"Kalon!" Adrienne whined, "Slow down! I can't walk as fast as you!” 

    The both of them were speeding down the mossy pathway, Kalon walking a few paces in front of his half-sister. He ignored her calling out to him and continued in his pace, taking long, intentional strides. The trees grew inwards, making the pathway feel like it the road to a portal. There was little light that could penetrate the thick foliage.  A gust of wind blew through the branches, the leaves whispering as it blew along. Kalon picked up the pace – much to the dismay of Renne, who was huffing along behind him – and pulled up his hood, hiding his messy, brown hair.  

    And then they were there. Kalon stopped abruptly, causing Adrienne to crash into him, sending them both tumbling. Adrienne stood up immediately, brushing the dirt from her black denim mini-skirt and ran over to help Kalon up.  

  “You’ve got a leaf in your hair.” he smirked, reaching over and pulled it out of her hair.  

  “Oh! Why thank you~” she smiled.  

    She had a short wolf-cut with bangs and a strand dyed purple. Her hair was up in a spiky bun that day, kept up with a random pencil she had found and an almost-broken elastic, her bangs falling out of her paper-boy cap and over her eyes from time to time, so she would blow them out with a grin. Kalon watched her smugly for a moment from the corner of his eye after knocking on the door, looking away once she noticed him staring.  

  “What are you doing, Mr. Taryn?” he shuddered at the sound of her terrible British accent. 

  “Analysing your face to try and come to terms as to why I’m still friends with you, your eminence.” he didn’t even look at her, but he knew she was wearing a face of mock horror. Even though he was a year younger than her, he was taller by a few inches, so she would be scowling up at him. This amused him immensely for absolutely no reason. He attempted to keep a straight face, even if he was anything but, whilst staring indignantly at the oak door. Luckily, he was saved by said door opening, revealing a short, round-faced girl wearing an oversized blue jumper, pleated white skirt and a massive smile.  

  “Come in! Come in!” Irene greeted them with her usual air of excitement, ushering them to take a seat at the old table in the living room. It was a rectangular table, right in the middle of the room, with rounded edges made of oak, cloaked with a cheap, gnat bitten, white tablecloth. Plastic ivy and paper butterflies hung around the room, entirely enveloping the yellowing ceiling. There were vintage botanical posters on the walls, almost entirely disguising the ugly wallpaper behind them. In one corner of the room was a small, green armchair, crudely patched up with tape.  

Kalon had found it with his neighbour's rubbish one evening during a walk – as he did with most of the furniture in the house -  and asked if he could take it, so now it belonged to their secret hideout. Around the table were three wooden chairs. Two of them matched but the leg has been partially gnawed off one, so you’d have to balance your entire body weight very precariously to make sure you didn’t tumble onto the cold, hard-wood floor, as Adrienne had learned when they were first redecorating the place to become their little hideaway and she had claimed that chair to be hers.  

“If I were to ever get sick of my wonderful, picturesque life and decided to run away, then I would live here.” Adrienne had said when they fixed it up and patched the hole in the roof, so it stopped leaking. 

“As if, you can’t live a day without electricity, let alone forever.” Kalon had point out whilst precariously positioning a framed picture of the 3 of them at their favourite park on the wall. This in turn earned him an empty, plastic cup to the back of his head and Renne’s grunts of protest. 

The place had belonged to an old lady Irene knew since she was young. They lady had passed away about a year before Adrienne’s disappearance and left the place to Irene. It wasn’t very large and was in the middle of a random forest, so it was always quiet around, apart from the crickets and occasional owl. It was like a little nook away from the world. As soon as they stepped inside, it was like a different realm. One where they could escape the harsh realities and judgments of the real world and just be children.  

They each had a room of sorts. Irene’s was filled with her paintings and other creations. She had painted on the walls, tapestries draped all over the room, an old rocking chair, her sewing machine, some outfits she had tried to make, sketches littered the floor and more ivy and fairy-lights draped everywhere. It was bright and bursting with colour and life. 

Kalon’s was a bit less colourful. It was simplistic with a sage green rug covering most of the dark oak floor. There was a white desk in one corner, next to a tall bookshelf filled with all sorts of books, ranging from classics to modern must-reads. The desk was mostly barren, except for a silver pen pot with a singular fountain pen and a pile of his filled journals. There was an A3 poster of the periodic table stuck onto the wall, next to a green armchair that matched the rug. The green of the chair was subtly cut through with a purple string, where Irene had mended it. 

Adrienne’s was significantly darker than the other two. It has posters of moon phases and crystal properties plastered on all the walls. She had bought a battery powered galaxy projector which tinted the room purple when she turned it on. There was an alter with all sorts of bits that screamed witchcraft. A full body mirror hung in one corner of the room, covered in a thin layer of dust. She had hung up an Aro-ace flag on the ceiling next to the only window, which she had covered with blackout curtains. There were a few sheets of paper littering the floor, covered in symbols and spells, and forgotten maths homework.  

Irene had always tried to convince her to open the curtains, but Renne found comfort in the darkness. She wasn’t emo or a vampire (or so she claimed) but there was something about sitting in the pitch black and depending on all your other senses that was calming for her. Her navy armchair sat in the corner, where she would often cuddle up in the darkness. She could rest her sight and just listen to the silence. She was just weird like that. She could be herself. She didn’t have to exaggerate her movements or facial expressions for people to understand her because there weren’t any people around. It was strange, and she knew that. But she knew that she was strange, and she didn’t really care.