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Post by Salted Squid on Aug 20, 2016 0:07:52 GMT -5
Aviva Harel
Aviva couldn't see much. Not without her glasses. The world was a blur of gray and white and red-- too much red. A sickening amount of red. The side of her face was wet. Warm. She reached up, and could feel the deep slashes on the side of her face that the Harpy's claws had left behind. Her left eye, it couldn't see quite as much as she remembered; the sharp talons had caught it, had torn into it and damaged her vision enough that she felt scared and vulnerable. It was like the lake all over again, except this time she had her wand. This time she could fight back.
She rolled onto her back, squinting up at the dark figure that was swooping in on her. She raised her wand, teeth gritted, trying to see through the river of blood that ran down her face, but before she could speak the spell there was a bright flash of gold, and she squeezed her eyes shut, blinded, throwing her arms over her face, waiting for the final blow, but it didn't come.
She opened her eyes. To her utter astonishment, the harpies were gone, or rather the shapes that had been them were gone. She rolled over, getting to her knees. A new dark shape had joined them. It wasn't important. Her glasses. They were important. She needed to see. Needed to know what was going on.
She crawled forward, hands searching. Looking like she should be dead, probably, her face covered in blood. It didn't hurt. Not yet. Her fingers found her frames, bent badly out of shape, one lens missing. She slid them on, and the vision in her left eye seemed so much worse now, since it had no lens over it and the other did, the other was so much clearer.
But she could see, and wished she couldn't, for the first thing she saw was Enid. Enid, cradling Eden in her arms, and it tore at Aviva's heart, because there was so much love and pain in Enid's expression that it hurt.
But Eden was not dead. He couldn't be dead. She sat back on the snow, the snow that was red, and stared at them, feeling numb to the core.
I'm going to kill you for this, Absolon Abernathy. You are a dead man.
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Post by maple on Aug 20, 2016 0:50:00 GMT -5
liesel wailes // i am totally not listening to the titanic soundtrack as i write this
It's all too fast, there is too much noise and pain, mixed with chaos and the smell of smoke. It's everywhere, and it's excruciating - all of it. Liesel's body shakes as the blood pours rapidly from too many places to count. At some point she is aware that the harpy is no longer ripping at her flesh, perhaps only when Almach pulls her to her feet. The tears don't stop, and she doesn't try to make them subside. She is damaged, and weak, everything is stained with scarlet. And she is cold. So cold.
Somehow she still remembers to retrieve her wand that had been flung to the ground. She puts it back in her pocket, her hands shaking too badly to even hold it properly. Her vision is blurred, and the cries of harpys makes her flinch and cringe away from the sound. Liesel clings to Almach despite the fact that they had never even been acquainted, none of this mattered in the moment, all she wanted was to hold onto someone and be safe. She didn't want to see anything. Not the blood. Not the wounds. Not even the trees that loomed all around her.
But then her safety - in the form of Almach - was asking if she could walk, and she didn't want to. Liesel Wailes wanted to collapse onto the ground in a tight ball and cry, she wanted to hide herself away from everyone else. Her breathing was little more than rasps, and her arms were held stiffly in front of her with the palms up. Her skin was no longer a clean sheet, it was sticky and hot with her own blood. Her stomach was tightening and her throat constricting, but she couldn't even gag. "Do I have a choice?" Her face stayed lowered, as did her gaze. Her voice wasn't defiant or haughty. It was wary, tired, and most of all small. Hurt. No sooner had she spoken and Almach was gone, helping Sadja who's arm looked far from alright.
Liesel walked. She stumbled and staggered and told herself everything was going to be okay. But it wasn't.
She saw the dragon - that was Absolon Aberthany - too. Surprisingly, she didn't flinch. She had no reaction left, no ability to scream with a throat so dry. So she raised her face to the look at it's magnificence, and she paused amongst it all. But she did not stand in awe, nor did she marvel over it's greatness. She stood shaking and half-delirious, watching and thinking that the pain couldn't get any worse. The deep, wounds on her shoulders hadn't ceased their gushing, nor had the slashes across the middle of her back. Her collarbone was already darkening to a splotched purple and blue bruise. Scratches adorned her fore-arms and face, it all burned as one.
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Post by koi on Aug 20, 2016 1:12:29 GMT -5
“Did I almost die?” asks a fourteen year old Eden, because he is curious. Because he is curious and he is young and he is innocent and always has to know too much. Because his mother is silently crying and he wants to know why.
“Oh, kochanie,” his mum says, puts her hand through Eden’s sweat-sticky hair, a sob wracks through her body and her touch is shaky and gentle, gentle, gentle. She’s not hugging Eden because his ribs are freshly broken and he still has tubes sticking out his his chest. She looks like not hugging him might kill her. Eden doesn’t cry. He should be crying.
He doesn’t cry for years.
He doesn’t know how he ends up in his dearest friend’s arms, roles reversed, her hand on his, against the mess of his neck (blood and blood and blood). Dully, he thinks that he is going to have so many scars. He already has so many, so many, he doesn’t want more, he won’t know how to lie about this. Enid is crying. Eden realizes that consciousness is a burden.
“It’s all superficial,” he tries to tell her, but his vocal chords warp it all in his shaking, cold, cold state, to the point where it is a warbling whisper. “...missed any major blood vessels...I don’t—it’s fine.”
(he has no idea why he is so f*cking coherent. this is called eden’s nurse mode and it is the only safety blanket that he has when he is bleeding out all over the forest floor. he can see the canopy of trees above him, and it’s beautiful. enid is with him and he thinks if he died it would be perfect. in a forest, bleeding out, with his dearest, dearest friend. it is perfect. the forest is beautiful. enid is even more so. his blood against the snow is startling but so pretty. eden has always found beauty in unconventional things. it’s beautiful. it’s beautiful.)
By the time gold glints in his blurry vision, Eden is drifting in and out of consciousness, and he thinks it must be blood loss paired with lying half in snow that’s made him so inconsolable, completely conscious no longer. Even when the image of an eastern dragon truly reveals itself, makes itself clear in Eden’s vision (blurred, still), like a puzzle piece clicking into place after hours of searching for the missing piece, he can barely raise his head. The blood is sticky and sickly warm under his hand, and his hand is cold underneath Enid’s. It doesn’t add up. Nothing does.
(that is, until—)
For a moment Eden is struck by just how mighty Absolon Abernathy is. He is a towering figure among the bloody wreckage--he swears half the blood is spilled from his own body (untrue, but a fair amount is). The rest is from the harpies. Some is across Absolon’s mouth, in his hair, messy for once. He is strong among the sea of battered, bruised, broken, bleeding students. The blood from Eden’s shallow neck wound is becoming an afterthought, the blood tacky, his head not clearing, like his thoughts are being carved in a fog that quickly overtakes everything. He hates that it is familiar. It is so, so, so familiar. Enid cards her hand through his hair, and it does relax Eden, actually. Somehow, it does calm him down. He tries to focus on that feeling. He tries to.
(When Eden is hurt, he loses his filter.)
“Are you sh*tting me? You—you’re sh*tting me. Jesus f*cking Christ I don’t even know my name and our headmaster is a f*cking dragon.” He takes a shuddery breath, looks at Enid, and he smiles like he’s not in pain, smiles like he loves every moment of this, smiles like the liar he is. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with his brain. Maybe being shaken so much as a child injured him in some way.
Anyways: Eden takes a breath, and he starts laughing, against Enid's body.
(he may or may not fall unconscious at this point.)
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Post by 𝓑𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐫 ♥ on Aug 20, 2016 14:43:43 GMT -5
. ahhhhhh. things are out of order as it is and it's mostly internal monologue anyways considering that the dumb bird is currently bleeding out.
g r a y m a r k e l l .
tldr;; gray is slipping in and out of consciousness, half coherently tries to tell abby that it's not his fault, probably apologizes twenty six times, most of his words muffled by the snow and the fact that his grasp on reality is slipping, and then probably starts crying without realizing he's actually crying.
There are no monsters found in the dark that do not also exist during the day. The absence of light cannot give life, but it can take it away. (Annika Markell once moved the windowsill flower out of the direct sunlight and forgot to put it back. She became distracted with life’s thousand of other frivolities and so the flower died.) There are no monsters present in one’s dreams that do not plague the mind when one is awake, whether they are aware of it or not. Gray Markell flickers in and out of consciousness like a corrupted VCR tape, or a strobe light. He gets quick glimpses - a sight, a smell, a feeling - before the world goes dark again. Nothing seems to make sense anymore.
1 Eden is crying. He looks like a flamenco dancer; plumed in red red red. Red like a stop light, except, not as vibrant. Seems to dull black against the snow. Binary. Like right and left or right and wrong.
(and this is wrong and gray is wrong and something is broken)
the world takes on a glossy sheen like watching through glass and it is disorienting.
2 Snow is wet and cold. Gray thinks that maybe you can, in fact, drown in it.
3. There should be people screaming but instead there is silence. His ears are ringing, buzzing in a faint tingling way that is as painful as it is numbing. Gray almost wishes he could hear the choir if only to make it stop. Almost wishes. Does not think that he could bear to hear Enid hurt. (Gray slips and he remembers thinking that he does not know if Enid is hurt. He is choking.)
4. It is bright.
(4.5 but not in a glowing radiant sun on a summer morning kind of way. It is bright like the moon. An echo. Why is it bright?)
5. Warmth. Gray wants to fold into it. This is not rational. He is ice; belongs here in the snow, cradled by the sticky heat of his own blood, curled up on his side. This seems a natural way to go. It is not peaceful; it is cold and it hurts, god, Gray can't feel it buy a numb throbbing in his chest, down his back. Like a cat scratch. He can't feel his body enough to look down but he knows enough to realize this is not a cat scratch.
6. “This is all my fault.” Breathe rustles Grays hair and he knows that voice. He knows that voice. He knows.
7. Where there once was gold there is now Absolon Abernathy and his hair is windswept. He is still beautiful. Some might say he looks like Achilles or Hannibal or some god of war and maybe if Gray wasn't bleeding out he would think the same thing.
8. “No”, Gray tries to look up but everything is cold and he just. can't. “Don't say that.” When Gray was younger he barely spoke at all. He talks a lot, now. Will probably die lecturing the fishes. Quoting Milton. Peace. “No. God. Not your fault.”
(He should have been watching them he should have seen the harpies he was sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry it was the lake over again should have watched closer should have protected them sorry sorry should have sorry been sorry good sorry enough sorry )
(Gray might have said some of that out loud.)
(His face is also wet and he's not sure if it's the snow or something else entirely.)
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Post by servalstrike on Aug 20, 2016 20:30:52 GMT -5
Sadja;
Sadja can’t stop staring at Absolon. He is some kind of war god. Fierce and spectacular. In the moment she doesn’t even realize how he knew what had been happening to them, but it must have been Applejuice that ran off and told him. She doesn’t need to think about it. Because Absolon is a beacon of strength amidst their battered group, regal and shining and brutal.
Her gaze snaps to Eden as he speaks. “Language,” she manages to hiss through her teeth “Forget not whom you are addressing.”
Taking in the sight of Eden, Sadja feels almost sick. His injuries are the most severe. Well it was hard to tell just how bad they truly were with all the blood and gore obscuring her view. And Eden and Enid still cling to each other, though she suspected that the other would fall if not for the embrace. Glancing down at her arm she thinks to herself how badly they all need the hospital wing in that moment.
And yet, medical aid was far from her mind as she slowly trudged to the spot where her wand lay in ruin. Her hand caressed her broken arm as she knelt in the snow and scooped up the two pieces of black wood that had once been her wand. It was sad and yet not sad. It had been her wand for six years and now it was nothing. Reza would have been glad that she was finally rid of the thing.
As the nostalgia is about to overwhelm her, her eyes catch on the woods again and she thinks of the mysterious figure that had been there before. Had it been Abernathy? Maybe he’d planned this whole thing just to swoop in and make himself look like the hero? Sadja couldn’t know. There was still so many questions that needed answers and her head was throbbing with a dull ache. Her arm and back were in more pain though, somehow she could drown it all out.
With her broken wand in hand and grasping her injured arm she walked back to the group. She didn’t make eye contact. She was ashamed of how badly she’d been beaten. She still felt like this was all her fault, that they were out in these woods in the first place because of her failure as a leader.
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Post by koi on Aug 20, 2016 21:32:46 GMT -5
*dabs in slow motion* eden sytko
Eden is in a forest and light filters down from the tops of the trees selectively; the sunlight feels like a blessing, warm on his skin—why is he so cold if it is summer—but it hurts his eyes, and he closes them against the—
(there is no sun. there is only eden and snow and cold and very, very wet blood. there’s blood on his face too when he reaches up to try and wipe away his tears. eden is comfortable with blood. it is the only thing warm in his world when he accidentally smears it across his cheeks. he is comfortable with blood, has seen so much of it, he was bleeding red and red and blurry visioned red into his bathroom sink and there was just so much blood too much to clean up there was so much blood and all eden had in his left hand was blood and his other wrist was made only of blood and he could could only think about the mess he was making, how long it would take to clean up.)
Eden’s mind works strangely in these situations. He thinks of his mother, covered in his own blood. His mind works strangely in every situation. He thinks of Enid, who is covered in his own blood. History repeats itself in such ways it’s almost hilarious. His mind works strangely. Right now, consciousness is a rare splatter of sun on top of the forest floor. There is no sun. There is no sun, if you do not count Enid. His blood is the only thing warm in the whole world. Eden loves being warm. He loves summer for this reason. He is not crying anymore, but that is probably because he is barely conscious. He hears Gray talk. He hears Sadja reprimand him for Eden's language. He doesn’t remember what he had said. He wonders if she is hurt. She sounds quiet and simmering with pain and hurt and hurt and hurt. He hears Gray apologize under his breath and slurred and he does not--he does not sound okay at all. His voice has always been light and almost fleeting but it is even more so now. He sounds pained. Eden can’t really see him, but would not like the sight he would see if he could. Eden forces himself to take a deep breath; cold air fills his lungs.
Eden is alive.
The fact that everyone around him is hurt and he can’t help anyone, anything, can barely raise his head without feeling dizzy, without the slit skin on the side of his neck gaping, is just as bad as having his arms tied down to something. It is the feeling of restraint. It’s the feeling of helplessness that Eden can’t stand. So he mutters, “S'aalll good,” to Enid, slurring like he is absolutely sh*ttered, and he manages to sit up, half up half down, his arms (and Enid) braced out to support his weight, and he is covered by pain like a comforting blanket. It is an all around sharp, searing thing. Not broken ribs. Not aching hearts. It is the pain of a cut, of damaged muscles, fast bruising skin. Eden has always been better with that sort of pain than anything else. He is fine. He is fine.
(the wound on his neck is now registering as an itchy sort of pain. you all know that feeling, right? eden wants nothing more than to tear at it, scratch the pain-itch away. but he doesn’t. eden is good at not picking his wounds.)
When he turns, he is meaning to find his wand, to try and remember some healing spells and get to work. But he doesn’t even find his wand (it is buried in the snow just a few feet behind him). Because he sees everyone. Everything. It is all greyscale except for blood and blood and blood. and his eyes fill up with tears again—wipes them. Feels no pity for himself. Feels too much for everyone else.
(“It’s not mine,” is what Gray Markell had told Eden. There was blood dripping down his face but--”No, it’s not mine.”)
It is Gray’s blood this time. He is hurt. (this time.)
(Sadja had made a comment about needing a band-aid. Her blood was pouring out of her limbs, out of the cuts, onto the dock. She was still beautiful. (her blood fanned out like a poppy's petals.) Eden was so sad for her. He was so sad for himself. Gray looked empty, staring, blue eyes contrasting with blood, looked empty enough for all of them.)
Sadja’s arm is at a terrible angle. It is all wrong. She is not a failure. She is a teenage girl and she is hurt.
(And Enid. Enid was being taken away, taken to the place where she would lay to rest for days afterwards, Eden by her side, and Eden does not want this to happen again. History repeats itself. A cliche that has never been more appropriate. But Enid is okay now. Eden can take comfort in that one fact, as he sits in the snow, dizzier than hell, vision doubling, she is okay.)
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Post by maple on Aug 21, 2016 0:08:19 GMT -5
liesel wailes // who might as well be a frozen statue for what she's worth?
To think that at the beginning of their trek, Liesel actually had enough shallowness to be worried about snow dampening her new wool socks. Worried about the scolding she'd receive from her mother, most likely in a phone call or worse yet - a letter. That was something her mom had a habit of doing, sending an old-fashioned letter addressed to Hogwarts with Liesel's name printed daintily across the front. Now, that's when she knew sh*t just got real.
With a warm flow of blood trickling from her shoulders, back, and everywhere else that she was beaten; all she could think about was staying conscious, and most of all getting out of the cold abyss of darkness that was made up of a tightly inclosed area of trees and stained snow that no longer looked like powdered sugar. She wasn't the only one, others were in worse shape, barely able to support themselves or not at all.
Like Eden, soaked with his own blood that cascades from his wounds like a waterfall in some tropical place that Liesel's never visited. She wants to help him, to carry him, but her own body is too weak to even take the steps that way, let alone strong enough in the first place. All she can do is rest her gaze on his face - one that isn't even looking in her direction, and feel a horrible wrenching pity, not for herself, but for everyone else who needs help and isn't getting it. That includes Gray; who she barely knows but doesn't want to see hurting like he is, and Sadja; who still looks so elegant and lovely despite the way her arm limply hangs. All of them, because in that moment they are all the same. Broken, unarmed, and undeniably exposed.
The tears are still damp on her cheeks, still swimming in her eyes that are opened wide and horrified from every sight that they have witnessed. Blue and brown pools that are reflecting it all, and maybe that's okay. Maybe it's okay to cry, because it's one of the many things that makes you human.
In that moment Liesel looks nothing but human; silvery hair tangled and dirty, chest still heaving up and down, tentatively touching the exposed flesh on her left shoulder as if to test if the blood was actually real. And it was, all of it. And it was her's. Pumping from her veins and spilling down her fore-arms and wrists, onto the ground and onto her shoes. Drop, drop, drop.
She felt so sick, nauseated and light-headed from the sound of liquid dripping and her heart pounding. And Liesel Wailes collapsed into a nearby tree, her cheek colliding against the rough bark and her arms fumbling against it's trunk. She stayed there, crumpled against the only thing solid, with her eyes half closed and her mind so clouded and dark - and she let herself stay there, drifting off into the cold nothingness that was her pain.
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Post by Salted Squid on Aug 21, 2016 17:52:21 GMT -5
Aviva Harel~
tldr;; All of this is Absolon's fault basically and Gravy is an official thing now
"This is all my fault."
Absolon Abernathy's voice startled her. She looked up, startled and battered, through her single functioning lens to see the dismayed professor standing there. Aviva had not seen him arrive. For a moment, she wondered if he was the one who had sent the gold thing-- some sort of patronus, maybe, but no, patronuses were silver, not gold... yet still, something told her that whatever the gold thing was, be it a spell or something else, it had indeed arrived with the headmaster, and it had been that which saved them.
Then, anger. She struggled to her feet, wiping blood from her face, and glared at the man, trying not to look as wretched and torn up as she felt. She wanted to yell at him, to scream every curse that she knew at the top of her lungs. Of course it's your fault, you bloody idiot, you shouldn't have sent us here!
But she didn't get the chance. It was Gray who spoke first, who called out to the headmaster, but he spoke not the words Aviva had been wanting to say, but the opposite. "No, don't say that. No. God. Not your fault."
Aviva turned to Gray, wounded, wondering how he could say such a thing. He lay in the snow, sprawled, hurt, and of course he was saying things like that, he was delirious, he needed help. Help that he shouldn't need, because he shouldn't be here to begin with, none of them should; they should be writing lines or scrubbing cauldrons, not wandering into the forest to be slaughtered like pigs. Gray was pale, his dark hair tousled, the snow around him stained red.
She felt a stab of fear, of hatred for Absolon Abernathy, of anguish at seeing Gray like this. He was hurt, he was bleeding out into the snow, and it was the Headmaster's fault, it was all his fault and there was no changing it, there was no changing the fact that Aviva Harel would hate Absolon Abernathy for the rest of his life.
Her legs moved, then, carrying her forward. They stopped next to Gray, then gave out, sending her to her knees at his side. Her hands, almost on their own, reached out, pulling his head onto her lap, her arms cradling him, holding him close to her, like a mother protecting a child.
What was she doing? She had never done this before, yet her body, her heart, they seemed to know what to do. They seemed to do this instinctively, as if the way she was supposed to react was written in her DNA.
After the fight they'd had, if you could call it that, it felt like five million years ago, Aviva knew that Gray would not do this for her, would not take her injured body into his arms and hold her, would not search her body carefully to find where she was hurt, as she began to do for him now. "It's okay. It's okay, you're hurt; but you're going to be okay, Gray Markell, none of this is your fault." He wouldn't tell her this, because he did not care; Aviva was but a friend to him, not his best friend, or even a close friend, but just a friend. He did not love her, did not love her as a sister, nor as something more. He liked her, maybe, but love was never a word that he would use.
And yet, Aviva knew, that she loved him. She had no more doubt about that now; she'd known that she had liked him, had desired him to like her in return. But simple like did not explain how she felt now, did not explain the pain she felt at the sight of his wounds. Desire did not explain how she feared more for his life right now more than she did her own. A petty, childish crush did not explain how much rage she felt toward Abernathy at this point, how much she hated him for putting Gray into this situation.
No, she was sure that it was love that she was feeling. And as she looked back up, fixed olive eyes upon the man who was responsible for all this pain-- olive eyes that seemed to smolder with flame-- she willed him to know this (she'd never been a skilled Legillimens, but she willed the thought into his mind nevertheless), to understand that I love Gray Markell, it's your fault he's hurt, and if anything happens to him, I swear to God, you will have me to answer to, and it will not be pretty.
Threatening the Headmaster. A new low for Aviva Harel.
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Post by 𝗁𝗈𝗇𝖾𝗒𝖻𝖺𝖽𝗀𝖾𝗋 on Aug 21, 2016 18:30:57 GMT -5
- - Enid & My Second Favorite Son }
Absolon spat a wad of harpy blood from his mouth, silently watching as it joined in to stain the snow. This. This would be a difficult task to explain to the Ministry. He was in trouble and he knew it. He glanced to Almach, eyes almost sad, "A flashy entrance yes, but I thought it necessary for the circumstances. I only regret that I could not have come sooner." Only an idiot, a fool driven by pure emotion, would reveal his secret as an animagus to students. The very same students who had broken into his office in search of damning information, nonetheless. And yet, he felt no regret at the slip-up, the lapse in judgment had been enough to fell a flock of harpies. But not soon enough.
Absolon was surrounded by injured students and it indeed, regardless of Gray's protests, his fault. He had been a fool.
"Excuse me. Coming through. Ah, yes, terribly sorry about all your unfortunate injuries but they should heal sooner or later. Now please make way." Rodney Applejuice trotted briskly through the bloodied, stirred up mess, still wrapped in his sweater. He took a seat beside Absolon's feet, triple-eyed gaze swimming through the battered and broken. "This went surprisingly better than expected," he chirped. "Apologies for abandoning you to the chaos, Henley-Almach, but it was necessary for retrieving aid," the cat added, nodding to the Headmaster.
The Headmaster, surprisingly, was already weaving his way through the group of students, frowning as he did so. At last, he came to stand by Gray, whom Aviva clung to firmly, glaring up at him from behind shattered glasses. Absolon brushed off the venom in her stare, focusing solely on Gray.
Gray Markell. The one student in a sea of hundreds who had stood by him, even if it was for selfish purposes. And Absolon had allowed this to happen. "You're all free to return to the castle, but allow me to explain something for a moment. None of this was my intention. I did not come here to hurt anyone. I came here to change things. I know that this particular group of students harbors the most animosity towards me, but believe me when I say that I did not put the nixies in the lake. I meant no harm to a single one of you. But the way our world woks needs to change and it needs to change now." Looking at him, one would think Abby was speaking directly to Gray, but a closer inspection would find that his eyes were distant. Clouded with pain, his gaze was unfocused, speaking to everyone and no one at the same time. This was the burden he had to carry, but not the one he had expected.
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Post by 𝗁𝗈𝗇𝖾𝗒𝖻𝖺𝖽𝗀𝖾𝗋 on Aug 21, 2016 20:29:15 GMT -5
- - what the heckity-heck am i doing with my life? }
The river wasn’t far from his grandparents house. Its waters wound around the shoulders of mountains, no more than a thin thread of green, but here— perched on its banks, clothed in early evening mist —it felt much bigger. South Korea was warmer than Abby had expected. Not the same dry, suffocating heat as Australia. This heat was thicker, smothering and damp. Humid, his father had called it. Early on in their trip, he had discovered it was pleasant to linger by the river in the early hours of the morning, when the bird chorus was just beginning and white veils of mist still hovered above the sluggish, jade waters. Evenings were just as well too. The voices of wild crickets mingled with the frogs, replacing the birds with a symphony of their own.
That would be the case, if it weren’t for the raucous noise of his brothers. “Jean! Get out of there!” Max called from the bank, watching with wide, helpless eyes as Jean waded deeper and deeper into the swirling currents of the river.
“The mud feels so weird. Abby you should try it!”
But Abby wasn’t listening. In fact, he was making a conscious effort to ignore his loud, energetic brothers. He had come here alone, hoping to quietly enjoy the evening by himself. Instead, he was stuck babysitting.
“Jean! Pleeeease! Let’s go do something else!” Max pleaded, bunching his shirt with his fists as he usually did when pouting.
Jean, callously ignoring the incessant pleas of his little brother, continued out, farther and farther until the water lapped at his chin. Proud of this discovery, he turned and cried, “Look! Abby! Look how deep it is! It’s up to my face!”
At last, Abby broke. Rounding on his two younger brothers, he said, “You know there’s catfish in there right? Halmoni said so. She said they like to eat seven-year-old boys.” His grandmother had said no such thing, but Jean didn’t need to know that. The boy snorted, unperturbed by Abby’s warning, “That’s not true. You’re just a scaredy cat! Abby’s afraid of water! Abby’s afraid of water!” The chanting only grew as Max joined in as well, happy to follow Jean’s lead wherever it may take him.
Abby glowered at the two for a long moment before finally admitting defeat. “Fine, I hope you get eaten by a catfish.” That said, he turned and made his way back up the grassy, sloped hill to his grandparents house. It was a strange little house, nothing like what Abby was used to. His mother called it a ‘hanok’. It was so small, especially for their family of… How many were there again? Mom and dad and himself and Jean and Max and Vincent and Elliot. So, seven, right?
The boy was just coming into of the hanok when something else caught his eye. A figure sitting lonesome in the grass. By the way he was scribbling almost urgently in a notebook, Abby identified the small form as the second youngest of his brothers: Vincent.
He frowned, part-curious part-pitying, as he watched him. Every now and then Vincent would glance up, stare wonderingly and then jot something down. The scene looked comical given that Vincent was only five years old and could barely sing the alphabet, let alone write it. “Vincent?” He jolted fearfully at the sound of his name, relief washing away the fear as his gaze settled on Abby. “What are you doing?”
“Writing,” he answered matter-of-factly, as though it was obvious.
This only fueled Abby’s curiosity, “You can’t write.”
“Yes I can.”
“No, you can’t,” he crouched down beside him to examine his notebook. His eyes darted from Vincent to his notebook and back again seeking answers. Scribbled on the pages were, just that, scribbles. Not letters, just squiggly lines and the occasional crudely-drawn shape.
“Vincent, these aren’t words.”
Vincent shrugged, disregarding Abby’s statement as easily as Jean had brushed off his warning of imaginary catfish. “It’s writing if I believe it is,” he responded and went back to scribbling. Abby pursed his lips in a frown. This wasn’t writing. Those squiggly lines weren’t letters and words, they didn’t mean anything. Why did Vincent refuse to admit that?
“Alright then, what does it say?”
“It’s a story,” he didn’t glance up as he said this, but continued on with his scribbling.
“About…?” Abby prodded, crossing his legs now to sit more comfortably. The stars were beginning to show themselves overhead, peering out from the black velvet sky that sprawled above them. A fat, bulbous yellow moon hunched behind the looming mountains that formed the horizon, providing ample light for the quiet evening. Mom would be calling them inside soon.
“A fox with ten tails.”
Abby smiled now, halmoni had told him stories of nine-tailed foxes roaming these mountains. She had they were created when a fox lived for a thousand years. But she never told him about a fox with ten tails. “Why ten?”
“Ten what?”
“Tails. Why ten and not nine?”
“Because I don’t like nine.”
Screams erupted from farther down the hill, by the river. Abby surged to his feet, halfway down the hill before the screams dissolved into noisy laughter followed protests of "Jean stop it! That's not funny! There's no catfish!" from Max. By the sound of it, the poor boy was on the verge of tears. Sighing, Abby turned on his heel, ready to rejoin Vincent and just in time to witness his fuming farther storming down the hillside, shouting, "Jean Pierre! Arrêter tourmenter ton frère"
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Post by 𝓑𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐫 ♥ on Aug 22, 2016 23:20:09 GMT -5
THIS POST IS 2.3K AND I DID NOT EDIT IT also i will write leelah an actual response. almach is getting ignored right now because he is useless.
g r a y m a r k e l l .
(If someone were to ask Gray Markell what his favorite season was, he would probably reply ‘winter’. Not because he has any particular fondness for cold weather or shoveling snow at 5am, but because winter is the approximate opposite of summer. And Gray Markell hates the summer.)
Aviva Harel is warm in a way that is slightly jarring; like reaching for what looks like a cup of ice and finding it hot, sodium acetate rather than water, or walking outside in December only to be greeted by temperatures in the high 80’s. Gray does not hear her approach - the ringing in his ears is still numbing, a high pitched chime that drones on to the point where he is almost acclimated to it in the same way one becomes used to chronic pain. It is a dull ache that never leaves; so overwhelmingly constant that one forgets what life was like before, wonders if there was ever really a ‘before’, or if those memories are just faked. A survival mechanism so that one can look back and think ‘i was happy once’. Gray tries to remember if he was ever happy, genuinely happy, or if he has become so accustomed to faking a smile that this imitation has become his definition of joy. A hollow shell of what emotion could feel like. Should feel like. The pressure of the snow on Gray’s cheek is as numbing as the sound and he can no longer feel the right side of his face, can no longer feel anything below his neck. There is a gaping hole where his organs should be; lungs, heart, liver. Everything that makes him a human. Everything that, theoretically, keeps him alive. Gray can no longer feel anything below his neck and he thinks that this is only natural. He has not been alive for years. (should have died when he was sixteen. seventeen. eighteen. wonders how he will make it to twenty. thirty, of course, would take care of itself.)
Aviva Harel is warm in a way that should be comforting but is not. He does not see her coming; he is so very tired, wants to close his eyes, let himself drift back into the black it was peaceful there the embrace of a wave or laying fifty feet under the water and just watching the sunlight flicker dance wave and wanting to never move again thinks he can never move again realizes that if he just waited down here until natural instinct kicked in he would pass out before he made it to the water's surface and then he would never have to worry about failing again. But of course he did. fail. could never go through with it. because he was weak and pathetic and gray markell once wanted to be a god thought he could be something in the world that had merit that was worth something that he could be worth something be good enough but he was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
he is always wrong.
Almost always, anyways, with a few exceptions; two which stand out to him now, vividly, like seeing the sun at midnight, even in this hazy drunk-on-pain- and-blood-loss state of mind;
1. Aviva Harel might be in love with him. And this revelation is terrifying. A “No, please, god, no” shouted to any higher power that would listen, could listen. See: Julianna Shay smiled like the summer. She was a beautiful beach blonde, four inches taller than him, with large teeth and mocha brown eyes. Her hair was naturally wavy, not in the awkward seafoam curl of Gray’s own hair, but a gentle, sweet kind of crest, floated around her face like sunlight. Julianna Shay was a warm July afternoon and Gray Markell is ice. He was afraid of the world, and she was afraid of hurting him. Julianna Shay loved Gray, and he cheated on her. regularly. with multiple people. one of them being her brother. (only five people in the world know that last part: the perpetrators, julianna, almach, and now eden sytko.) (gray is not looking at eden but he thinks he can hear his voice; can not make out the words, they are soft, like background music, fleeting. enid is probably with him. gray thinks back to the lake; realizes that where gray had failed, eden did not. but that was not a surprise. gray was inadequate. he would always be inadequate. he should have been able to love Julianna and he should be laying where Eden is now. this was all his fault.)
“you're going to be okay, Gray Markell, none of this is your fault”
(but it is.)
(gray has always wondered what other people saw when they looked at him. not in a physical sense; gray has seen his own reflection. he is not handsome. unique, maybe, with long legs and thin wrists, high cheekbones and a slightly too sharp nose. rather, gray wants to know what people saw in him. good, bad. anything. people said his eyes were pretty and perhaps this is not inherently wrong. they are empty and cold, but maybe, if you didn’t look to closely, only saw what you wanted to see, they might be beautiful. but they say that eyes are the windows to the soul and gray’s soul is dark and ugly ugly ugly and gray still cannot fathom how anyone can look at him and see anything there worth loving. he is a body and that is all. and sometimes that is all people want.)
Aviva Harel seems to think that Gray is something more than a silhouette that happens to be good at writing essays and turning in homework on time and getting down on his knees. She is a fool.
(it was halloween and gray was drunk and crying and mumbling about how anyone who cared about him was ignorant and stupid and dashiell shay had sat next to him and replied, “do i really strike you as an idiot?” and gray had been caught so off guard that he actually forgot to be embarrassed about having a mental breakdown in the back alley outside of a Chili’s)
There was no moment of revelation here, though. The world did not flip on it’s axis when Aviva pulled Gray into her lap, when she held him like the Pieta, the boy she loved no more than a near corpse in her arms. Gray was cold. He was so so so so so cold. (he felt nothing, but he also felt cold, and it is a very strange phenomenon like finding out that the story about Benjamin Franklin flying a kite and discovering electricity is just a story or that “treating others the way you want to be treated” is actually piece of load of butterflies advice because Gray Markell would like someone to drown him but does not want to be thrown in jail.) Aviva Harel holds Gray like he is worth something. He will never be able to reciprocate her feelings. He does not move from her arms, though; he cannot feel anything anymore. The black laps at the edges of his vision.
2. Gray knows what it is like to have the world hate him. He has a reputation and it is well deserved; he is pretentious, uptight. The kind of boy that one might respect from afar, as a concept, but not as a person. Gray Markell speaks as if he were looking down his nose at the rest of the world; as if he were on some ethereal plane, somehow above the ‘rest of the world’, standing on some great podium in the sky where the eyes of the world were constantly on him. Most people have little interaction with Gray outside of the classroom or the hallways, where he is either kissing up to a teacher or handing some third year detention for cussing in the halls. There are few reasons for people to like him and a thousand justifying the student bodies prevailing dislike. Someone once called Gray a computer, said that he was simply a machine programmed to seem like the perfect student; he might seem human but inside he was just cold wires and circuitry. Sometimes Gray almost believes this. Almost. Because even though he constantly repeats to himself that he “feels nothing”, like it were some kind mantra, a chant where if you say it enough times it might come true, Gray Markell knows emotion. He is lonely. He is terrified. There is nothing rewarding about being hated.
Absolon Abernathy stands among the bodies of those he has defeated and some might say he looks like a god of war. Caesar standing at the banks of the Rubicon, or Odysseus looking down over the smoldering ruins of Troy. Up to this point Abernathy had been somewhat of an enigma to the student body. He was the man standing at the head of a movement no one truly understood, but all condemned. He became the rallying point around which students channeled their anger; a universal scapegoat. A ‘thanks, obama’ taken to extremes unprecedented. Some students loathed Abernathy enough to start a revolution, casting him as the witch. But Gray Markell was selfish; and perhaps, in his selfishness, was able to take a perspective that the general student body either overlooked or ignored. Absolon Abernathy stands among the broken, battered bodies of the people he was supposed to protect and says that this was all his fault. It was not all his fault. Gray notices that his hair has fallen out of place. There is blood around his mouth, staining his lips a dark red that dulls to black under the faint glow of the moon. He is no longer ‘perfect’. But he never had been.
Absolon Abernathy is just a man.
He is a human. A living, breathing person with a story that no one here really knows. They can make assumptions, guesses, decide facts about him that correlate with what they want to believe, but if there is anything Gray Markell has learned it is that first impressions are often wrong. Absolon Abernathy walks among the students and he is no longer a swan; he is still beautiful, still graceful, but more than any analogy that Gray is ever so fond of making, he is a man. And he is hurt. Perhaps not physically - not in the way that he is, that the other students are(Gray can see a blurry outline of Eden in the corner of his line of sight, painted with red red red) - but Gray can see it in his eyes. The first time that he met Abernathy, Gray had been taken aback by the seemingly inherent depth to the young Headmaster's eyes. He had called them a puzzle; a mystery that Gray wanted to crack - he had wanted to see how the Headmaster had been able to climb to the top so quickly. Had hoped that Abernathy would be able to open a door for him into the Ministry. Gray was no longer sure how he felt but he did know that, looking at the other man now, he literally did not give a sh*t whether Abernathy could get him a job or not.
There is a pain lacing Abernathy’s voice as he speaks. It is subtle, perhaps, a kind of emptiness, distant and hollow, but still so profoundly distinct it is physically painful. Gray did not think he was capable of hurting any more (not with Eden bleeding out, not with having failed Enid again, not with knowing that he would inevitably have to destroy Aviva) but he is once again proven wrong. Absolon Abernathy is looking at Gray as he speaks, but his eyes are clouded. As if he were not speaking to simply the students, but justifying himself to the universe. (Absolon says that the students are free to return to the castle but Gray cannot move; he cannot feel his own body, and even if he could, he would not leave anyways. He has no choice in the matter now, but what his choice would have been matters, somehow. To him, at least.)
There are so many things that Gray wants to say, but words, as they so often do, fail him. There is also the small problem of him dipping in and out of half-consciousness (he is so very cold) so he could not speak, anyways, even if he wanted to. But Gray is watching Absolon Abernathy, watching even as Aviva cradles him, shooting the Headmaster a glare that Gray cannot see and, in his hurt and semi-delirious state, does not even bother thinking about. There are so many things that Gray Markell wants to say but instead he simply looks at Abernathy, looks into his eyes and they are dark and distant and Gray hates to see people hurt wishes he could fix everything, and mouths, “I know”.
(and it is so very very cold)
(somewhere on the other side of the clearing Leelah Veyera sees Liesel fall against a tree and everything Abernathy says suddenly means nothing. She is hauling tail over to the other girl, her face splattered with blood, a gouge in her left shoulder dripping down her arm, the branch she had been using as a weapon suddenly abandoned. “Hey”, she says, bending down, ripping her coat off to put pressure on Liesels arm, as if she was trying to staunch the bleeding from a sports injury, something not so serious, something that she would try and crack a joke about. Leelah is not smiling now, though. “Liesel, can you hear me?”)
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? The transient pleasures as a vision seem, And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.
John Keats
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Post by koi on Aug 23, 2016 1:44:10 GMT -5
"And I felt so bad, 'cause I didn't know how to feel bad enough to make him proud." - the line from Have One On Me that inspired the whole of this post because it's the most eden line to ever eden
eden sytko
It’s like sobering up after an hour of shots or the drop after a rollercoaster builds momentum into the clouds. It’s one of the two or maybe three or four feelings at once but that does not matter it doesn’t matter because—Eden can feel everything, now, and overall, the feeling is pain; both emotion and overwhelmingly physical, too.
(“I only felt bad because I couldn’t feel,” Eden whispers. He still can’t quite feel anything, but it is close now, a taste in the air, a spark of electricity down your spine before the crack of lightning that cuts the sky in halves. “I did it because I couldn’t feel. I haven’t felt anything since—since—”)
The air is cold, the snow underneath Eden is colder, and he only knows this because whatever sort of trance he was in is wearing off slowly, but surely (always surely; still, sometimes, Eden thinks he is regressing before he looks at Enid and feels the warmth of her everlasting smile like the dawn of sun ‘cross a field and Eden feels something), he is cold and wet and really f*cking unhappy with the situation he is in. His eyes are so, so unfocused. His mind is starting to clear, a self-awareness that is blurry in itself, because he is in so much pain that things can’t be cloudy anymore, but sharpened into clarity (a red cloth polishing silver) that feels unreal in its simplicity.
(You’d think that not being able to feel would be simpler than emotion, but it wasn’t, didn’t feel simple to Eden.)
(“I just,” he tries to say, tries to articulate himself, sometimes he wishes he was never raised speaking two languages because all he does is struggle with both. “I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d do it until—”)
(and it was all red.)
Eden is propped up awkwardly, looks like a broken doll dashed with red food colouring (but he is not a doll, can be healed without means of super glue, can’t be shattered, would pick himself back up slow piece by piece if he was). His hands are sunk into the snow like he’s trying to find something within it (his wand, but he’s forgotten). He has been staring off into space for a while. Everything hurts to the point where Eden thinks the last time he was this hurt he must’ve cried. (he is crying now, doesn’t notice it. There are tears streaming down his face steadily and he barely sniffles. Blood. There’s blood on his face too and he doesn’t know how it got there. His fingers are cold when he touches his face and they pull away all red—)
“Enid,” Eden says, suddenly, his voice so broken, rasped. When he thinks to look at her, it is an afterthought, there is a noticeable delay. And Eden can’t bear to think of the fact that he’d never asked before now. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
But Eden truly looks at Enid, properly gives her a one-over; and she is not hurt. Not even a damn scratch. Not a scratch.
Eden, previous to this, had not been listening to whatever Abernathy was spouting off on, until he starts listening, and he is still bleeding and bleeding and he is starting not to care about it. He hates that he doesn’t care. He hates that he’s lost so much blood that he is dizzy and he knows the feeling like the back of his hand. Hates himself for so much. Doesn’t quite hate himself for protecting Enid.
“I don’t hate you,” Eden very gently informs Abernathy. He probably can’t hear him. Eden cannot hear himself. It doesn’t surprise Eden when he blurts it out. Eden doesn’t hate anyone, never has. Even the the people he should hate, he can’t bring himself to truly despise. “I don’t care, I just—I want to go home.”
He’s never not had a near death experience with his family by his side. He misses his mom’s honest bluntness and his sister’s doting nature and his dad’s deadpan humour and when Dagny starts reenacting a movie scene with her toys right on Eden’s shoulder. He wants them to be here, even if his mom would be yelling at him and Marika would be crying and his dad would look so, so tired, and Dagny would ask why Eden is so sad.
“I want to go home,” Eden repeats, and it’s a secret to the white noise his hearing has turned into.
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Post by servalstrike on Aug 23, 2016 21:42:59 GMT -5
Sadja;
Sadja was starting to shake. Her body trembling from pain and cold. The blood from her wounds had soaked through her clothes and made the freezing night all the more chilled. She knew she must reek of the foul metallic stench. She dreamed of leaving that forest of nightmares and going back to the castle and take a nice long bath after hopefully repairing her arm. Sadja could almost feel the warm water surrounding her and melting all her pain and troubles away.
Water may wash away blood but the wounds would remain. The scars of past sins would forever mark her body. Nothing was so easily solved with a nice bath.
Which was why, for now, Sadja chose to stay. Maybe she could get some answers. On another note, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to reach the castle by herself. Whether she would collapse in the snow or forget herself in the twisting maze of trees and ice, travelling as a group was the wiser choice.
Pulling her bloody sleeve tighter around her broken arm, like she was hiding it, like she couldn’t let the others know she had been weakened with such an injury. Pain surged through her arm at the slightest movement, her expression twisted at the sensation, but she tampered it down. Sadja needed control, not just over the group anymore but over herself. She wanted to feel in control again.
The sight of Aviva with Gray caught her attention. Sadness became a weight on her shoulders. The longing in Aviva’s eyes, visible only for a moment until they were suddenly clouded by hatred, was one Sadja knew. And she knew that it was only going to hurt the girl, Gray would cause her nothing but heartache. Love wasn’t something you could force, it was something you earn. Love was a give and take, but it appeared that Aviva was the only one giving and not taking. She wished she could tell her that, tell her to cease the foolishness before she truly regretted ever thinking of Gray as anything other than a boy made of ice and intellect. A glance back at Eden and Enid and she could see what love really looked liked. It looked like someone putting the needs of their friend before their own and even risking their life to do so. A platonic form of love but love nonetheless. A strong bond.
And Sadja remembers that Jasmin is safe. She thanks every star in heaven for that small blessing. If anything had happened to him her feelings towards the Headmaster would not have been so light.
Sadja latched her solid brown eyes on the Headmaster now as he spoke. Stepping forward, holding herself up on aching feet. Her body screamed and pulled against any movement she tried to make. “Headmaster Abernathy,” her voice was hoarse barely a whisper. She cleared her voice and spoke again sounding stronger this time but still weak and dry, “I am sorry. My assumptions about you started this mess, you are not the man I thought you to be. Your actions were not meant to be as wicked as they were received. Please accept my humblest apologies.” She does not sound strong, she does not sound like a leader. Sadja bowed, her hair spilling over her shoulder masking her face like a curtain of ink. “My mission was not an act of loathing. Only curiosity.” She stood up straight again “I feared the worst for my fellow students and only wished to get information that could protect them. If you would, please tell me what you were trying to accomplish by doing all that you did. What sort of change do you desire?”
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Post by maple on Aug 24, 2016 1:38:50 GMT -5
liesel wailes //
There had been a time when Liesel's twin brother Cayne yes guys liesel has a twin brother had broken his arm falling out of a tree. Specifically a twisted old oak tree. And honestly, it was 100% his own fault (of course if you don't mention how liesel had said he couldn't do it, all the while secretly wishing that he would.). They were only thirteen an he was incredibly spry, scaling up each branch like a squirrel, making sure to hang by one hand every now and then just to scare her. He was strong and sure of himself, not to mention incredibly reckless. He actually did it too; at least, he almost did. Cayne had been towards the very top, where the branches were still thick but more wobbly and close together. He looked a little shaken when he almost slipped, his expression fading for a second despite the confident smile he still threw her way. Typical.
She had looked away for a quick second, only long enough to look farther across the quiet meadow and shade her eyes from the setting sun. And that short amount of time was enough for a brittle tree branch to snap under her twin's weight, enough to send him plummeting down to the ground with a crack and a thud.
He was alright, careless, but alright. They had gone to the emergency room and on the way there he was his normal self. Belting out the lyrics to Hollaback Girl with her to their parent's dismay, and waving to random people out the window. Besides the occasional flinches when the car turned or went over a speed bump, Cayne was his average self. That was the thing about him, he had a way with handling physical pain.
There had been other times though. Times when Liesel's brother had cracked under the amount of pain, mental pain. One notable time, was the time when her father had told Cayne to get his head out of the clouds and stop locking himself alone in his room to write "that damn music" while he could be studying for something better. Something realistic that could get him a job that pays. Because that was what Liesel's father did, he worked all the time to make money. Make the money to be wealthy. Only to come home and say how stressful his job was. Cayne had yelled and slammed his hand against the living room wall, shouting back with such fury it sent Liesel reeling back towards the kitchen where she had been making lunch. The most horrible thing happened ten minutes later, when he walked too quickly into his room - and exited too quickly with his guitar in hand.
He had flung open the front door and let it swing on it's hinges. Then, without so much as a moments hesitation, Cayne had brought his guitar smashing down against the front steps with such strength that it splintered and cracked. He brought it down over, and over and over again.
Leelah's face is there so suddenly, that Liesel is squinting and blinking her eyes to regain focus. "Leelah?" She breathes out the name like a question, as if she was doubtful whether or not the other girl was truly there. She felt so accustom to lying there in the snow, her body too imprinted to move. She was afraid of the pain if she did.
Liesel wanted to say something else too, like how she felt numb and that her foot was tingling for no apparent reason. Or maybe that moon looked like it was smiling, she could have sworn she saw it's face. But all of those things would have sounded insane. So instead of coming off as incoherent, she asked the first thing that seemed important. "Are you alright?" Liesel was acutely aware of Leelah using her own jacket to try and plug the flow of blood that was still trickling forth from the shoulder wound, but she barely felt anything at all. The cold was making her drowsy, and her lips were already turning a shade of purple. Altogether, she looks half unconscious even though she's awake, her body is solid and there - but her mind is far, far, away.
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Post by 𝓑𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐫 ♥ on Aug 26, 2016 20:27:23 GMT -5
i listened to 'become the beast' by karliene on repeat while writing this post and now it's going to be stuck in my head forever
leelah veyera
Snow is cold. It translates into a sharp albeit numbing sensation against Leelah’s knees as they press into the ground. Her body yells at her to stand up, to get out up away from this situation. She does not move. Liesel whispers her name like a cry for help; the bray of an injured deer caught in a bear trap; fallen beauty, fallen grace, tumbled into a pile of teardrops and rose petals and glistening against cool white alabaster. Leelah gives the girl a reassuring smile. (and for once in her life it is forced.) “That’s my name.”
Snow is wet. It seeps into her shins, like kneeling in a puddle, the cotton of her pants absorbing the chill like a sponge. The tips of her toes are beginning to numb, even through the protection of heavy leather boots. Her shoulders are bared to the night; there is a scrape, not deep, welling on her right arm, tracing a hooked pattern across her collarbone and over onto her back. The flesh is jagged, torn, but the seeping of blood is slow. Not like the warmth that drenches Leelah’s hands as she presses the jacket against the worst of Lisel’s wounds. This should never have happened. They should have never been out here in the first place.
(In the background Abernathy apologizes and Leelah could have punched him in the face. He did not have the right to apologize for this. His sins stretched further than mere words could ever reach. An ‘i’m sorry’ could not staunch the flow of blood that pounded beneath Leelah’s palms. Could not erase the memories. Abernathy has overstepped. And he would have to pay the price.
Sadja mumbles out an apology. Grovels at his feet as if she were a disobedient child while Eden lies broken open like a dropped china doll, while Aviva sinks into the snow holding the mangled body of the boy she loves, while Leelah kneels here wrapping her arms around Liesel like she were the most precious gemstone. Priceless. Absolon Abernathy does not deserve their forgiveness.)
All respect that Leelah ever had for Sadja Al Jarad disappears in a matter of moments when Sadja bows.
(And she laughs. Cannot stop the cackle that bursts past her lips, loud and abrasive, like lightning splitting the silent night. It only lasts a second.)
(So Absurd Abomasnow can turn into a dragon. Saved them from a mess he had assigned them to in the first place. Does this suddenly make him a god? If so, call Leelah Lucifer, because she will gladly walk into hell rather than for one second support the tin idol who had sacrificed them at the altar of his own ambition.)
(Leelah Veyera is no pawn to be played with. Not just a number. None of them were. Absolon Abernathy tried to justify himself as if that would suddenly absolve him of his sins. As if ‘changing the world’ was a nobler cause than being a decent human being. He was so blind to his own failure that even though he blamed himself, even though he seemed to surrender his bravado for only a moment, Abernathy still believed he was acting in the aim of the greater good.)
(The thought made Leelah sick.)
Liesel Wailes was worth so much more than Absolon Abernathy would ever be. If she was the cost of this greater change it would never, ever be worth it. And Leelah would rather secede from the Union than ever bow to a man who would forfeit someone like Liesel Wailes, someone like any of the students fallen here. Too heavy was the cost.
(Leelah turns to face Abernathy, mouths, "go. to. hell." and she will gladly be expelled.)
“Don’t worry about me”, Leelah smiles at Liesel. There is blood on her face and it is not hers. It is warm and sticky and she is proud of it. “I’ll be fine. You just relax there. I’ll make sure you’ll be ok. I promise.”
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Post by koi on Aug 27, 2016 9:24:11 GMT -5
eden sytko
“I have never been normal about my body. It has always seemed to me a strange and foreign entity. I don't know that there was ever a time when I was not conscious of it. As far back as I can think, I was aware of my corporeality, my physical imposition on space.” - Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
Eden never needed to ask what was wrong with his heart. Sometimes he felt as if he were born from his mother’s mind with a fully formed self-awareness that triumphed over the silly curiosities of his childhood; maybe he was born fully aware of his own misdemeanour, his malfunctions, a simple mistake in nature and biology and in his development. He felt as if he always knew. He’d had two open heart surgeries by the time his personality started to develop and clear (like the beginnings of a watercolour drawing, an outline made strictly of pencil). Magdalene gave him a microphone at the age of five and he’d serenaded a crying Marika with it (not using it properly at all; voice spitty and unruly at his young age, didn’t sound like the type of voice that would mature into something greater). He knew his own disorder and his own influence over the untidy world around him at a young age. Sometimes, however, he pretended not to know. Sometimes, Eden pretended there was nothing wrong, that he hadn’t heard Lorraine talking to her sister over the phone about how she is not sleeping because she’s worried he’ll outgrow all the surgeon’s work. Eden always grew too rapidly for anyone to catch up with, has stretch marks in odd places like bright lighting strikes dancing along his skin not in a fleeting fashion (as real lightning has a tendency to jolt across the sky like a chopping knife and disappear faster than it came) but a slow burn, not there one day, noticeable the next, just another scattering of scars to add to Eden’s extensive list. He grew too fast for his own skin, grew up too fast for his own brain to take him seriously, is still dizzy from the ascend. He wishes he could’ve had some warning, could have put on a seat belt, at least; prays he’s stopped growing because six feet and three inches is enough for him, any more and he’ll feel like his personality cannot be stretched that far without snapping. He is not made of elastic, and he takes up too much room. He wants to be smaller than the dirt underneath all the layers of snow in the forest and larger than the inevitability of his own slow descend back to old habits. His childhood made little fissures within the porcelain teapot that is Eden’s mind, filled to the brim with substanceless liquid; sometimes he’s worried something could cause him to crack into pieces. He’s not sure what will be the tipping point. He hopes the water within the pot is not scalding, anymore.
(There is something about Eden that is reminiscent to a muted fire. Not alike to a simple chain link curtain in front of a roaring fire, not exactly, but maybe the knowledge of there being a warm place just beyond reach; a poor girl stuck selling matches on a street corner dreaming of a place beyond the morning where there is warmth to be found and a hand to hold. Eden feels he is that poor match girl. The warmth he thinks he could feel one day is out of his reach just as living long enough to see sunrise is; the girl burnt her hands trying to feel something, anything, and a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old Eden learnt how to perform incendio wordlessly.)
Eden could feign blind, oblivious curiosity on more than a few occasions, especially when he was younger. So he’d pretend to be clouded with the young curiosity he should have at such an age, would ask Lorraine questions that he already knew answers to. He just wanted her to talk to him; wanted her to lay her hand atop of Eden’s head and not pull away. He asked her about what the hospital was like. Was it scary when he was first diagnosed? What about when he was four and seemed adamant on not waking up from what was supposed to be a routine surgery? Did you ever wonder if maybe I was supposed to die years and years ago?
(They scarred. Eden always scarred badly. His hands were white speckled with scars like static snow, like flour on the tip of Marika’s nose, and no one thought anything of it; speckled like someone erased the pigmentation of Eden’s skin on a dare lost to the summer wind. He talked to Enid with those hands, with those scarred, scarred hands, and she thought absolutely nothing of it. How ironic. How appropriate. His unconscious cry for attention—as his therapist had put it—was unconscious, invisible, even to his dearest friend.)
(Asa held his hand when no one was looking, traced his fingers over the back of Eden’s palm absentmindedly, let himself outline the surgery scar on Eden’s left wrist, touching for the sake of touching, taking Eden’s hand in his own and checking for new marks, every day. He did it every single time he saw Eden, because he knew what Eden was like, knew why he had so many scars. There were none. There haven’t been new marks since early in his sixteenth year. If there was anything good that came out of the Asa situation, it is that Asa left Eden half-convinced that his scars weren’t as bad as Eden made them out to be; it is that Eden was happier than he thinks he’s ever truly, genuinely been in a long time, didn’t feel the need to feel anything but happiness when Asa looked at Eden like it didn’t matter that his skin was speckled without pigmentation like the opposite of freckles. Asa might’ve even liked that Eden was so scarred, constantly reprimanding Eden when Eden apologized for the way his skin looks up close. Eden didn’t know, doesn’t know to this day, but Asa held his hand only when no one else was around and that should’ve been enough of a hint.)
It puts Eden in a place of discomfort, because he knows he’ll scar from this newest event: how badly he’ll scar is another question to be answered another day. Unfortunately, though Eden tries not to have his self-esteem built upon the validation of others, he wonders if all the times he has been called nice things under the duress of night and a hand in his hair and stars shining through an open skylight, are irrelevant now. He wonders if they were always irrelevant, just a few nice words to gain Eden’s trust, like holding a treat out for a cat to lick off your hand.
The sky, when Eden tips his head towards it, feels his neck scream at him when he stretches a gaping wound, is a handbasket opened wide and dark and filled with faraway stars, or maybe snow falling, and he sits in his pain, basks in it in a way he hasn’t for years. The last time he was forced to drown in his pain is uncategorizable in his emotions. It took a place in the bottom of his lungs and is now resurfacing with every shallow breath he forces himself to take in short intervals, trying to be mindful of himself in the only way he can.
To stress an earlier point: Eden is not elastic; can’t be brought back to the same state after being stretched and stretched over and over and over, regardless of miniscule frays and tiny tears. He is not glass. He, if anything, is rather stale gum, a discomfort to your jaw in the long run, better left slightly chewed and spat out the side of your mouth onto concrete, used, lacking flavour. Stretchable only to short extents, eventually snaps, tacky in your hands and your mouth like half dried glue. Eden knows what it is like to be devoured only to be spat back up again when he did not taste as expected, when all that was left was regret, first and foremost, and then forgetfulness, the knowledge that the same mistakes will be wrung out for years until all that is left are lovers left threadbare. It’s the afterthought of it all that gets Eden; the I should have known that hits him squarely in the larynx, catches the cold wintry air in his weak lungs, a jewel-shiny beetle in a transparent net the same colour as his eyes. He has that thought often. He can always see it coming and troops on anyways, like a soldier led blind into war, hearing cannons and gunshots and not turning around with a metaphorical tail between a metaphorical set of legs. The loud mechanical sound of a flatline and doing nothing to restart a heartbeat. All of Eden’s regrets are like little charms and trinkets he keeps in his pocket and, on occasion, lays out onto the floor like a collection of miscellaneous buttons, are things that he saw coming, and did not do anything about. He’d been having chest pain for a month leading up to the day his heart finally had enough of his stubborn mind, after all. Asa only held his hand when no one was looking. The mirror Eden had dropped into the lake. The night had been so cold even before the harpies tore slits into his jacket like blood stained glass windows to view ragged and torn skin, and it is even colder now against exposed flesh. Little hints, a real-life foreshadowing almost humorous in its bluntness.
He is trying to regulate his breathing. He is trying he is trying so hard, so hard; but he is starting to hyperventilate, too much oxygen reaching a panic filled brain, and his heart pounds in its place like an impatient little drummer boy, an, “are we there yet?” that gets louder and more distressed as the car ride gets longer. He moves weight off his left hand to put it across his chest. The action, the stirring of his weight displacement causing his shoulder blades to move against torn skin, makes warm, fresh tears slide down his cheeks, salt between his lips that he absentmindedly licks away, a metallic taste intermingling with it that must be his blood because melted snow does not taste like warm iron, the last time Eden checked. His hand is so cold, slid underneath his jacket, and there is a delirious, fever-dream idea in Eden’s mind that maybe he’ll be able to calm himself down with how cold his hand is over his very warm heart.
It’s a silly thought. There are a lot of thoughts that circulate in his head that he'd be ashamed of if anyone were to hear them; that is one of them. It isn’t as bad as the others. Eden is visibly hyperventilating. That fact is, perhaps, worst of all—he is visibly scared, visibly crying, visibly a mess on the forest floor—thinks, he doesn’t know if he deserves to be peeled off of it when the time comes—thinks, his parents are going to be so sad about this. Marika will cry when she sees Eden. Marika will cry and Eden will force himself to laugh at her and it’s not enough. Eden’s had enough of it all. It’s not f*cking fair that he has to go through this so often. It’s not fair for anyone in his life.
(there comes a point that Eden casually refers to as his tipping point, the shutdown of his emotions. He can’t count how many times he’s been so gently pushed over that edge. The last time it happened, he cried on his kitchen floor about a boy who might’ve loved him but evidently didn’t anymore.)
Y’see, love has never been a good subject for Eden.
Aviva holds Gray in her arms and for a moment, if Eden were a simpler person (which is so often a fact stressed about him; he is not simple, he is not simple), he would think that Aviva was in love with Gray, or that perhaps it was requited. Then again, he thought that Asa was in love with him. Love has never been a good subject for Eden. The amount of platonic love in his life was overwhelming, more than one small boy should ever feel surrounding him, but it could’ve all been hatred for all Eden knew. It never mattered because it wasn’t like it was his mother who was showing him all that love. It wasn’t. Both his parental figures were all but gone during Eden’s first few years; it made Marika into a tempermentally unstable child, and did the same for Eden, but in markedly different ways. Marika cried too often. Eden laughed even when he was being hurt. Eden wants to tell Aviva to stop fooling herself; to stop before she creates a situation she cannot win in—Gray is not a prize to be won nor a privilege to behold. He is a boy—no, a young man, bleeding out onto the forest floor, tears wet on freckled cheeks. Aviva’s own face is bloodied, looks like misplaced warpaint. Her glasses are cracked and she is bruised and battered and bloody. And Eden hopes more than anything that they did not break while they were still on her face. The reason why he’s even said it in the first place was because it’d happened to him when he was younger.
“Aviva,” he says—god, his voice is soft; a broken whisper, a five year old with a microphone, spitting blood onto Asa’s floor and hoping it stains; the don’t touch me that follows afterwards. Please, don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do this to Gray. Stop taking it out on Enid.
all he says is, “I’m sorry about your glasses.”
“I do not remember very many things from the inside out. I do not remember what it felt like to touch things, or how bathwater traveled over my skin. I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break. Even now, when people lean down to touch me, or hug me, or put a hand on my shoulder, I hold my breath. I turn my face. I want to cry.”
“I remember the body from the outside in. It makes me sad when I think about it, to hate that body so much.” - Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
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Post by servalstrike on Aug 27, 2016 16:28:10 GMT -5
Sadja;
Two days.
Only two days since the world had gone from being stark contrasts of red, black, and white into muted shades of gray. At least for a short while. Sadja didn’t remember the trip back to the castle. She didn’t want to remember anything and yet the beating wings and bloody talons cursed her nights and hallucinations plagued her days. Her mind was becoming a twisted mess of brambles and she couldn’t untangle it without getting hurt.
Sadja tried to occupy her time while she was bed-bound once more, with homework or games or making origami. However, she did everything but speak with the other students who had been attacked. She must have looked foolish and stuck up for refusing their company, but the truth was that she felt she didn’t deserve it. That night in the woods she had forgiven the man who was the cause of their pain. Ceasing to see him as their enemy she might as well have slapped all of the botany club in the face.
With a look around the dreary room she took in the faces of the others, all worn and torn yet healing. Flowers adorned the stands by their beds, bringing color and life back into the pale world, gifts from Professor Cicuta who had seemed more than distraught at the dreadful news and Sadja had even heard the poor thing fainted. Truly she was beginning to dislike the hospital wing. Though Madam Poppy had healed her arm with a simple spell and her other wounds were healing as well, she couldn’t help but find no sanctuary in the place. It only brought back memories of a time she’d like to forget.
Why was this school bent on her destruction? On watching her deteriorate into a pitiful weeping mass. She had yet to cry. She didn’t cry for the nixies and she would not shed a tear for the harpies. She had resolved to that much for herself at the very least.
Outside the window she could make out a world of gray. The land still blanketed in a sheet of pure white and the sky clogged with clouds.Though the calendar said it was November, autumn, it was clear that winter was upon them. And Sadja felt almost comfortable in the warm nest of her hospital bed, the cold trapped just beyond the glass of the window. Shrouded in dark. Winter was like that- and incubatory sort of darkness. The kind of darkness that cradled people in their houses by their fireplaces while the wind whispered at their windows. The kind that left Sadja to stew in her thoughts even if they were becoming a jumbled tangled garden of flowers and briars. Beautiful but uncertain and skewed and lopsided in some places where the gardens wall were crumbling and sinking into the sodden ground.
With Sinbad poised atop her backboard, like a silent preening sentry watching over her to keep away whatever monsters lurked just beyond her bedside, she turned back to the chessboard seated in her lap. She was losing her game, not that she’d ever thought herself to be any good at chess. It was a confusing game of logic and strategy so of course she was losing she’d already proven she wasn’t any good at such things. Reaching across the board she gently plucked the white Queen from her square.
In chess, the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board, as it can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. The King is more important to the game, as you need it to win, but it is pretty useless compared to the Queen.
As Sadja carefully examined the piece. Rolling it back and forth over her palm, it was clear to her that she wasn’t a queen. She wasn’t powerful in any sense of the word. Nor was she a king, for she wasn’t important to the game at hand. Treating the endeavors of the botany club like she had, like it was a game of chess, had resulted in many students getting hurt and had put Headmaster Abernathy’s job at stake. The botany club was not a game of chess, it was far more complex than that and if she had seen that sooner than her decisions would not have led her and the others to this point.
No, Sadja was not a queen. She wasn’t sure what she was besides a broken bird locked in a cage.
She let the chess piece roll across her palm and over her hands into her other hand. As it moved she caught a flash of color against its ivory surface. Sadja’s eyes widened. A splatter of blood stained the white queen. The color striking against the pale figure like blood in the snow. She tried to wipe it away but it wouldn’t come off. Taking her sleeve she rubbed against the blotch of blood harder trying to make it disappear before anyone could see.
The blood wasn’t going anywhere. She kept rubbing and rubbing and she could have worn a hole through her sleeve for all her work. When she lifted her hand away to check her progress she found the if anything the stain had gotten bigger. It had spread. Turning her other hand over and looking at her palm she noticed how it now glistened in the light, red dripped from her fingers onto the white sheets of her bed. Blood was splattered across the chessboard, the pieces oozed it as if they were really alive and could bleed.
The queen rolled from her now bloody hand and clattered to the floor. Her mouth was gaping and a scream was caught in her throat. There was blood everywhere. She was bleeding, not from any open wound she was just. Bleeding. Soaking through her bedsheets and clothes she started rubbing her hands and arms trying to get it off. Trying to clean herself of it. Tears welled in her eyes. It wouldn’t go away. The smell filled her nostrils and made her sick to her stomach. She could stop herself from shaking, her breath coming in short spurts. She tried her hardest to get ahold of herself.
With a cry that was a mix of fear and pain her legs lurched towards her chest. Sending the board and all the black and white pieces spraying into the air and then crashing to the floor. Her legs locked against her chest and her hands flew to her head, wringing her fingers through her hair and grabbing it tight she pulled her head down and shut her eyes tight. “'Annaha laysat haqiqia” she tried to calm herself It’s not real. She could still smell and feel it though, the sticky slick sensation of blood against her skin.
She tried to will the nightmare away. Tried to force it back into the darkest corners of her reeling mind.
She could hear the wings. She could see blood and snow and the black night sky that no longer twinkled with stars but was not a sheet of pitch darkness that swallowed her. She could hear the cries of the harpies. Sadja tried to cage them away. Lock them up tight where they couldn’t reach her.
Suddenly talons gripped her shoulder and spun around her eyes round and fearful only to meet the caring worried gaze of Antheia. Professor Cicuta rubbed her wrist which Sadja realized she had just smacked away. Blinking she looked down at her hands to find the blood gone. Relief washed over her. “I-I’m so sorry” she said. Cicuta knitted her brow in concern and her eyes flicked down to the chess game that had been scattered to the floor. “What’s wrong, deary?”
Sadja looked down at the mess and shook her head offering a weary smile “Oh it’s nothing...I wish just losing is all.” She tried to play it off like she’d just lost her temper.
The herbology professor arched her brow “You must really like chess, huh?” Bending down she started to pick up the pieces. “Well, not exactly, I suppose I just hate losing.” Her hand rubbed the back of her neck as she watched the professor clean her mess up for her. With a resigned sigh she fixed her bedsheets “Thank you.” The Professor set the chess board by the vase of flowers and softly patted Sadja’s back, careful not to touch her tender wounds. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you and the others, Miss al-Jarad. No child should ever go through such a thing and Absolon Abernathy will pay for what he’s done.” Her words became sharp at the end, she tone calloused and full of a resolve Sadja wished she still possessed. With a bow of her head Sadja gave a nod, “Thank you, Professor Cicuta, you’ve been more than kind to us and I give great thanks for your kind heart. I only wish everyone was as kind and forgiving as you”
Antheia Cicuta replaced the flowers in Sadja’s vase with some beautiful new ones. She exchanged a few more kind words with the poor girl who was obviously experiencing things that she could never understand. Then Antheia left to go give the other students more flowers. These were flowers she had cultivated herself in the greenhouse. Even in the winter months she wanted to surrounded by flowers and beauty and life.
Sadja laid back on her pillow and closed her eyes. Draping her arm over her eyes she submerged herself in her thoughts. She was losing her mind. Seeing things that were there. Any strength or courage she once possessed was slowly seeping from her body. Sapped away by nightmares and hallucinatory episodes. Slowly but surely she was becoming a hollow shell of a girl who had no right to call herself Sadja al-Jarad.
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Post by Salted Squid on Aug 27, 2016 19:33:54 GMT -5
Amily and Aviva Harel~ (aka some very patriotic [oops])
As a mother, Amily Harel had not been at all happy to hear about the attack that had taken place at Hogwarts two days earlier, especially since her daughter had been one of the students involved in the gruesome event. As an Auror... well, she still wasn't happy about it. An attack at Hogwarts meant lots of overtime, and even more paperwork, which lead to headaches. Amily hated headaches.
She'd arrived at Hogwarts the morning after the attack with a team of Aurors along with a squad from the Comittee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. Even considering the fact that there was clearly no Dark Magic involved in the situation, the Ministry had wanted her there anyway. Something about her expertise in investigating and the Ministry wanting to know how the heck a flock of harpies had gotten into Hogwarts grounds unnoticed to begin with.
Whatever. An excuse to visit her daughter was an excuse to visit her daughter, regardless of reason. Still, she was annoyed about the fact that she'd been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to get breifed about this.
People looked at her as she walked down the hall, no doubt because they recognized her from her chocolate frog card, from her dark brown hair to her tanned skin to her slightly arrogant smirk, well worthy of her house of Gryffindor. She really looked nothing like her daughter, who took after her Muggle father in appearance, aside from their shared olive green eyes. Amily wore courage and pride well; her daughter was much more meek, though no less brave. This year, she had proven this many times over.
Aviva's bed was near the front of the ward, divided from the others by a thin blue curtain she had drawn around it for privacy. She looked up as Amily brushed her way in, her glasses still bent, though the lens had been repaired. Deep, angry red cuts, just starting to scab over, marred the left side of her face; Amily had been warned about this, but it was still hard to see Aviva hiding it, to see her red, bloodshot eyes and the dark circles she wore much too early in her life and know that the scars had affected her on an emotional level, not just a physical one. It hurt Amily's heart.
For a minute, mother and daughter stared at each other in silence, taking each other in. Amily was the first to break it.
"I'm proud of you, you know."
Aviva looked away, but Amily caught the ghost of the smile that played across her lips. I'm proud of you was not the sort of thing that Amily Harel said lightly. Those words really meant something from the hardened Auror.
"I wasn't anywhere near as good as you," Aviva said softly, looking up into her mother's face. It was a face that was also scarred, though faintly, the marks that came from her everyday work as an Auror-- occupational hazards, Amily called them.
A grin tugged at the corners of Amily's lips. "Are you kidding me, Avi? I heard you were fantastic out there. They wrote me a letter all about it. You did fine."
A grimace. "I only had to fight because I got in trouble," Aviva mumbled, her cheeks reddening.
Amily gave a one-shouldered shrug. "You haven't been in trouble before. Breaking into the Headmaster's office was dumb--" she fixed Aviva with a stern look-- "but I did way worse as a kid. I'm not concerned about it. Just don't be such an idiot in the future. Next time you decide to break the rules, don't get caught."
Aviva laughed. "Yeah, I won't. Thanks, mum."
Reaching forward, Amily gave Aviva's dark hair an affectionate ruffle. "By the way, I'm moving this curtain when I leave. You shouldn't be hiding. You look badass, kid, that's nothing to be ashamed of."
Aviva rolled her eyes, though a smile flickered across her face before disappearing again. "Sure, mum. Whatever you say."
"Damn right. Oh, and here." Reaching into the pocket of her robes, Amily pulled out a pair of glasses, identical to the ones Aviva was wearing except for the fact that these ones were new. "I heard that you might need these."
This time, Aviva's smile didn't fade. "Thanks, mum. You're the best."
"I know I am, Avi. I'm the best mum ever, you've been telling me that since you could talk. I'm the absolute greatest--"
Aviva threw her old glasses at Amily, laughing. "Don't be a prat, mum. What would Dad say?"
"He'd agree with me, of course." Arrogant. "Alright, I've got to get back to work before my boss has my head." She bent over, planting a kiss on Aviva's forehead. "I love you."
"Mum!"
Grinning, Amily pulled away. She pulled out her wand and gave it a wave; with a flash of purple light, the curtains disappeared, exposing the Harels to the rest of the ward. "There. That's better." She flashed Aviva a wink, then turned, slipping her wand back into her pocket before walking confidently out of the ward.
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Post by maple on Aug 28, 2016 1:33:14 GMT -5
liesel wailes //
It was easy to tell whether or not Liesel had slept much in the expanse of two days since the attack. Dark circles under her eyes gave the answer away, matching the purple and blue bruises that discolored her skin like splatters of paint. Her body had mostly been curled into a huddled fetal position under the mounds of blankets piled on top of her bed, the only thing visible being a few silvery stands of hair that poked through.
Under the sheets and quilts, Liesel had kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her breathing barely a whisper. She didn't move; not even when her body ached for her to stretch out, not even when her wounds throbbed from being smashed. She thought that maybe, if she stayed absolutely still, perhaps for some miraculous reason she'd fall asleep, even though her heart thumped inside her chest as she imagined what would meet her when she did.
At the times when it was impossible for her to stay conscious, and when the fatigue was added to by the bitter tasting medicines she had to force down her throat, she was immersed into a realm of darkness filled with the tearing of talons and the cries of familiar voices in agony - it was always the same.
She could feel them raking across her back and forearms, taking hold of her shoulders and shaking violently as if she was nothing but a rag-doll. The blood was not so much hot as it was warm, like the temperature of a bathtub that had once been hot but was left to sit in the open air. It trickled down her skin leaving trails behind, thicker than any raindrops that could fall from the sky. And the pain is not so unbearable as the cries of others, that fill her ears and clog her brain as the harpy sits on top of her ribcage. There is nobody there to save her, just distant screams that echo her own. Leelah's familiar voice is not there, and Liesel cannot see. It is as if those thing, who do not deserve a name, had pecked until she was blind.
One turns it's head and looks at Liesel, and it has a incredibly crafted human face; with a porcelain skin tone and rosy cheeks matched with mis-matched blue and brown eyes.
The creature smiles, because it's face is her own.
Liesel screams like she had seen a ghost, or something even worse, her eyes still closed as she kicks and squirms against the sheets that once offered protection but now restrain her. She covers her face and yells into her hands, body shaking and quivering as violent sobs wrack her body. She can taste the blood. She can still feel claws, still feel her flesh tearing as it's pressed into the snow that scalds like fire. Whether it is night or day, every hour is now a nightmare for Liesel.
That is why she cannot sleep.
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