Nora sighed, the young vixen twirling a pen in her paw. Her arctic suited fur coat of whites and greys contrasting with the dark room. She'd been sitting at her desk in her bedroom. A sheet of decorated paper sat in front of her brown eyes. At the top it held a "To, Clifford." She cringed at the terrible start. She'd been admiring the cute fox, one year her younger. He wasn't much smaller than her despite his fennec blood, but she found the little ball of spunkiness endearing. He'd always seemed pretty quiet and mean, but when he did speak up it was usually for a good reason.

She still remembered when she'd first noticed him. 

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She'd been in their shared physical education class running around the court eight times. Eight times around every thursday. It was a way to build endurance to run a mile, which eight times around roughly equaled. She'd been weak that day, having slept in and missing breakfast. Ohhh the pain of P.E in the morning.

She'd put in the effort to finished, but only barely made it in eleven minutes. Not very impressive. Sitting in the bleachered catching her breath before the next activity when Gella, a Marten girl with a mean streak had begun to bully her. Bringing up old gossip and mentioning her preformance just moments ago. It wasn't an unusual thing for Nora to get chewed out by this particular peer. Gella was always a bit of a gossip. But before Nora could retort with her usual dismissive attitude a strong voice had cut in from behind her further up the bleachers.

Had he always been there? "Cut it out Geegee." Oh no. "Excuse me!?" Gella had one widely known weakness, she hated that nickname. It was it was something her mother had called her in elementary, and eeeeevvveryyyone in school knew about it by now. She'd just never seemed to get over being teased about it. "You heard me, leave her be, why are you always gotta be such a Weasel?" Inbetween the screaming from Gella and Cliff's cutbacks Nora could see one of the gym instructors approaching looking pretty steamed. "H-hey! Cut it out." She tried to shush them. But the two of them were at eachother's faces at this point. His quieter but still cutting remarks against her pointing and shouting.

It hadn't been much of anything in hindsight, but when she'd seen Cliff later that day in eighth period after having been sent to the office she'd meekly congradulated him "You didn't have to do that, I've got a handle on uh her.. But I appreciate it." He'd only really responded with a huff and sat in his desk. "Don't worry about it uh..." He seemed to be trying to remember something. "What was your name again?" Ouch. "Nora. With one r." It had been then she noticed his eyes, they were blue, and...Something about them were mesmerizing. Their chat was short, he seemed stand offish. But Nora had decided he seemed like a nice guy. I mean, the only real time he'd spoken up was to defend someone. Even if she hadn't really needed it.
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Nora decided she'd watched him more carefully, she'd grown to appreciate him despite his sometimes mordant and vocal attitude. He was reasonably well kept for a boy his age, she could smell the fragrence on him and could tell he took good care of his coat. Something she could appreciate, a lot of boys around the school were so lazy in comparison. But what's more he seemed to have taken a liking to messing with Gella any time she was tormenting a classmate.

So here she was, thinking on his cute little eyes and big ears, all puffy faced and giving the school bullies a piece of his mind. The pen twirled again in the paw that refused to write. This was the biggest hangup, how do you tell a guy you like them? Usually they're suppose to do this right? That's what her mother had told her, but times were different now, and he didn't seem at all interested in her... But that didn't mean she couldn't try. So again, eyes on the page.

"I like you?" She said outloud, writing it on the page. "I want to spend more time with you?" She asked to herself. No, no none of that worked. A frustrated sigh, maybe she could just ask him to go to the park or out to eat with her? Without having to express her feelings just yet? Yeah. That sounded good. She crumpled up the paper, leaving it in her bookbag, she'd just toss it in the morning whenever she remembered. Standing up and settling into bed, grabbing the stuffed figure of 'SuperFoks', the protagnotist of her favorite visual hero novel.

The next day she'd woken up groggy eyed, checking the clock and momentarily feeling a bit freaked out. It was 9:12 and she was late!- Wait. No. It was Saturday. Right, she'd forgotten. But that meant she wouldn't be able to ask him out until monday...Her ears dropped, a barely visual frown on her face as she laid in bed. Until she wasn't, because she'd also remembered that he was in the rugby club. He'd worn the team shirt a couple times, and they practiced on saturday if she remembered from passing by the school. It was usually around 2PM. She figured it was one of the few games he must enjoy since he didn't seem to have much else to enjoy.

Later in the day she was approaching the school grounds, bookbag in hand. She figured it'd be a good idea to ask him to go out with her after practice and then work on her homework until he was ready to leave. The field was coming into view now, she'd been right. The boys seemed to be gathering by the locker building that sat adjacent to the field. She came around the fence, entering the school grounds by the parking lot. Her tail involuntarily swaying behind her in a bit of excitement at her master plan.

The vixen made it to the locker building, eyes skimming over the gathering team. It didn't look like any parents were around, but one of the coaches and a couple students who weren't part of the team were hanging around too. She spotted Cliff standing by the endzone of the football field. He seemed to be just enjoying the heat from the sun that afternoon. So she decided to approach him, heart pounding in her chest and ears meekly pulled back. "H-hey Cliff!" He turned, his blue eyes opening, oh those little blue eyes.. and he seemed to recognize her. "Oh, hey Nora." He said, his face looking puzzled as he walked to meet her. "What's up?" He asked. "Aa heh, I wanted to say hey! I know you play Rugby and uhh- Listen! I wanted to ask if you were busy after practice today?"

His eyebrows shot up in a bemused look. "Uh, no, not really. I was just going to be hanging around here for a while." OK, this was it. This was her chance. He wasn't busy after all. "G-great! Did you want to go eat at The Rolling Swan on me? I mean...With me, but the food it on me. Heh!" She asked, the Rolling Swan was a pretty standard fast food place, but it was really all she could afford to offer to him.

The poor boy seemed confused for a minute, his mouth opening slightly as if so say something, but his mouth wasn't really making any words for a good fifeteen seconds. Nora internally shuddered, was her approach to casual? Maybe she should have gone with the letter, she usually wasn't that good at reading the room, and a bit of a fiction reading nerd. She'd figured this would work from some of the novels she'd read but-

"U-uhh sure. But why?" He asked. Phew! The nervous energy in her didn't leave but at least she hadn't failed yet. She could actually feel a weird feeling in her chest looking at him like this, in his team shirt, fur highlighted by the sun above and those little piercings he always seemed to have in his left ear. "Oh well I wanted to-" She hadn't thought she'd get this far. "-Just hang out y'know? You seem pretty cool and I wanted to get to know you a bit better." She said.

"Right." He said, shrugging to himself and if his tail was any indicator he seemed even excited at the prospect of the surprise outing with a potential friend. Or maybe he just wanted to get some free food. Who knows.

She'd gone to sit down on one of the many benches around the field, bookbag behind her and some health class homework on her lap. The teacher had assigned a project to "Take pictures of places and things you find interesting. Make a scrap book out of it." But she didn't go...out all that much. So it was a big of a tough assignment. At that moment she'd been working on a writeup about a picture of a bird in a tree she'd seen that morning. Whatever it took to get a good grade, but she really didn't care for the bluejay.

"Hey, Noooraaaa." Ugh...It was Gella's voice. "Hm?" Nora didn't look up, pretending to be concentrating on her work, scribbling down a couple more words. "What was that about girl?" Gella asked, sitting next to her. "Talking with Cliff over there huh?" She had a grin, Nora could see it in the corner of her vision. Just the blur of the white teeth in a crescent upturn. "It's none of your business, but yeah. We were gonna eat after practice." She still wasn't looking up.

"Oh yeah?" Gella's voice sounded further back now, the vixen flicking her ears toward the voice and hearing some rustling of a bag...Wait! "Wait! Hey!" She wrestled with the troublesome Marten for a moment for get bookbag back. "What'd you take!?" Nora dug her nose into the bag, checking for all her supplies before sighing. "Nothing, stop being so uptight like a little fussy cub." Gella intoned. "I'm not fussy, you're just being a prick, don't touch my things." This hadn't been the first time the cousin of weasels had looked through her things without permission. She'd even taken a comic from her bag before and had tossed it in the school pool. Ruining the pages from front to back.

"Just buzz off will you?" She said, holding her bag and homework close to her lap with her ears back. "Sure, sure, whatever loser." Gella said with a grin, one hand conviniently behind her leg as she made a half hearted apology and walked away.

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When the Marten had gotten a fair distance from the clueless vixen she unfolded the scrapped page she'd snatched. It likely wasn't all that important but she just looooooved messing with that girl- Wooow "Oh my. Little crushing are we? Our sweet Nora crushing on Clifford?" She glanced at the field where the boy fox in question was making a brave effort to block a grey wolf with the ball from running the field. "Maybe I could help you two get to know eachother better~" She said with a whimsical toss of her arm into a dramatic bow. "It would be free of charge naturally!" She said to nobody in particular.