(Due to the change in the timeline, Jasmine would have never showed Asteria's Heart to Karyn so lightly, so Karyn never wished her hair and boobs to match Sarah.)
Karyn hummed to herself as she made the walk to Jasmine's house, basking in the last rays of the setting sun. It'd been cloudy the last couple of days, so it had been nice to be able to photosynthesize with natural sunlight for the first time in a while, basking under the sunlamp in the basement never felt quite as nice. Being a Dryad, she gathered most of her energy in a method similar to plants, only needing to eat for essential vitamins and nutrients. If people paid close enough attention, they might notice she ate far less than humans did, but it was something she could usually play off by saying she'd had a big breakfast or something similar.
She absently rotated the silvery ring on her right pointer that she never took off in public. It was enchanted by a witch friend of her mother to cast an illusion over Karyn to make her green skin appear white, and hide the vines that wove their way through her red hair. It was annoying to have to hide herself all the time, but Karyn knew it was a necessity. Dryads, like most of the major magical species, were signatories of the Veiled Accords, which established the policy of keeping baseline humans in the dark about the magical world as much as possible. So it was that no one at Lakeview Academy was any the wiser that Karyn and her mother were in fact Dryads, who protected the grove of trees that grew on their extensive property surrounding the Black home.
Well, almost no one Karyn thought sourly as she rounded the corner onto Jasmine's estate; Mrs. Galenos having buzzed her past the gate. From basically the day she'd sprouted, she'd been close with the daughter of one of the only other magical families in town, Sarah McMillan. The McMillans were Dragonnewts, who appeared with wings, tails, and horns in their unconcealed forms. Dragonnewts were in many ways simply humanoid versions of their full Dragon cousins, right down to the fire breathing and the hoarding. The McMillan family fortune was in fact just a small portion of the family hoard they'd been accumulating for centuries, although it wasn't really that uncommon for families from the longer lived species to be well off in general, their longevity allowing for an easier accumulation and retention of generational wealth. The Blacks were certainly well off themselves, as attested by the acres and acres of land on which their grove was growing.
Thinking about Sarah left a bitter taste in Karyn's mouth, because the girls had once been best friends, all the way till winter break eighth grade. They're parents had set them up on playdates when they were little, in part because it was harder for them to hide their nature to non-magicals at that age, and the two had been thick as thieves from then on. It hadn't come crashing down until what Karyn tended to think of as the Incident. In truth, it had all begun as a misunderstanding that got out of hand. Karyn and Sarah often hung out in Karyn's private grove, a smaller portion of the one tended by her mother, where they could relax and just be themselves. It was a special place to Karyn obviously, which was probably why she'd reacted so badly when Sarah had shown up in the little forest with a human classmate of theirs, Tiffany Saunders, one day To Karyn it had felt like a huge invasion of privacy and the girls had gotten into a big argument over it; looking back, Karyn could concede that Sarah might not have gotten how private a Dryad's grove was to them, since she'd always been very free with inviting Sarah into it, but at the time it felt like a betrayal of trust to bring someone uninvited, especially a human since Karyn often took off her ring while on her family property.
The argument had continued, even after Karyn had made Tiffany leave, and unfortunately in the heat of the moment, Sarah's firebreath came in. The blonde had shouted, spewing flames that both singed Karyn and lit one of her ceders alight. Karyn had lashed out, growing a vine to yank Sarah by the tail, tossing her into the nearby creek and covering the girl in mud, ruining her outfit and gumming up her scales. Luckily Karyn's mother had sensed the commotion and arrived to douse the blaze quickly, but the damage had been done; the two previous best friends were no longer on speaking terms.
Still, it was likely their animosity could have thawed out given time and maturity, if it weren't for the girl who's long driveway Karyn was walking up, Jasmine, who had joined their class that spring, having previously been schooled at home. Karyn had felt instantly drawn to the new human girl, and before long was absolutely smitten. She'd been too nervous to pursue anything romantic with the girl at the time, but had made overtures of friendship almost immediately, which were happily reciprocated. In the vacuum of her shattered relationship with Sarah, Jasmine had quickly become Karyn's new best friend going into highschool. Sarah had seemed to take her new friendship as a personal insult, Karyn presumed out of jealousy, and only increased her animosity towards the Dryad as they entered highschool. The draconic girl had thrown herself into the cheerleading clique, and become something of a mean girl, further distancing herself from her childhood friend.
As time went on, Karyn's anger over the Incident had largely faded and these days she honestly just wanted her friend back, but the gulf between the two of them felt like it had grown to large to bridge. She loved Jasmine, absolutely, but she'd be lying if she said she didn't miss having a friend she could be open about her magical nature with, since she had to keep up the masquerade with the human Jasmine. Hell, she'd also love to have someone besides her mother, to vent to about her hopeless crush on Jasmine to. Then again, the golden haired Dragoness had only grown more beautiful over the last three years and if she wasn't so mean all the time there was every chance Karyn's poor sapphic heart would develop a crush on another best friend.
Karyn shook her head, pushing thoughts about Sarah from her mind for the moment, as she rang the doorbell. The Galenos lived in a manor not far from the Black's sprawling property, so it wasn't a bad walk at all. She was carrying a duffel with her pajamas and an outfit for school the next day, since she'd just be riding in with Jazz. Sleepovers on a school night were a bit odd, but the pair had been doing them on occasion since they were freshmen. Karyn both loved and dreaded their sleepovers, since she loved spending time with her best friend, but found spending time with Jasmine in nothing but pajamas a kind of sweet torture.
Despite her gloomy thoughts on the way over, Karyn couldn't help but smile when her bubbly brunette friend threw open the door, looking super cute in a skirt and floral blouse that unknowingly appealed to Karyn's Dryad side. Sweet Gaea, she looks like sunshine in human form, and Gaea knows I love sunshine, Karyn thought as the olive skinned girl basically tackled her into a hug. How in the world is someone this perfect not even a little magical?
