Lysander Martis
Prometheus
Cloud’s Cross, Gymnasium -> Side streets

((Decided that I needed to at least try to spread my characters out a bit; sorry for the mix-up before, Char. XD This post is nigh identical to the prior draft, minus everything about Lysander seeing Lydia))

The sound of Sera’s repeated hits on the punching bag formed a rhythmic backdrop to Lysander’s thoughts as he wrote down thoughts in his notebook. Usually, the notebook was something he kept with him in case he had a sudden spark of inspiration, or if he was just bored and wanted to write. Lately, however, he had been using it to keep track of some of the Cloud’s Cross oddities - chronicling everything he could about Beau Sanders, and adding notes about Sera and a few other kids he knew who had either been acting weirdly, or knew Beau well. So far he’d found no solid conclusions at all, but he found that writing down his thoughts helped him feel a lot less overwhelmed.

Just then, however, nothing was really helping. There was tension lodged deep in his chest, tension that spread through every muscle and made it impossible to sit without twitching. Seraphine wouldn’t take him seriously and didn’t want to hear a word against the adults. He didn’t know anyone else he could go to with this - before, he might have considered his moms, but he didn’t want either of them to know he’d eavesdropped on his mum. He didn’t know what to do, and looking at the clumsy words and phrases he’d scrawled down, he suddenly felt like there was too much of it all, and maybe he was just making mountains out of molehills like always anyway, and…

“I need to go,” Lysander announced suddenly, his voice coming out a lot squeakier than it was supposed to. “I’ll be out for a walk like usual after dinner if you want to talk tonight… see you tomorrow, otherwise.”

He could tell that Seraphine was thinking about saying something more, but she just nodded, her lips pursed with concern. “Okay,” she said, trying for a smile. “See you.”

As soon as Lysander got outside he began to feel a bit better. The gymnasium was good, familiar territory most of the time, but Seraphine’s rolling tension like was a thick malaise that filled the room. Between that and his own nerves, Lysander had been feeling strangled. Outside, however, there weren’t all those emotions bundled together. Everything felt more relaxed, more free. Slowly but surely, Lysander’s shallow breaths began to deepen.

The funny thing was, he was quite suddenly doing exactly what Seraphine had been wanting him to do - he wasn’t thinking about Beau Sanders or any part of the vague feeling of impending doom that shadowed over him. His thoughts were taking a very different direction.

“Your moms are probably just concerned that we’re sleeping together or something.” Seraphine’s words echoed in Lysander’s head. She had just meant it as a joke, Lysander was sure, but her tone had been so dismissive… For some reason, it bugged him a lot.

Well. Not “for some reason”. Lysander knew exactly why it bothered him, when he stopped to think about it for five seconds. Seraphine was strong - fierce, even - intelligent, beautiful, and his most staunch supporter besides his moms. As silly and juvenile as it was, he was smitten with a girl he’d been strictly just friends with for years.

Now that’d be a sign of the apocalypse, he thought, feeling a smile of weary amusement forming on his face. Lysander Martis, getting a date.

A flicker of motion caught Lysander’s eye. There was a loud “meow”, and then a big orange-and-white shorthair cat trotted out of an alleyway with its tail raised high.

“Hey, buddy,” said Lysander, bending down to the cat’s level. The great tomcat sniffed Lysander a few times, then plopped down on the sidewalk and meowed demandingly. “Sera’s not with me, but I can still give you a good scratch behind the ears, right?”

It was just as well; if Seraphine had actually been there, Oswald would have pretended that Lysander was completely nonexistent. For reasons that had never been entirely clear to either he or Seraphine, cats adored Sera, and Oswald in particular was the most affectionate of them. Lysander managed to get a few minutes’ worth of petting in before Oswald batted at his hand with a lazy paw and rose again, meowing plaintively.

Lysander let out a small sigh as he rose. “Sera’s not here,” he said again. “If you want her, you’re going to have to wait.”

However, Oswald followed when Lysander walked away. He sighed. Cats, no accounting for them. He wasn’t even particularly sure where he was going - he just sort of ambled through Cloud’s Cross, holding his notebook like a security blanket. It was kind of weird that he didn’t end up running into anyone, considering - while most people would probably still be in the stadium watching whatever was left of the soccer game, it seemed odd to him that he just happened not to see anyone at all, especially when he was just picking side streets at random. Not that he minded. In his frame of mind, talking to anyone but Sera would make him even more agitated - actually, talking to Sera would probably be even more tense after how he’d left.