I actually got my act together and wrote this whole chapter today! Pretty proud of myself for that, honestly. I'm beginning to realize once again why I don't write romance- ~ First: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/854964808/ Previous: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/871541202 Next: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/873170541/ ~ Age rating: 11+ (basically just as long as you're a mature reader) ~ The day after, I had met Em in the Woods again. I don’t know what it was, but something about her drew me in in the same way a moth will fly to a light. Her playfulness, the fact that you never really could tell whether she was toying with you or being serious, and her ability to always seem like she had the upper hand made me want to play her game. I was stupid and innocent then. I wish I hadn’t fallen for her tricks. I was a fool. “What brings you to the Woods, Kaitlyn?” Em had asked. She threw a stone lazily into the water, and it skipped a few times on the surface before eventually sinking. /Kaitlyn./ The sound of my new name sent sparks through me, and I felt my fingers tingle at that. I was not Ravynne anymore, at least not with her. When I remembered that she was looking at a response, her fierce amber gaze setting on me, only wavering as she quickly tossed another stone into the water. I had shrugged. I liked being with her, outside of Solanine. It made me feel free. But I couldn’t tell her that. Not if I wanted to be Kaitlyn, the hero, the good one, not the daughter of one of the most powerful villains. I wanted to be /normal,/ whatever that would really mean. “I guess it’s just better than being cooped up.” I was never one with words, and I lacked the easy confidence that made Em so lovable yet so dangerous. I was one with doubt, and that must have been the end of me. She had smirked at me after I had said that, and it made me light up inside. My stomach had seemed to flurry around, the butterflies inside it fluttering even in my throat and in my toes, filling the whole of me with nervous energy. It was an electric kind of hum which stays in you long after. “An adventurer, then?” she had said, and I nodded. “I like adventurers. They’re much more interesting than the rest. I’m an adventurer too.” To Mother, I was “silly girl”, “insolent child”, “little Ravynne”. I had never been /interesting/ before. I had never been something, anything without Mother to come and sing praises of me and the ability to draw in the birds which I was named for. She doted on me when anyone was watching, because she was the perfect villain. But being /interesting/ sent a shiver through me, a sort of coldness that inexplicably warms you up as it runs down your spine. It made me feel like something more than before, more than the stupid little girl that she liked to treat me as. “Hmm?” I had said, tilting my head to the right as I said it. I tried to channel Em’s boldness into my next words as I tiptoed up to whisper in her ear, finishing with a mysterious smile, “I like adventurers too.”
