"Ah! My arm! It was just a joke!" I said, pretending that my left arm could feel pain.
"Is that so? Well, you didn't seem to notice when your arm bumped into literally everything last night." John replied while pinning me to the ground. "You're still a garbage liar."
"Fine, you've forced my hand! Take this!" My arm started to deform and wrap around John, restraining him and leaving me with only one arm but standing.
"Nooo! You have defeated me!" His voice was deliberately exaggerated.
I released him and took back my arm.
"I gotta take Laura back, wanna come with us till we get to your house?"
"Sure, let's go in like an hour."
********
After a short stint of collecting some milfoil from the garden and bantering with John, Laura woke up. She found us outside with a really bad case of bed-head. John and I slept in the blanket fort and she slept in my room by herself.
"Why doesn't your house have coffee?" She asked through dead eyes.
'What happened to her?' Spirit and I thought in unison.
Noticing my inquisitive gaze, she touched her hair, blushed, and ran inside to my mother.
John and I looked at each other and shrugged "She'll be back." I said
********
Laura retreated to the living room where Jordan was sitting.
"Help." Laura said, pointing at her disheveled hair.
With the mutual understanding every girl has for hair troubles, Jordan sat Laura down in front of her and started to fix her hair.
"So, what's bothering you hon?" Jordan employed her best motherly voice.
"Well, I went outside with my hair messed up, so there's that," Laura said in a dead voice.
"I get the feeling, my hair was a disaster on my first date with Ernest."
"Why do you have to make everything about love!?" Her voice regained its vigor.
"Because that's what you need right now. I can't imagine what your parents are doing to you, but judging by your horn, it's not good."
"I admit that my mom and sisters aren't good people, but I don't see how Ingen could help me." If Laura's face was beet red before, now she was a tomato.
"You need someone to trust unconditionally, and if I know Ingen, he can't exactly lie."
Jordan was almost done with the first of two braids, she was also quietly using her healing Eneru to fix Laura's split ends and flaky scalp.
"Well, yeah, but my interests and his are different. Plus he's really smart and I'm not, it's really intimidating."
"I get it, Ernest was alwa-"
"Stop right there, Ingen isn't Ernest, and I'm not you."
"That may be true, but Ingen takes after his father a lot, and our relationship started the same way yours did."
Laura tried to turn around but stopped so Jordan wouldn't mess up her braid.
"Don't talk about it like it's already happened!" Laura pouted.
"Be a little more positive, all that negativity will make you wrinkly."
Ingen was all but forgotten. "Really!?"
"Yeah, why do you think all those cranky old people are wrinkly." Jordan lied naturally.
Laura gasped and made an internal vow to be more positive.
"I'm done!"
The two braids made Laura's hair look like a crown with a ribbon at the back.
"Ingen and John are probably done collecting the milfoil, you should greet them, I'm going to go make breakfast. Oh, and remember, you are young, it's ok to try."
Laura brushed off her last piece of advice because she knew that Jordan wanted her to get with Ingen.
--------
We finished collecting the milfoil and went inside.
"Took you long enough." Laura joked.
"It's not like you helped." John retorted in the same tone.
"Your hair is looking good, did mom do it for you?"
She looked away "Yeah, she saw my, ahem, predicament, and helped me out."
"Are you ready to go? We have to start walking now if we don't want to ride Orin."
We had agreed earlier that a serene hike to Laura's house on the outskirts of town would be more fun than being transported there in minutes by a giant fox.
We left John at his house and continued to the gate.
After a few minutes of awkward silence between Orin, Laura, and me, Orin suddenly dashed for the forest.
'What's wrong Orin?' I thought frantically while forming a staff.
'Don't worry, I just realized something.'
Laura noticed me suddenly relax and she put away her knives.
"What was that all about?"
"No idea, Orin just said that it's nothing to worry about. Give him a minute and he'll be back."
True to my word, Orin trotted back to us with flowers floating around his head, held by pressure manipulation.
"That haircut screams flower crown. The dryad of my part of the woods wears one and you look just like her."
'Take notes Ingen.' Spirit advised, he was on Jordan's team.
'What do you mean? Why am I taking notes?'
'Take a look.'
My eyes regained their color and I looked at Laura. Her red hair matched well with her orange eyes and rosy cheeks, and with her flower crown braid, she looked cute. I felt a strange feeling in my chest, my heart had started to beat faster than normal.
'My heart is beating asynchronously! I must be having a heart attack!'
'No! You absolute nitwit! You just experienced butterflies for the first time in your miserable life!'
'Uh... what does that mean?'
'It means you think that Laura is pretty. You might even like her.' If Spirit could facepalm, he would.
'I will keep this from her for now until I can study its effects further. As long as she never brings it up, I won't have to lie.'
"So, Ingen, how do I look? With the crown I mean." Laura timidly twirled one of her braids.
'She seems to be having the same symptoms as me, hmm.'
"You look uh... well..." I suddenly couldn't find my words.
She projected the worst possible outcome onto my words before I could finish.
"Just forget I asked." she turned all the way around.
"I was going to say that it was cute." My words returned to me like a well-trained dog.
Laura sat down clumsily. "Maybe we should ride on Orin's back, after all, my legs are jelly from all this walking."
Orin grew to accommodate us, but not quite as large as he did when we were going to my house.
"Orin, why are you so small?"
"First, I'm actually huge. Second, I'm too tired to get any bigger at this hour."
Orin was also on Jordan's team.
I helped Laura get onto Orin's back and this time we were sitting stiffly at a less-than-respectful distance apart. Orin kept at a leisurely pace, making sure to make the ride imperfect so that we would have to grab something to not fall off.
'Hey Ingen, did you know that you will return to normal if you grab Laura's hand'
'That's ridiculous!'
'You won't know until you try.'
At that, he stoked my curiosity enough. When Orin hit his next 'bump' we both grabbed each other's hand, both her and my hands were soaking wet from sweat. Suddenly Orin yawned and grew to his usual travel size, and our ride was smooth.
"Ahh, I feel warmed up, I think I'm good enough to even smooth out our travel."
For the rest of the ride, neither Laura nor I said a word, but our sweaty hands were stuck together like glue. We arrived at about noon. One of Laura's sisters saw us and ran inside. Her mother came outside.
"Guess who's back!" She sneered tauntingly, "Be gone, you aren't welcome."
"Huh?" Laura and I wondered out loud, but Laura sounded less than surprised.
"I mean that you are no longer Laura of Gond Wood, you are Laura of nowhere, I'm disowning you."