[Silver]

The school was abuzz with stories of a mysterious and perhaps ominous fog. Everyone had a theory and many of them wanted everyone else to know about it. Some were fearful and others excited. Whatever it was, it left a tense charge in all the students.

A few small groups were sent out to investigate on top secret orders from the headmaster. Elesa wondered how she made the cut, but she did not complain. She and Nova had been paired up before, so she sort of knew what to expect. Not that anything went predictably with the two of them around.

Once they had made their preparations, the girls headed out past the school grounds, past the city, and into the wild. There they would find the fog, and, if all went well, come back to report on their discoveries.

[Night]

"Would you shut up? You're going to get us caught!" Luca knocked his elbow back hard into Renic's stomach, effectively cutting off any response he may have given. The smaller man rubbed at his ribcage, a nasty glare clouding across his features.

"What, is the mist going to hear us sneaking up on it?" Renic grumbled, ducking away from Luca's second flying elbow and crouching a little ways away from the fog. Although he'd been joking, of course, he couldn't help but voice the question that his own statement had peaked in his mind. "Do you think it can hear us?"

If Luca hadn't made a bet with Renic that he could go this entire adventure without rolling his eyes, they would have rolled directly out of his skull by now. "No I don't think it can hear us. Do you listen to yourself talk?" He was speaking in a hushed whisper as he crouched down beside his friend. "I'm more worried about what else might hear us. We're in the middle of the damn woods, Renic, I don't think we need to go drawing attention."

[Silver]

"Do you think it's a monster?" Elesa wondered aloud. The silence between them was killing her.

"What?" Nova tilted her head, not really sure what Elesa meant.

"The fog stuff, do you think it's some kind of mist monster?"

"I'm not sure."

"You're no fun."

"I'm sorry!" Nova squeaked. She wasn't trying to be boring and factual, it was just sort of who she was. "What if it's someone casting a wicked spell?" Maybe offering her own theory would steer the conversation back again.

"Yea, I guess it could be..." Elesa entertained the idea, but she liked her theory better. "Wait. Did you hear that?" She threw out her hand to stop Nova, who walked right into it and let out a weak little cough. "I think there's someone else nearby. Listen."

[Night]

"What the hell else is going to hear us all the way out here in the middle of the woods? The trees? Are we keeping secrets from the rocks now, Luca?" Renic scoffed, keeping one eye on the strangely twisting mist even as he pushed the toe of his shoe against Luca's knee braced agains the ground.

Luca growled at him - a strangely effective gesture, given that the man looked rather human in his current state. "You know just as well as I do, Renic, that there's plenty in the woods that we shouldn't be trifling with. Or have you forgotten about the time when you decided to go for a drunken waltz through the underbrush and -"

"You swore we'd never talk about that again!" Renic griped, effectively cutting him off. "Besides, I'm not the one that made a bet with the fair folk that I could beat them in a drinking contest."

"They're so tiny, they look like lightweights!" Luca's voice was steadily raising now as well - both men seemed completely unaware that they were no longer alone.

"Literally everyone on the planet knows better than to take any kind of food or drink that the fae offers you. We're lucky they thought you were just as annoying as we think you are, or they wouldn't have given you back at all and you'd still be wandering naked through the faerie realms. Now shut up, I'm trying to take notes on this!"

[Silver]

Nova frowned. The last thing she wanted to do was interact with other people. Elesa she liked, but she didn't do so well with strangers. There was always the possibility of a fight, too, which did not make her happy at all. She would really rather... not. This was what she signed up for, though, wasn't it?

"I think they're talking about faeries," Elesa said. "Do you think faeries are real? I've never met one..."

"I don't know any more," Nova said. A long time ago she wouldn't have believed a lot of things that were now staples in her life. "Never mind that. Are they close?"

"Yea, but it doesn't sound like they noticed us. They're too busy arguing. What should we do?"

Nova knew the answer to that question in her mind. Run away. However, she doubted Elesa would be on board with that plan. So she remained silent and waited to see what she would say.

"I think we should introduce ourselves. They don't look dangerous." Nova looked visibly uncomfortable with that suggestion. "I know, I know. I don't think we'll get in a fight, though. You'll be fine."

[Night]

"Don't tell me to shut up, you're the one that's been talking since we got out of the car!" Luca hissed, and from an outside perspective they no longer seemed to be paying much attention to the mist at all. "I'm the one that should be telling you to shut up!"

"Oh trust me, if I thought that it would get you to stop blathering on I would. But sometimes it seems like you aren't even smart enough to learn by example!" The fight was getting somewhat nasty now, Renic yelling loud enough to startle a small flock of birds from the trees nearby.

"YOU are going to call me stupid? I'm not the one that blew up half the science wing the other day because I was trying to light a bunsen burner with my oh so amazing powers now am I."

"I can't even hear you, I'm way too busy trying to investigate this weird magical mist that just appeared all over the place. Concentrate would you?"

The duo shot one another a pair of nasty looks, the tense silence radiating between them for all of five seconds before one - and then both - of them were smiling.

"Gods you're an idiot." Luca snorted, a clear affection in his tone. "So what do you think it is?"

[Silver]

Elesa truly wanted to introduce herself, as she had said, but she was a bit too interested in eavesdropping to get on with it quickly. She shushed Nova by putting her finger silently to her lips and proceeded to listen to everything the boys were saying. Most of it seemed like harmless arguing, but she caught a few words that piqued her interest.

"Nova," she whispered, beckoning her closer. "They said something about the mist. Maybe they know something."

"They don't sound like they know anything," Nova scoffed. From what she heard, they were too busy not really focusing on the mission to have learned anything important.

"Well, then, we have something in common," Elesa said. Her statement had a bit of a bite to it, as if to remind Nova that they didn't really know what they were doing, either.

Against Nova's wishes, Elesa popped out from behind the trees and waved in an exaggeratedly friendly way. "Heeeey there," she said to the boys. She had a goofy grin on her face that made her look comically nonthreatening.

[Night]

"I'm not really sure. I've never seen anything like it, and none of the books I could find said anything about it." Renic eyed the mist from his position crouched a few yards away, as if worried it may move closer and attack them. He opened his mouth to ask if Luca had any ideas, but was interrupted by the arrival of a sudden guest. He startled, falling backwards and landing flat on his ass in the dirt.

Luca was immediately in front of him, far too used to protecting Renic from his own inadequacy in times of crisis. Not that either of the newcomers appeared particularly threatening. "Can we help you?"

He.... likely didn't mean for it to be quite as rude as it sounded, but it was a near thing.

[Silver]

As a young woman who did not at all look threatening, she was not often met with rudeness from strangers. She was a bit taken aback by his unusually sharp response. Given what she had overheard so far, she should have been expecting such a response. They had done nothing but argue the whole time they were within earshot. It probably wasn't even personal.

"I, ah," Elesa stammered. In her head, she had a whole lot of things to say, but they all decided to escape at the same time, leaving her stammering.

"I'm not sure," Nova interjected. It wasn't like her to be the more well composed one, but she couldn't just sit back and let Elesa make a fool of herself. "We're here to take a look at the mist," she waved her hand in the direction of the strange black fog as she mentioned it.

"Nova!" Elesa said quietly but sternly. If Nova said too much, they would risk letting out their big unspoken secret. The one that they spent every day of their lives intentionally not mentioning.

"We're just curious about it," Nova finished, shooting Elesa a dirty look.

[Night]

Luca narrowed his eyes, clearly skeptical of their intent - but Renic held no such reservations. Having finally righted himself, he offered a wave and pleasent smile from his position crouched somewhere near the taller man's hip. "Hello! Sorry about my friend here, he's just a little... on edge, being in the woods with whatever all that is."

Renic elbowed Luca hard in the back of the knee, causing the other to step forward and turn his glare on his friend. "Renic, I don't know that -"

"I don't blame him really." Renic was used to talking over Luca's objections, so it came as little consequence to him to ignore the daggers that were being shot in his direction. "It's a bit creepy isn't it."  He nodded over his shoulder towards the mysterious substance, but kept his eyes trained on their guests. He put on a pleasent enough act, but even he wasn't so stupid as to be immediately trusting of random people that showed up in the forest.

Not with what they'd seen in these woods.

"I'm Renic, and the tall growly one is Luca. And you are...?"

[Silver]

The more they spoke, the less Nova wanted to trust them. They didn't seem to trust each other, either, considering the way they spoke to and glared at one another. Confrontation was not her strong suit, to say the least, so their bickering made her uncomfortable. Elesa saw a familiar timidness in her partner's eyes and decided to step up to answer the question.

"This is Nova," she said, touching her friend gently on the shoulder. The motion was meant to be comforting, but she couldn't be sure that it was. "I'm Elesa. Nice to meet you."

"We're students at a nearby school," she said, indicating her uniform. It looked pretty generic and didn't seem to indicate any school in particular. At least not one they would likely know.

"I was hoping that we could maybe find out something about all this." Elesa waved her hand to indicate the strange dark mist that surrounded the forest. "It would certainly make an interesting research paper, right?"

[Night]

Luca's eyebrows were inching towards his hairline, but it was Renic that spoke for the both of them. "You're out here researching this for a school project? Seems a little dangerous for a field trip, don't you think?"

There was, of course, the possibility that the school didn't know that they were doing this. Renic would like to believe that people in charge of supervising children wouldn't willingly send them out into the woods to investigate something with unknown properties. A small part of him felt as though he should keep them close to protect them - the larger part of him felt it was immediately suspicious.

With Renic mulling over their options, Luca took his opportunity to work his way edgewise into the conversation. "Have you found anything out so far?"

[Silver]

Elesa's face wrinkled a little bit at his statement. Was he really suggesting that she was just a kid on a field trip? Even if she wasn't a little bit hiding her true intentions, that was pretty insulting. She wasn't just some little kid who didn't know what they were doing.

"Dangerous?" Nova asked as soon as Elesa opened her mouth to speak. "What makes you think it's dangerous?"

Of course she had considered the fact that it might be dangerous, but she wasn't too worried about that. Between the two of them, they were a pretty formidable force. Not that the boys knew that. Still, the fact that they considered the fog might be dangerous and not just a weird source of weather suggested that they   might know more than they were letting on.

"We just got here," Elesa explained. "What did you find out about it?" She tried to continue to look cute and innocent. As much as she hated being underestimated, it currently worked out well for her.

[Event posts end here]