I did as what Amy told me to do and continued to walk forward in the pitch black forest. It was pure luck I did not bump into any trees. After walking for about five minutes, the dense forest cleared up a little, and moonlight shone down, lighting parts of the forest floor up with a glow.
My foot hit something hard, and I looked down to see that it was the torchlight I had dropped when I ran towards that boy. "Speaking of him, where is he?" I thought to myself while looking around. Straight ahead of me was the tree that I had found that boy leaning on, but to my surprise, there was no trace of blood anywhere.
Pushing thoughts of the boy into the back of my head, I continued back to the camp. Just like Amy had said, it was still dark outside, and my body heavy. After all, I did only catch a few hours of sleep. I forced myself to forget all thoughts of faeries and whatnot for that moment to try and get some rest.
Yawning, I climbed into my tent. The moment my head hit the pillow, I fell into a deep sleep.
"Rise and shine sleepyheads!" I heard a voice echo. It felt like the sound came from extremely far away. Something cold splashed onto my face and I woke up with a shock. Someone had cheekily thrown cold water onto me.
"Geez! Let me sleep like five more minutes!" I shouted in annoyance and threw my pillow at that person. It turned out to be Azure.
"It's already noon! And did you not change out of your clothes before you slept? You look like a total mess!" Azure questioned me.
I panicked and looked down. My shirt was crumpled and my pants were wrinkly with dried blood on them. Thankfully, Azure did not seem to notice the blood on my pants.
"Oh! Silly me, I must have been more tired than I thought last night. Anyway, I'm going to change into a fresh set of clothes so could you please get out of my tent? Also, didn't you sleep without changing your clothes last night?" I asked sarcastically and rendered Azure speechless.
Azure pouted and left the tent. After she left, I sighed in relief and started changing my clothes. I got out of the tent after putting on a new set of clothes and packing my old ones away so none of my friends would see it. The delicious smell of beef cooking wafted under my nose and my stomach growled.
"You're finally awake Lila! And just in time too, the steaks that Azure brought has just finished cooking!" Jessica smiled and waved at me.
I walked over and sat down next to the fire where the beef steaks had been cooking. Azure then joined me and we waited for Jessica together. She was the one who fed us most of the time while we were hanging out because she had great cooking skills inherited from her Asian parents.
After Jessica handed us our beef steaks, we started to dig in. I was so hungry I could eat a cow and I was the first to take a bite.
It tasted horrible, like cardboard with the texture of sandpaper. The longer I chewed on it, the worst it tasted. I choked and spat out the half chewed piece of beef.
"Jess, I don't doubt your culinary skills, but did you cook this right? I'm going to be honest, this tastes like bull. No offence." I said hesitantly to Jessica.
Azure looked at me questioningly and reached over to cut a piece of steak from my plate before putting it into her mouth.
"You're trolling right, Lila? This tastes amazing. You can drop the act. But if you don't want to eat it, i can eat it for you." Azure grinned with her mouth full. Jessica also took a bite and she nodded as if to agree with Azure.
I frowned. "It tastes so disgusting though, I wonder what is wrong with me today." I thought doubtfully to myself. Then an alarm went off in my head. "Oh, no. Is it because I'm a faerie? But I thought all of that was a dream! And even if it wasn't, Amy didn't say anything about food tasting bad!" Anxiety filled my heart as I excused myself and went back to my tent where I kept a few different packed snacks.
I ripped a packet of biscuits open and put it into my mouth. Just like the steak, it tasted of cardboard and felt like sandpaper on my tongue. I started opening every packet of snacks I had in desperation to taste them, but they were all the same, gross and terrible. My heart dropped to the floor as I clutched a biscuit wrapper tightly in my hand. This was all definitely not a dream, and I had to face reality.
I trudged back to the fire pit and sat down depressingly. Azure and Jessica did not think that anything was wrong and just continued talking to each other. Slowly, I lifted a forkful of steak and swallowed it after chewing minimally.
It took all my willpower not to gag and spit out the meat. I painstakingly finished half the steak and gave the rest to Azure and told them I was not really hungry because I was feeling unwell and wanted to rest in the tent. We had planned to go hiking together in the forest that day but since I told them I felt unwell, Azure and Jessica went by themselves and left me back at the tent.
At first I thought everything was fine and tried to take a nap to ignore my hunger pangs. I laid down and closed my eyes, hoping to get more rest before meeting Amy in the forest that evening.
Suddenly, I gagged and vomited all over my pillow. I stood up as fast as I could while covering my mouth with a hand to prevent more vomit from splashing onto the blankets and sprinted a distance out of the tent.
I uncovered my mouth and bent over while clutching my stomach in pain as I started puking continuously for what seemed like an eternity. After I felt as though my stomach had settled, I dragged myself back to the tent and cleaned it up.
"This must be one of the side effects of eating human food while being a faerie if the food itself doesn't taste edible..." I mumbled, my eyes filled with sorrow.
I decided to sit by the fire pit while waiting for Azure and Jessica because I did not want to risk vomiting in the tent again. When they returned, it was getting late and they wanted to go back to the city to have their dinner. I turned them down regretfully and waited for them to leave after packing up everything before making my way back to the forest.
I want to know everything about this new situation of mine, because I do not want another accident like that to happen again.