[img]http://i.imgur.com/SsySWU5.png[/img]

[b]"What was it like hugging a dragon?"[/b]

“Eh-?”

Leila turned around at the question, to see Riley and placing a hand on her shoulder, gleaming.

[b]"Because seeing you rush up to it was just amazing."[/b]

[i]...amazing?[/i]

Leila raised her eyebrows, half in surprise and half in confusion, at the notion. It was quite a while since the last time anyone considered anything she did worthy of being describe as such. In fact, it was a scenario that never even crossed her mind to try imagining.

And such she lacked a fitting response to such a statement.

[i]”Ah, um...thank you? I...um...”[/i]

And there she trailed off, not sure what to fill into the conversation next. Should she go ahead with some more thanks? Return compliments, as people sometimes do? Should she describe her encounter with the dragon - what if Riley wasn’t actually intending to ask about it in the first place? Should she mention how the dragon scales were to the touch? Or how dragon breath smelt like a mixture of charcoal, rust, and coconut? Should...

...Reminder to self: never start a sentence before you have an idea of how you are going to finish it.

Leila eventually gave up trying, and simply allowed her voice to trail off as she forced a rather apologetic smile, saying nothing.

[centre]*	*	*	*[/centre]

The people in the group started talking again, and so Leila saw no reason to resume the humming. 

Later in their trek through the woods, Leila was distracted by the sudden burst of action, a figure of white rushing past them, through the group, and into the dark woods in front of them only to end up stranded in a tangled mess of vines and twigs. Leila paused as Inadi was observed to have rushed forward subsequently, apparently intending to rescue Jasper.

Before she saw what became of Inadi as he rushed into the depths of the woods, however, Leila’s attention was again captured by something else.

She turned around sharply to identify that ‘something’, only to see the members of the backmost part of the group equally confused.

Then what was brushing against the back of her neck?

She frowned a bit, turned back around, and straightened her collar and tidied her hair, thinking that it was possibly-

[i]-what was it?[/i]

The same tickle on the same place. It pretty well wasn’t her own hair or hands because she felt it on her hands too. What was i-

-...Lesley?

Leila felt her weight being shifted away from the feet and to where the pair of large hands were now wrapped around her upper arms. Her feet were nearly swept clean off the ground when Lesley, in an act that was less dragging her along and more lifting her up and dropping her off somewhere else, swung her around himself and eventually plopped her back onto the ground somewhere she could only assume to be somewhere at the back of the group.

As the pink-haired man stood behind her in anticipation, Leila recovered from her stagger and straightened up her stance to see clearly what stood in front of her.

She found her face inches away from a gleaming circle of blood-red between two pieces of wooden eyelids.

Leila gasped in shock and instinctively shot backwards in unsteady steps, only to stumble right back into Lesley, who she managed to almost knock over, despite the difference in their height. The impact, however, propelled her back forward, into the trunk of the gnarling tree.

[i]umph.[/i]

The bark was rough, thick, cracked and layered in places, where various other forms of more primitive plant and fungi life made their residence. It was moist and cool to the touch. Leila could feel some bits of moss scraped off and accumulated at the tips of her fingernails, as part of the result of her failed attempt to prevent her face and body from slamming into the tree. Her left index finger came dangerously close to poking the tree in the eye. She tucked her head down as a last resort and saved herself from ending up with a painful nose and a mouthful of bark. and that probably resulting in her having to take some time plucking leaves and pieces of moss out of her hair.

Her feet found no firm hold among the slippery, intertwined roots on the floor the forest, and she ended up falling over, plopping backwards into the ground, ending in a sitting position at Lesley’s feet as she looked upwards again to see the still glaring red eye of the living tree. With her hands on the ground for support behind her and out of her sight, only moments later did Leila noticed something stuck between her fingers that was a segment of a snapped twig.