Smiles On A Spring Night (Open)

[Mia Clifton]

The scent of honeysuckles had been driving Mia absolutely crazy for days now. Where was it coming from? She just had to know. Their intoxicating perfume was just one of the few things that made camp and this foreign country bearable. After all, it reminded her of home. Ok, so they weren't that prevalent in Australia, but Mia could remember several incidences of playing in honeysuckle bushes whenever she visited her grandparents' house. The corners of her mouth curled up slightly as she remembered her grandmother showing her a vine filled with them, telling her that the nectar was what fairies drank. And then an older cousin had shown her the proper way to extract the nectar, and from then on, barbies at their house always involved a magical stop at the bushes.

Mia blinked suddenly, aching with nostalgia. Why was she doing this to herself? Thinking of her home almost always never helped. She would only end up worrying and in tears or something. No, she had to remain calm. Live in the present. Closing her eyes, Mia devoted herself wholeheartedly to her current task-- finding the honeysuckles. It certainly helped that she had heightened senses, and she followed the scent, humming quietly to herself.

It was only after the sun had set did she finally find them. It wasn't just one bush; it was a whole row of them, lining the edge of the forest. The girl stared at them in awe. How had she never noticed them? It didn't matter. She had found them now. Mia eagerly strode forward but stopped suddenly, unsure. She could almost feel her anxieties coming back. What if it didn't work this time? What if those were a different type of flower and were poisonous?Oh, shut up, Mia. You think too much.

Hesitantly, she reached out and gingerly plucked a bright yellow flower. Yellow was always sweeter than white. After twirling the petals between her fingers, she gripped the small green bud at the end and pulled, a small drop of nectar forming at the end. Dammit, her fingers were starting to tremble now. Closing her eyes, Mia brought the drop to her tongue, and the sweet liquid filled her senses. Suppressing a giddy laugh, she dropped the flower and moved to take another. Who cared if she missed dinner? There was a feast awaiting her ahead.

Word Count: 395
Muse: Alive
Notes: If you have no idea what's happening, click HERE or Google "how to eat Japanese honeysuckle nectar" or something along those lines.
Tagged: Open!

[Skye Jade Remmington]

Skye was sort of in a daze. She had woken up at four-thirty in the morning, found some random gum in her hair (total ew), and not been able to get back to sleep after going to bed at, say, two in the morning after awful insomnia? She had tossed and turned all night, watching the sky turn darker and darker. She couldn't fall asleep. She just couldn't. Her sheets were too hot, she was too agitated, and everything was wrong. She couldn't name exactly what was wrong, but something was.

After getting two measly hours of sleep, Skye woke up again. She lay awake watching the dawn break, but she could barely concentrate on anything. Finally, she couldn't stay in bed anymore. She paced around, she took a shower (and found the gross gum), she gave herself a makeover and wiped it off. She tested lipstick she knew the color of already on her wrist. She organized the money in her wallet, the money she couldn't use because it was mortal money. She stacked her drachma until the stack fell, which honestly was pretty soon.

What was up with her? She needed someone to talk to. And about time, too — the sun was well up by then. She had been her crazy self inside while people were allowed outside into the crisp, cool infinite air where they couldn't be all control-freaky like Skye just had. It was probably, like, a junior panic attack or something.

Normally, she would talk to Bailey about this stuff. But Bailey had the...thing going around, and was probably in the infirmary, so he wasn't an option. She paced violently, trying to sort her jumble of thoughts in her head.

She had ended up wandering around aimlessly for most of the day and skipping lunch as well as breakfast, not feeling hungry; just lost. She had been reading her book, Pretty Little Liars, when she realized it was almost dinner. She had wasted away the whole day reading and being claustrophobic and practically having a panic attack.

On the way to the dining hall, her thoughts somehow turned to her family. It was the weekend of the month they usually skipped town to go to their house in Malibu, a far cry from their hometown, which was a place as rural as California could get. They were probably there now without her. Her sister Emma Kate was probably in her Aeropostale flip-flops, the ones Skye had adored from afar, her pedicured toes dangling. Her parents were probably chatting with her as they ate dinner at a fancy pseudo-Hawaiian restaurant, forgetting that hello, they had another daughter. This always happened. It was so sad and so pathetic. People had deemed Skye "the weird one" and the perfectionistic Mr. and Mrs. Remmington had not been happy. Apparently, she was the talk among other parents of the town.

Off to camp she went.

As she walked, Skye realized two things. One, she was way off course — in the woods. Two, tears had made their way onto her cheeks, dripping silently and traitorously. At least no-one would be in the woods around dinnertime. She hated people seeing her cry.

And then she saw her. Mia Clifton. Sucking honeysuckle from a yellow flower the color of the frosting Skye's mom used to put on cakes in Malibu.

Shut up, she thought. But Mia had probably already seen her and heard her sniffling and crying. What the hell was wrong with Skye today?

"Oh...I didn't realize someone else would be here..." Skye had hoped to cover up the fact that she'd been crying, but her words came out in that weird voice you always use...well, after a crying fit. "Hi..." Her voice was quiet and sniffly. She knew Mia had noticed she had been crying and didn't try to cover it up. She was sick of covering up crap like this. Let her notice she was crying. She didn't care.

"Are you...drinking out of a flower?" Quite honestly, it sounded like some weird hippie ritual an Artemis person might do. But, even if it was some weird thing like that, it got her mind off the bad things. Being alone. Her family ditching her. Her weird panic attack this morning. Yeah, running into Mia couldn't be all that bad.

[Uriel Orion Eisenhower]

"Here goes nothing." Uriel murmured to himself as he looked at the chalk circle on the floor. The white powder hummed with an invisible power, and within the circle lay a single stalk of honeysuckle, harvested fresh an hour or two ago from that giant bush of them in the camp. He held a hand out towards it, before whispering a word of the Ancient Greek language underneath his breath. The incantation wasn't needed for the spell, but Uriel used it anyway as words helped one focus their thoughts and made spells gain a higher chance of succeeding.

Instantly, the chalk circle glowed with power for a second, a fiery blue light emanating from it before that blue light soared out from the powder, coalesced in mid air and plunged into the flower, diffusing throughout it. Uriel picked up the flower from within the circle, the power of it already spent and attached it to a fish hook at the end of a line on a wooden rod. The honeysuckle flower floated in the air even after Uriel let go and it acted like a compass, directing Uriel towards the bushes that he had plucked it from. All he was doing was trying out a tracking spell he recently came up with - he deliberately chose the flower from that bush so he could tell if the spell had brought him to the right place.

The Son of Hekate walked out of his cabin, fishing rod in hand and the end of the hook held aloft by the softly glowing honeysuckle. The flower pointed towards the left, the fishing line bent towards it so Uriel walked that way and after a few minutes, he found himself before the honeysuckle bush he had plucked the flower from.

The teenager smiled to himself in satisfaction, plucking the glowing flower from it and peeling away the outer layer of the petals and pulling back the string inside to suck on the nectar that pooled up. "Mm." Uriel grunted in satisfaction at the sweet taste before he sat down on the ground, waving his hand to call upon his magic to pull more of the flowers forward. He plucked out a handful of them and only then did he notice the two girls there, one enjoying the honeysuckle too and the other asking the one drinking the sweet nectar from the flowers a question.

"Nectar?" Uriel asked with a somewhat eccentric smile on his face, holding out the handful of honeysuckle towards the both of them. He always looked like that, like some crazed scientist every time he tested out a new spell and the spell turned out to be working or even better than just working. "It's .. sweet stuff." Uriel assured, the statement directed more towards the one who had been asking Mia if she was actually drinking out of a flower.

Words: 481.

[Jason Elliot Corcoran]

All he could hear was his heart beating furiously in his chest. He could feel the muscles in his arms and legs going overdrive to heave the weight of his body along the forest path. His sword, now transformed into a silver and gold knife sat safely in his jean pocket, the sheath occasionally making a clinking sound, reminding him that it was there to help him. A massive hellhound was chasing him, the brown haired teen could've turned around and took it on, but he'd be bashed about in such a tight place with so many trees. He'd have to find a larger clearing where he could taking it on one-on-one.

Sam must've been lost further back. It was her stupid idea to come and have a little sibling time in the forest, that was until a hellhound pounced right in front of them. It was only Sam's over-active ADHD that stopped both of them from getting crushed.

But here he was. Running through the forest. His throat started to burn and his chest started to heave. The muscles in his arms were already aching. He'd almost tripped countless times from the lumbering body behind him. Intuition told him that there was a clearing up ahead, hopefully he'd be able to take it on there.

He saw the trees starting to thin out, this was the clearing. He spun around on his feet and fluently brought out his sword. Facing the hellhound, he didn't realise that there were three people in the clearing.

Strong vines wrapped around the hellhounds' paws, tightening the hellhound to the floor for a few seconds. Rushing forwards, sword in hand, Jason stabbed the creature in the belly, but it didn't do much but enrage it, and it broke free from the hold that the vines had on it. For a few minutes this went on, and finally he managed to get one good shot at it in its chest, making it explode into gold dust. Blowing the dust that stuck too him off and wiping the sweat off his forehead, he turned around, hoping to sit down for some rest. Only then did he realise the 3 people in the clearing. His cheeks tinted red as he realised they'd probably seen him fight. He slowly walked over, about to greet the trio.