A Lantern's Light | A TMF Fanfic

Chapter Six | Cattails

"Milly! Give me my shoe!" a violet-haired male yelled, trying to tug his footwear from the pink-haired counterpart.

"Not until you apologise!" Milly retorted, voice grunting and strained as she pulled.

"I thought you were the one who was meant to be apologising to me?!" Zander yelled, voice cracking at the high volume.

"Well the circumstances changed!" Milly reasoned, volume only rising.

As Zander continued to pull, in tug of war with Milly over his shoe, he shouted, "Luke! Help me!"

Sitting at the picnic table, watching the dilemma before him, Luke muttered, "Are you sure that isn't too intimate of a task for your not-boyfriend to do?" showing a pettiness he rarely did.

"Stop being salty and just help!"

Voice commedically exaggerated, Milly exclaimed, "You're telling him to not be salty?!"

"Milly, just give him his shoe," Sean mumbled, rubbing his eyes, tired, sitting at the same table as Luke.

"No! He called me a cumberground!" Milly whined.

"What does that even mean?" Sean yawned, still not being fully engaged.

"I don't know!" Milly annoyedly yelled, "He's being an asshole and won't tell me!"

"Yeah!" Zander loudly scoffed, "Because you're the one who made me think I was eating spider eggs!"

"What the heck is happening here?!" an onyx-eyed girl yelled, just arriving back to witness the scene before her.

As everyone turned to the club's president, Milly loosened her stance, caught off guard by Hailey's presence. "Oh, hey, Hailey!"

Taking advantage of Milly's lowered defense, Zander tugged the shoe, ripping it from the guitarist's hands. "No!" Milly exclaimed, as Zander lazily placed his shoe back onto his foot.

"Bug off, Milly."

"Seriously, guys!" Hailey yelled, fumbling with the firewood she was holding, "I wasn't even gone for half an hour! And Sean! Usually you do a better job keeping that one under control!" Hailey finished, gesturing towards the club's guitarist.

"Oh, and you just assume this is my fault?" Milly asked, taking offense.

Turning her head, giving Milly a discontent look, Hailey questioned, "Am I wrong?"

Milly returned a guilty long stare before pettily mumbling, "I dunno..."

Jake -- who had been silent throughout this instance - standing next to Hailey, but a hand to her shoulder, trying to mollify the aqua-haired girl, "Well, it seems like things have calmed down now. Why don't we just get the campfire set up?"

Loudly sighing, Hailey agreed, "Okay."

As the musician made her way to the campfire, Milly trailed behind her, asking, "Wait, we're keeping the fire going even when it's daytime?"

"Yeah, why not?" Hailey asked rhetorically, not actually looking for an answer. As she took a second to ponder, she continued, countering her previous point, "Although, actually, since we talked about doing the hike kind of early, and we can't leave the fire going while we're out, maybe we should just wait."

Hearing the reminder of the club's plans, Zander jumped back into the conversation, complaining, "I can at least kind of get why you all want to go on a hike, but why do we have to do it early morning?"

"It's almost nine, Zander," Hailey pointed out, "It's not that early." Having different definitions of what constituted as early, Zander just met Hailey's reasoning with groans. "Plus it'll be fun!" Hailey continued, "At the end of the trail there's this beautiful lake with cattails spread throughout its ends."