I came to, my check plastered against the rough stone floor, warmed from my own body. The sandy grit of dust scratched against my skin, the bright sun that had previously shown through the murky window was now a dying glow, barely enough to illuminate the room. I turned my head slowly, my neck stiff and achy as my body moved positions. The cabinet in the back of the room now seemed like a massive, looming black shape, casting crawling shadows on the old floor. I sat up carefully, suppressing the chill that ran across my body as the drafty room's breeze hit my face. The crystal was still grasped tightly in my hand, the edges dug deeply into my palm, revealing little indentations as I released the stone. It sat now, dull, lifeless and unassuming, no longer the beacon of mystery it was before.

At once I considered where to put it, the option of simply putting it back in the cabinet for anyone to stumble across felt too... wrong. Almost like an invasion of privacy, the crystal had spoken to me, chosen me. We were tied somehow, since our connection; and therefore, I justified to myself, it now belonged to me. "No stone left behind", I thought smugly.

I stood up in a whirling cloud of dust, the little mites lit up as they lazily spun like wandering planets in the fading daylight. Carefully, I slipped the precious stone into my apron pocket, and grimaced as a vision of Gollum flashed across my mind, "precious"; no way I'd let a rock be the downfall of my sanity.

I dusted off my clothing quickly and straightened my hair. Distantly the sound of milling people reached my ears, clanging of pots and the pattering of many feet as the castle began to prepare for dinner. Claire would be wondering where I was, we always got ready together for the evening meal.

I gave the room one last scan before patting down my now heavy pocket and opening up the door. I looked out, and finding the coast clear, slipped out from the mystery room and headed back to the physician's ward. After a few minutes of getting lost twice, and crossing paths with a particularly touchy drunk old man, I found myself in a hallway that I recognized.

My feet scraped against the stone floor, the sound of scuffing leather filled the air as I ran back to my room. Already in my head, I was rehearsing my explanation to Claire as to where I had been, yet as I reached the stairwell, about to descend, I heard something echo up from below. Slowly and quietly, I took a few steps down, making sure not to step into the pool of light, cast by the wall's lantern. I stopped on the seventh stair up, right before the turn that would expose my presence to the room.

I took a breath and listened.

And immediately regretted it.

Claire certainly was not alone, but she was also not in a decent state I imagined, at least not going off the sounds that both she and Jamie were making.

I panicked all at once, horrified at the scene I had stumbled upon, and turned in a rush to race back up the stairs. But alas, making a quiet and non-embarrassing escape was not in the cards. In an instant, I collided with a warm body headed in the opposite direction.

I hate to admit my cliché response, but I shrieked. Loudly, as I felt my equilibrium shift backwards. The warm body seized up and made a deep exclamation of surprise, followed closely by a scream and yell from down within the ward. All the while my balance was tipping down the stairs and I had no way to right myself besides grabbing wildly for anything to stable. Which I did.

To be specific, I grabbed the warm human body.

If I haven't mentioned it before, my luck is nonexistent. A fact clearly displayed when my handhold lost balance himself and decided to follow my descent as I roughly fell down the stairs. Tumbling together, we landed, sprawled in a tangled mass of arms and legs upon the hard floor; in the lantern's light and regrettably in view of two very indecent individuals in a position that I sorely wish I could burn from my brain. My face flushed as I turned to my tumbling partner. Looking back at me was a very disheveled, equally embarrassed boy. Specifically the one who returned my ribbon to me at the clan gathering not two weeks beforehand. Lucky for me, his current state very much humanized him and I was not the blubbering tongue-tied buffoon in his presence that I was at the dinner previously.

His eyes flashed to the couple behind me and in an instant he was on his feet, grabbing my hand and yanking me up the stairs, almost pulling my arm straight out of the socket. Not that I would have minded at that point, anything to escape the situation that we had fallen into, both literally and figuratively. As we ran past the lanterns and into the dusky hallway, the calls of Claire and shouts of Jamie were left answerless in our wake. Up we ran, through twisting hallways and corridors, doubling back and taking wild turns until we were sure that there was no chance of being found by the other two. Once we found a hallway, tucked back and away on the other side of the castle, clear from the physician's ward and any that might wander out of it, we stopped. Our faces a mix of red and pink from more than just the running.

"I dunno abou' Claire bu' I think we should steer clear o' Jamie for a bit", He said in a huff, his face slowly returning to the ruddy tan it was before. I nodded my head, my chest heaving as I caught my breath.

"I think I'll skip dinner" I said in response, unwilling to face Claire or Jamie after our recent events. He laughed and nodded his head,

"Aye, tha' seems like the best idea".