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“I CAN’T. I CAN’T DO this!” Rachelle whimpered. They decided set up camp for the night, but Rachelle was having a particularly difficult time accepting that fact. “I can’t sleep on the ground! How can you expect me to sleep on the ground?! I might as well go back to Medea, because at least she had a bed for me!”
Somehow, Aurora resisted the temptation to wring her neck. “Well, you’re welcome to go back, if you’d like.”
“I’ll get dirt on my dress... and bugs in my hair, and those bugs will bite me. The embers from the fire will land on my dress... they’ll set me on fire while I’m trying to sleep! No... I WON’T sleep. There’s no way I can fall asleep under these circumstances.”
“It’s okay, Rachelle,” Lyric tried to calm her down. “I’m exactly like you. I’m a fan of luxurious things, but I’m not complaining. Sometimes, you can’t have everything you want.”
“No, you don’t understand. I NEED a nice pillow to lay my head on, and I WON’T be able to sleep like this!”
A few seconds later, Noxor returned from scouting the woods. He was returning from a successful hunt as well, with three dead birds dangling from the end of a rope. He tossed them toward the fire—a fire that he had to start. It was becoming apparent that Noxor was the only one in the group with survival skills.
“Do you expect me to eat that?!” Rachelle squealed, eyeing the pile of dead birds with a puckered nose. “How disgusting!”
Even Noxor couldn’t resist the temptation to toy with her a bit. “I’m expecting you to pluck off the feathers and eat it raw.”
Rachelle let out a horrified wail. “I can’t do thiiiiiiiiis! I can’t do thiiiiiiiis! I want to go home!”
“I’m only joking,” Noxor chuckled. “You don’t have to eat it like that. After I’m through with it, the meat will look like castle cuisine. I promise.”
Aurora was impressed. She was about to express her appreciation of Noxor’s humor, when suddenly, a flash of green flew by her eyes. It was Charmaine. He leapt out of Greta’s pocket and landed on Rachelle’s knee; which, of course, made her throw another fit. She sprung from the ground and knocked Charmaine off her leg.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Get it off of me! Lyric, get it off of me!”
Charmaine held out a webbed hand. “Princess! It’s me! Please calm down!”
“It’s... what?! This frog can talk!?”
Lyric chuckled under his breath. “If you think that’s strange, I should take you to the village of talking pigs.”
“The... what?” Rachelle looked utterly perplexed. She kept staring at Charmaine with disbelief.
“Please, allow me to explain,” Charmaine continued, rather eloquently for a frog. “When I was in the middle of my serenade, Medea showed up and—”
“Wait. YOU’RE Prince Charmaine?”
“Yes! Had you been looking out the window, you would have seen it. It was Medea! She’s responsible for my amphibious form... but I don’t have to stay like this. You can save me!”
Rachelle sat beside the frog, but kept her distance. “Oh?”
“Kiss me! Break the curse!”
Rachelle looked over at Aurora, as if hoping for an explanation for all this nonsense. Aurora simply shrugged.
“Kiss you?” Rachelle repeated. “Are you serious?“
“Indeed. I’m actually quite handsome in my true form, as I’m sure you noticed when I was serenading you. So if you would just kiss me, we could—”
“I’ll do no such thing!”
“Oh, please!” Charmaine tried to shimmy closer to Rachelle, but she withdrew from him before he could close the gap. “Please oh please oh please! It doesn’t have to be on my lips... I don’t think it does, at any rate. Kiss me on my nose! Or... whatever you’d call a frog’s nose? Do frog’s have noses?”
“Please get it away from me, Lyric!” Rachelle whined. “It’s... it’s making me unsettled!”
Lyric lifted Charmaine off the ground and returned him to Greta’s lap. “Sorry, buddy. I don’t think she wants that kiss.”
Charmaine flicked his tongue in Lyric’s direction. “Then maybe you can kiss me, you great big oaf! I don’t think Medea specified that the kiss had to come from a member of the opposite gender.”
Lyric chuckled. “I’d rather die, but thanks for the offer.”
“Well, it isn’t as if I’d want to kiss a man!” Charmaine clarified. “But if you find yourribbitself in my position someday, you’ll understand that beggars can’t be choosers!” He looked up at Greta and blinked his oversized eyes. “Hello, little girl. Have you ever kissed any frogs?”
When Greta picked him up and put him back in her pocket, everyone was tempted to applaud her.
Aurora stretched her legs out in front of her. After everything she’d been through, it felt nice to relax for a moment—even if her present company left something to be desired. It seemed as though Charmaine and Rachelle were competing to see who could be more annoying. Lyric, for once, wasn’t even in contention. “Medea’s curses are kind of... odd, don’t you think?”
Rachelle, who seemed to calm down after Charmaine was stuffed away, asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I guess it’s not the curses themselves so much as the stipulations she puts on them. For instance... Charmaine. She turns him into a frog, and the only way to un-frog him is to kiss him. And then there’s Noxor.”
Noxor, who was in the middle of skinning a bird with his sword, looked up when he heard his name. Had he been paying attention, he might have stopped her from saying anything else.
“What about Noxor?” Rachelle inquired.
“He’s cursed with eternal life and a decaying body, and the only way he’ll die is if someone falls in love with him.”
Noxor tried to focus on his work. He didn’t want to be the topic of conversation, nor did he want to announce the circumstances of his curse. But now that everyone knew, there was nothing he could do about it.
“Really?” Rachelle pouted. “Well, that’s kind of... tragic, isn’t it? I mean, for one, who in the world is going to fall in love with someone who looks like that?!”
Aurora frowned. She wasn’t a fan of Rachelle’s honest brutality.
“And second of all,” Rachelle went on. “Even if some girl did fall in love with you, it’s not like you could ever be together. No matter what happens, it sounds like things are going to end badly for...” Rachelle scratched her head. “What did you say his name was again?”
Aurora sighed. It seemed Rachelle had something in else common with Lyric. “Noxor.”
“Oh, right. Noxor.” As she watched him prepare the meal, Rachelle could feel her stomach doing somersaults. The sight of the gutted bird wasn’t exactly pleasant. “So, what does he look like under that hood? Is it as hideous as I might imagine? I mean, not to be rude, but I’ve caught glimpses of his hand, and if his face is anything like that, it must be horrifying!”
Noxor tried to tuck his hand deeper into his sleeve. “I’m going to have to consider gloves from now on,” he said with a sigh. “And let me assure you... the face is just as frightful as the hand, if not more so.”
“How disturbing! Is it not something I could correct with a bit of makeup? Maybe I could use some foundation to even up your complexion? If you have dark circles under your eyes, I have the perfect concealer for that!”
“Ahhhh, women.” It was Lyric who spoke next. “You get more than one of them together, and you’re guaranteed a headache.”
Aurora glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means... the chatter of women is destined to become a man’s headache. I’m sure Froggy and Necksore would agree with me. When she grows up, Greta’s going to be a perfect wife because she doesn’t say a word.”
Aurora narrowed her eyes even further. She wondered if she should reassess her feelings for him.
“Why is that, anyway?” Rachelle asked. “Why doesn’t that girl say anything? Is she mute?”
“Actually, we’re not sure. She just started following us around and—”
“She started following you around?!” Rachelle interrupted shrilly. “I thought she was you little sister or something! She’s not?” She waited for Aurora to shake her head. “Well, I guess that makes sense. Lyric would have told me if we were traveling with another relative of his.”
“He’s not my cousin.” Aurora couldn’t keep up the charade any longer. In the corner of her eye, she could see Lyric wince.
“He’s not?!”
“No. He just said that because he didn’t want you to think we were, you know... romantically involved.”
Rachelle’s gaze must have shifted between Aurora and Lyric at least a dozen times before her eyes finally settled on Lyric. “Well, are you romantically involved?!”
“Uh... well...” Lyric hesitated, if only for a moment. “No. No, not in the least. We’re only traveling together due to a series of unlikely events. I just want to make sure Aurora finds her aunts, gets back home, and that will be that.”
Aurora could feel her spirits declining, but Rachelle looked satisfied.
“Oh, good. For a second, I might have been jealous.” Rachelle crossed her arms. “But the fact remains... you did lie to me.”
“About what?”
“About what?!” Rachelle rolled her eyes. “About Aurora being your cousin, silly! If you say you’re not romantically involved, I believe you! I have no reason to doubt you, just as you have no reason to lie to me!”
Aurora clenched her fists. She should have taken Rachelle’s existence into consideration before falling for Lyric. Now that Rachelle was back in the picture, she didn’t stand a chance. She could never confess her feelings for Lyric.
“Well, anyway, I forgive you.” Rachelle started to lie on the ground. Then she remembered they were camping in the woods, so she popped back up and smacked the dirt from her hair. “But I have to warn you about something.”
“What’s that?” Lyric inquired.
“Well, I might fall for Noxor,” Rachelle said. “Someone has to rid him of his curse, right?”
She followed up her statement with a snide chuckle, as if to suggest what a ridiculous notion it would be.