Askari took Leandra to his tent. While the outside was nothing to be impressed with, the inside was much larger, and full of all sorts of things that he said he had created himself using magic. They had talked for hours about little nothings, about their families and how much parents sucked and were stupid, then about themselves, their bodies... even Leandra's own magic didn't feel that good.
The next day she woke up and Askari was gone. It didn't matter. Leandra sat on the edge of the bed getting dressed. She'd probably go out and see what the Esper camp was like, maybe talk to the trees to figure out where she was, and then see Askari when he got back from wherever he was. But she didn't get that far.
Askari had come back to tell her that her dad and mom were at his house. She couldn't believe it. Part of her thought it was really cool that her dad would leave the cavern just to find her. The other part of her was terrified because she knew for him to leave the cavern to find her mean that he was utterly, thoroughly pissed. She'd have to go back.
And so she did. Her mother and father, of course, treated her like she'd done the worst thing in the world by leaving. She tried to explain that she couldn't live in the house seeing how her dad acted like a dog following around her mother who acted like he didn't exist, but in the end, she was relegated to a term of confinement (grounded!) in her room.
They didn't know that Askari popped in and spent vast parts of the day with her, nor that he spent vast parts of the night with her too. In fact, nothing would have been wrong at all if it weren't for the sick feeling she'd started getting all the time. So sick sometimes that her mom couldn't even fix it.
