Camping. When was the last time Nerissa had gone camping? She couldn’t remember, but the idea of spending time outdoors with the trees, the flowers, and the tall grass sounded more than pleasant; it sounded like heaven.
Nerissa pulled on a shirt and a pair of shorts after crawling out of bed, her hair tangled and curly, framing her face oddly due to the nap she had just taken. She had been extremely tired after staying up all night trying to figure out why it was that her mandrake had stopped growing so early in its life cycle. She had figured it out eventually, of course, but she still hadn’t even begun thinking of sleep until after the sun had risen and the early birds had begun singing, perched just outside her window as if to mock her. It was very rare that Nerissa slept in, being an early riser, but her mandrake was her pet, and she cared for it oh so dearly.
After her morning ritual was finished with- well, more like an evening ritual at that point- Nerissa slipped her feet into a pair of worn sneakers and walked downstairs to the commom room, where her backpack of camping gear was waiting for her; she had been sure to pack the night before after caring for her plant, knowing that she would not wake until very late in the afternoon, perhaps even evening. She bent down and hooked her arm through one of the pack’s straps, slinging it on to her back before making her way out the door.
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“This path…” Nerissa muttered to herself quietly as she stared at the map had been given in order to find the ‘campsite’, holding the paper inches from her face. She stepped slowly, lifting her feet higher off of the ground than usual in order to avoid tripping over tree roots as she focused on the squiggly lines on the map.
“ooof,” Nerissa grunted when she ran straight into something hard and toppled over backwards. She assumed it was a tree trunk, and couldn’t help but laugh when she realized that she really should have been paying more attention to where she was walking, even with a map to read.
She stood, dusting the blades of grass off of her shorts off with a smile on her face, only to see that she hadn’t in fact run into a tree, but a boy, a boy whom she knew as Andrew. “ohoho, my, I’m sorry Andrew,” she apologized with another chuckle, dropping her backpack on the ground.