Red sky at night,
Sailor's delight
After an otherwise ordinary day (Lindsay was otherwise more... enthusiastic when she realized who, exactly, Tyler was after staring at him from across the gym) Gwen made her way home from school, flanked by Duncan and Geoff. Duncan split off from the group at a fork in the road, naturally, with the parting shout over his shoulder of having to go harass Courtney before his parole officer realized that he was late.
Geoff offered the excuse of having to do homework, but she noticed that his home was the other way and the street he was taking went to Bridgette's.
Deciding not to call him on that, Gwen stretched, pulled down her traditional black skirt, and tromped on with little drama (she was a big girl, after all, even if it was dark already). Of course, until the tree started writhing above her. Just the wind, she decided, but moved out of the way all the same. It was when it started making garbled sounds that she stopped, and when something fell out of it with a slightly wet thud, that she got worried.
Keeping a safe distance all the same, she politely stared at the dark mass of something on the sidewalk. It twitched, and she blinked quickly. And then it unfolded itself into another teen, with the traditional camouflage top and jeans.
And, of course, the not quite so traditional coffin-shaped stitching on his right shoulder that signified that he was, in fact, a vampire going to Night School (another pun muchly used)
So. Said vampire apparently going to Night School coughed a little into his elbow (she noted that) and proceeded to inform her, "Uh, ssssorry." Drawing out the consonant in an effort to prolong the time he needed to think up a plausible explanation; "..." He offered.
"... Whatthehell. Why were you in a tree?" Gwen arched in eyebrow, not quite unafraid but confident in the fact that she had pepper spray in her bag. Pepper spray, whilst not quite twenty-first era technology, worked fine to blind all creatures and send them into spasming agony while their victims fled for their dear lives.
Of course, she still kept her nice, lovely personal bubble far, far away from the stated vampire.
Said vampire rubbed the back of his neck, looked around, and stared at the tree contemplatively. "...Dunno. Um, sorry. I'm Trent." He held out a hand, Gwen stared at it for a very long time, and then informed him of how easy it would be to drag her to him and suck her blood if she took that hand, so, sorry, no thanks, maybe when there's people around and witnesses.
Because even with pepper spray in hand, Gwen was not quite ready to trust a vampire that fell out of a tree (whatthehell?), alone, with just her and the vampire –
spotting some movement out of the corner of her eye, she assigned it the identity of the resident hobo. Thus; just her, him, and an unreliable witness. God knew why she was even sticking around.
Considering her options – curiosity or going straight home and eating some goopy carbonara her mother concocted? In the end, curiosity won (but she was keeping the damn pepper spray) and she folded her arms.
"Shouldn't you be at class?"
"..........You know, you're kind of ri-...wait. Do you have a watch?"
"...Sure."
"What time is it?"
"... Mm, eight, almost nine, give or take a few minutes?"
"....OhshitohshitohshitI'msolat-uh, bye, I gotta go, I'm, um, yeah, I'm...yeah,"
"I'm Gwen, lovely to meet y-" Cutting herself off once she knew he was gone (in the wrong direction, no less, but she had a feeling his sense of direction was skewed by falling from that tree), Gwen started the not-quite-long trek to her house (school had ended a bit early, and the most of the trip had already been done when she met whats-is-name, yes, Trent, so she could convince her mother she'd been staying at a friend's for a little while)
She felt kind of bad for him, though - if what she thought was right, he'd probably been carried up there in a prank concocted by friends. The leaves were thick enough to block out sun, but it was far away enough that he'd be confused. Very, very confused. On the other hand, Gwen thought, he didn't seem quite impressively intelligent. Hnh.
Looking up, she noticed that the sky wasn't the midnight blue she was expecting, but rather a fragmented crimson mixing with the blue, so dark it might not be recognized, a testament to the sun's power.
Gwen wondered if that was a bad sign. She'd heard a 'red sky' saying before, once, but that was when her family had gone on a road trip and decided to stop at a whaling museum (a whaling museum, of all things).
And so, life went on until the second (un)eventful meeting which both of them kind of wanted to forget and was hardly romantic in the least. The first meeting was hardly epic, however. The second, though... was an epic meeting, but something that everybody would've rather avoided in the end.