Laila Kennedy
February 25, 2016 1:26 PM
Procrastinating in the Gardens (tag: Mr. Xavier) by Laila Kennedy
The light sprinkles the night before ensured that when Laila stepped out into the Gardens that afternoon after putting her things away following Defense the grounds were still muddy. She wasn’t quite aware, really, that her friendship with the groundskeeper could be considered odd, she just knew that she enjoyed talking to him and she enjoyed helping him in the gardens. Since she had first started working with him during her first year, Laila had learned a lot about various magical plants and the environments which they needed to best survive. The rain was good for most of the plants, she knew. There were others that did better with less rain and less mud, but there really wasn’t anything to be helped. It was the weather, after all.Actually finding Mr. Xavier was usually the hardest part of the day since he really could have been anywhere in the labyrinth, but by now she had gotten enough of a working knowledge that she didn’t feel as though it were a frustrating task and she actually kind of enjoyed attempting to learn the twists and turns so that the next time she entered she would have an easier time of it. Indeed as time went on it was easier and easier, but she was still somewhat wary. There were tales of sinister creatures living in the labyrinth, and even though the satori had ventured forth last year, there could be more. It was for this reason that she tried her best to be on guard, but after having not run into anything particularly nasty, she was starting to not pay as much attention to her surroundings.
Today, she was paying no mind at all to her surroundings, having found a particularly pretty flower of a variety that she had not yet encountered in the gardens before and had stopped to admire the coral burst that was adorning the bush to her right. The color almost perfectly matched the ribbon she had tied her dark curls back with and she half felt it was the garden playing tricks on her—sometimes she got the feeling that the place was alive. A rustling further down the path didn’t break her concentration as she reached a finger to touch the velvety petal, thinking that it was probably a bird that was finding something to eat, and it wasn’t until she heard a louder noise, something of a branch cracking that she jumped, started.
Laila had long since learned that she did not have that magnificent ability to scream upon being frightened. Sometimes she liked it, knowing that she would never sound stupid when Arne or one of his friends snuck up on her and Jillian Chong, or when Gabe hide under her bed to frighten her at night. Other time she realized how bad it was because if she was ever alone and something bad did frighten her then the loudest she would get would be a startled gasp, which was what she did now, accompanied with a little jump that splashed some mud onto the sides of her black rainboots. Looking around, however, she saw nothing, yet she proceeded ahead with caution, softly squelching throw the mud, pausing only once to free her left foot from a particularly sticky bit. She wiped her hands off on her jeans before continuing.
To her relief, it was only Mr. Xavier, working in the gardens as he usually did and she laughed, placing a recently muddied but now clean hand on her chest. “You scared me,” she said as she walked closer to better see what it was he was busy with. “What are we doing today?”
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Laila Kennedy
Procrastinating in the Gardens (tag: Mr. Xavier)
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Laila Kennedy
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