This is Not a Theme Park [Lucca]

[Lucca]

Arkady shook his head, sending his slightly disheveled mane to flying a bit. There was no reason for him to be thinking such paranoid things. After all, the trip had been full of rather nasty surprises (at least the early part of it) so maybe he and Conall were just a little jumpy? After all, the other boy seemed just fine after taking the medicine. He nodded to Castiel. Yeah, letting the food settle might be good.

"It's fine," he said meekly, tail giving a nervous wag. "Conall's right. It was something we wouldn't have gotten to do otherwise." Ark was able to smile, then, since he didn't know the apothecary was still around. He nosed Cas's hand a bit. "Come on, we're still on vacation. We might as well enjoy the rest of it." He turned to smile at Conall, too. Sure, they should be on their guard...but that didn't mean they couldn't enjoy themselves, too, in these last few moments of freedom before they needed to return to parents and guardians and tutors back at the Court.

[Kari Muffin]

Castiel gave Arkady a smile in return. The pair of them were so nice, when it came down to it. She had screwed up royally but they were willing to forgive her, and they said such nice things. What would she have done without them around? Well, in the case of the Wood she probably would have died horribly by the hands of a crazy Tulgey, or something much much worse.

"Okay!" she said after a moment. "Before we go home we can stop in the Highlands. They weren't expecting us back so soon so... it wouldn't hurt would it?" She gave them not a wide grin. And they would be close enough to home that if they got into any trouble. Though she didn't particularly plan to get into trouble.

The apothecary was still lingering outside. Hopefully she would leave before they were ready to go. Castiel continued to focus on the boys in front of her, putting on her cheeriest smile.

Conall was fairly quiet. She smiled back at Arkady and Castiel. "I suppose we could," he said as he poked at his empty bottle. "I think I'll be fine with the medication. I don't feel the pain anymore and it's fairly easy to breath now. Do you want to get going? It's still a little while before we get back to the Highlands."

Castiel shifted for a moment. The woman was still outside though. "That... sounds like a plan!" She said as she stood up and readied herself to leave. The Corvie mix showed no sighs of leaving their outside vantage point.

[Lucca]

Arkady nodded. That sounded good, and certainly a bit safer than everywhere else they'd been so far. More familiar, but the Highlands were quite beautiful and well worth a bit of time to spend in them. His tail swayed with contentment as he listened to the others talk. He was certainly glad that Conall felt better, now! Maybe that meant he'd be more cheerful the ride back, and they could play a game or something to pass the time in the carriage.

"Sounds good to me," Ark agreed, and hopped up to his paws, blissfully unaware they were being watched. He pushed some of the dishes on the table into order, to make it a bit easier for the waitress when she came to clean up after them, and stood by, waiting for them all to be ready to leave. His tail was still wagging and he had a smile on his muzzle. It was amazing how good he felt now that the worry about the medication and how they could convince Cas not to take it without worrying her wasn't weighing on his mind anymore.

[Kari Muffin]

Castiel took her sweet time collecting herself, even though there wasn't that much to do. She could still see the woman was lingering outside, though she seemed to be smoking or something. The girl tried to brush off the feeling of foreboding as she finally decided to lead the way out.

Arkady seemed bright and happy, and even Conall looked a bit better. Maybe everything would be perfectly fine. Everything would go smoothly.

Conall didn't notice that Castiel was stalling. He was quietly waiting to get going a little way away from Arkady. And he couldn't complain about the idea of investigating the Highlands. Despite living there he hadn't been out to investigate for a long period of time with people he actually considered friends.

That was more exciting than Tulgey Wood. Conall actually looked cheerful as they walked out of the little shop and towards the carriage home.

The Corvie mix kept her distance, but she did seem to be following them silently.

Castiel edged towards Arkady a bit more than she usually did.

[Lucca]

Arkady noticed Castiel was taking a little longer, and he gave her a slightly worried look, wondering if her shoulder was hurting or something. He made sure to try and help her gather her things just in case she was in pain, but at least once she got moving it seemed at a normal pace. He happily walked toward the carriage, tail wagging steadily behind him, and when he looked over and Cas was closer to him than she last had been...well, that just made him feel kind of fuzzy and happy.

He didn't think it could be because of anything they should be nervous about. Though once he did get the strange feeling something was watching or following them, and he glanced backward. The Coyote didn't see anything odd, and upon sniffing the air, all he could smell were plants and the faint oder of wood smoke. Ark shrugged, thinking he was probably just being paranoid after everything that had happened.

[Kari Muffin]

Castiel silently hoped that the person would stop following them when they saw the carriage. She didn't look back, for fear of seeing something she didn't want to see. Neither Arkady or Conall seemed to notice that anything was wrong.

Which meant everything was fine in her book. She bounced over to the carriage, made a comment at the carriage driver who was smoking his pipe and reading a paper. He briefly acknowledged her instructions and got ready to head off.

Castiel flopped into the carriage with a bit more cheer, she winced when she landed on her back harder than she intended to. "It's going to be a bit before we get back to the Highlands. So... want to play some card games?"

Conall was unaware of the distress that Castiel was going through. Though he did briefly smell something like smoke, he brushed it off. The boy silently followed, wondering about how long the ride to the Highlands would be.

A small part of him just wanted to go home.

Carefully he took a seat in the carriage, doing his best not to make anymore holes in the fabric. "You've had a deck of cards the entire time?" he asked as he successfully started another hole in the fabric behind one of his scythes.

Castiel shrugged. "Yes, but it's not like we had any use for them. And I didn't think it was fair for Arkady and I to play cards while you felt icky."

[Lucca]

Despite not really being aware of anything amiss, Arkady still made sure to let the other two hop onto the carriage before him. After one final look around, the Coyote finally climbed up into his seat beside Cas. He smiled at Conall, even though he could see the further damage the boy's scythes were doing to the fabric. After all, the Court would pay for whatever damage was left, right? It was only fair.

He looked curiously at the cards, tilting his head. He'd rarely had much to do with them, since he and his siblings usually found some other, stranger way of spending time, but he knew a few games with passing familiarity. "What game are we gonna play?" he asked, ears tilted forward and tail beginning a hesitant wag. "I don't know how to play any except go fish, but I could learn." And it would be a better way to pass the time than worrying or sitting in awkward silence.

[Kari Muffin]

Castiel pulled the deck of cards out of her pocket, shuffling them while listening to Arkady. Go fish huh? "Well, we can play Go Fish, Old Maid, Snap, Bull, War, Spit, Egyptian Ratscrew or we could try to play Poker, Black Jack or Rummy. Any of those sound interesting to you two?" She eyed the deck that she was shuffling. They were all fairly easy games to teach, Poker was a bit complex and she wasn't fantastic at it. It really depended on what the others wanted to play.

She would wait for them to decide.

Conall had never been one for card games, and he honestly didn't know half of what Castiel had spouted. He did know how to play Go Fish, which could be interesting for a bit. "I... have no idea what half of those are. I know how to play Go Fish and Old Maid. So either of those would work. Unless you want to teach us both a new game, Castiel. Bull sounds interesting... well they all do."

"Anything on the list you want to learn Arkady?" she asked cheerfully as she started to split the deck between the three of them.

[Lucca]

Arkady's eyes widened at the list of games Castiel spouted off. Wow, she sure knew a lot of them, didn't she? He was stunned for a moment at the sheer number of names, as well as the very odd sound of some of them. He half glanced at Conall, and was a bit relieved when the other boy was almost as confused as he was. He wagged his tail a bit, thinking, and leaned over to look at the cards. He actually hadn't seen a deck of them in ages.

"Uh," he began intelligently when Cas asked him his opinion, and then floundered for a moment in silence. "I really haven't heard of most of those games either. Maybe if we got a brief description of some of them? For example...what's Egyptian Ratscrew?" That one certainly had a very strange name. He'd actually only played Go Fish before, really, though he'd heard of Poker and Black Jack but only in the context that some Cards actually played them to win money, and then ended up losing all their money. He wasn't sure his mom would want him playing a game like that.

[Kari Muffin]

Castiel grinned. She was surprised that she actually knew more card games than either of them. Maybe it just had to do with her short attention span.

"For Egyptian Rat Screw the goal of the game is to get all of the cards. We split the deck evenly between the three of us and keep a pile in front of us face down. The first person on the left draws a card and puts it in a central pile. When playing normally and someone puts a face card down, the person after them has three chances to put a face card down in their turn. If they fail to do so then the person who put the face card down takes the deck. If they manage to put a face card down, the next person has three chances to put a face card down and so forth..." She paused as she shuffled the deck a bit more. "The fun part is the slapping of the deck. When two of the same cards are put down you can slap the pile and take it for yourself, your turn or otherwise. Three alike cards win the game, triple six everyone loses, and consecutive card counting like "one, two, three, four" can be slapped. It would be a little hard to play in here, I guess, but we're all small enough that we could probably sit on the floor."

She set the deck of cards between herself and Arkady. "Any other games you want to know about?"

Conall quietly listened to the rules. As fun as the game sounded he didn't think it could end well. What if he accidentally slapped Castiel or something? He had a set of claws that could do quiet a bit of damage. And what would happen if he drew blood? He didn't want to think about it. "I don't think that's my type of game..." He gave a small shrug. "Maybe a game that doesn't have a chance of us smacking each other?"

Castiel looked mildly disappointed for a split second, before shrugging it off and nodding in agreement. "All right, so War, Snap, and why not cut out Spit since that's a little complicated with three people. That leaves Go Fish, Old Maid, Rummy, Black Jack, Poker and Bull! Andy of those sound interesting?"