You've Got Another Thing Coming

Cherokee grit his teeth.
“Where the bloody hell is that stupid transvestite?”

He and Rose were wandering along a narrow path, naked branches clinging to their clothes and tearing at their skin. The dark sky above them gave little if no light at all and the forest was deathly silent, except for their echoing footsteps.

Rose was clinging to her brother’s arm, her pretty face distorted into a mask of terror. When an owl hooted in the deafening woods she jumped high.
Apparently, this sort of odd behaviour seemed to rather amuse the bird. It kept on hooting, and every time it received the grand prize, as Rose wore her nerves on her outside.

“I hope we find Callie soon,” she managed to get out before yelping yet again at the owl noise. “I can’t take much more of this!”

Cherokee did not reply, but merely clenched his jaws tighter together. He would never have admitted it out loud but he was a tad bit worried about that big lump of reddish brown hair.

“What on earth possessed us to stray from that nice path we started out on?” Rose whined quietly to no one in particular.

Again, Cherokee did not reply, as it kind of was his ‘thing’. Instead, he creased his forehead to the point where he looked like a woman in labour.

They had begun on the bright yellow path by the lamp post around mid-day. However, after a while Rose had become convinced that her friend – with the best luck in the world – surely would choose the conspicuously dark way instead of the nice and pretty one. Cherokee had of course seen the truth and logic behind this statement (he figured most of his sister’s friends to be complete lunatics), and they had crossed the forest in order to reach the icky black path they were now on.
Thus far they had not seen any sight of a goddamned living thing.

Except for the owl.

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I was practically running through the forest. My eyes were set on the pair of tracks in the snow, leading deeper and deeper and further away from the path I had started out from.
I narrowly avoided the trees as I rushed by them.
Other times; not so much. Three bumps were burning hot on my face from where I had come in contact with hard objects, such as large rocks and/or trunks.

In the beginning I had wondered what on earth had possessed Rose and Cherokee to stray from the nice path they had begun on. But, I came to the conclusion that they had both become barking mad, and wanted to find a badger with a gun and a load of make up so they could dress up as clowns and kill the entire nation of Azerbaijan. Now, the best place to find a badger with a gun and a load of make up would obviously have been on the other path, and so they had crossed the woods in order to find it.

I sincerely hoped that they were happy, dressed up and – for their own sake – very, very dead.
Otherwise, I was definitely going to slaughter them when I found them.

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The wind howled over the tree tops, but the entourages were standing freakishly still. Nothing moved in the thick air and you could practically cut the icky tension with a knife.

Now, this is exactly what I did. I cut my way through the misty air and obtrusive objects with the nice sword Cherokee had handed me some time ago.
During all of this I entertained myself with imaginative curses and naughty words which I muttered under my breath as I was panting heavily.
I often choked on my breath, but I simply coughed and kept on going.

After some time I reached a small line in the forest that could only with good will be called a path.
The pair of footprints had faded a while ago as the snow had melted, and I was now carrying on on pure instinct.

An owl hooted, and I shrugged uncomfortably. I never liked owls. They were such stupid birds.

I slashed my way through the uneasy silence with my pointy sword which I had already learned to love.
Suddenly my foot hit an object of unknown description, and I toppled over head-first and hit the ground with a hard thud.

The object I had fallen over groaned heavily at the impact my foot had made with some sensitive part of its body.
I cursed violently, thrashed around ferociously and got to my feet quickly. I scrambled around for my darling sword (which I had oh-so conveniently thrown aside as I fell) and found it, and in an instant I stood in a rudely mimicked position that almost – but did not at all – resembled a fighting stance.

The object had also hurriedly got up from the ground, only not as fast as I. It now stood with two knees in the ground, two hands to support its upper body and its neck exposed.
The form trembled slightly, and the black haired head moaned lightly in pain and faced me.

“Harry?” I shrieked as I took in the scrawny figure of one of my best friends. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The boy on the ground took little notice of my exclamation, and gently rubbed his stomach. He slowly got to his feet and began to thoroughly ignore me. Without as much as even looking at me he brought out a staff and did a weird arm movement, and a warm stream of air rushed by.
Another strange motion with the staff, and a fire immediately blazed from a grate.
He muttered under his breath, rubbed his tummy again and put the staff to the stomach and muttered another couple of words, and then sighed in relief.

I stood there, watching him go about without saying a bloody word to me. As he sat down in front of the fire and started rummaging through a Mary Poppins-like bag I decided he’d do well with some company, and sat down opposite him.

“So,” I said to no one in particular. “The sky is awfully un-pretty tonight.”

The boy across from me raised his head as he had been studying his dirty shoes. Finally he acknowledged me:
“It’s dark. I like it that way.”

I glared at him. “You can’t see anything.”

He slump his shoulders and averted his gaze. “That’s what I like about it.”

“You’re strange”, I told him, and silence settled after that statement.

We watched the fire crack and burn and the warm wind breezed by. After a while of this, I suppose he had finally had enough:
“Who are you, anyway?” he wondered. “I don’t recognize you from anywhere.”

I thought it strange that Harry (or Paul, which was his real name), one of my best friends, would say this to me – but then I figured he had never seen me as a boy, so I reached over and shook his hand.

“Callie Johnson, at your service.” I grinned stupidly.

“Aberton Olav Pears”, he answered grimly and squeezed my hand to the point where it became numb. “Wizard of first grade, lover of dark magic and specialist in metamorphosing.”

I stared wide eyed at him. “Oh”, was the first thing that came to my mind. “I think I’m looking for you.”