cottonferret
Qia
spicykvnt
Festive
Rockette
Skai
Snowdrops
Cleveraptor
ButtsnBalls
Dion
They’d been sent to hunker down beneath the building storm in shelters made of straining, collapsible frames with plays of light and shadow figures in the corners of his eyes across plastic windows. Soft whispers rustled through cloth over wrinkled bedding asking if he was asleep, awake, excited, scared, crying? Do you know what time it is?! Muffled laughter made up the enclosing shell keeping out the cold wind curling around him, underscoring the steady drumming patter of rain already blurring the line between then and now. He wasn’t sure if the wet he could feel was the morning’s condensation lining the tent last time or creeping in through a new leak in the corner. Had to test it a few times and ask his tentmate—Ariel? They looked over when he said it—if it was leaking. Wasn’t even raining yet…
He stayed quiet after that, going through the motions, working through the tent’s history for awhile. But once they were both tucked away and ready for sleep, when the influx of new discoveries slipping through his head had slowed enough to let him drift back to the last few hours, Lucas sat up and asked them about names. The ones he’d picked up and the ones he hadn’t. There were three he was particularly interested in. The beehive, whom he hadn’t heard name herself. Whether or not Sierra was the name of all the girls that looked the same. And who Dominik was. He got his answers. He also learned more about pro wrestling than he’d asked for, though he didn’t mind it much. And that he hadn’t introduced himself. Once that conversation wore out its words though, it was late, the storm was almost upon them and the howling winds naturally filled in the shadowy spaces the night had set between them.
Sleep seemed a long way off then, with the skirling scream rising all the higher as the tent shook faintly around them, but haunting as the sound was, it drowned out all the rest. And when the rain came, scattering across his skin and pounding on his bones, he was numb. Between one blink and the next, the memories became real. Though what woke him was the delayed snap and tear of fabric and frame separated to let in the rain. Left him breathless and gasping and so confused that the sudden soaking hardly registered. He was simply stranded, tangled in a blanket, and tumbled off his cot in a slowly growing puddle that splashed briefly when he finally flailed upright, but then flowed in a steady stream over his feet to join with the new shelter Ariel had built for themselves.
There hadn’t been time to truly register what they were doing or why the roof was gone or what he was hearing over the storm after he’d untangled himself and worked his way upright before he’d seen the brown splotch of a small dinosaur tumbled to the ground beside him and reached to save it only to watch it fly away just beyond his reach, and stay there, no matter how much he struggled to close the distance.
The threatening figure so full of furious pride that even the blurred remnants of his power could pull it free of their clothes became nothing more than a hand playing keep-away like the schoolyard bully. The might on display nothing but a tool withholding cheap stuffing, worn, wet fabric, and a voice he’d never hear again.
Watching it fall made his heart drop before the rest of him did. No time to try righting himself in the air or even notice how far off the ground he was. Just landed with a breathless grunt and scrambled back to his knees, desperate. He couldn’t lose it. He couldn’t.
Distantly, the silence registered as a collective moment of held breath. Words were being spoken. Shouts were pulled free of fear-closed throats and so many shirts were full of fast-beating hearts wrapped in sodden terror. His brain felt muddy. But he wasn’t using it to think so all that mattered was finally catching sight of the little stegosaurus and cradling it in both hands to his chest. All that came into view when he finally raised his head were so many pale faces spread around the still figure who’d made it all happen.
And then they were gone, and in their place was a single slumped form. It was dark enough he could have doubted his eyes… Just a mound of dirt or someone’s lost bag… But he couldn’t avoid the certainty of one more pale face staring sightless through the grass even as his view was cut off by the adults closing in with desperate hope or grim practicality.
One more breath out never drawn back in.
He stayed quiet after that, going through the motions, working through the tent’s history for awhile. But once they were both tucked away and ready for sleep, when the influx of new discoveries slipping through his head had slowed enough to let him drift back to the last few hours, Lucas sat up and asked them about names. The ones he’d picked up and the ones he hadn’t. There were three he was particularly interested in. The beehive, whom he hadn’t heard name herself. Whether or not Sierra was the name of all the girls that looked the same. And who Dominik was. He got his answers. He also learned more about pro wrestling than he’d asked for, though he didn’t mind it much. And that he hadn’t introduced himself. Once that conversation wore out its words though, it was late, the storm was almost upon them and the howling winds naturally filled in the shadowy spaces the night had set between them.
Sleep seemed a long way off then, with the skirling scream rising all the higher as the tent shook faintly around them, but haunting as the sound was, it drowned out all the rest. And when the rain came, scattering across his skin and pounding on his bones, he was numb. Between one blink and the next, the memories became real. Though what woke him was the delayed snap and tear of fabric and frame separated to let in the rain. Left him breathless and gasping and so confused that the sudden soaking hardly registered. He was simply stranded, tangled in a blanket, and tumbled off his cot in a slowly growing puddle that splashed briefly when he finally flailed upright, but then flowed in a steady stream over his feet to join with the new shelter Ariel had built for themselves.
There hadn’t been time to truly register what they were doing or why the roof was gone or what he was hearing over the storm after he’d untangled himself and worked his way upright before he’d seen the brown splotch of a small dinosaur tumbled to the ground beside him and reached to save it only to watch it fly away just beyond his reach, and stay there, no matter how much he struggled to close the distance.
The threatening figure so full of furious pride that even the blurred remnants of his power could pull it free of their clothes became nothing more than a hand playing keep-away like the schoolyard bully. The might on display nothing but a tool withholding cheap stuffing, worn, wet fabric, and a voice he’d never hear again.
Watching it fall made his heart drop before the rest of him did. No time to try righting himself in the air or even notice how far off the ground he was. Just landed with a breathless grunt and scrambled back to his knees, desperate. He couldn’t lose it. He couldn’t.
Distantly, the silence registered as a collective moment of held breath. Words were being spoken. Shouts were pulled free of fear-closed throats and so many shirts were full of fast-beating hearts wrapped in sodden terror. His brain felt muddy. But he wasn’t using it to think so all that mattered was finally catching sight of the little stegosaurus and cradling it in both hands to his chest. All that came into view when he finally raised his head were so many pale faces spread around the still figure who’d made it all happen.
And then they were gone, and in their place was a single slumped form. It was dark enough he could have doubted his eyes… Just a mound of dirt or someone’s lost bag… But he couldn’t avoid the certainty of one more pale face staring sightless through the grass even as his view was cut off by the adults closing in with desperate hope or grim practicality.
One more breath out never drawn back in.
Location:Northern Cove
First Class #2.14:Spilling Over
Interaction(s): Efraim @Theyra
Previously: Bees
3 Days After Hyperion’s Attack
Don’t you get tired of living like this, Lucas. I know you’re tired of living in the past. Echoes of things will be alright, okay? These things just happened to be how it goes, right? It doesn’t end on a good note here. But—
With careful fingers, Lucas reached out and straightened the two rows of fabric plates running down the little plush’s back, interwoven voices instantly jumping clear of each other.
—don’t you get tired of living in the past? Seeing echoes of things that already happened?
—I know you’re tired of living like this, Lucas. I’m sorry. Don’t mean to put it all on you but things will be alright, okay?
What was one more voice in the background noise of his father’s growing wheeze and slow rasp? It shouldn’t have mattered. The soaking didn’t, or wouldn’t, if he left the toy sitting in the sun often enough. But he couldn’t erase anything.
He’d tried, sometimes. Best he could do was ignore them a while or cover them up with other memories. Or walk away. Walk away like it never happened. Pick up something else. Leave those sounds behind.
Frowning to himself while lying on the lawn and feeling the sun soaking into everything, Lucas had his chin hooked over one arm as he kept straightening those small cloth plates into the semblance of the stiff armor they were meant to be, copying the rougher fingers he could feel pinching them straight with idle care. He’d left walls behind because walls were full from the start and when they squished down with the weight of the roof under so much strained silence, he didn’t want to deal with it. So, he’d brought the toy out with him to consider its newest memories for as long as that took. Now, they were facing each other, him and the small plush toy, and he wasn’t really thinking because there was nothing to think about.
This new voice had ruined it. Carried memories with it he didn’t want to remember, made his dreams wet and murky and breathless if he left the toy in its usual pride of place on his bedside table. But he couldn’t throw it away. Couldn’t put it somewhere else. Couldn’t pretend he’d lost it. Couldn’t leave it behind. So, there really was nothing to think about because it was a problem that did not have a satisfactory solution. It did, however, ignite a familiar feeling in his chest. Something he was used to turning on anyone asking him to do what he didn’t want to do, what he was too tired to do, what he’d done a hundred times before, what he’d tried telling them didn’t work and wouldn’t work and couldn’t help no matter how many times they insisted…
It wasn’t a matter of rebellion this time though. Or of being too tired and aching to bother. Wasn’t a matter of misunderstandings and not understanding sliding under the radar into frustration.
Hyperion simply existed now. A memory no one wanted. Rumours ran through every building. The stain of fear couldn’t be washed out like dirt. In the moments of quiet that manifested in a corner, in the hall, at one empty seat, he’d found tense waiting for something to break. The school hadn’t been perfect before, though he hadn’t had much time during his one day of exploring to understand the general atmosphere, but it was ruined now, too.
Lucas didn’t like that. He resented that voice speaking for him as though it knew what he wanted. Breaking into the last gift his dad had given him and pretending it was worth more than anyone else. If they’d wanted to help, they’d gone about it all wrong. If they wanted the fear…
“Yeah, okay, I don’t know about tired, but I don’t need to listen anymore.”
Huffing out a breath to blow the hair out of his eyes, Lucas pushed himself off the ground, snagging the dinosaur as he went. He was done. And he was hungry.
Present
Standing quietly and watching strangers honour another stranger wasn’t exactly how Lucas wanted to spend his time. Standing quietly all dressed up amidst similarly dressed strangers bidding farewell to a burning corpse wasn’t how he wanted to spend his time either. Funerals were full up of other people’s griefs. Their angers and shames and guilts and reliefs. Full up of fidgets and trembling and hitched breath broken sobs. No one cried pretty. Tears spotting thighs or soaking into handkerchiefs and tissues was annoying enough. But when snot got involved…
He'd just walked away.
Sat down far enough off that he could watch the proceedings without distraction and promptly lost himself in the warmth of an iron pressing clean folds into the kilt he was wearing. It had seemed like a good idea when he’d picked it instead of pants. Something different and fun. Hadn’t expected he’d be standing on the edge of the ocean, legs bared to the breeze, and halfway to shivering. Schools didn’t have funerals. Most definitely not Viking funerals. Wasn’t what schools were for. But as he sat there letting handfuls of sand tumble between his fingers and watching a small boat drift out on the tide before flaring into smoke and fire, he supposed this school did.
Despite sharing the same house with the dead guy for all of a day and having the last week to learn more about him, Cassander Charon’s presence in his head was limited to toes tapping a footboard and minimal conversation. He’d spent most of his time either sleeping or outside the Intake House and finding him anywhere else was too hard to manage. Five days was hardly any time at all for leaving an impression. He had though, beyond the walls, dying on the first day. Standing up for something. Asking for it. Lucas didn’t know which was more accurate. But he was dead before he should have been, when he shouldn’t have been, facing a threat that shouldn’t have existed, most people agreed on that.
And even if he was only a stranger, Lucas had already said his goodbyes his own way when he’d found the leftovers of his presence haunting the halls. He was here because tradition made funerals significant, wasn’t leaving because the ones who were grieving didn’t need to see that, but he wasn’t interested in sharing the load. So, when the larger group began breaking up, he stood up, dusting his hands and kilt free of sand grains, and started walking along the shore.
Cassander wasn’t the only one missing from the Intake House after that night. It had taken him almost the whole week to glean the full story out of bits and pieces. Not because no one was willing to tell him, but simply because he hadn’t thought to ask. One was dead. Lucas knew where he was. Another was badly hurt and somewhere in the infirmary. And the rest had left with Cassander’s killer. Everyone left over was stuck in their own heads with their own thoughts and the whole building was full of ghosts. The only loud noises came of anger or accidents. Avoiding that brittle gloom had left him spending his days nowhere in particular after a while. That meant stalling now. Walking along the water’s edge was better than going back to the Minotaurs. Better than being back in a space where the silence was suffocating under too much unspent emotions. He knew without having to ask that he wasn’t the only one jolting awake in the middle of the night and lying there breathless, staring at the ceiling long after the dream had faded.
After a while, however, his stalling tactic turned out less than great. Every step grating sand across the soles until he grimaced and sought grass. Wasn’t paying attention to where he was going, but he did glance up when he felt new records simmering in the back of his mind. “Oh… Uh…” Who was he again? “Efraim?” Probably right. But… Twisting his fingers until the knuckles twinged, he eyed the trunk of the tree and then huffed out the frustration tightening his chest. “I’m not helping if it fights back. Okay? You okay?”
Don’t you get tired of living like this, Lucas. I know you’re tired of living in the past. Echoes of things will be alright, okay? These things just happened to be how it goes, right? It doesn’t end on a good note here. But—
With careful fingers, Lucas reached out and straightened the two rows of fabric plates running down the little plush’s back, interwoven voices instantly jumping clear of each other.
—don’t you get tired of living in the past? Seeing echoes of things that already happened?
—I know you’re tired of living like this, Lucas. I’m sorry. Don’t mean to put it all on you but things will be alright, okay?
What was one more voice in the background noise of his father’s growing wheeze and slow rasp? It shouldn’t have mattered. The soaking didn’t, or wouldn’t, if he left the toy sitting in the sun often enough. But he couldn’t erase anything.
He’d tried, sometimes. Best he could do was ignore them a while or cover them up with other memories. Or walk away. Walk away like it never happened. Pick up something else. Leave those sounds behind.
Frowning to himself while lying on the lawn and feeling the sun soaking into everything, Lucas had his chin hooked over one arm as he kept straightening those small cloth plates into the semblance of the stiff armor they were meant to be, copying the rougher fingers he could feel pinching them straight with idle care. He’d left walls behind because walls were full from the start and when they squished down with the weight of the roof under so much strained silence, he didn’t want to deal with it. So, he’d brought the toy out with him to consider its newest memories for as long as that took. Now, they were facing each other, him and the small plush toy, and he wasn’t really thinking because there was nothing to think about.
This new voice had ruined it. Carried memories with it he didn’t want to remember, made his dreams wet and murky and breathless if he left the toy in its usual pride of place on his bedside table. But he couldn’t throw it away. Couldn’t put it somewhere else. Couldn’t pretend he’d lost it. Couldn’t leave it behind. So, there really was nothing to think about because it was a problem that did not have a satisfactory solution. It did, however, ignite a familiar feeling in his chest. Something he was used to turning on anyone asking him to do what he didn’t want to do, what he was too tired to do, what he’d done a hundred times before, what he’d tried telling them didn’t work and wouldn’t work and couldn’t help no matter how many times they insisted…
It wasn’t a matter of rebellion this time though. Or of being too tired and aching to bother. Wasn’t a matter of misunderstandings and not understanding sliding under the radar into frustration.
Hyperion simply existed now. A memory no one wanted. Rumours ran through every building. The stain of fear couldn’t be washed out like dirt. In the moments of quiet that manifested in a corner, in the hall, at one empty seat, he’d found tense waiting for something to break. The school hadn’t been perfect before, though he hadn’t had much time during his one day of exploring to understand the general atmosphere, but it was ruined now, too.
Lucas didn’t like that. He resented that voice speaking for him as though it knew what he wanted. Breaking into the last gift his dad had given him and pretending it was worth more than anyone else. If they’d wanted to help, they’d gone about it all wrong. If they wanted the fear…
“Yeah, okay, I don’t know about tired, but I don’t need to listen anymore.”
Huffing out a breath to blow the hair out of his eyes, Lucas pushed himself off the ground, snagging the dinosaur as he went. He was done. And he was hungry.
Present
Standing quietly and watching strangers honour another stranger wasn’t exactly how Lucas wanted to spend his time. Standing quietly all dressed up amidst similarly dressed strangers bidding farewell to a burning corpse wasn’t how he wanted to spend his time either. Funerals were full up of other people’s griefs. Their angers and shames and guilts and reliefs. Full up of fidgets and trembling and hitched breath broken sobs. No one cried pretty. Tears spotting thighs or soaking into handkerchiefs and tissues was annoying enough. But when snot got involved…
He'd just walked away.
Sat down far enough off that he could watch the proceedings without distraction and promptly lost himself in the warmth of an iron pressing clean folds into the kilt he was wearing. It had seemed like a good idea when he’d picked it instead of pants. Something different and fun. Hadn’t expected he’d be standing on the edge of the ocean, legs bared to the breeze, and halfway to shivering. Schools didn’t have funerals. Most definitely not Viking funerals. Wasn’t what schools were for. But as he sat there letting handfuls of sand tumble between his fingers and watching a small boat drift out on the tide before flaring into smoke and fire, he supposed this school did.
Despite sharing the same house with the dead guy for all of a day and having the last week to learn more about him, Cassander Charon’s presence in his head was limited to toes tapping a footboard and minimal conversation. He’d spent most of his time either sleeping or outside the Intake House and finding him anywhere else was too hard to manage. Five days was hardly any time at all for leaving an impression. He had though, beyond the walls, dying on the first day. Standing up for something. Asking for it. Lucas didn’t know which was more accurate. But he was dead before he should have been, when he shouldn’t have been, facing a threat that shouldn’t have existed, most people agreed on that.
And even if he was only a stranger, Lucas had already said his goodbyes his own way when he’d found the leftovers of his presence haunting the halls. He was here because tradition made funerals significant, wasn’t leaving because the ones who were grieving didn’t need to see that, but he wasn’t interested in sharing the load. So, when the larger group began breaking up, he stood up, dusting his hands and kilt free of sand grains, and started walking along the shore.
Cassander wasn’t the only one missing from the Intake House after that night. It had taken him almost the whole week to glean the full story out of bits and pieces. Not because no one was willing to tell him, but simply because he hadn’t thought to ask. One was dead. Lucas knew where he was. Another was badly hurt and somewhere in the infirmary. And the rest had left with Cassander’s killer. Everyone left over was stuck in their own heads with their own thoughts and the whole building was full of ghosts. The only loud noises came of anger or accidents. Avoiding that brittle gloom had left him spending his days nowhere in particular after a while. That meant stalling now. Walking along the water’s edge was better than going back to the Minotaurs. Better than being back in a space where the silence was suffocating under too much unspent emotions. He knew without having to ask that he wasn’t the only one jolting awake in the middle of the night and lying there breathless, staring at the ceiling long after the dream had faded.
After a while, however, his stalling tactic turned out less than great. Every step grating sand across the soles until he grimaced and sought grass. Wasn’t paying attention to where he was going, but he did glance up when he felt new records simmering in the back of his mind. “Oh… Uh…” Who was he again? “Efraim?” Probably right. But… Twisting his fingers until the knuckles twinged, he eyed the trunk of the tree and then huffed out the frustration tightening his chest. “I’m not helping if it fights back. Okay? You okay?”
