Malina Harvey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bredinthebone) wrote2015-06-09 02:18 pm
bredinthebone) wrote2015-06-09 02:18 pm
knights of legend } { miles to go, no rest for the wicked
[Written for GYWO Bingo (prompt).]
Malina meets Gus on her first shift at a bar back in the city.
It’s a slow night full of regulars and this young Asian kid struts in like he owns the place all confidence and determination. He couldn’t be any older than she is, but he’s got confidence for miles which definitely catches her attention if nothing else.
“A beer.”
“Got ID?” It’s her job. She has to card them no matter what, and not everyone takes it well, but if he’s as young as he looks, she’s sure he’ll have no problem plopping whatever fake ID he’s happened to obtain into her hand. She’s not wrong, the fake ID comes out and at first she doesn’t say anything, just hands it back to him before going to pour him the weakest brew on the tap. She slides the glass down to him, and he takes it with a pleased look, knocking back a swig and then quickly spitting it out as the flavor hits his tongue.
“That’s a really shitty beer.”
“Well, that was a really shitty fake ID so I guess we’re even,” she smirks, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Seriously, did you really think that would work?”
“Worked before.” While she had originally passed him off as a harmless frat boy college student, there’s something sharper behind his eyes now, almost as though there’s more to him than she originally thought.
“Guess when it worked before you were dealing with an idiot. Not all that uncommon around these parts. But my daddy didn’t raise no fool, so either you get something non-alcoholic or you find another bar to troll.”
He studies her for a moment, almost as though he’s trying to determine whether or not to test her, before smirking. “Virgin Cuba Libre.”
Malina laughs, a sharp sound, before pouring him a Coke and leaving it on the bar. He doesn’t go anywhere after that, however, electing to sit at the bar and periodically hassle her, almost as though he’s trying to find her limits. It’s a push here, a nudge there, but nothing that particularly gets her up in arms. She’s had years of practice in controlling her temper, thanks to her grandfather, so the fact that she remains cool, calm and collected must be impressive because he doesn’t seem to be at all bothered by it, and he doesn’t leave either.
By the time the night winds down, one of the very drunk regulars starts patting down his clothes as though he’s looking for something. Malina frowns before making her way over with the tray balanced in front of her. “What’s the matter, Joey?”
“Oh, hey, ‘lina. Can’t find my keys.”
“Oh, really? Where’s the last place you left them?”
“Not too sure … ” As he speaks he slides off the stool, and she spots the telltale bulge in his back pocket. All it takes is a smooth gesture of her hand and a quiet spell, before the keys are drawn up out of the pocket and into her hand. She then gently slips them into plastic bucket under the bar. Eventually he turns back around again, muttering under his breath. “Damnit.”
“Tell you what, Joey. How about I just call you a cab? If I track ‘em down, you’ll be the first person I call.”
His big head bobs slowly and it’s only a few minutes before he’s in a cab and on his way home. When she returns behind the bar, the guy is still sitting there, watching her carefully. She eyes him back for a moment, before snapping back, as is her habit. “No offense, sweetie, but considering the way you’ve been eyeballing some of the boys walking in here, I don’t really think I’m your type.”
He smirks at her, before shaking his head. “You save all your drunk regulars from making dumb driving decisions?” She raises an eyebrow at him in response and he rolls his eyes. “I saw that trick with his keys.”
That makes her tense like she’s getting ready for a slap, not quite being able to read into how he means it. At home, if she got caught doing magic she was called a demon. When she was working with her dad, it could get her arrested or worse. She’s been conditioned to hide that part of her away, over and over again, that the fact that somebody’d seen her has already preparing to go on the defensive, but before she can he seems to recognize that and holds up his hand.
“I’m not – you aren’t the only one with a few tricks.” Then he waves his hand and the empty Coke glass in front of him starts to glow brightly, drawing some complaints from people on the opposite side of the bar. Malina’s hand comes up to shield her eyes away from the light until he ends the spell, raising an eyebrow at her in return. “Not everyone thinks magic is a bad thing.”
“I know,” she replies simply. “Just generally hasn’t been my experience.”
“Maybe you just need a new experience.” He shifts to lean forward, before extending a hand to her. “I’m Gus.”
She spends a moment eyeing the hand like it’s going to bite her, before slowly extending it forward to shake it. “Malina. Nice to meet you.”
***
Returning to New York isn’t really like coming home.
For one thing, she doesn’t have a home to go to. Hadn’t had a home for the past two years. While she knows what her father told her once, about family being all the home you need even if it isn’t a physical place, it isn’t enough to shake the fact that a couple boroughs over is the walk-up apartment she had grown up in, and she is never going to set foot in it again. There’s not much she can do about that now, and she knows when she had left that she had burned her bridges. She is two years older, a whole lot wiser, and odds are, they probably wouldn’t even recognize her if they saw her.
In fact, she’s pretty much counting on that.
Home is also a thing that’s constantly changing, however, and as the years pass, the weird friendship she managed to strike up in a crappy dive bar has become something like family, a missing piece she didn’t realize she had lost until it was right in front of her again. Sitting around the dinner table at the Harrisons was almost – not quite – like having her mom back again, and she would take whatever sense of family she could get.
And it is that sense of family that lands her on an empty subway at two in the morning, being judged by two sixteen year-old girls. Also, possibly slightly drunk. Slightly. Gus is slumped next to her, also slightly drunk, while Lucy and Felicity are the ones doing the judging, leaning against one of the support poles with their arms liked together.
“You guys are embarrassing.”
“You’re not my mom.” There’s a beat as Malina wrinkles her nose at the both of them. “That comeback sounded better in my head.”
Lucy rolls her eyes and Felicity can’t help but laugh. “You realize this is supposed to be the other way around, right? We are supposed to be the drunken embarrassments and you are supposed to be the disapproving responsible ones sent to fetch us from our poor life choices?”
“We are setting an example,” Gus says with a nod, the sentence trailing off for a moment before he manages to resume it again. “A bad example. The example you don’t follow.”
“Right.” Malina can already feel herself sobering up as it is. By the time they get back to the Harrison Family Home, she should be fairly normal and ready to crash on the couch, not the poor example she is currently setting. “You don’t want to be us, kids. Stay in school. Don’t do drugs.”
“Think you should be telling my brother that.” There is a pointed look from Lucy in her brother’s direction and Malina will forever be impressed by her ability to be both tiny and terrifying at the same time.
“Pot is not a drug. It’s a plant.” He holds up a finger to emphasize. “There’s a difference.”
Lucy rolls her eyes as their stop is finally called and the two teenagers reach forward to get Gus and Malina up onto their feet and stumbling to the exit. Getting up the stairs is an adventure never to be repeated, but once they hit the cool, brisk air of New York City and get smacked in the face by that winter wind, the journey gets a little bit easier. As predicted, Gus and Malina are mostly sober by the time they get to the Harrison’s front door, and are being shushed by their teenage charges as they make their way inside so that they don’t wake their parents.
When they get in the door, however, whatever’s left of their buzz is gone when they see the look on Janine Harrison’s face.
Malina’s seen that look before. It was on her grandparents’ face just before the grief turned to blame and the blame turned to anger and she was left without a family to speak of. It’s the look of someone who was suddenly missing a part of themselves they could never get back. There’s something about Felicity’s expression that says she’s seen it before as well, maybe in a different shade, but she at least knows what it means before Janine even says anything.
Gus and Lucy haven’t.
“Mom?” The slight teenage girl elbows her way from between Gus and Malina, wanting to get to her mother’s side as though that will somehow make it better. Make the look go away and everything will be alright again. “What are you doing up? Where’s Dad?”
Janine’s hand moves to cover her daughter’s, giving it a soft squeeze before making her sit next to her. It always starts with those fateful words, those four little words that change everything because after that nothing is ever going to be the same.
“There was an accident.”
It hits Gus before it hits Lucy, and she can tell that he checks out of the conversation sometime after the words are said. Her first instinct is to comfort him, reach out and let him know that she’s there if he needs it, but it’s cut off by the sharp cry of denial that comes when it hits his sister. Gus had always been one to withdraw when it came to something emotional but his sister is his opposite in every way, almost as though she’s trying to force the emotions away from her by expelling them as fast as she can.
She tries to leave, pulling away from her mother and being caught in the warm warp of Malina’s arms before she can force her way out the door and Malina takes that grief, letting the younger girl pour it onto her, giving those sharp emotions somewhere else to go for the time being.
Eight months later, Lucy is dead, and Malina finds herself once again leaving home to chase someone who thinks it’s better to run than to deal with the consequences.
***
“With all due respect, sir? I’m not really here for you.”
She knows from the second she says them that the words coming out of her mouth are a mistake, are not what the guy wants to hear. She can hear her father’s voice nagging in the back of her mind as she tries to convince the leader of this organization – “Wynn,” as she’s been told – why she should be part of the Knights of the Silver Dragon. She knows that she should be playing this smart, using that silver tongue she got from her father because being her usual frank self may not get her what she wants, as well as cause this guy – who happens to have two feet on her, easy – to step on her like she is some kind of ant. At the same time, however, she doesn’t think that Wynn is the kind of man who can be conned.
And more importantly, this isn’t really the kind of organization you want to enter on a lie.
Wynn doesn’t seem bothered by her outburst, however, standing at his place at the head of the table with a kind of cool, collected calm that isn’t ruffled by something as commonplace as an indignant twenty-something with too many emotions for her own good. Every inch of him is built to be intimidating, and there is a part of it that is definitely working, but she’s doing her best not to let it show.
“Then why are you here?”
Her fingers drum against the back of the chair she’s standing behind, nervous energy that needs to be expelled somewhere. “I could tell you what you want to hear. I know that. That I want to do good and save the world, but … I don’t actually care that much. The world is the way it is, and no matter how far your organization reaches, you can’t save everyone. The saving people part, that’s what’s keeping me from dragging my best friend out of here by his ear, because while I know he’s having it rough right now, I’m not about to let him go out and join some kind of cult.”
There may be something that’s close to a flicker of amusement at her response, but if it’s there, it’s gone as soon as she sees it. “So you are here for Gus Harrison.”
She nods in agreement. “I’ll do the job, whatever it is. I’ll learn what you want me to learn, I’ll fight whoever you want me to fight. But he’s grieving and I can’t just let him go off and do something that’ll potentially get him killed alone. He’s my family.”
Wynn studies her for a moment, before moving closer and mirroring her position behind the chair, though he looks considerably less anxious than she feels as he does it. “This isn’t a club you can join on a whim. This is a commitment. A calling. It isn’t something you should take lightly.”
“Do I look like I’m taking this lightly to you?” Her eyebrows climb in the face of his considerations, straightening her spine as her natural inclination to be stubborn kicked in. “I don’t do things lightly. Life is too short for that kind of crap.” Wynn still doesn’t seem impressed and she huffs for a moment, before her head. “There’s supposed to be some kind of trial period, right? Where you figure out if we can actually hack it?”
“A squiring period, yes.” He raises an eyebrow slightly at the challenge. “All of the knights go through it.”
“So squire me. Test me. I’ll do whatever you want, and I’ll pass. If I don’t, then … you can ship me off and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“And what assets can you give me that would make me want to squire you in the first place?”
“I’m resourceful. Quick on my feet.” She pauses for a moment, hesitating, before admitting something she doesn’t really admit easily, but this is one of the moments where she needs to put everything on the line. “I have magic.” Even after all the time with Gus’s family, she still flinches after, waiting for the impact that usually comes with it, but nothing comes. Just Wynn’s quiet consideration.
“Wizard?”
It’s not a question she’s expecting and she blinks. “What?”
“Are you a wizard?” There’s another pause, and she still looks confused. “Do you need to prepare your spells before you use them?”
“Oh.” She pauses before shaking her head. “No. I just … do them.” And she doesn’t really know many, beyond what her father taught her, but she doesn’t want to admit that now. “My dad wasn’t really big about putting labels on things.”
“I see. A sorcerer then.” He falls silent again, quiet consideration that makes her feel as though she’s under a microscope, more so than she’s ever been in her life. “A test run. We will squire you and see how you do.”
There’s a part of her that sags in relief when he agrees. She had been prepared to fight tooth and nail to be able to stay, but the fact that she doesn’t have to carries far more relief than she would expect. She just nods her agreement, releasing her grip on the back of the chair.
“Thank you.” There’s a pause as she waits to see if there’s anything else. “Is there anything … ?”
“Not at this time, no.” She nods, taking a moment to turn to leave before his voice suddenly stops her again. “Ms. Harvey? You may want to take the time to explore the Dragon’s Fire wing before you go.”
She glances back at him, confused for a moment, before nodding her agreement. “Right. Sure.” It wouldn’t be until much later that she’d realize it, but once she was in, she never bothered looking back.
2,870 words
Malina meets Gus on her first shift at a bar back in the city.
It’s a slow night full of regulars and this young Asian kid struts in like he owns the place all confidence and determination. He couldn’t be any older than she is, but he’s got confidence for miles which definitely catches her attention if nothing else.
“A beer.”
“Got ID?” It’s her job. She has to card them no matter what, and not everyone takes it well, but if he’s as young as he looks, she’s sure he’ll have no problem plopping whatever fake ID he’s happened to obtain into her hand. She’s not wrong, the fake ID comes out and at first she doesn’t say anything, just hands it back to him before going to pour him the weakest brew on the tap. She slides the glass down to him, and he takes it with a pleased look, knocking back a swig and then quickly spitting it out as the flavor hits his tongue.
“That’s a really shitty beer.”
“Well, that was a really shitty fake ID so I guess we’re even,” she smirks, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Seriously, did you really think that would work?”
“Worked before.” While she had originally passed him off as a harmless frat boy college student, there’s something sharper behind his eyes now, almost as though there’s more to him than she originally thought.
“Guess when it worked before you were dealing with an idiot. Not all that uncommon around these parts. But my daddy didn’t raise no fool, so either you get something non-alcoholic or you find another bar to troll.”
He studies her for a moment, almost as though he’s trying to determine whether or not to test her, before smirking. “Virgin Cuba Libre.”
Malina laughs, a sharp sound, before pouring him a Coke and leaving it on the bar. He doesn’t go anywhere after that, however, electing to sit at the bar and periodically hassle her, almost as though he’s trying to find her limits. It’s a push here, a nudge there, but nothing that particularly gets her up in arms. She’s had years of practice in controlling her temper, thanks to her grandfather, so the fact that she remains cool, calm and collected must be impressive because he doesn’t seem to be at all bothered by it, and he doesn’t leave either.
By the time the night winds down, one of the very drunk regulars starts patting down his clothes as though he’s looking for something. Malina frowns before making her way over with the tray balanced in front of her. “What’s the matter, Joey?”
“Oh, hey, ‘lina. Can’t find my keys.”
“Oh, really? Where’s the last place you left them?”
“Not too sure … ” As he speaks he slides off the stool, and she spots the telltale bulge in his back pocket. All it takes is a smooth gesture of her hand and a quiet spell, before the keys are drawn up out of the pocket and into her hand. She then gently slips them into plastic bucket under the bar. Eventually he turns back around again, muttering under his breath. “Damnit.”
“Tell you what, Joey. How about I just call you a cab? If I track ‘em down, you’ll be the first person I call.”
His big head bobs slowly and it’s only a few minutes before he’s in a cab and on his way home. When she returns behind the bar, the guy is still sitting there, watching her carefully. She eyes him back for a moment, before snapping back, as is her habit. “No offense, sweetie, but considering the way you’ve been eyeballing some of the boys walking in here, I don’t really think I’m your type.”
He smirks at her, before shaking his head. “You save all your drunk regulars from making dumb driving decisions?” She raises an eyebrow at him in response and he rolls his eyes. “I saw that trick with his keys.”
That makes her tense like she’s getting ready for a slap, not quite being able to read into how he means it. At home, if she got caught doing magic she was called a demon. When she was working with her dad, it could get her arrested or worse. She’s been conditioned to hide that part of her away, over and over again, that the fact that somebody’d seen her has already preparing to go on the defensive, but before she can he seems to recognize that and holds up his hand.
“I’m not – you aren’t the only one with a few tricks.” Then he waves his hand and the empty Coke glass in front of him starts to glow brightly, drawing some complaints from people on the opposite side of the bar. Malina’s hand comes up to shield her eyes away from the light until he ends the spell, raising an eyebrow at her in return. “Not everyone thinks magic is a bad thing.”
“I know,” she replies simply. “Just generally hasn’t been my experience.”
“Maybe you just need a new experience.” He shifts to lean forward, before extending a hand to her. “I’m Gus.”
She spends a moment eyeing the hand like it’s going to bite her, before slowly extending it forward to shake it. “Malina. Nice to meet you.”
***
Returning to New York isn’t really like coming home.
For one thing, she doesn’t have a home to go to. Hadn’t had a home for the past two years. While she knows what her father told her once, about family being all the home you need even if it isn’t a physical place, it isn’t enough to shake the fact that a couple boroughs over is the walk-up apartment she had grown up in, and she is never going to set foot in it again. There’s not much she can do about that now, and she knows when she had left that she had burned her bridges. She is two years older, a whole lot wiser, and odds are, they probably wouldn’t even recognize her if they saw her.
In fact, she’s pretty much counting on that.
Home is also a thing that’s constantly changing, however, and as the years pass, the weird friendship she managed to strike up in a crappy dive bar has become something like family, a missing piece she didn’t realize she had lost until it was right in front of her again. Sitting around the dinner table at the Harrisons was almost – not quite – like having her mom back again, and she would take whatever sense of family she could get.
And it is that sense of family that lands her on an empty subway at two in the morning, being judged by two sixteen year-old girls. Also, possibly slightly drunk. Slightly. Gus is slumped next to her, also slightly drunk, while Lucy and Felicity are the ones doing the judging, leaning against one of the support poles with their arms liked together.
“You guys are embarrassing.”
“You’re not my mom.” There’s a beat as Malina wrinkles her nose at the both of them. “That comeback sounded better in my head.”
Lucy rolls her eyes and Felicity can’t help but laugh. “You realize this is supposed to be the other way around, right? We are supposed to be the drunken embarrassments and you are supposed to be the disapproving responsible ones sent to fetch us from our poor life choices?”
“We are setting an example,” Gus says with a nod, the sentence trailing off for a moment before he manages to resume it again. “A bad example. The example you don’t follow.”
“Right.” Malina can already feel herself sobering up as it is. By the time they get back to the Harrison Family Home, she should be fairly normal and ready to crash on the couch, not the poor example she is currently setting. “You don’t want to be us, kids. Stay in school. Don’t do drugs.”
“Think you should be telling my brother that.” There is a pointed look from Lucy in her brother’s direction and Malina will forever be impressed by her ability to be both tiny and terrifying at the same time.
“Pot is not a drug. It’s a plant.” He holds up a finger to emphasize. “There’s a difference.”
Lucy rolls her eyes as their stop is finally called and the two teenagers reach forward to get Gus and Malina up onto their feet and stumbling to the exit. Getting up the stairs is an adventure never to be repeated, but once they hit the cool, brisk air of New York City and get smacked in the face by that winter wind, the journey gets a little bit easier. As predicted, Gus and Malina are mostly sober by the time they get to the Harrison’s front door, and are being shushed by their teenage charges as they make their way inside so that they don’t wake their parents.
When they get in the door, however, whatever’s left of their buzz is gone when they see the look on Janine Harrison’s face.
Malina’s seen that look before. It was on her grandparents’ face just before the grief turned to blame and the blame turned to anger and she was left without a family to speak of. It’s the look of someone who was suddenly missing a part of themselves they could never get back. There’s something about Felicity’s expression that says she’s seen it before as well, maybe in a different shade, but she at least knows what it means before Janine even says anything.
Gus and Lucy haven’t.
“Mom?” The slight teenage girl elbows her way from between Gus and Malina, wanting to get to her mother’s side as though that will somehow make it better. Make the look go away and everything will be alright again. “What are you doing up? Where’s Dad?”
Janine’s hand moves to cover her daughter’s, giving it a soft squeeze before making her sit next to her. It always starts with those fateful words, those four little words that change everything because after that nothing is ever going to be the same.
“There was an accident.”
It hits Gus before it hits Lucy, and she can tell that he checks out of the conversation sometime after the words are said. Her first instinct is to comfort him, reach out and let him know that she’s there if he needs it, but it’s cut off by the sharp cry of denial that comes when it hits his sister. Gus had always been one to withdraw when it came to something emotional but his sister is his opposite in every way, almost as though she’s trying to force the emotions away from her by expelling them as fast as she can.
She tries to leave, pulling away from her mother and being caught in the warm warp of Malina’s arms before she can force her way out the door and Malina takes that grief, letting the younger girl pour it onto her, giving those sharp emotions somewhere else to go for the time being.
Eight months later, Lucy is dead, and Malina finds herself once again leaving home to chase someone who thinks it’s better to run than to deal with the consequences.
***
“With all due respect, sir? I’m not really here for you.”
She knows from the second she says them that the words coming out of her mouth are a mistake, are not what the guy wants to hear. She can hear her father’s voice nagging in the back of her mind as she tries to convince the leader of this organization – “Wynn,” as she’s been told – why she should be part of the Knights of the Silver Dragon. She knows that she should be playing this smart, using that silver tongue she got from her father because being her usual frank self may not get her what she wants, as well as cause this guy – who happens to have two feet on her, easy – to step on her like she is some kind of ant. At the same time, however, she doesn’t think that Wynn is the kind of man who can be conned.
And more importantly, this isn’t really the kind of organization you want to enter on a lie.
Wynn doesn’t seem bothered by her outburst, however, standing at his place at the head of the table with a kind of cool, collected calm that isn’t ruffled by something as commonplace as an indignant twenty-something with too many emotions for her own good. Every inch of him is built to be intimidating, and there is a part of it that is definitely working, but she’s doing her best not to let it show.
“Then why are you here?”
Her fingers drum against the back of the chair she’s standing behind, nervous energy that needs to be expelled somewhere. “I could tell you what you want to hear. I know that. That I want to do good and save the world, but … I don’t actually care that much. The world is the way it is, and no matter how far your organization reaches, you can’t save everyone. The saving people part, that’s what’s keeping me from dragging my best friend out of here by his ear, because while I know he’s having it rough right now, I’m not about to let him go out and join some kind of cult.”
There may be something that’s close to a flicker of amusement at her response, but if it’s there, it’s gone as soon as she sees it. “So you are here for Gus Harrison.”
She nods in agreement. “I’ll do the job, whatever it is. I’ll learn what you want me to learn, I’ll fight whoever you want me to fight. But he’s grieving and I can’t just let him go off and do something that’ll potentially get him killed alone. He’s my family.”
Wynn studies her for a moment, before moving closer and mirroring her position behind the chair, though he looks considerably less anxious than she feels as he does it. “This isn’t a club you can join on a whim. This is a commitment. A calling. It isn’t something you should take lightly.”
“Do I look like I’m taking this lightly to you?” Her eyebrows climb in the face of his considerations, straightening her spine as her natural inclination to be stubborn kicked in. “I don’t do things lightly. Life is too short for that kind of crap.” Wynn still doesn’t seem impressed and she huffs for a moment, before her head. “There’s supposed to be some kind of trial period, right? Where you figure out if we can actually hack it?”
“A squiring period, yes.” He raises an eyebrow slightly at the challenge. “All of the knights go through it.”
“So squire me. Test me. I’ll do whatever you want, and I’ll pass. If I don’t, then … you can ship me off and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“And what assets can you give me that would make me want to squire you in the first place?”
“I’m resourceful. Quick on my feet.” She pauses for a moment, hesitating, before admitting something she doesn’t really admit easily, but this is one of the moments where she needs to put everything on the line. “I have magic.” Even after all the time with Gus’s family, she still flinches after, waiting for the impact that usually comes with it, but nothing comes. Just Wynn’s quiet consideration.
“Wizard?”
It’s not a question she’s expecting and she blinks. “What?”
“Are you a wizard?” There’s another pause, and she still looks confused. “Do you need to prepare your spells before you use them?”
“Oh.” She pauses before shaking her head. “No. I just … do them.” And she doesn’t really know many, beyond what her father taught her, but she doesn’t want to admit that now. “My dad wasn’t really big about putting labels on things.”
“I see. A sorcerer then.” He falls silent again, quiet consideration that makes her feel as though she’s under a microscope, more so than she’s ever been in her life. “A test run. We will squire you and see how you do.”
There’s a part of her that sags in relief when he agrees. She had been prepared to fight tooth and nail to be able to stay, but the fact that she doesn’t have to carries far more relief than she would expect. She just nods her agreement, releasing her grip on the back of the chair.
“Thank you.” There’s a pause as she waits to see if there’s anything else. “Is there anything … ?”
“Not at this time, no.” She nods, taking a moment to turn to leave before his voice suddenly stops her again. “Ms. Harvey? You may want to take the time to explore the Dragon’s Fire wing before you go.”
She glances back at him, confused for a moment, before nodding her agreement. “Right. Sure.” It wouldn’t be until much later that she’d realize it, but once she was in, she never bothered looking back.
2,870 words