The Iced Curse: Part Six

      Realizing that Logan was asleep and he couldn't hurt me right now, I slowly drifted off into a fitful sleep full of nightmares of getting frozen in a block of ice and no one being able to find me.

      ***

      My eyelids flitted open and closed. I could just barely make out an icy shape in front of me.

      My eyes flew open as I realized what was in front of me. Logan was standing a few feet above me, just staring. I nearly screamed when I saw him, but I slapped my claws over my mouth and just cowered.

      He no longer looked like the innocent young Ice Draik from earlier that day. He was back to being that huge hulking mass of ice. Multiple spikes stuck out from along his arms, legs, hands, head, back and wings, he looked like he had even more spikes from the last time I saw him. His eyes were back to translucent orbs of ice. He was standing still, almost like a statue.

      He wasn't saying a word as he stared at me. Breathing ragged breaths that blew ice crystals onto my face, he shifted his wings ever so slightly.

      I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, grabbed Snow Cloud out of the air and leapt over the back of the couch. Logan's eyes seemed to follow me as I ran into the first room off of the hall. It was the writing room as it turned out.

      I crashed through the door and got tangled up in the bottom of the swivel chair. But the chair felt heavier, as though...

      "Flames?" I asked in astonishment. Sure enough, Flames was sitting at her desk, the white quill grasped in her hand. She looked down in surprise when she saw me and quickly stuffed all of the papers she was writing on into an open drawer and slammed it shut.

      "I was writing about you!" she blurted when she saw me. Seeing how shocked I looked, she quickly changed the subject. "What are you doing here?" she asked me, gingerly placing the quill on her desk. "Did something happen? I thought you were asleep."

      "And I thought you were asleep," I said as I frantically slammed the door out to the hallway and locked it shut. "But I guess that now both of us are awake now."

      "Why did you slam the door closed?" Flames asked. "You could wake someone up."

      I thought about what I was going to say. Should I reveal Logan as a creature made of pure ice that stalked me around all of Neopia? Or should I just say that I was really cold and it was cold in the living room and much warmer in the writing room, and in turn possibly put this innocent family into danger? I figured that that probably wouldn't be the best decision.

      "I'm in here because..." I faltered, trying to think of how to word this. "Well, I need to tell you something. It's about Logan."

      "Oh yeah, that Draik you knew from back in Terror Mountain." Flames rested her hands on her lap. "How is he doing? He seems like a very polite Neopet, it's a good thing we let him in, or else he might have frozen."

      "Flames, he is frozen," I said. "He's an ice Neopet."

      "Right, right."

      "And there's something really important that I need to tell you about him," I continued. "Or perhaps I should just show you instead."

      "Lead the way, wise Lodowaty," Flames said sarcastically as she gestured towards the closed door.

      I opened the door slowly and peeked out. My eyes swiveled around the hallway to make sure that Logan wasn't standing right outside the door waiting for me. I didn't see anything resembling an ice Draik, so I opened the door wider and stepped out onto the fluffy rug. Flames followed behind me, looking for what I was talking about.

      We walked out into the living room and I was shocked to see that Logan was no longer standing by the couch. Thoughts raced through my mind. Could he have left the house? Or even worse, could he have gone and attacked Pacina, Harpier or Aluendi? Had he attacked all three? Or was he lying in wait, ready to strike me?

      A soft snoring broke me out of my thoughts. I turned around the couch and sure enough, Logan was curled up on the floor fast asleep. He didn't look like the hideous monster anymore; he looked like an ice Draik again.

      "I don't see anything wrong with Logan," Flames said, and she turned to walk back to the writing room.

      "B- But he just looked like a monster about two minutes ago!" I burst out, not caring that I probably woke Logan up.

      "That is enough, Lodo," Flames said strictly. "Now quit criticizing Logan or I may just kick you out of here before this darn storm is over."

      I stared in shock after Flames before mumbling to myself that if I left then this whole storm would be over within a matter of hours. Of course, Flames and everyone else didn't know that, but if they did they wouldn't have even agreed to take me in.

      I grumbled as I walked to the couch and lay down again. If I had even bothered to look down at the floor for once, I might have noticed one large ear made of ice twitching as it listened to every word I said, and I might have noticed that one icy blue eye wide open, watching me as I crawled under my blanket and fell asleep again.

      ***

      It was probably the worst night of sleep that I had ever had. I woke up around seven more times, and when I had actually managed to fall asleep, my dreams were filled with horrible nightmares that I couldn't get out of my head.

      I hid under my blanket for as long as I could until Pacina dragged me off of the couch. I shielded my eyes from the blinding light of the lamp right next to me as I flopped on the floor, still resisting the urge to move.

      Flames acted hostile towards me for the rest of the day. And the day after that. And for the next few days, Flames would avoid me as best as she possibly could. She looked more and more sleep deprived, and she was in her writing room constantly, sometimes skipping meals to write. I could hear her grumbling about how there had to be a ridiculous amount of words in a series for it to even be considered good. She must have been writing another series. Part of me didn't give a care about it, but part of me desperately wanted to find out what she was spending so much time writing about.

      Days began to pass, although they molded together and felt like just a few hours. Everything was going by so fast.

      I would no longer sleep after that one night that Logan had spent watching me. I no longer felt safe. I would curl up under my blanket for hours and do absolutely nothing but stare blankly at Snow Cloud, and the Christmas Cirrus just stared back.

      I could feel Logan constantly staring at me, as if waiting for me to come out of my blanket of solitude. But I always just shrugged the feeling off and went back to staring at Snow Cloud.

      "Lodo, you need to get out here and eat lunch," Harpier called a few days after the night I had upset Flames. I didn't know the exact number of days, because as I said, everything blended together. "You're going to get way skinnier than you already are, and that would be really really bad," she continued.

      Reluctantly, I trudged out of my blanket and across the living room to the kitchen. Everyone's eyes were on me as I walked up to the fridge. My blue hair was a snarled mess and my clothes were rumpled. I could tell that the looks were of disgust, except for Logan, who was just staring at me to make me miserable.

      I grabbed some Pirate Potato Crisps (why they were in the fridge, don't ask me) and walked back to the couch. I realized that if I ducked back under the blanket to eat these Harpier would probably be furious with me. And since she was the battle pet of the family, she could pound me into a pulp. So I sat on top of the blanket just as Snow Cloud wiggled out from underneath it. I gave a chip to the Cirrus and began to eat myself.

      "Don't you think you should have something a little healthier than that?" Harpier asked me.

      "I don't want to get too skinny," I snapped back.

      "Guys, what's going on in here?" Logan asked as he walked into the room, his tail swishing against the floor behind him. He was wearing a small torn brown shirt and thick denim jeans with tears at the knees. Flames hadn't been able to give him any new clothes because all of her Neopets were girls and she figured that he wouldn't appreciate wearing frilly pink skirts and diamond-studded shirts, although I thought that he would have looked hilarious.

      "Don't talk back to me," Harpier growled at me. "I could mash you like potatoes in seconds flat."

      "Harpier, don't get worked up at her," Logan said as he walked over. The shadow Eyrie shivered as Logan pushed her back towards the kitchen. "I'll talk to her. Since she was my childhood friend maybe she'll tell me why she's acting so grumpy."

      Harpier reluctantly agreed and walked back into the kitchen. Logan sat down on the couch, and I shivered as I scooched over. I was going to be as far away as possible from that freak.

      "What's wrong, Lodowaty?" he asked, not daring to come any closer to me.

      "You know exactly what's wrong," I snapped at him, pulling the blanket back over me. I couldn't even believe that he was talking to me. "Why did you come in this house and why do you keep staring at me? It's so unnerving that I can't sleep or eat or anything." I set the bowl of chips down on the low-lying table and cuddled Snow Cloud.

      I stared at Logan, waiting for a response. But he just kept looking at me with his big eyes that took up a lot of his face. I should've known that he wouldn't give away his objective.

      "You need to get out of my life," I continued. "Take this horrible curse away and go back up to that wretched mountain without me."

      "Never."

      I looked in shock at Logan, whose expression had turned bitterly sour. He was glaring right at me.

      "I'll go back to that lonely mountain, Lodo," he said coldly. "But I'm not going unless you're going with me to keep me out of insanity."

      "Logan, what do you—" I began, but Logan slapped his tail across my face and spun me around so quickly I didn't have time to even blink. He bound my hands together behind my back with an icy piece of rope.

      Snow Cloud looked just as surprised as I did, especially when Logan cracked his tail over the top of my head. I slumped to the couch, dizzy but not unconscious. It seemed that Logan was unaware that I was still conscious. He attempted to snatch Snow Cloud out of the air, but the Cirrus quickly dissolved into nothing. It was a special trick of his, and he would probably reappear in a different room only seconds later.

      "Darn Petpet," Logan mumbled, still not noticing that I was awake. "I didn't think you were going to rebel like this. I thought you were too clueless."

      I stared I awe at Logan, wondering what connection he could possibly have with Snow Cloud. But come to think of it, the little Cirrus had shown up the first night that I had seen Logan hulking around the cave looking like a complete monster.

      "Lodo, I found some fruit in the fridge, and I thought that since you're only eating chips you should—" Harpier stopped short when she saw Logan holding the rope that bound my hands together and me slumped on the couch, looking unconscious. Her expression changed from smug to horror as she raced down the hall to the writing room shouting "Flames! Flames! Our guest has gone insane!" I couldn't hear what else she said.

      "Lousy Eyrie," Logan grumbled. "Lousy Neopets. Lousy family." He turned to me. "I said I wasn't going without you."

      He grabbed my wrists and burst through the makeshift front door, letting all of the snow inside. He beat his wings, harder and harder, until we started whirling up into the sky.

      I felt something cold behind my head, and something light and fluffy press itself against me.

      I was tempted to tell Snow Cloud that he shouldn't be here and that if he got caught than Logan would get rid of him for good, but the determined Petpet stayed with me as we lifted off into the storm clouds.

      I looked down at the Neohome and saw Harpier, Aluendi, and Pacina emerge. Flames was following after them. They all lifted into the sky, Flames on Harpier's back, Pacina on wings of fake gold, and Aluendi on wings that looked almost as if they were made of vines that I had never seen her wear before.

      My heart leapt with joy as I realized that Flames couldn't hate me all that much. She and her Neopets were coming to rescue me.

To be continued...