to Sereg right now. You just can't. But this way is better because we both have someone and then we can both have each other. But you're the one who's going to have to see that, I can't make you see, Eva, I just can't. But, please. Please be nice to Yuhi. He really is a nice guy, sure he's a little hard-headed, but, hey, I am too. Please, Eva. I love him." She stood there for a while then finally walked off. I collapsed and cried tears of anger and sorrow. But I knew she was right. He wasn't that bad, for her. But if I wanted anything to ever be close to the same between Mana and I again, I had to be able to accept him.

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I tried to dry my tears as I walked back into the cave. Luckily Sereg wasn't around anywhere. Chiyo came leaping up to me, but after seeing me, sobered and rubbed her back along my feet.

"Hey," Yuhi greeted me, with a smile.

"-hey," I meekly replied and tried to return the smile, but I just collapsed and more tears streamed down my face.

"Hey. Hey, hey, now, come here." Yuhi crawled over to me and pulled me onto his lap and cradled me in his arms. I laid my head on his shoulder and cried until my eyes were dry. He ran his fingers through my hair and held me tight to his chest, even though I'm sure it hurt him. After a while, I wriggled out of his arms, but he pulled me back. "Where do you think you're going?"

"I don't want to hurt you."

He gave me an odd look and dragged me back onto him. "What on earth are you talking about? I'm perfectly fine, as long as you're here." I smiled. He pulled his cloak over the both of us and we fell asleep like that; me on him, him leaning against the wall, the cloak on the both of us, and Chiyo curled up on his head.

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My body was weak and I was tired from crying. I didn't want to move. I didn't want to do anything, and most of all, I didn't want human interaction. Just to my luck, Sereg walks up behind me right then and puts his arm around me. I lash out and swat at him, yelling "Don't touch me!! LEAVE ME ALONE!" I growled deeply and clearly, just to make sure he's not confused that I don't want him here, that I wanted to be alone. Obviously, he didn't get the picture because he moved towards me again and put his arm on me, again. This time, I grabbed his arm, and sank my teeth in, drawing blood and sucked on it. 'Damn it, Sereg,' I thought, 'If you're not going to leave me the hell alone, you might as well be good for something.' He just stood there and stroked my hair. I was shocked.

"Eva, you should know this by now. No matter how much pain you inflict upon me, no matter what you do, no matter how strange you act, I'm not leaving you. I'll always be here until the day I die, even if you cause my death because I love you, Eva, and nothing you do can change that." Once I thought my eyes were completely dry and unable to produce any more tears, they form another waterfall, larger than the one before.

I unlatched my teeth from his arm and rested my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around my shaking shoulders and drew me in. "Sereg," I chocked out. "God, Sereg, you're too damn nice to me, I don't deserve you. I hurt you and I hurt Mana, but you both keep on loving me no matter what. My tears soaked his shirt.

"Who's to say that you don't deserve it? I think that you do." He hugged me again, then tilted my chin up and kissed me. "Now, dry your tears and tell me what's wrong."

I sat in his lap and told him everything that Mana had said. We sat there in silence for a while then he nodded. "You know, she's right. I told you. But, whatever you do, don't feel betrayed. She doesn't love you any less than she did before, but she loves someone else, now, too, and she needs you to accept the one she loves or she'll feel out of place. Because of her love for you, she feels that she needs you to approve of the other that she loves, Yuhi, or she'll never fit, she'll be torn between two loves." I nodded with him. Sounded reasonable. And it made me feel better. Felt good to be reassured that she really did still love me. I was glad of that.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shooting star. I pointed at it, gasped, then quickly closed my eyes and made a wish. Before I could open my eyes again, Sereg had his lips around mine, kissing me. He followed my jaw down to my neck and covered my neck in kisses. "What'd you wish for?" He whispered.

"That you'd kiss me," I purred. We fell asleep embracing each other under the stars.

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Mana- woOoOoOo….. LOOOOOONG chapter!!! :D -star-eyed-

Eva- W00t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -reads-

Sereg- What the… -shrugs-

Yuhi- -sleeps-

Mana- -shakes head- weirdoes…