Maybe, she had been too eager, especially after her ill received hug. It wasn't her fault, not really. Flickwicks hugged and she had been warm and happy and Beth had walked her home and it really had just seemed like the right thing to do. At time anyway.  All Emily had meant to do was send an owl with a proper birthday greeting and then she'd gone and thrown in a mention of seeing if maybe Beth really was free this coming Saturday. Just because they'd chatted about future plans didn't mean she'd formed any sort of expectations on that matter, or hopes, or anything even remotely in the same realm. What was the worst that could happen though? Beth could say no. There. Done and dusted. But, then the blonde had written back that, yes, she was, indeed free and open.

Then the harder part came. The part that Emily never could have anticipated, was that getting to Saturday morning was both the longest and the shortest a week had ever gone by. A messy mix of contradictions that even articulate Emily Flickwick couldn't verbalize in a way that made sense. Not that anyone knew to ask, of course. It was good they were running or else the anxiety would be end of her.

Of the all the ways to travel, side along appartion was one of the worst. It was a necessary evil though, considering she'd never even been to Wales, much less Beth's village on the coast. It wasn't quite as hard on the body as portkeys, but since you had to keep your mind clear to keep from splinching, it was definitely more nerve wracking. So, here she was, ten o'clock sharp in her leggings and trainers, waiting in the garden for Beth. There was the tell tale pop and Emily pushed up from the bench to greet the blonde witch.

"Hey." She grinned and before her arms could raise of their own accord, she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her hood sweatshirt.

Beth Ellis wasn't exactly a couch potato in the strictest sense, but she did have a penchant for lazying about, particularly on weekend mornings, when her greatest joy was sleeping in and doing as little as possible. Physical exertion by choice hadn't been a theme in her life since she was back at school, when a game of pick up quidditch or a broom race was the best way to pass the time when the weather warranted it. She'd been getting more exercise in lately, with the hand-to-hand and advanced flying training she was getting at the ministry, but that didn't mean she was back in the habit – on the contrary, she was a wobby puddle of exhausted goo by the time the weekend rolled around. With all of that said, it took something major to not only convince the blonde to roll out of bed before 10 AM, but to do so for the sake of extra exercise. It wasn't the running she was looking forward to. In fact, she had to keep reminding herself that running was the goal here (and then deal with the slight wave of disappointment that accompanied the reminder). She was excited because she finally had plans that weren't work – plans with someone she might actually get to know. Sleepy or not, that was something worth jumping out of bed for. She was sure Brynn would be thrilled that things seemed to be going well between the girls... only Brynn didn't know this was happening. It was a full moon night, so she hadn't seen her sister, and didn't plan to see her for a few days at least. 

She slipped on a pair of trainers and a coordinated deep purple trackie that she definitely hadn't purchased for herself, but which had been in her wardrobe for three years at least – she'd never actually worn the trousers with the jacket before, and she felt a bit ridiculous when she first put them on together (and vaguely chav-like), but the more she glanced at herself in the mirror, the more she was okay with the look. She waited until exactly 9:59 AM to apparate, because she didn't want to be early, and she'd gotten up too early to be late. There was a pop! and she was in London.

The moment she saw the figure stand and approach her, she was grinning, and jogged half way to meet Emily closer to the bench. She didn't normally jog many places, but the uniform was tricking her into thinking that she was moderately athletic for a change. “Hey! Alright?” she greeted the girl, standing with her hands on her hips and a toothy grin on her face, proud of herself for having shown up on time to a morning appointment. Emily really had no idea how unprecedented this was! “Do you got everything you need?” she asked, the final syllables emerging on the edge of a tiny yawn. “Best head out before I change my mind and crawl back into bed instead,” she laughed, “Because I will.”

The purple track suit wasn't expected of the shorter blonde girl, but that didn't mean it didn't suit her. With her tattered hooded, zip up jumper and hair bundled atop her head in a messy bun, Emily could very well be laying about the house or painting. Definitely not fit for public consumption. Even if public consumption in this case was a girl who's sneered at her dressy shoes just last week. "It's been such a long week." Emily said with a shake of her head to emphasize the extent of it. "You?"

There wasn't much to take. Plastic water bottle, mp3 player and ear buds tucked into her pocket, wand, keys, herself? All things were checked off unless Beth had anything planned for later. Then they'd require a stop back or at the very least a warning. "I'm good." She promised. Ten in the morning didn't seem quite so torture inducing to Emily, but clearly Beth felt some kind of way about it. It was the yawn that had Emily cracking up. "I used to run at five. Up with the fishermen and farmer's markets. This is letting you off easy, Miss."

When asked about her own week, Beth shrugged, “Seemed about the same length as all the other weeks,” she remarked, scratching at a spot beneath her sloppy ponytail, “As soon as I do something thrilling I'll let you know – assuming you don't find out about it in the paper first,” she smirked. Things were moving along at work, truth be told. Beth was at the point in her training where she had some actual skills now. She was still considerably green considering who most of her coworkers were, but she was no longer the new kid in the corner, strutting around and pretending like she had the first idea regarding what was going on. Now she did know what was going on... sometimes. And sometimes was – maybe, possibly - good enough. She wasn't sure how she felt about settling in somewhere she didn't technically want to be... but she supposed settling in anywhere was still an improvement. These days she felt more confident at work than she did many other places... like right here, for example, and right now.

Beth didn't have a water bottle, and she didn't even own an mp3 player – all she had on her were the basic necessities. Frankly, she was mostly just asking Emily if she had everything to make sure that she wasn't missing anything herself. It wasn't just any day that Bethan Ellis attempted physical exertion for her own amusement. It wasn't the supply list that caught her off guard, however.

 “Five?” she repeated, “Up and out of bed and already running at five?” She made a face, wrinkling up her nose and making zero effort to hide her revulsion, giving her head a few broad, ponytail shifting shakes. “If I'm out of bed at five, I'm either taking a slash or I haven't been to bed yet in the first place,” she declared firmly, settling her hands on her hips. She released the remainder of her exasperation on the edge of a snort-like sigh, only breaking into a sly, cheeky sort of grin at the very last moment. She was strange, this witch.

“Well, alright, you'd like to side-along, isn't it?” she asked, “You're lucky we're doing this now, like. If it was five in the morning we'd both be splinched!” Some were morning people – others barely qualified as people no matter what time of the day it was. “Luckily I'm not completely mental, like some people,” she laughed, shooting Emily a very pointed look. “Apparition is one exam I passed on the first try. So, erm,” she paused, reaching out her hand and letting it hover in mid-air for a few awkward seconds before snatching it back and shoving it in her pocket, “Where would you like me to, erm... how do you wanna do this, like?” she asked, cocking her head one way, then the other. “I don't side-along much.”

You could get so much more done when the majority of the people were still asleep, or in Beth's case, just getting to bed. "Laze about," Emily countered with a smirk.

Then came the actual logistics of getting where they needed to go. Beth's hand had come and gone before Emily could register and respond accordingly. Emily's hand dropped down her side. It was one thing to know that she shouldn't go imposing hugs on people who clearly didn't want anything to do with them. Emily could still feel the stilted pats on her back. That was easy, hugs were just off the table. Emmy had failed to consider the actual intimate nature of this particular mode of transportation. It was the most efficient way to go about this and really, she only had to invade the other witch's space for a matter of seconds. After she knew where she was going, they didn't need to sort this out again.

"Right." It took a second to figure out a good way of going about it. "Here." Emily moved to Beth's side and looped her arm through her bent elbow and got a firm hold on the fabric of her purple sleeve. "Alright?"

Beth just cocked her head playfully to one side and shrugged her shoulders when accused of being a laze-about, a perfectly sheepish, yet somehow cocky grin on her mug. “I never said I wasn't!” she insisted, “And if anybody told you so, don't you trust another word they say.” Her brows jumped upward as she produced a near silent, shoulder shaking chuckle. “That's good proof of a liar if I ever heard any!”

The awkward hug was also fresh on Bethan's mind during this strange moment. She'd ruined the hug. She had destroyed the damned hug. She could still feel her flaccid arms patting Emily around the shoulders like an idiot, fumbling while her mind tried in vain to catch up with her. In dueling, and even in real combat situations, she had excellent instincts. She was quick. When it came to physical contact and... people skills, however... her instincts left something to be desired. And she was just as flummoxed now. It shouldn't have been a stressful thing. Fighting dark wizards was supposed to be stressful – touching people was not. She was all mixed up – right now... and in general, as a person.

Emily knew what to do, however. Emily was good at this. Before she could even register it they were just... sorted. It was comfortable and easy and she was not suddenly stricken with the compulsion to pat her like she was her estranged niece or something. “Yeah,” she said, nodding a few times, “Yeah, this'll work. Should be fine,” she said, all business. And she stood there, silent. And she blinked. And she blinked again. And she looked down at their linked arms and smiled a bit, and then she looked up and out, and then and only then did she remember that she was supposed to be apparating.

In a ridiculous and not so suave attempt to pretend that nothing had gone wrong, she made her eyes big and apparated on the spot, pulling Emily with her back to the road outside of her coastal home in Wales. It was sudden and jerky and she'd given zero warning whatsoever, but the location was so familiar that it hadn't thrown her off in the slightest. By the time they were on solid ground and the loud crack had startled the last of the birds away, her shit eating grin was firmly in place. It looked natural there. “So, ah,” she Beth spoke.“Wanna walk out to the road, then?” Though her free hand was jammed into her pocket, she had yet to untangle her arm from the other witch's 

There had been no announcement or ceremony whatsoever before her body was yanked away from London, much like being sucked through a straw, and then just as unceremoniously, dropped into Wales. Both her head and her stomach, along with her surroundings, swam about for several long seconds. Walking anywhere, much less running (what they were meant to be doing) was just out of the question. Why had she suggested this again? The only thing keeping the world planted firmly beneath her feet and not square, painfully under her bum was her vice like hold on Beth's arm. Emily flexed her fingers out as a means to pry them loose, grateful Beth hadn't broken free as soon as they'd arrived as her body worked to settle itself again.

"Sure." She nodded. She'd be steady and ready by the time they'd reach the road, if not well before then, but for now she'd stay attached to her means of standing upright. At least for as long as Beth would let her get away with it, a fact Emily knew she probably shouldn't push, but couldn't help it out of necessity. The salty air was helping to clear her head and she was able to appreciate her surroundings. "This almost makes up for the worst example of side-along apparition known to wizarding kind."

Was... was this...? Uh? Maintaining her link to Emily had been an oblivious sort of oversight at first, but after a few seconds of serving as a rock for the wobbly witch, Beth began to question the arrangement. Was it...er... okay? She wasn't the sort to panic. Although she was supremely sensitive in some cases, there were truly only a few things in life that could get Bethan Ellis good and riled up, and since this was unrelated to any of them, she decided to wing it. Winging it meant standing there, waiting for some kind of cue that she was supposed to reclaim her arm.

Naturally, none came. She was a girl of action, but she was just as often a girl of incredible sloth and ineptitude, and in this case standing around like a jackass seemed to be the best road to take. Except they were supposed to be walking down to the road (by her own recommendation, no less), and that meant adopting a strange sort of moseying gait as she tried to sort out how walking arm in arm worked – and all to the soundtrack of her legs swooshing together in the slightly-too-long track pants.

She was incredibly thankful when Emily went ahead and kept on talking, distracting Beth from the fact that she felt completely and utterly out of her element walking arm and arm while on her way to go for a jog. Chattering on like she'd been hit with a babbling jinx was her typical tactic when in any strange situation (or, well, any situation period), so this was an excellent segue. “Sounds like a story,” she remarked with a  smirk as she lead the way from one part of The Middle of Nowhere to another. “Did ya splinch?” she asked, her accompanying grin a touch too eager, “Couldn't have been too awful, since you don't look dead to me, isn't it?”

"No." Emily looked down her front and considered her free arm. "I'm still traumatized, for life." Emily protested. "This is the sort of thing that makes people afraid of ending up splinched in the first place." A true statement unto itself, but theatrics that weren't a real concern in this case. It was that air of silliness that kept Emily attached to Beth longer than necessary.

We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. The song played in the back of her mind the longer they were linked arm in arm and it wasn't long before she was humming along to it. Ruby would have started skipping and Sophie would have burst out with the lyrics and Emily would have rolled her eyes at their ridiculousness, but get pulled in by the end. So, she hummed and only long enough to realize she was doing so. She separated from Beth then and pulled out her mp3 player to fuss with it for the last length of their walk to the road.

“What's that?” Beth asked, noticing the MP3 player and becoming instantly curious, “A mobile or something?” There were more than a few muggle conveniences in her home, as both of her parents were muggleborn, but those were all archaic comforts from their respective childhoods. The Ellis home was a magical home first and foremost. The only time she'd been living strictly muggle had been with her grandmother. Nana hadn't been quite as elderly back then, but she was still a Nana, and there wasn't much novelty in the countryside, surrounded by farmland and little else. Add in Beth's lack of pre-Hogwarts muggle schooling and you had a witch who thought she could Talk the Talk when it came to muggle contraptions, but really couldn't. She could pass, superficially, and while that came in handy now and then, it really wasn't much to brag about.

Her arms were crossed firmly over her chest as she proceeded toward the road, mostly because the spot where the girls had been linked had felt suddenly cold with the absence of Emily's body heat and it was the best way to compensate for the chill. The houses were already very sparse out  where Beth lived, and the further out they walked, the more the landscape began to change. It seemed like before long they were actually going to have to run. “So, erm, how's this work, like?” she asked, not concerned about looking ignorant – Emily knew she didn't go around doing this everyday. “At some point we just start running?”

Emily's formative years had been spent having to spend the the majority of her Summer holidays just catching up on whatever pop culture elements she had spent the school year missing out on. Most of it she could do without. Movies were becoming remakes and sequels and celebrity gossip she could really care less about. It wasn't like she could bring the latest and greatest gadgets to school and expect them to work. The MP3 player for instance had come about simply because she'd taken up running and all the other runners she came across had these wires coming from their ears.

"No," Emily laughed with a shake of her head. "It's a music player." She unwound the ear buds from their state of perpetual tangle and offered one end to Beth. "Put it in your ear." She dialed up a song and tucked the other end into her own.

What were they supposed to do, Beth didn't know the protocol and Emily couldn't help the snort that escaped. It was one thing to have to explain a muggle gadget, but something about having to explain the simple act of running to the fellow witch just amused her to no end. "Yes, first we stretch and then we run, then we cool down, then we got the rest of the day to do whatever you want to do." It all sounded so clinical when she said it like that.

“Like a radio?” Beth asked, perplexed by the wires and the small size, her head cocked to one side like a dopey little puppy, her brow wrinkled with both interest and confusion. She took the single ear bud and studied it for a moment, turning it over in her hands, her expression more or less neutral... but a moment later she was glancing over at Emily again with that same dopey puppy look. “In my ear, like?” she clarified, “Inside?” Shrugging, she took the thing and jammed it in, holding it there – unconvinced that it would stay on its own. A moment later, however, a slow smile was spreading on her face. “Alright, alright, I see how it works,” she said, speaking a little loud, as her hearing was muffled by sound on one side “You can take the songs with you and that, yeah?” Frankly, Beth wasn't huge into music... which was weird, since music was one of those universal things that everyone was into. She liked it, but she didn't have strong opinions about it – which was pretty much par for the course for Beth, who was either completely passionate or utterly apathetic. There was no in between.

Running was another one of those things that she was sort of ambivalent about – she typically didn't care if people ran or not as long as she wasn't expected to do it. Frankly, she was dreading this more than she was willing to admit. Emily's amusement at her ignorance was met with a disgruntled look, her lips puckering together with frustration as she looked anywhere but at the other witch. She was listening, but she didn't have to be happy about it. “I like the bit at the end,” she remarked, “The part about doing whatever I want. That's more like what I'm used to,” she smirked, hazarding a glance at Emily again.

“Well, let's get this over with, then,” she said, crossing her arms back over her chest. “First the stretching?” she asked, plopping down unceremoniously in the middle of the road, resigning herself to the fact that this was officially happening.

The only thing Emily wanted was to give the blonde a squeeze and really, if Beth didn't want to risk anymore awkward physical exchanges, she should stop being so... Something. Articulate Emily didn't have the right word for it, but dismissed the need to fill it in because it wasn't likely that Beth was doing it on purpose in the first place so why try to analyze it at all. After all, it didn't matter that Emily not so very long ago had been turning over the tiny contraption in her hand in search of an on button. The person in the shop had probably found her every bit as odd.

With the ear bud returned and nothing left to do but to get on with it, Beth threw herself onto the road as if she were a small, petulant child being forced to leave the playground before they were ready. "How's it being twenty again?" Emily drawled with teasing sarcasm as she dropped down to join the blonde witch. Legs stretched out in front of her, she reached for her feet. "Half the reason we're doing this is for you, remember?"

“Yeah, yeah,” Beth griped when reminded she'd asked to do this. She really was interested in becoming fitter for the sake of keeping up with the more athletically inclined members of her new department, but she wished that it involved less... moving. “It needs to get done, but it doesn't need to get done happily. It's like homework or cleaning or something. I can complain all I like. It doesn't change a thing. I'm gonna do it and I won't like it and that's all there is, isn't it?”

 With a bull-like sigh, Beth looked askance at Emily, trying to figure out exactly what she was supposed to be doing with her legs. She tried copying her without acting too obvious about the fact that she was copying her, which only served to make it more obvious. She kept looking away... which meant she had to turn her head all the way over her shoulder again every time she wanted to peek... which was approximately every five seconds. The only thing she was stretching out was her neck.

“I wanna get better at this sort of thing,” she insisted, “I only wish it wasn't so boring. If I was by myself I'd have gone home already,” she admitted with a sheepish, cockeyed half-grin as she struggled to touch her toes.   

"If I was alone I'd be half done by now." Emily countered. For someone with so much energy Beth you'd think she'd be running circles around Emily while she tried to get herself sorted. Hadn't it been Beth who'd gotten so animated at the bar that she'd ended up shouting about her arse? As it turned out, subdued, solitary Emily was the one having to coax and tease Beth every step of the way. While Emily enjoyed the quiet nature of it, Beth equated it to a necessary evil. Stretching alone was causing some kind of strain and Emily couldn't help the laugh that escaped and shook her head."What's gonna happen when you get a puppy, hm?"
--

Emily collapsed in a pile of limbs on the bank of a stretch of deserted road. The whole of the road was empty and without much in the way of land markers beyond trees and dotted house, the distance had gotten away from her. By the time she'd decided they needed to call it a day and cool down, a distinct stitch had formed in her side and her left calf was on the verge of cramping. "Here." She dropped her water bottle by Beth after she'd taken a thirsty sip from it. No one was accusing Emily Flickwick of being an athlete any time soon.