Hello again :) I had originally intended to have weekly updates for this story but every other Saturday I end up pulling double shifts at both my jobs so it's now going to be every two weeks :D anyway I hope you enjoy the chapter and recognise where the first bit is from ;) poor Lumaria, that was about as far as I got too
I looked into his gothic red eyes(he was wearing color contacts) which revealed so much depressing sorrow and evilness and then suddenly I didn't feel mad anymore.
And then...suddenly just as I Draco kissed me passionately. Draco climbed on top of me and we started to make out keenly against a tree. He took of my top and I took of his clothes. I even took of my bra. Then he put his thingie in my you-know-what and we did it for the first time.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" I screamed. I was beginning to get an orgasm. We started to kiss everywhere and my pale body became all warm. And then...
.
.
.
Holy crap! I cannot keep reading this shit! I mean at first it was so bad it was funny but I'm done! There is no way this is going to get better – I hope the person who wrote this wasn't serious when they wrote it but then again you never can tell with the internet. I closed down the window and rubbed my eyes – this was getting ridiculous. I could not keep doing this to myself, trying to affirm my own abilities by intentionally searching for bad writing is not good for my mental stability.
Maybe I need to get out of the flat. Get some fresh air and some sunshine, maybe a conversation with someone outside of the internet (aside from Lea or Arlene) and I'll feel better – it might even help me to stop obsessing and just write. I closed my laptop, grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and scribbled Lea a note.
Lea was meeting with some architectural firm about designing a monument for the centre of town and he had said he'd be back in the early afternoon, I didn't know how long I'd be out and I didn't want him to worry – I think he'd gotten used to coming home and seeing me wandering round the flat with no purpose. To be honest I'd gotten used to doing it but at some point you have to kick yourself up the arse, get out and find some purpose or you end up deranged and, judging by the things I had been choosing to read, I was already beginning the slow decent into madness. I grabbed my jacket and left the flat – the outside world had been calling for a while and it was about time I answered.
The sunshine was glorious and the light breeze rolling in from the coast was enough to keep it from being sweltering. As I walked away from the flat I wondered why on earth it had taken me this long to do this; maybe the fact that I had locked myself away from the world in a valiant attempt to try and finish my novel was actually what was preventing me from doing so. A small part of my brain was telling me that this was just another form of procrastination, that I should be inside writing, but that was swiftly shut up by my entire body screaming that I needed this. I need to have a proper break that didn't involve consuming alcohol.
Walking was making my usually tense muscles relax, the breeze was blowing away the fog in my mind and the sun was like a medicine that I had been reluctant to take but found that it actually didn't taste as bad as I had thought it would. I walked past all of mine and Lea's usual haunts – the café, the pub, the castle – I wanted to find somewhere new. A change of routine, a change of scenery and actually looking at the world around me was instantly helping; I could already feel my brain beginning to start working again.
I was playing a conversation between two of my characters in my head, imagining myself as the protagonist (because I'm cool like that) when the most tantalising thing I had ever smelt caught my attention. I turned towards it and found myself standing in front of a house with a stunningly beautiful garden out the front filled with all different kinds of flowers. I took a step towards the house, all my attention focused on the garden trying to work out which of the multitude of scents had caught my attention first.
I leaned over the small fence and carefully wrapped my fingers around the stem of a tall plant with a number of purple bell-like flowers running down it. Gently, so as not to break it, I pulled it towards me and inhaled the scent of the flower, it wasn't what had first drawn me to the garden but it was still beautiful. I let go of the stem and the flower fell softly back into its place in the garden, swaying slightly once it did. I reached for the stem of a different flower, this one pure white rose, totally enraptured by the sights and smells of the garden.
"Beautiful isn't it." a voice from behind me said, breaking the spell of the garden and harshly bringing me back to reality. I was so shocked to discover that I was no longer alone I spun to face the owner of the voice a little too over-zealously. I found myself stumbling and falling on my backside at the feet of a very pretty, slim girl with auburn ringlets and kind eyes. I stared up at her dumbly for a few minutes before I finally found my voice.
"Um...I was just...sort of...looking...at...the flowers." I stammered as the English Language failed me once again, I wasn't really sure what to say to make this situation any better for myself. It wasn't the greatest position in the world for me to find myself in; leaning over someone's garden fence, sensually smelling their flowers like some kind of perverted hippy. The girl, who looked about the same age as me – maybe a couple of years younger, laughed a soft musical laugh and extended one of her hands to me, the other clutching a large stack of papers. I took her hand and allowed her to pull me to my feet.
"It's fine." she said as I began to brush myself off slightly. "It's supposed to catch people's attention, that's why I planted them." I blanched.
"You did this?" I asked, a little surprised. This looked like the work of some agricultural genius, not just your Average-Joe gardener.
"Yeah." the girl smiled proudly.
"It's amazing." I breathed turning to stare at the garden once again. The girl laughed again at my mesmerized state.
"Thank you, I'm glad someone appreciates it." she said. "It's not everyone who can just take the time to notice something beautiful in the world." I turned and smiled at her, she smiled back and extended her hand.
"I'm Aerith." she told me. I raised my eyebrows slightly as I recognised the name; so this was Cid's daughter. Lea would be very jealous that I had gotten to meet her – the girl was stunning; curves in the right places, soft elfin features and just his type (aka breathing).
"Hi." I said taking her hand and shaking it. "I'm Lumaria. You're Cid's daughter right?" Aerith nodded, brushing one of her ringlets behind her ear.
"That's right, how do you know my dad?" she asked.
"Oh, me and my friend met him at the pub last night." I stated shuffling a little nervously. I wasn't used to talking to people on my own, I always had Lea with me so if the conversation died he was able to resurrect it. Clutching at straws, and not wanting to stop the first conversation I'd had with alone someone outside of my small circle of two friends in weeks, I nodded towards the large stack of papers she was holding. "What are those?" I asked.
"Oh these?" she asked and handed me one. It was poster with a picture of a man in a smart blue uniform with large sideburns and thick black dread-locks tied back from his face. Above the picture was the word 'MISSING' in large letters and underneath was the contact information for anyone who found the man or knew anything about his whereabouts. "I told my dad I'd put a few of these up around the neighbourhood."
"I didn't think Braig had dread-locks." I stated a little confused – this didn't look like what I though Braig looked like, unless I had confused him with someone else.
"That's not Braig." Aerith replied. "That's Dilan; he went missing about a week ago. Occasionally he gets called to other towns for work – he's kind of like a hired bodyguard, but not exactly that – but he's never been gone this long before and his wife hasn't heard anything from him at all and she's starting to worry."
"Has she been to the police?" I asked. Aerith shook her head sadly.
"They won't do anything." she stated. "If they won't look for Braig then they certainly won't go looking for Dilan. Apparently, according to Dilan's wife, they say someone has to be gone for at least a month with no word from them before they will class them as a missing person."
"Really?" I asked. "A whole month?" That seemed a rather long time for someone to be gone, in my opinion, but maybe the police force in Radiant Gardens was a lot more lenient than in other towns. By the sound of it even one missing person was out of the ordinary never mind two in quick succession.
"Yeah, it's stupid," she replied, a hint of anger in her voice. "if something did happen to them they wouldn't even be recognisable by the time the police started looking for them." Aerith's eyes darkened with anger and she turned her face away, looking as if she was about to cry. I've never been good with emotional displays but as I looked at Aerith I wanted more than anything to keep those tears from running down her face.
"Would you like some help putting these up?" I asked, signalling to the poster I was still holding, changing the subject. Aerith looked back at me and she smiled, her face brightening somewhat.
"Thank you Lumaria, that would be fantastic." she said. She cut the pile that she was holding in half and gave one of the halves to me. I took them and we made our way down the street in the direction that I had originally come, leaving the suburbs and making our way back into the centre of town.
"So where was the last place Dilan was seen?" I asked as Aerith stopped to tack one of her posters to a lamppost.
"Apparently, according to his wife, the last time she spoke to him he was going to a meeting with Xehanort, presumably about his next job." she replied as we continued walking down the street.
"Xehanort?" I asked stopping, there was that name again. I had never met the man but, for some reason, every time I heard his name I felt this strange chill go up my spine. That might have just been because he was known to be a bit...ok, a lot on the strange side of maybe it was because of his connection to both of the men who had gone missing but there was something that made me apprehensive of ever actually meeting him. Aerith turned to look at me when she noticed that I was no longer by her side.
"Are you ok?" she asked. I shook my head, returning to my normal self, and jogged to catch up with her.
"Yeah I'm fine." I told her as we started walking again. "It's just...he's the guy Braig was last seen with." She nodded.
"I don't think that's escaped anyone else's notice either." she stated. "Have you ever met Xehanort?" she asked as I tacked up another poster.
"No." I shook my head. "To be honest I hadn't really heard all that much about him until me and my friend Lea spoke to Cid at the pub last night. All I'd really heard about him beforehand was..."
"Rumours and speculation?" she asked finishing my sentence.
"Pretty much, yeah." I replied.
"And those three girls that he's always with." she added.
"Do you know anything about them?" I asked and she shook her head.
"No, I bumped into one of them once – the tall one with the ponytail. I tried apologising to her but she just glared at me and stalked off. The look she gave me, I honestly thought she was going to hit me." Aerith shuddered remembering it as she put up another poster.
"To be honest, from what I've heard about the three of them, I'm surprised she didn't." I stated.
"I've tried to avoid them all as much as possible since." she stated. "I don't understand why Ansem allows Xehanort to keep them around – everyone's terrified of them and I think some of the things they do to get their jobs done are illegal."
"Missing people, creepy aids and illegal activities...makes me wonder why I moved here in the first place." I joked. Aerith laughed slightly.
"Have I been putting you off?" she asked. "Radiant Gardens is a good place to live and everyone loves Ansem, despite the company he lets his aid keep, and this is the first time anyone's ever gone missing or anything out of the ordinary has happened here."
"I was joking." I smiled as I tacked my final poster to the lamppost next to the café. We had reached the centre of town now and had left a wave of posters tacked to various signs, posts and buildings in our wake. Aerith laughed as she went and tacked her final poster to another lamppost down the street.
"Good, you shouldn't listen to me." she said making her way back to me. "Dad's been saying that if any more people go missing then he's going to move us somewhere safer so I guess it's just his prejudice coming through."
"I can understand that, he just wants you to be safe." I replied.
"I suppose so," she murmured. "it's just...I rather like it here, despite the disappearances, I don't want to have to move."
"Not after you did so much work on that beautiful garden." I chuckled trying my best not to sound a gay as that statement made me feel. There was nothing wrong with a heterosexual man having a love of flowers but I knew what Lea would be saying if he had heard me say that. Aerith didn't seem to notice and question my sexuality but just smiled up at me.
"Exactly." she said. A silence between us hung in the air for a minute, all the while I tried to scrabble for something else to say, before a voice behind us broke it for us.
"...I live around the corner, it's not exactly a long trek, and besides it's not even dark." I heard Arlene shout to someone inside the café. I looked over Aerith's shoulder to see her leaving, pulling her jacket on over her uniform as she did. She glanced in my direction, only taking in the shock of pink that was my recognisable hair, and shouted back into the café. "Besides Lumaria's out here – I'll just walk with him...oh!" She stopped and exclaimed when she saw that I wasn't alone or with Lea, like I usually was.
Arlene took a proper look at me and only then did she see Aerith standing with me. I blushed furiously and shuffled awkwardly; this was the first time that Arlene had seem me with someone who wasn't Lea and the fact that it was another woman just made me all the more embarrassed (even though Arlene had no idea how I felt about her and probably didn't feel that was about me anyway). Aerith looked at Arlene and stiffened, evidently she found the situation just as awkward, then sent me a hasty smile.
"I better go or my dad will worry, thanks for helping me put up the posters Lumaria." she said.
"Well if you ever need more put up just give me a shout." I replied.
"Thanks," she smiled. "I'll see you later." And with that she was off like a shot before I could say anything else. I turned back to look at Arlene who raised an eyebrow at me and smirked slightly.
"Who was that?" she asked as she walked towards me and linked her arm with mine. I stiffened ever-so slightly but not enough for her to notice that her close proximity was making my heart hammer against my chest. As attractive as Aerith was she would never replace Arlene in my affections – my heart belonged to her and her alone.
"That was Aerith; Cid the barman's daughter." I said trying to sound as blasé as I possibly could, like I didn't care in the slightest that Arlene had seen me with another girl. "I spent the afternoon with her."
"Ooooooh." Arlene crowed childishly. "What have you too been up to?" I shook my head and rolled my eyes.
"Nothing like that." I laughed slightly. "I've been helping her put up some 'missing person' posters."
"Is that all?" Arlene asked, she seemed a little put out that I didn't have anything more interesting to tell her about what I had been doing all afternoon with a pretty girl.
"Sorry to disappoint you." I chuckled. We continued in silence for a moment before Arlene spoke.
"So who's gone missing?" she asked.
"That bloke Dilan, with the sideburns and dread-locks." I replied.
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "But he's always going out of town for work, and things like that, I'm sure he's fine."
"Maybe." I replied quietly. "You will be careful walking around by yourself though, won't you?"
"You sound just like John," she said. "he's telling all the girls to watch out on their way home, I think it's just because he wants to walk one of us home in the dark and try it on, the pervert."
"Arlene." I said sternly. She looked at me with her large green eyes, she knew from my tone that I was serious even though she was trying to make a joke.
"Ok I'll be careful," she replied. "but Braig and Dilan will come back and this will all blow over soon, I promise you." She gave my arm a reassuring squeeze but it didn't help to dispel the discomfort I felt in my stomach.
"You're probably right." I replied smiling, pretending to return to my normal self again. I didn't see the point in arguing with her if she wasn't worried about it but I was sure she wasn't 'probably right'. In fact I was one hundred percent sure that, in this case, she was probably wrong.