[Closed] The Waters of Discontent

[Raksha]

67th Roalis, 2719
BRUNNHOLD | AFTER MIDNIGHT, BEFORE THE SUN

It was very early, on this the day of Madeleine Gosselin’s birth.

Or it was very late.

It was that time of morning where the world was still dark, and yet could not be classed as night time any longer. The time when drunks would stumble home from bars, or sneaking students slipped through dorm windows. There was something eerie about this time of morning, a natural strangeness that hung about like a lingering scent. It was a place, where in the darkness, Brunnhold came alive where life seemed void. Small creatures scurrying across the courtyard to their homes, or in search of a meal. Birds roosted in the trees, and insects went about the business of insecting. Plants grew, a little taller or a little wider than they were during the day, or in the case of some flowers they curled in on themselves to rest till the sun showed its face again. It was a place for the world to move, when civilization slept. A place for unnatural things to reach out between there and here, hungering for something it couldn't explain.

A place for things to occur, in a time when no one would bat an eyelid at strange things.

Which would be the case for Patrice Weatherword.

She was next door to Madeleine Gosselin in the girls dormitory, had been since the start of this year, though they were never friends per say. Patrice’s mother was Mugrobi, and her father Bastian, and she was fifteen and really liked the histories of Anaxas. What she didn’t like, was the way Madeleine practically cried over everything. I mean, like, you couldn’t even say hello for fear of waterworks. Her father said Bastia would love her, whatever that meant, and her mother tsked for the lack of Godly vision in the girls life or something like that. Either way, Patrice usually had front row tickets to the crying because; dorm walls were thin here in the sixth form!

So, when Patrice heard the soft weeping through the window, she thought it was just Madeleine. Maybe returning from a lavatory visit and being frightened by her own shadow or something.

“Mmshush Gosselin…” The tanned girl mumbled from her warm bed, rolling over and shoving her pillow over her head.

In the darkness of Madeleine Gosselin’s room, at this curious time of the morning, the weeping drifted through the glass like some sort of sorrowful sonata. Soft, and ever so sad. It ached with emotion, broken with tearful release. Almost quiet enough to be missed if one was a heavy sleeper.

Almost.

[Madeleine Gosselin]

Just before early, 67 Roalis, 2719
Madeleine Gosselin's Dorm Room

Madeleine had sat down before bed with a paper and a pen, and started to write herself a letter.

Dear Madeleine, she wrote, and then she’d stopped, and stared at the page for a very long time. Tomorrow was her sixteenth birthday; sixteen seemed like a very large and important number. Now that she was sixteen, Madeleine decided, she was practically an adult; she was in the second half of her teens – well, nearly in the second half of her teens – well, in the second half of the years from ten to twenty, which was practically the same thing. Any day now, Madeleine was sure, she would be an adult, and she would understand all those things which everyone had always told her she would understand when she was older.

Getting letters on one’s birthday was customary. Madeleine’s grandmother had always sent her a note wishing her a happy birthday – even when they lived in the same house, and it was really rather silly. But Madeleine liked getting them; they reminded her that someone cared. Nobody’d sent them since her grandmother died, of course. She didn’t think she’d get any notes or cards or anything in the mail, not tomorrow, and not, like, the week after as an afterthought or anything. She hadn’t last year, or the year before, or the year before that. She didn’t think being at Brunnhold instead of Vienda would make any difference, really.

Madeleine was glad she wasn’t home, she decided. There was nothing at all worse than sitting at breakfast waiting for someone to wish you a happy birthday. It didn’t count if you reminded them first but the waiting was awful; it was just awful.

Anyway, Madeleine had decided to write her own letter; if nobody else was going to send one to her, then she would write it herself.

Dear Madeleine,

Happy birthday to you!

You are sixteen now, or you will be when you read this letter. Sixteen is a very important age.

When you were fifteen, you did a lot.

(Here, Madeleine paused again, to think what she had done at fifteen)

You danced in the senior showcase for the very first time, and you did two dances. It went well – everyone said so – and it was quite fun. You cast a lot of spells, and made good progress on your project. You met Ekain Da Huane, and he said nice things about your dancing and even sent you a letter.

This next year, you must promise to do even more good things. Dreams don’t just happen; you have to really reach out and take them! Even if it’s awful, you have to try. It is, of course, awful sometimes, but if you work really hard, you can do all sorts of things that no one else ever has. It doesn’t matter who does or doesn’t believe in you; it doesn’t matter if nobody believes in you at all, if you believe in yourself.

(Madeleine was not entirely sure this was true, but it seemed a hopeful sort of thing to write down, and she thought birthdays were a good time to be hopeful)

Have a great day! Maybe you’ll have cake.

Sincerely,
Madeleine Gosselin

She signed her name at the bottom of the letter with a flourish. Madeleine set a paperweight down on the top of it, and turned her light out, and climbed in to bed; she closed her eyes, smoothing her cheek against the pillow, and went to bed without crying even a little.

It was in the middle of the night that she woke again. Madeleine shifted; her eyes opened, slow and bleary. She yawned, forgetting in her sleepiness even to cover her mouth, and curled her cheek back into the pillow, closing her eyes. There was, Madeleine thought sleepily, someone crying outside.

Outside the third floor?

Madeleine sat up, then; she turned, and looked at the window. She rubbed her eyes; she shifted her blankets, and crawled across the bed towards the window. She was dressed in a long white nightgown, with loops of ribbons on the neck, the sleeves and the hem; it was mussed from sleep, as was the soft braid of her hair, but otherwise clean and neat.

Madeleine opened the window, and held on to the edge of it, and peered outside; she glanced down, squinting at the path below in the darkness. “Hello?” Madeleine called, very softly, over the chirping of crickets, looking down. “Are you all right?”

[Raksha]

67th Roalis, 2719
BRUNNHOLD | AFTER MIDNIGHT, BEFORE THE SUN

Down below, on the path there was nothing. The only things below her were foliage, and a delicate birdbath, its waters dirty and dark in this light. There were no insects calling at this time, nor sleeping birds chirping soft sleepy songs. Just the dark of the night and the silence of it all.

And the weeping.

Still, the weeping could be heard. Loud enough to be disturbing now, but soft enough to avoid interfering with those sleeping soundly at this time of the night. It drifted into the window, like the tendrils of song drifting from the Church of the Moon in the evening. Only this song was much sadder, and full of woe.

It drifted, it seemed, right past Madeleine’s ear, and a voice seemed to whisper in the darkness beside her.

Help us.

A sound much like an exhale, long and low and slow, seemed to seep into the room. She would feel cold. A chill like the touch of winter frost on an early morning. Her breath would fog before her.

For a moment, the crying seemed to disappear, and Madeleine would find herself uncomfortably alone.

Except it didn’t feel like being alone. It felt like being watched.

From the table where her letter was neatly set under a paperweight, there was a too loud thunk and a soft splash. A puddle of ink spilled forth onto the desk, black on the lighter wood and stationary of the table.

A soft sobbing, there, from the desk.

From the liquid pooling on the wood.

Help...

[Madeleine Gosselin]

Just before early, 67 Roalis, 2719
Madeleine Gosselin's Dorm Room

Madeleine hung over the edge of the open window, and felt very silly. There was definitely no one on the path; she was pretty sure, even if there were dark patches between the phosphor lights and it was hard to see everywhere. Unless, Madeleine thought, squinting and leaning forward, they were hiding in the bushes and shrugs? It seemed like a rather uncomfortable place to sit and cry but sometimes you did want to hide when you were crying; Madeleine knew about that. The only thing worse than crying was crying in front of other people, except for crying properly in public, which was even worse.

Was it getting louder?

Madeleine eased back a little, nearly bumping her head on the window, and glanced around.

Help us.

Madeleine gasped; it had been warm a moment ago. It had absolutely been warm. Suddenly it was cold – really cold. Madeleine’s breath misted in the air, and she shivered, crossing her arms over her chest and glancing around. She went to the window, and shut it; she felt awfully sorry for the girl who had been crying aloud, but the breeze was unseasonably cold. She might catch a chill, or even get a cold, and that would be just awful.

Only Madeleine must have shut the window too hard – much too hard – because she heard a thunk from over by the table. Madeleine turned, and made her way barefoot across the rug, eyes wide. She looked down at the table, and the spilled ink.

“Oh, my letter!” Madeleine cried out; she snatched it up with the paperweight, and moved them both to the far side of the desk. She frowned. She would get a cloth, Madeleine decided, and clean it up.

The ink shifted. There was a crying sound, and for some reason all the hairs on Madeleine’s arm and the back of her neck were standing straight up. Madeleine glanced around; she wasn’t crying, and she was the only one in the room, so who…?

Madeleine glanced back at the desk. The pool of ink had shifted a bit; it looked, Madeleine thought uneasily, almost like letters. The awful feeling all over her body grew worse, and worse still. She came a little closer again; she squinted down at the desk.

“This is the worst dream,” Madeleine whispered. Her voice didn’t sound very good; it sounded all strange and shaky. She pinched her own arm, very sharply; it hurt. She closed her eyes, and opened them again, expecting to sit up in bed. Nothing happened. Madeleine pinched her other arm, this time, closed her eyes firmly, and then opened them.

Nothing; she was still standing in the midst of her cold room, shaking, and the ink spilled on her desk still seemed to read help. Madeleine trembled; she took a deep breath. “H-hello?” Madeleine said, again, this time to her empty room; she glanced around, her lower lip starting to quiver.

[Raksha]

67th Roalis, 2719
BRUNNHOLD | AFTER MIDNIGHT, BEFORE THE SUN

The sobbing was so soft, it was almost inaudible now, but as Madeleine leaned closer to squint at the ink pooled just so on her desk it would seem certainly that the sound was just a little louder from the dark liquid. Even in the low light of the room, Osa’s light barely a glimmer this time of year, the sixth form would be able to make out her face in the reflection of the ink. Her pale face, hair loose and lank around her head, milky blue eyes staring back at her.

Of course though, that was impossible, because she didn’t look at all like that.

If she blinked, the vision in the black liquid would clear, just her own reflection looking back at her like normal. Because anything else would be absurd.

Her breath would escape in a small puff of steam, the chill of the room seeping into her bones.

“Help us…” The voice said again, a sad moaning, entwined with the crying. It sounded young, not an adults voice. A girls, for certain. The inky shaped word ran together, forming a small pool on the desk, and it rippled gently. It looked far deeper than it possibly could actually be.

And quite out of nowhere, a pale hand with blackened fingertips reached from the pool towards the girl. It was unnaturally long, as though there might not be anything but arm from where ever it came from. It grasped her wrist, tight and clammy and wet.

Something was dragging itself upwards through the darkness, a face pale with death and eyes milky from too long under water. Ruddy tendrils of dirty hair trailed behind it as it came to Madeleine Gosselin.

In her mind, Madeleine would see the rose maze...

vibrant and fresh in the crisp morning sunlight. She would hear laughter—it was herself laughing—and dew drops would catch the orange of Ire’s rays. Her long red hair flowed across her shoulders, she could see it in the corner of her eye against her Brunnhold greens. Another laughed somewhere behind her, a man, and she would feel something in her chest. A swelling of emotions at the sound, joy and love and delight.

Flashes though. Of something else broke through the vision.

Darkness. Screaming. Fire.

The sun on her face, a rose against her cheek.

It was cold, and the water was heavy around her. She couldn’t breathe.

Warm arms embracing her, holding her tight.

Hard fingers digging into her throat, holding her down…down…drown.

Madeleine would see the face before her, hideous and so close to her. A sense of acceptance however would flood her field, her whole being, a sense of calm. The ghost brought the other hand to her face, half out of the ink, the otherhalf still somewhere else.

“Help us. You must help us. They hurt him. They hurt…him.” Her voice was a burble, water spilling from blueish purple lips. Uttering words that had perhaps been the last of hers when the end had been close.

“Help. Us. Hurt. Him.”The ghost begged, willing Madeleine to accept it’s hungry needful ache to let her in. Let her in.

Let me in.

[Madeleine Gosselin]

Just before early, 67 Roalis, 2719
Madeleine Gosselin's Dorm Room

Madeleine was sniffling a little as well; she didn’t really mean to, but this was an awful dream, and it was getting worse. She took a deep breath. “Wake up,” Madeleine whispered, aloud. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

It was all Ezre’s fault, Madeleine decided, and Lilanee’s. If they hadn’t spent so much time talking about ghosts, she would never have had a dream about one. Madeleine shifted, taking a deep breath. She tried to think what she knew about dreams. There was something you couldn’t do in them, she was sure; it was something silly, too, like reading. But, no, of course you could read in a dream, because she’d read the words on the table.

Madeleine’s teeth chattered a little bit; she wiped at the tears on her cheeks. It was really cool, Madeleine thought, even though it was Roalis. That, she was sure, meant it was definitely a dream. She went back to the words on the desk – maybe she’d only dreamt that she read them, and she really couldn’t.

Madeleine looked down; she sniffled. She shook her head, blinking; there were pale strands of hair around her head, and her eyes – Madeleine blinked again. It was, she decided, just a trick of the light, or a part of the drea. Any moment now, Madeleine thought, her teeth chattering, she would wake up.

There was another echo of a voice. Madeleine whimpered; her breath puffed out into the air like a cloud, and a few more tears trickled down her cheeks.

Madeleine shrieked when the hand grabbed her wrist; she half-swallowed the sound, shaking. Tears were running down her cheeks now. Her eyes were wide open, too wide, and she stared down at the face coming up through the water. She tried to cry out, but it didn’t make a sound; all the sound was stopped in her lungs, strangled through, and she couldn’t push it out through her mouth.

She was lost, then; she saw the Rose garden, she felt – she saw – Madeleine was shaking.

It wasn’t a dream, Madeleine realized – it wasn’t a dream –

Panic shot through her, laced with terror. Madeleine opened her mouth to scream, to really scream – and the other damp hand cupped her cheek, and stroked it lightly. Madeleine’s mouth came closed; she breathed, slowly, in and out. She blinked.

“Yes,” Madeleine said, slowly; she blinked again. They hurt him, Madeleine thought, sluggishly. "Hurt... him." That was wrong; she knew that was wrong. She tried to shake her head, once, but the ghosts words were all she could think of. Madeleine blinked, her gaze focusing slowly back on the strange pale face so close to hers, the water-logged hair and the purple-blue lips.

“Help... you,” Madeleine said, slowly, the words coming out of her mouth. She blinked again, more slowly. There was a door, inside her, Madeleine thought, fuzzily; why was she keeping it shut? She couldn’t remember. A tear trickled down her cheek, and slid off the edge of her nose. Why had she been afraid? She didn’t know.

Madeleine blinked one last time, and, then, she opened the door.

[Raksha]

67th Roalis, 2719
BRUNNHOLD | AFTER MIDNIGHT, BEFORE THE SUN

Mod NoteShow

In these next posts I will be playing Madeline, who is currently occupied by the ghost. This has been discussed with Moral.

Yes.

The doorway was open, acceptance lured by the young woman in the damp blackened fingers of the needful creature. It’s eyes opened wide, mouth wider, water pouring from the gaping rotted hole, tongue purple with death. The corporal form of the drowned red head flickered, and slowly it merged with Madeleine, hands to hands, face to face. For the student, it would be a painful experience. She would sense the chill of another soul taking over her body, pushing her aside to take over the control of flesh and bone. Things would fill her head, overwhelm any self-awareness with flashes of the past playing in a disjointed loop. An obsessive hurtful vision, fiery things and so much water around her. Filling her lungs and weighing her down.

The thing that now inhabited the teenager inhaled with a long gasp, mouth open wide as though air was hard to come by, too long spent searching for the breath that would never come. It looked down slowly, at this body, head jerking slightly in a tick, as though movement was not quite in their control. Lifting small, pink hands, it looked at them as it turned them over. It stood there, the sun slowly lightening the dark of the sky to a deep blue, examining the intricacies of the hosts hands. She’d felt this one, through the waters. From the pond. They had been near the garden, had spoken her name.

Alysonia. Was that her name? It had been once.

They hurt him.

Lifting its face, the ghost moved with unsteady movements around the room, jerking and twitching in unexpected rapid moments of activity. It made its way to the mirror, staring at a blank face with wide blue eyes. Hair was wrong. Not red. Brown. Younger than it had been. Maybe. Had they been younger? Long ago, long long ago. Unblinking, it touched the face, the cheek. Pushed fingers against freckled skin, into brown hair. It leaned close, staring into eyes that were full of life and bright with colors and alive this host was alive.

It traced fingertips over tear streaks on freckled cheeks, the blue of morning turning into a lighter tone, mingling with pinks and purples of the pending sunrise.

They hurt him.

She needed to help him.

Turning woodenly, the creature moved across the room, staring at the door handle to the outside hall. It had memories of life, of these things. Memories reached for the handle, and turned it. Memories put bare feet on the runner outside the room, door left open as memories walked in night clothes along the hallway.

“Help…him.” The words croaked from Madeleine Gosselin, in a voice that was not hers, older and disjointed, like a toddler learning to talk. Stairs. One. One. One.

One at a time. One by one.

Standing at the base of them, the creature stood still for a moment, staring at the space in front of them. They were there now, that last day. Happy thoughts flooded the mind, visions. Breakfast. Garden. Her love. They wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t understand.

They hurt him.

Barefoot, the thing that inhabited the student moved from the dormitory, tracing feet across foyer and through doorway.

“Madeleine. Madeleine! Stop ignoring me!” Patrice snapped as she stomped her black polished shoes on the wooden ground, walking towards the other student full of early morning frustrations and sleepless annoyances. She grabbed Madeleine by the shoulder and spun her round.

“Do you know how long I was clocking well up for last night because of your—uh—you…” The steam went out of her as she took in the other girls appearance, releasing her shoulder and stepping back with a frown. A chill went down her back as she watched the blue eyes of the sixth form fix on her, though they were hollow. Like there was nothing there looking back at her. Patrice wrapped her arms around herself and stepped back a little. The girls field was wrong, full of anger and hate and heavy with sorrow. It didn’t have colors, just the depth of nothing, so deep the other girl felt like she drown it in.

“Are…are you okay?” The young woman asked, her anger forgotten at the state of the other girl.

They hurt him.

It tilted its head, as though thinking, opening its mouth to speak.

“Okay.” It parroted, before turning and walking onwards to its destination.

The garden. They’d been in the garden. They would go to the garden.

It paid no heed to the other students as it crossed the courtyard, passing by the cafeteria, set on a path that it had walked before in the time when it was alive.

Another would pass by, in the morning hours. Another who it had felt, in the garden. It was not kind. The creature fixated a tattooed face with blue eyes, hunger and rage deep within. Its hands twitched and its head jerked slightly, and it opened its mouth to choke words forth like someone who has swallowed a glass of water wrong.

“Okay. Hurt. Him. Okay.”

[Ezre Vks]

wandering campus

before dawn on the 67th of Roalis, 2719

Ezre would have perhaps used his travel as an excuse to be awake at this house. He could have perhaps complained that it was simply too hot in Anaxas, especially after just having returned from Hox. That thin mountain air still in his bloodstream but the summer heat here near sea level crushing his lungs. He perhaps could have said he still had too much on his mind—Tom's frustration, Madeleine's tears, Lilanee's touch, or even the glowing eyes of the ghost in the East Garden. Alone, any of those things and more were good reasons to be restless and awake, and yet Ezre wasn't sure if he could really blame a single one of them so much as all of them at once.

Sweaty and annoyed that even an open window wasn't enough to cool down his small room, the Hoxian eventually gave into being awake, slipping into comfortable, lightweight linen clothes instead of his uniform, given it was thankfully still unnecessary for a few more weeks before classes began again in Yaris. He ran palms over the shaved sides of his scalp and gathered thick, dark hair into a loose bun, out of his face, not even bothering to look at himself in the small mirror on the standard issue dormitory dresser stuck against one wall.

Po lifted his wide head from the bedsheets, tail swishing as if thoughtfully considering what the young Guide was up to, but then promptly laid back down again, unconcerned. The deep blue tones of the hours before dawn filtered into Ezre's room and it was just enough to see by, gathering his satchel and notes, slipping the book with pressed garden roses in wax paper between the pages into the bag as well.

Maybe he'd wander by the Garden at this hour, just to see.

Maybe he'd see if he could find his aquamancy cup, though he wasn't sure it was wise to venture inside the gates of the garden alone.

Carrying his soft leather shoes, the dark-haired student padded out into the hall and down the stairs quietly on bare feet, noting that the hall monitor'd fallen asleep reading a book, most likely studying for the some post-graduate course or another that would start again once summer break was over. He slipped his shoes on and quietly snuck out into the pre-dawn morning, aware that he had no curfew but always feeling strange on Brunnhold's campus being out at unacceptable hours, even if this wasn't his first time and certainly wouldn't be his last.

With the exception of the Gated passive servants, no one was actually out at whatever time this was. Maybe there were a few athletes eagerly getting in some time at the Gyre, but even then, Ezre doubted that very much. He was just a shadow in the deep blue that stretched across all of Campus, occasionally illuminated by the electric lampposts that lined sidewalks and stood sentinel next to Brunnhold's red stone buildings, lost in thought as he sifted through the past few days since his return to Anaxas, attempting to piece together names and clues from their various discoveries as well as from the book from the Crypts. The Hoxian had to admit that he'd been too tired and too distracted to focus on it all, and so this slow, meandering walk was more productive than he'd intended.

He made his way past the cafeteria, aware that it was, unfortunately, still to early for breakfast, and as he made his way along familiar paths toward the library in order to keep walking past that, too, toward the East Garden, he felt the strangest of sensations.

Well, perhaps not strange so much as unexpected. There was a familiarity to the field that brushed his, familiar enough that he stopped walking and turned—for he hadn't noticed anyone, so far into his own thoughts—but also strangely unfamiliar enough that his own field drew close, sigiled with a sort of instinctual protectiveness.

Oh.

"Miss Gosselin?" Ezre considered the sight of the younger student, especially since he'd upset her last time they'd met and she still looked upset now. She didn't seem the sort of girl to be caught outside of her dorm after curfew, especially in her nightclothes. The Hoxian didn't want to stare, so he looked down slightly, delicate brows drawing together in the faintest hint of concern and confusion.

The girl murmured some words, sounding strange, and he wondered if she was sleepwalking—he had a cousin that more than once staggered out into the snow, still asleep, when they were children—

Something felt wrong, and it was a familiar kind of wrong. Shifting slightly on his feet but not taking a step back, the Hexxos Guide looked back to Madeleine's face, attempting to get a better feel for her field, somehow disconcertingly aware it was ... odd.

"Are you alright? Did something happen?"