Tea For Mum (Hailey)

Bennett loved tea. He loved it. His mother did, too, but his father sadly did not. Therefore, Bennett had to beg him to let him go to the tea shop to buy some tea for his mother, as Matthew didn't even want to go near the cozy shop. His father said something about it being a man's day and tea being...unmanly. Naturally, Bennett had rolled his eyes and pointed out that every man had a mother and every mother deserved her favorite tea. With that, his father had agreed to meet Bennett at the post office later on, as he had to send some important package to German friend of his. Bennet had ran into the store, his eyes taking in the familiar surroundings and his lungs filling in with the best smells in the world. Gosh, Bennett loved tea.

Reaching into his pocket, Bennett checked to make sure he still had money - which he did. Had he completely run out, there was still time to run after his father and ask for a few sickles. But seeing as he had enough, Bennett smiled rather smuggly as he walked through the ailes of tea. There were so many! All kinds of flavors! Like a kid at a candy store, Bennett stared in awe at the so-familiar shop. He loved this place, he just couldn't get enough of it. Some people walked in as he was looking at the Black teas, but Bennett paid them no attention. He was so focused on trying to read the name on the labels that he simply didn't have time to think about anything else.

It was then though, that a dirty mess of black curls caught his eye. Who could have hair that weird? Following it, his eyes found a tiny girl with ebony skin. Bennett didn't want to seem racist, but he wasn't used to seeing people with skin that dark, so his eyes widened in surprise. Sure, he'd seen lots of different skin tones, but the darkest he'd seen was umber skin, and it was quite nice to look at. Bennett didn't know how to tell the girl with crazy hair that she was the darkest person he'd seen so far. In fact, Bennett was one hundred percent sure that could easily he misinterpreted, even if Bennett didn't mean it that way. His cheeks turning bright red with the feeling of stupidity reaching his blood cells, Bennett looked away and began to read the tea labels again.

Tea. Hailey hated the stuff. But she was forced to choke at least two sips of the stuff down everyday with her grandmum. It was really unpleasant, and usually she could get away with just drinking lemon water, but her grandmum was smart for her age, and sometimes she couldn't because her grandmum would pour her glass. When her mum did it, she got lemon water. At their tea times, she often wondered if Aliens had tea.... There was no proof that they did, and also, no proof that they didn't. So Hailey didn't think that she should be able to have tea if they didn't. But her mum insisted. So every Sunday, she was forced into a stupid yellow sundress, for an afternoon of gossip that she didn't care about, and had to undergo her grandmothers stinky old people smelling house that made her gag.

Hailey was glad when she would be able to miss Sunday Tea when she was at Hogwarts. But she often wondered if she would miss it. After she pulled her stunt in the ice cream parlor, she walked out and pretended like nothing happened. She skipped along until she found the tea shop. She had wanted to pick something up for her grandmother, and thought tea would be perfect. Maybe she could find a really lemony flavored one. She went to the counter, and skipped while she did it. She asked the worker at the counter, "Can I ask where the lemon flavored tea is please?" If they didn't have any, so would officially quit.

He looked very unamused by her cuteness, which offended Hailey to no end. He looked at her like she was an annoying brat. Maybe he was an alien. The idea got her excited. And she wanted to ask him, but didn't want to offend him. She gulped nervously as he pointed to the row of different flavored teas behind him. She nodded, and sheepishly ran to the shelf he pointed to. She laughed. The very flavor of tea that she wanted was on the very top shelf.

The one shelf she couldn't reach. But she was too scared to ask the alien man if he could get a ladder and get it for her. She saw a tallish boy looking at tea not so far away and asked, "Hey you! Can you get that for me! I'm too short and I'm afraid to ask the alien man over there." She whispered the words "alien man" afraid that if he heard her, he might try to abduct her and perform experiments on her small brain. She now wondered if the boy she was talking to at this current moment believed in aliens. Did he think she was weird? Probably. The group of kids she met in the ice cream parlor did. And she was probably out casted for life. But she didn't care. She had the aliens. And that was all she needed. That, and the lemon flavored tea on the top shelf.

It wasn't long before the girl with the crazy hair approached him. Bennett was used to kids come up to him shortly after figuring out who his father was, but that never mattered until now. Because this girl didn't ask to see his father, she asked him to get something for her. Tilting his head to the side, clearly confused, Bennett turned around to give his father a look that pleaded for help, but sadly his father wasn't there and Bennett remembered he had walked into the shop alone. Frowning, as he would have no other choice but to talk to the girl, Bennett turned back to face her. She was talking about an Alien Man, but Bennett paid it no attention because she was a child. Children were unpredictably weird. "Which one?" Bennett asked for specifics. The girl looked even darker from up close, and her hair wasn't actually as wild as Bennett originally thought. It was ridiculous, yes, but not so much as his mind had first seen it as.

Then he just couldnt help himself. "Wait, did you just called the clerk and alien?" Bennett was 100% sure he had heard her right, but he also wanted to make sure because, again, childrenw erre unpredictable. "Don't you think that's a little harsh?" The poor guy wasn't an alien, Bennett knew that much. Alien weren't even real. He would have to he the good guy and inform this wild child about this knowledge before she went and made a fool of herself. He had to smooth about it, though, because children. Children were....vulnerable. They needed to be protected from real life dangers like disappointment and loss. It was suddenly Bennett's mission to make this girl realize what a fool she was for even believing in something as silly as life outside Earth.