I'm happy with this chapter. I hope you'll like it to: )

Disclaimer: I don't own Night World, nor will I ever….

The two of them dashed through the woods in the cool night air, laughing, chasing each other. The leaves under the trees lie so crisp, that even a lizard would make great skittering noise if he runs among them. Occasionally there would rabbits coming out of the bushes, ears twisting, detecting danger around the surrounding.

"A rabbit!" Jez would say, and they'd chase the animal before loosing its tracks.

As the sky became darker and darker, and the stars climbed into the sky silently, Jez was throwing a handful of crispy leaves to Morgead, which he dodged easily. She began to run, and Morgead was right after her. She laughed. "You'll never catch me!" She shouted, but then stopped short when she realized she was standing in a clearing, which was the top of the hill, where no trees loomed and covered the sky. She lifted her head up.

Morgead came behind her within a second. "I got you!" he shouted. Then, seeing Jez's mesmerized face while looking at the sky, he asked, "What is it?" He looked at the cliff in front of Jez, "You're not planning to jump off the cliff, are you?" A concerned expression occupied his face.

Jez ignored his comment. "They're stars." She pointed at the sky, where there were millions of stars twinkled.

Morgead looked confused. "Yes, they're stars."

"Don't they look amazing?" She asked.

"So?"

Jez sat down where she stood. Morgead followed her move, baffled. Since when did Jez have the time to sit down and just star-watch?

"Uncle Bracken taught me how to recognize the stars." The young Jez explained to Morgead. "Like, how to tell the direction and time from stars." She shifted her position, combing back her messy, red hair.

"Like… that one." Jez pointed her finger toward the sky.

Morgead raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"That's the North star! So we must be facing North right now." She said smugly, showing off the knowledge she had learned from Uncle Bracken.

Morgead stared at the star she pointed at. "Okay."

"And, so…" Jez narrowed her eyes, moving her finger across the sky." That one must be the Big Dipper! The Great Bear." She exclaimed happily, pointing at a group of stars against the dark sky among with millions of other stars. Like millions of tiny diamonds spread all over the black velvet cushion.

"That doesn't even look like a bear." Morgead argued.

Jez scowled. "It does."

Morgead just stared at her side-ways with an I-don't-believe-it expression.

"Well, maybe it doesn't." She finally admitted, after staring at them for a while, trying to figure out where the head even is. "But I know what it is, that's what counts." She concluded. "Ursa—" Jez stammered, trying to remember the name of the constellation.

"Ursa Major?" Morgead answered for her.

"Yeah, Ursa Major." Jez said, annoyed that she needed someone else to remind her of the name.

"The time would be…" She trailed off. Remembering the method Uncle Bracken had taught her, using Ursa Major as the pointer star, she silently performed the math in her head.

"The time would be?" Morgead prompted, turning his head in her direction.

"Don't distract me." Jez waved a hand in his direction. He grumbled, "Fine."

"It would be…5 am?" Not to mention Uncle Bracken would kill her if she did stay outside that long.

"What? The sun just set, Jezebel, how can it be five in the morning?" Morgead explained patiently, holding a smile.

"Oh, shut up." Jez groaned. "Uncle Bracken's method sucks." She muttered under her breath.

The smile on Morgead's face disappeared, as if her words reminded him of something unpleasant. "You can always try again." He said, looking up at the stars.

Jez wondered at the thin expression he wore on his face. She was sure she didn't say anything wrong, but he was quieter than usual. Normally he would've been laughing his head off. She was still glad she didn't tell him what she really got as an answer for the first time though, because 56 0'clock doesn't make any sense at all…

She sighed. "Okay. Fine."

She tried the calculations again—the pointer star seems to be pointing at 7 pm on the "sky-clock-face". It's four months away from Zero, which means eight hours; Moving back 8 hours from 7 should give the answer.

"It's 11pm!" Jez gasped, "Uncle Bracken's still going to kill me if I don't get back soon…"

Uncle Bracken had decided that Jez was to return home before 12 mid-night, or else, he threatened, "I'll have to punish you like human children…you'll get grounded." No matter how hard Jez protested, "But I'm turning seven next month!" Uncle Bracken always reasoned her with the you're-only-a-six-but-not-quite-seven-year-old-and-you're-still-a-child-no-matter-what theory.

Jez imagined Morgead glaring. Saying, "He's going to kill you anyway."

The only thing is, he didn't. Which surprised her. She turned around to look at him. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass-covered-ground, his head tilted back, and he was staring at the stars. The wind was blowing his tousled hair, which desperately needed to be cut. His emerald green eyes seemed to glimmer in the dark, like a cat's eye. She remembered the time when she once mistaken the cat's eyes as Morgead's eyes. Not that she'll ever admit it.

"Morgead?" Jez leaned forward, waving a hand in front of him, trying to catch his eyes. "It's 11."

"I don't like Cassiopeia." Morgead said in return, not taking his eyes off the sky.

"What?" Jez said, confused by the sudden change of his mood. "It's eleven, e-le-ven o' clock. And the sun set ages ago." She strokes her hair impatiently. "What's that have to do with Cassiopeia? I know Cassiopeia, the "W" in the sky…"

"Cassiopeia in Greek Mythologies, the—"

"Is that what you do all day? Read about Greek Mythologies? Is that what's under your bed you wouldn't let me see?" She smirked. But then again, he didn't laugh or say anything in return to retaliate and defend himself. She got up and stood in front of him, blocking his view so that he has look at her. "What's wrong?" She demanded.

The sudden motion of Jez brought him back to reality. He blinked, as if waking up from a dream, and focused his view on Jez's annoyed face. Her eyes, now more of a shade of silver than it was in day time, when it was a silvery-blue colour, but with a little bit more of blue inside. Now it was almost pure silver. Her red flaming hair, blown by the cool night wind was flying into her face, and she pushed the hair away from her face roughly. Dried leaves were tangles in her hair—as it always does when they were running in the woods, and once in a while she'd start complaining about how annoying her hair gets. But he liked it. He couldn't imagine Jez without her long, red hair. He'd use the word "beautiful" to describe it.

"Nothing's wrong." He just said.

There's something you're hiding from me." Jez insisted stubbornly, putting her hands on her hip. "Tell me. Now."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

But Jez stared right into his eyes, her gaze intense, demanding an answer. For a moment it was silver to deep-emerald green, and there was nothing else in the world.

He gave up. "Okay."

Jez's gaze softened and she sat down next to him. "So what is it?"

He stared at the horizon. "My mom's been gone for a week."

Jez was surprised. "Why?" She asked, her eyes widened.

"She's going to leave me one day." He started, almost talking to himself. "She never cared about me anyway." He said bitterly, "No one cares about me."

"I don't have parents either." Jez said with a sullen expression, "They were killed…"

He looked at her. "But you have Uncle Bracken, Jez. You have Uncle Bracken who cares about you. Who teaches you how to star-watch. Who'll tell you off if you've gone home too late, who'll worry about you. " His green eyes burned, the color of deepest emerald green. There was desperation in his voice. Jez had never seen him like this. In a way, he was completely vulnerable, but he didn't sound young at all.

"I have nothing…Some day she'll stop caring about me, and I'm on my own…"

Then there was the longest silence they'd ever had between them. It was the longest time Morgead remembered Jez staying completely silence. He thought about his mother, going out again and again with some vampire guy, not coming back home for days. The sound of the door slamming shut. The lonely apartment. But she was still his mother. And she had loved him.

A moment later, which seems like forever, Jez spoke.

"You have me." She said softly, "You have me, Morgead."

He met her eyes, and she looked more serious than ever.

"I care about you," she said, "and I won't leave you. I promise." Her eyes flashed, and hesitantly, she put her hands on top of his. And it startled him. This was so unlike Jez.

"We're friends, right?" she said then, flashing a very-Jez like smile. "You won't ever get rid of me, even if the world ends." She grinned. "And you'll never beat me in stick-fighting."

He smiled at that. "Sure. That was because I let you win. I was just saving my powers for the final battle. "

"You cheat. You've been cheating since the first time we met."

"What? No. What have you been eating? Carbon Monoxide ice cream? You're brain must be lacking oxygen. I never cheat."

"Your brain's lacking oxygen, idiot."

"You don't even know what Carbon Monoxide is."

"And you do?"

"Yeah. I have his phone number. You wanna call him?"

"Shut up, Carbon Morgy-xide." She punched him in the shoulders.

"Well, Jezebel, if you say so…"

Jez rolled her eyes. Then her gaze stayed over the hill tops, eyes widening in disbelief.

"Oh, crap." Jez said, horrified. "Uncle Bracken is going to kill me." He followed her gaze, and saw what made her so horrified—the brightening eastern horizon. Sunrise.

"You got it wrong both times then," Morgead observed, "The time."

"Stop that!" Jez shouted, "Do something!"

"Race you down the hill, Jezebel." He called, grinning wickedly. He was gone in a second, not even bothering to see if Jez was going to watch up.

Because he knows she'll always be there for him.

"Morgead Blackthorn! Cheater!"

And he smiled.

Aww. Yes, so there you get to know more about Morgead : ) I'm hoping they're not OOC…You see, the fun thing writing about them as kids is, they're kids! It's ok to make them a bit…vulnerable. Lol, if that makes any sense…I also decided to slip some astronomy in…Just in case you were wondering, Cassiopeia was the queen and the mother of Andromeda. She got in trouble with the water nymphs for claiming she's more beautiful than any of them, so they had to sacrifice Andromeda, their daughter. Something like that. Get why Morgead doesn't like her now? Bad mothers…Yeah, Morgead is one smart kid…he knows chemistry, he knows mythologies…

So..Like it? Or not? Leave a review!