Wilderness Explorers [Germaine]

[Autumn Buckland]

Autumn Buckland is not particularly troublesome, she's quick witted, but eager in classes, with interesting insights. She does her homework, doesn't pick fights and most certainly doesn't insult her teachers - though she does argue her point with them something fierce.

But today, she has other plans.

Utterly fed up from spending the first days of spring inside listening to teachers telling her how to do algebra, and other seemingly pointless tasks, the young redhead had stomped her way out of the main corridors, towards the cafeteria, where she quietly made several sandwiches - specifically chicken salad and honey and banana. Stuffing them and a bottle of water in her bag, she rolled her sleeves up and nodded. Yes, she was ready, but she needed an accomplice - and she had ideas on who to take with her.

Germaine had been quickly tugged over out of whatever she had been doing, and Autie had practically burst with her idea, explaining how there was so much more for the pair of them to do than listen to Algebra and Onomatopoeia. She had sandwiches, she had water and they were going on an expedition. An expedition out into the wilderness nearest to Pilot Ridge, where they could make a camp, fish for shrimp in any streams, find frogs and hunt for signs of Spring. Easily better than anything any Hammel teacher could ever teach.

But then, there was something else they needed to do before they disappeared off for the day.

Autumn grabbed a piece of paper and wrote in her spider-scrawl handwriting:

Mister Campbell & Others
Gone on an eckspedision. Be back about ... don't know.
We have provisions.
Signed

A. Buckland & G. Sharpe

"So." She began brightly, pinning the note on the door of the reception room, hitching her woolly boots off. "Are we ready?" The redhead beamed, pushing her hair from her face and walking out towards one of the side entrances. "We'll have to climb the wall, but then we can get going. I asked a few trees earlier and they said there's a wood further north, just outside Pilot Ridge."

Could this technically be called organised crime? I think so.

[Germaine Sharpe]

There were few benefits of hanging out with Sammy that lead to a boost in Germaine's academic career. Well, okay. There were none whatsoever. The fourteen-year-old had been a mediocre student at best before she had met the older boy, and learning ways to skip class had done nothing for her record. Even before then, her grades had teetered on the edge of passable and repeating the 8th grade, and it was a bit of a miracle that she had made it to high school level courses at all, let alone the standard ones. She was still sliding by, but only just.

Gym was still her only A grade.

On that particular day, she was sitting in Freshman English pretending to do her reading assignment (but actually writing nonsensical stories about her teddy bears) when Autumn appeared. Without so much as a glance at the teacher, the other girl pulled Germaine out of the classroom, and she willingly came. As Autie gushed about her plans for the day and all the awesome things they could be doing instead of school work, Gerri added her own two cents about having to battle the grizzly bears to keep them from stepping on the frogs. It would be all fun and games of course, as the bears didn't really mean any harm, and once they had had their fill of snarling and snorting, the bears would happily leave the pair alone to play in the streams.

The girl wiggled impatiently as she waited for the red-head to write her note, nodded in approval, then bounced along side her to the door. "Yep!" Gerri happily chirped. There hadn't been anytime for her to rush back to her dorm and grab anything, but she had her nabbed her jacket from her locker and was already wearing decent shoes. That should have been everything she'd needed, since Autumn had already taken care of the food. "That sounds fun," she said with a grin. "There's bound to be all those cool things you talked about there. Make sure to thank the trees for me." Germaine had tried to talk to the trees once before, but they didn't talk back to her like they did to Autie.

[Autumn Buckland]

Autumn's expedition started the second the pair of them got to the large boundary wall around the place, and the redhead gave it a staring competition for a long moment, as though eyeing it with complete distaste would make it fall over and let them pass.

"The trees need to do me just one more tiny favour." She said, wrinkling her nose up and beckoning Germaine closer to the wall. "We'll get a helping hand!" She added eagerly, waving to one of the trees nearby until she got it's attention, branches turning towards her. "Excuse me Ms. Pine Tree, I don't mean to be a nuisance but me and my companion here need to get over this wall for particularly important expedition work in the forest. Could you help us?" The tree seemed to pull back for a moment as though hesitating, before dipping one of her larger branches down over the wall.

Grabbing hold of it tightly, Autumn decided to go first, just in case there were alligators hiding on the other side of the wall as an extra measure to stop people leaving. "If I don't make it." The red head began dramatically. "Please tell Eric that I am ever so fond of his grey t-shirt." And with that, the tree withdrew and flicked her over the bricks with a shower of pine needles. For a moment there was silence, then a quiet little "Oof" from the other side of the wall. "Germie?" She said, slightly muffled. "There's a rather enthusiastic group of stinging nettles over here." A loud rustling noise followed, then a gentle scoff. "That's it. They moved over."

It was then Germaine's turn, the branch returning and offering itself out to her.

"Be a little less... throwy this time please." Autumn added from the other side, picking an alarming amount of pine cones and half rotted leaves from her hair. "I need my explorers in the best possible condition for battling grizzly bears and hunting the dreaded killer shrimp." And with that, the red head began to ask several of the less occupied flowers and bramble bushes where exactly they should go to reach the forest, ignoring the fact she now had a rather remarkable mud smudge on her face.

[Germaine Sharpe]

((Thank you for being patient, Chez-love. <3))

Gerri skipped behind Autumn, managing to follow her all the way to the wall without getting distracted by some passing bird or bug. She stood back when they arrived at the obstacle, staring at the large wall with awe more than anything. Of course, she had her own idea for getting through it; one involving melting a hole in the wall with acid. It was classroom escape method she had been dying to try for months, and this would be the perfect opportunity to test it out. (Little did she know, even the most potent acids weren't fast acting, and it would never work anyway.)

It was fortunate that Autumn spoke then, breaking Gerri's train of thought and pushing all such plans of smearing the bricks with acid out of her mind. She obediently hopped over to the red head's side. "And what's that?" she asked, watching curiously as the other girl addressed a nearby pine. Germaine stepped back again when the tree came to life to allow Autumn to go first. She saluted the other girl and wished her luck before the tree tossed her over the wall, and shielded her own face from the pine needles that rained down as a result. When Gerri heard the other girl call to her she shouted back, "Oh, good! You're alive," then, "Alright, I'm coming over."

She clung tightly to the branch as it lowered the second time, expecting it to toss her over as it had her companion. The pine tree was an excellent listener, however, and brought her over slowly instead of flinging her. Gerri slid off it and onto the grass of the other side with a hint of disappointment on her face. "Hm, that seemed a lot more exciting when you did it," she commented. "By the way, you got a little something here." After indicating the respective location of the mud smudge on her own face, Gerri gave the forest a quick once over.

"I'm kinda surprised we got this far. I thought the security at this place was better," she said with a quick shrug, then spun around to face Autumn. "But, anyway. Which direction are we heading?"

[Autumn Buckland]

"Security-smucurity." Autumn said dismissively, rolling her sleeves up and pawing at the mud smudge on her face. "I just watch them to know where they don't look." She added cheerily, waving goodbye to the helpful pine tree and setting off in a very pointed direction. "One of the bluebells said this way would lead us straight to the main forest. Say!" She paused, turning to face Germaine with eager excitement. "We should set up a proper camp here in the summer with tents and a camp fire and sing nonsensical songs about kippers."

Spurned on by this fantastic idea, the redhead went on marching through the hedges and trees till she reached the main road. Standing on tiptoes - as though that would help, she raised one hand above her eyes and scanned the area, hunting for dense clusters of trees. "Bother." She said rather grumpily when she came back negatory. "I shall ask for directions again." Turning to a nearby clump of wild grass, she crouched down and held a long conversation with it, frowning, then sighing, then smiling. "We just follow this path, apparently." She eventually said, trudging onwards to the brow of a hill, hesitating when she got to the top and letting out a yelp of joy, pulling Germaine over.

"Gotcha!" She laughed, grabbing her friend's hands and dancing round and round in circles. "How wonderful. I wonder if the bears have started their picnic yet?" She questioned, nearly running the rest of the way down the hill to get to the forest entrance. Autumn scoffed derisively at the "Do Not Enter" sign and climbed rather cheerily over the small fence that stood erect at the start of the foot path. "Need a leg up?" She asked, offering her hands out to her companion. "I don't understand how people can claim to own a forest. A forest is it's own owner, no one elses. How very selfish." She gave a sharp kick to the sign, then stood hands on hips.

"Well, Captain Germaine, where shall we go?" The redhead asked, pausing at the start of the forest and letting the other girl take over. "To the stream or to the clearing to hunt for bugs? Or somewhere else?" Oh yes, this was definitely one of Autumn's best ideas since the time she made her bedroom sprout into a rainforest. Or when she made that dress out of flowers. It was possibly tied with both.

[Germaine Sharpe]

“Oooh,” Gerri cooed, “That’s so clever! You’re smart, Autie.” She definitely thought that the other teen’s ability to avoid campus security was some worth admiring. The idea of camping in the summer was nothing to scoff at either. “Ohmigosh, yeah!" She approved all of the other girl’s plans really, because they were always brilliant. It was Autumn that put together this expedition, after all. With a salute, the brunette began to march behind the other girl as she lead the to the road, almost not stopping soon enough when they finally got there. She had been expecting to continue across the street and into the trees on the other side. "Did we make a wrong turn?" she asked.

As the red head went to address yet another plant, Gerri--not wanting to eavesdrop on the conversation--meandered her way back to the tree line. She supposed it didn't really matter, as she was only able to understand one side of the conversation at best, but she still didn't want to seem rude. Flopping down on the grass (excusing herself as she did so), she picked up a rock that wasn't all that remarkable but interesting enough to catch her eye and make her want to take a closer look.

It was quickly tossed aside and forgotten when Autumn turned to her again. Gerri jumped up accordingly. "Oh, goodie," she squealed as a big grin took over her face. Bouncing all the way to the top of the hill, she stumbled when her friend suddenly grabbed her hand and pulled her forward. "Awesome!" she cried enthusiastically. "I was a little worried there, but you did great! Let's go then, before they start without us." She did a small twirl once she was released from the dance, then chased the red head down to the fence. After taking her hands and flipping over the barrier, Gerri bounced again.

"We should go catch shrimp first. Then we can relax while we eat dinner with the bears." That seemed like a pretty good starting point, and it left plenty of wiggle room for any changes they might think up. Without so much as a clue as to where they needed to go to get to the stream, the fourteen-year-old sprinted into the trees. She figured if it ran through the forest, then they'd have to stumble into it eventually, which admittedly, wasn't terrible logic. It wasn't such a surprise then when she burst out of a rather large bunch of ferns and landed in a steady river. "Oh!" she exclaimed, turning around to see if Autumn had been following her, "I found it!" Gerri splashed around in the cool water, hoping to stir up some of those shrimp they were after.

[Autumn Buckland]

"Then to the shrimp!" Autumn declared, skipping along behind Germaine as she dashed through the dead leaves and thick trees, giving a wave to a particularly friendly wildflower as she danced over the forest floor. She'd just about lost sight of her fellow explorer when the plop was heard, and she dashed forwards, poking her head through the ferns and laughing delightedly. "You have." She said cheerily, kicking off her shoes and leaping wholeheartedly into the river, getting the bottom of her dress absolutely sodden with water. Scrunching her face up as she scouted for shrimp, she clapped her hands and moved over to a large rock in the water.

Lifting it curiously, she laughed as a long freshwater shrimp began scurrying out from it's newly uncovered shelter. "Germaine! I found a big one!" Autumn yelped, chasing the crustacean downstream and plucking it up from the water. Lifting it up with a grip behind it's head, she waved it over at her friend, then tutted. "One isn't enough for even half a mid morning snack." She grumbled, putting the shrimp in her pocket for safe keeping. "You know what we need? Spears." Grabbing her fellow explorer's hand, she headed back to the bank and searched around for a few thin, sturdy sticks, then a rock to sharpen the points on.

Setting on a particularly large, prominant rock, ignoring the fact her skirt was gradually getting wetter and wetter, she began to make the sticks nice and pointy. "This way, the shrimps will die nice and quickly, without us getting arrested by the Society of Protection to Small Edible Water Creatures." Autumn explained, waving a half sharpened stick at Germaine. "Then we can make a campfire and swap stories about how we got scars." The redhead proudly showed a thin white scar on her arm, and nodded.

"I got this from wrestling a giant and most deadly caterpillar that was desperately trying to eat a dear friend of mine." She said eagerly, returning to the stick sharpening with diligence. "I very nearly died." She added for dramatic effect, pausing and putting a hand on her chest dramatically. "Back home, there's a special ballad written just for the story of me and the caterpillar. I'll teach you." Buzzing with excitement, Autumn handed a sharpened stick to Germaine and nodded gravely.

"Our enemy seem to hide under rocks. Like tiny shrimpy ninja."

[Germaine Sharpe]

There was no hope for Germaine's shoes as she kicked around the water, thoroughly distracted by the splash patterns and forgetting her original intent. It only took seconds for the tennies to be completely soaked through, making her socks just as soggy. She didn't really mind, however, and continued to splash about. Once Autumn arrived, she waved at the girl in greeting, remembered that she was suppose to be on a hunt, and began to search the cool water for any signs of prey. There was no hope for her finding any shrimp, as they all quickly scattered the second her feet hit the water, and her clumsy splashing about did not help matters.

Her friend was having better luck, and she perked up when Autumn called for her. "Excellent! Don't let him get away!" She toddled after the redhead, slipping on a rock in her haste, falling on her behind, and effectively soaking her entire self. This only caused her to giggle as she pushed herself up and out of the water, the current threatening to pull her back in. When she looked to see how Autumn was doing, and saw the large shrimp in her hands, Gerri clapped. "What a wonderful capture! Brava," she cried, a grin on her face. But Autumn wasn't as excited, and the brunette found that disappointing. Until the brilliant idea of spears was brought up.

Like a puppy, she again followed Autumn as she was pulled along. "That's a good point," she said with a confident nod. "And I wouldn't want to hear them screaming anyway. That would give me nightmares. " Germaine watched her sharpen their weapons, nodding again at the mention of stories.

She took a good look at the displayed scar, leaning in closer. "That's amazing!" she exclaimed, gawking, "I should love to learn your song." She took the stick with even more vigor than before, and darted to a rather large rock. "Aye, aye." Tugging on it with futile effort, she quickly gave up on that location and moved to a significantly smaller stone nearby. Flipping it revealed a nice batch of shrimp, and Gerri stabbed wildly at the creatures with her new spear. She frowned when she flipped the tool around and found that there was no fruit to her labor. Repeating the same process on a few more rocks showed no increase in success. "Autie," she whined, "This isn't working for me. You need to show me how to use it properly."

[Autumn Buckland]

"Oh blast I think we might need a net." Autie complained as she, too, began trying to stab the little shrimps with her spear, finding she had only managed to impale a great deal of leafy clag on the end of her stick. Wrinkling her nose, she flung it to the side and put her hands on her hips, before snapping her fingers and rather abruptly wiggling out of her small bra.

"This'll do!" She said cheerily, wiggling her spear between the lace and wielding the underwear like a warrior. "I don't really fit in this thing anyway. It's odd how people grow random extremities really fast." She scowled down at her chest, then hopped across the water to peer over Germaine's shoulder curiously. "You have loads here!" She said excitedly, passing the net-that-was-previously-a-bra to her friend and crouching in the water. "If they come towards me I'll scare 'em off! Then they'll swim into the net and we can skewer them on sticks and roast them on a fire." She clapped her hands together happily. The bears would love having fresh shrimp for lunch, without a doubt.

As the pair of them fished for the shrimp, the redhead came up with a good idea to top all the others she'd had. "Say, Germaine? Have you ever wanted to go to Ireland? There's magic in the water there." She nodded, before sitting down with a wet splosh in the water, occasionally flailing her arms at the scattering shrimp. "My pa says he saw a unicorn in the forest once, and he never lies." She added dramatically, looking up momentarily at their makeshift net. "Caught anything yet?" Autie grinned, moving her fingers over the rocks and pebbles around her. "Anyway, he says that there are only two whole unicorns left in the world, and that the leprechauns have to protect them, so they distract silly people with lies about pots of gold at the end of rainbows."

Taking a deep breath, she snatched a particularly pretty looking stone from the river and tucked it in her pocket. "So when everyone rushes to the end of the rainbow, the two unicorns go off and hide." The red haired girl paused, grabbing Germaine's arm a moment. "You should come run away with me and we can go to Ireland and chase horses and find unicorns. And you can meet my dog and we can hunt for four leaf clovers and stitch them into our clothes so we're lucky forever." She went silent then, and looked a little sad. "Hammel is nothing like Ireland." She concluded miserably.

[Germaine Sharpe]

Germaine tilted her head to the side, pondering the idea. "A net?" she cooed, observing the end of her spear. "I think you're right. Spears are much better for catching fat things, like fish." The brunette carelessly threw the stick over her shoulder, and shrugged. Then turning to her friend, she added, "Nets are far better for catching small things. Particularly those in bunches. Right?"

"But how do we--oh." Her question was simultaneously answered as the redhead began to construct the net using her spear and bra. It was a good thing Gerri had already tossed her spear, otherwise her underwear wasn't going to last very long. "It'll certainly serve us better this way," she commented with a confident nod. Taking the net from Autumn, she gave the other girl a hardy salute. "Yes, ma'am. We're gonna get those shrimp this time, I know it!" She practically pounced on the critters as she began to drag the makeshift net through the water.

The question made her gasp, like she had just heard some horrifying news. She had never thought about going to the Ireland before, but now that her friend was asking, she really wanted to. "Yes!" she squealed happily, forgetting for another moment that she was suppose to be catching shrimp with her net. She gawked at the mention of magic and unicorns (as if she couldn't have been more hyped about it), then held up the net when Autumn inquired about it. "Oh, yes. I may have caught a few." She picked the shrimp out of the cups and held them out to Autie. "Put them with the other one for safe keeping."

She dipped the bra back in the water and listened quietly to the rest of the tale. Every so often, she'd lift the net out of the water, and pull a shrimp or two out of it. "I would love to go to Ireland with you," Gerri agreed eagerly to the invitation. "You can't do any of those things here...although we do have bears and shrimps and campfires." She emptied the contents of the net for a final time, sticking the rest of the shrimp in her friend's pocket. Grabbing for Autumn's hand, she splashed back to shore. "No, Hammel is nothing like Ireland. But we aren't at Hammel right now, are we? And we have some shrimp to cook up for our picnic."

She smiled at the redhead as she hopped up on the bank, and stuck the net through one of her beltloops to free her hands. The last thing Germaine wanted was for her friend to be miserable, especially not when they were on an awesome expedition. "So cheer up, 'kay? We don't want to depress the bears when we go to visit them. It's not proper, and terribly rude to do so." With a quick nod, she began to gather sticks for the fire. "We need to find a good clearing to roast these guys, right? Do any of the plants know of one?"

[Autumn Buckland]

The fact the two girls were now far more successful on their shrimp catching campaign instantly cheered Autumn up. Her pockets were bulging with shrimp as they got out of the water and the young plant communicator sat down to quickly dry her soaking wet knickers on the dry crispy leaves at the bank. "My arse is all wet." She said with a laugh, shaking her head and shrugging. It couldn't have been as bad as if she'd been wearing tights, she supposed.

"You're quite right. I shouldn't like to upset the bears as they are wonderfully charming." She admitted, helping Germaine gather dry, aging sticks for the fire. "Our spears can work as kebabs and we can roast the shrimp wonderfully." She added cheerily, ignoring the slight wiggle of her pockets as the still live shrimp tried to free from their prison. Once she had a large bundle of sticks, she politely got the attention of one of the older trees, and cleared her throat.

"Excuse me Mr. Oak, I don't mean to bother you but do you know of any particularly safe and wonderous clearings?" The red head asked, as the tree turned to face her. Nodding at words no one else seemed to hear - there were some creaks and groans, however - she pointed in an easterly direction and beamed. "Well, Mr. Oak says there's a lovely grassy clearing just along that line of shrubs. He says there's also some wild garlic in that direction that we could use to rub on the shrimp."

Success.

And with that, the redhead tramped off through the dried leaves, making crunching noises as she went. "And here's the garlic!" She shouted over to her friend, crouching down and being ever so careful as to politely uproot only one little garlic bud - which happily said it was ready to be used and loved. She replanted the rest of it and nodded. This was the best idea ever. Scuffing through the undergrowth for a few minutes longer, Autumn found the small clearing and clapped her hands together. It was perfect - it even had an old rotten log they could sit on while the shrimp cooked.

Flouncing out through the shrubs, Autumn dropped her pile of sticks down by the center of the clearing and beamed. "When we go to Ireland we can go to one of the coves. There are mermaids there and they sing so very beautifully." She began building the fire, humming to herself. "Oh Germaine it's so wonderful, they make little shell necklaces for you and are ever so sad whenever I leave. And they ride whales! Did you know that? You see them sat on the backs of little whales as they skim across the water." She paused dramatically.

"And even better, there's sidhe." Autumn's voice dropped to a whisper. "They make their faerie rings and try to catch people in them. They come out on midsummer eve." She nodded, as though some could hear her right now. "You have to be quiet when talking about them, in case they're listening. If they're offended they cut the lining out of your pockets and knot your hair to the top of the bed."