The Sacred Lot Cards Chapter 7- Totally a Filler Chapter

The next morning was grey and dull. Akilah and Kenji immediately checked on Ekon's hand.

Dessa and Ayra started building a fire and finding breakfast. Ayra shot a squirrel (a little gamey, but tasted kind of like a chicken-y steak… but not a good one, like a prime rib, but like… a low-quality steak) and Dessa took a frying pan out of Ayra's knapsack.

"Why did you pack one of these, anyway?" Dessa asked conversationally.

Ayra shrugged. "I could beat someone with it… or I could use it to fry up some squirrel bacon. I knew we'd need to eat, numbskull."

Dessa held up her hands in surrender. "It's not a bad thing, Ayra. Just curious, is all."

The sizzling, crackling sound of the skinned squirrel on the fire apparently woke Connor, who gravitated toward the meat without second thought.

For Dessa, who had to skin, gut, cut, and bury the… entrails of the thing, Connor was welcome to the meat. Dessa might just go throw up in a hole instead.

Akilah and Kenji walked over with Ekon. "We need to stay here a day," said Akilah, who looked inexplicably as perfect as ever. She also sounded as bored with life as ever.

"Why?" Bernadette said, having just emerged from her cabin, stretching her arms and yawning..

Kenji whirled on her. "You heal poison that is supposed to kill someone in one session and make it easy for the victim to move the next day." His razor-sharp brown eyes challenged her.

They had the now-characteristic staredown that Bernadette seemed to use to exert authority over others. Kenji furrowed his brows at her before looking seriously back at the fried squirrel leg he had to eat. He managed to lose the staredown but still… win.

Bernadette, obviously sensing a loss and needing to reassert control, looked down into the frying pan with distaste. By now, the squirrel bacon was sizzling nicely in the pan, frying in its own squirrely grease. "What is that?" she demanded, looking around with her steel-hard eyes at everyone. Dessa shrank back.

Akilah said, sounding bored, "Squirrel."

"I'm a vegetarian," Bernadette explained.

Ayra snorted, "Not on a quest you're not."

Bernadette looked oh-so-adorably disgusted. "You can't expect me to eat this!"

Ayra laughed again. "Dessa had to freaking SKIN the thing and even she's eating something!"

It was true, Dessa had reluctantly taken a leg bone when her mouth watered traitorously at the smell of the frying meat. She had just taken a bite when Ayra spoke.

Oh, gods, she thought desperately, please tell me Ayra did not just drag me into this.

Bernadette whirled on Dessa. "That's disgusting. You handled a freaking dead squirrel? You're revolting."

Dessa internally panicked. This was where Raya swooped in to- no, she stopped herself from finishing the thought. There is no Raya here to protect her now. She was on her own.

And so she turned her back to Bernadette and ran into the woods, with some vague idea in mind of finding some sort of edible greens. Dessa wasn't super-excited about an all-meat diet either, but she did what she had to for survival.

But who was she kidding? She ran away to break down.

She was sick of these people, and it had barely been a day. They were all those people she hate, hate, hated back home.

Bernadette and Conrad were the couple that were in every single one of her classes and were still totally and completely ignorant of her existence; Akilah was the bitch who trashed Dessa behind her back every chance she got; Kenji was the magnet kid who thought he was better than everyone else simply because he went to special classes; Ekon was the guy who slammed her into a wall her first day of school; and Ayra…

Ayra was the girl whose friends thought she was awesome and everyone else thought was a total meanie, the girl who said what she was thinking with a total disregard to tact.

What was it with Dessa and making friends with people who had absolutely no tact when she had way too much?

But being around them was killing her slowly, like basilisc venom rotting her from inside out. No matter what she did, how social (or not) she was, she would never really fit in with them. Each pair was totally wrapped up in themselves and their various feuds with others.

Why was it, that no matter where she went, Dessa was alone?

Dessa silently told herself to get over it. She rooted around for a couple minutes in the dirt, letting her red, puffy eyes go back to normal, letting her breathing become regular again.

Dessa had the good luck to come across a cucumber plant (definitely NOT in someone's garden) and plucked it of its fruits to bring back to camp for herself and Bernadette.

When she got back, everyone was talking in their little pairs except Ekon and Ayra. Ekon was flexing his hand, trying to determine the extent of his injury while guarding his sister. Ayra was polishing her bronze knife, sharpening it against a whetstone.

Dessa didn't speak, just got out one of her little knives on a holster up her arm it took her a full five minutes to figure out and began slicing cucumber. Three of them she kept whole, to eat later, but the last two she fried in slices on the cleaned frying pan. Once the slices were done (read- warm and crispy), she came around to Bernadette and wordlessly offered her the pan.

Bernadette took a couple slices with a murmured, "Thanks," and went back to whatever she was talking about with Conrad. Dessa made the rounds with her cucumber slices, and everyone took some except Ekon, who was still tearing into a leg of squirrel.

I realized that I need a disclaimer: I'm disregarding The Lost Hero totally, and I'm blatantly using Rick Riordan's Great Prophecy II for my fanfic. It never struck me as 'Great Prophecy' material in TLO.

That being said, how was this chapter? R&R, please.

xoxo,
bekeyboo ;)