I Enjoy Angsting in the Dark

[Ixtlilton]

Dragon had not had a very good time of it at the school. Her math teacher seemed insistant on paying her special attention, which she hated, and she'd also found someone who reminded her of unhappy things. And also she'd run into a fridge. She wasn't in a good mood...

So she was sulking, the number one thing for angsty fifteen year olds to do.

She'd made it her priority to get dark drapes for the window, and by dark drapes she more or less meant cloth so thick that the sun itself couldn't burn through. She'd turned off all other lights, so the room was almost completely pitch black. A bit of light shone in underneath the door from the hallway, and even that was almost too much for her in her sulkiness. She'd even hung more of the curtains from the bottom of her bed, giving her a nice little extra dark super hiding place.

She was under there now, just sort of floating in shadows and irritability. She had a tendency to want to keep away from people when she was injured, and that hadn't really been much of an option for a few years. She was upset, and the whole fact her world had changed so violently in just a few weeks was really catching up to her. She was quite firm with herself that she certainly did NOT miss her old life, but she wasn't entirely sure she liked this one either.

She was fifteen, miserable, hormonal, scared, and still in minor pain. Not a good day for Dragon, so it was no surprise she'd skipped her classes.

[Kitten King]

Y'know, why she expected this school to be any different from the others, one couldn't explain. This place was exactly like all the other educational hellholes she'd been trapped in before - but the exception now was that she couldn't escape. There was no going home and brooding and eating cookies from the jar in the middle of the night. She was just... here. Trapped. Like a rat in a maze with only a cage to go home to at the end of the experiment.

Considering who had been missing from one of the afternoon classes they shared, too, she expected that someone else had been having an equally grand time here as well.

With the click of a lock she twisted the door open, letting light stream in for a moment. She tossed her bag onto the bed, where it landed on the very edge before sliding onto the floor - Lilith shut the door behind herself a little too loudly. It was reasonably cool in the room, since the sunlight hadn't been streaming in to warm it up, and Dragon wasn't the only one who felt secure in the darkness. Lilith made her way over to her bed, kicking her bag underneath along the way (and hurting her toe in the process) before she flopped down on it with a sigh.

"..oi, Dragon?" She remembered her roommate's name well enough, and that was a start, she guessed. "You around?" It was hard to tell, with the curtains under the bed, and the darkness, and the fact that her roommate could just poff into shadow like nothing. Hell she could be laying on Dragon, and she wouldn't know. ...she hoped she wasn't. God. That was awkward-time that wouldn't be needed.

[Ixtlilton]

Dragon only noticed the door opening by the slight increase in brightness. She probably would have been pretty upset if she hadn't put those curtains around her bed. As it was, she just felt momentarily smug about the fact she had. The safe feeling of being able to go anywhere she wanted at any point, as well as just being more or less untoucheable, was a luxury she hadn't been afforded for quite some time.

She heard the door slam, and she made a wild guess that it was Lilith rather than someone (like that freaking math teacher or the janitor) come to make sure she hadn't died. She was proved right in a few moments when Lilith made a proximity check to see whether or not Dragon was there. Fair enough. It wouldn't be right to "spy," or to lie to Lilith, so she popped out of the shadow enough to reply.

"Yeah, I'm under the bed."

[Kitten King]

So Dragon was hiding out in here. Good plan - Lilith should've ditched out herself and just come back here, considering how splendidly everything else went. Nyeehh, but then she never would have heard the end of it from Nic if he found out. Double-edged sword, it was.

"Thought ya might be," she responded, rolling over again to look at the curtains around the side of her roommate's bed. She knew she probably wouldn't be seeing anything of her, considering how splendid their other conversations had been.. "I noticed ya weren't around in class th's afternoon." She rolled back over, staring at the ceiling like she usually did. She could see the faint outlines of lighter shadows to darker shadows, and she studied them casually as she spoke. "So I figured you'd prolly be hangin' 'round here, eh?" She paused a moment, tracing the faintest of outlines in the world around her with her eyes. "No worries - ya didn't miss much."

[Ixtlilton]

There was a pause of silence, then... "Did the teachers say anything?" She sighed. "I don't know how this whole school thing works here. If I missed a class when I was little, N--people would just yell lecture notes at shadows and refuse to feed me until I came out and did my work."

She sank back into shadow and came out on her stomach instead of her back. Rolling over would certainly make her hit her head. She sighed again. "Mr. Abelev was nice, getting me a place here. And I don't miss my old place; I don't. I just..." her voice kind of choked a little. "Everything's... It was two weeks ago, Lil, two weeks! Everything's different now and, I, I just, I..."

[Kitten King]

"Just if anyone knew where you were," she responded, glancing over at the dark curtains again. "That was it, pretty basic procedure." Huh. Whomever it was that was teaching her before sounded like a right bastard. Why, if it was Lilith in Dragon's place, she would have- and then she kept going, and it all broke loose. Lilith was startled for a moment at the change, and hesitated a moment before she oriented herself and rolled back off her bed, so that she could move over to Dragon's.

"Woah, woah." She wasn't really prepared for this one, not in the least, but here it was. "Ssshhh ssshhh sssshhhhhh - it's all right, it's okay." What else could she say? Anything? Something… "I… I understand." That was good, go on that, Lilith. "It's real different for me, here, too." Not as different as it was for Dragon, she was almost positive by the sound of things, but nevertheless, different. She hesitated another moment, before she sat down on the ground beside the dark curtain. "I've been t' schools before but not.. this kind. Where ya stay. It's not something I'm.. comfortable with. I don't exactly, er, excel, at learning." Was she getting anywhere? God, she hoped so. She really, really hoped so.

"Me? I'm haven' a bitch of a time. I thought I could see Nic all the time again - we don' share classes, he sleeps on the other side of the place, where I can't get ta him, with a roommate." She'd sought him out in the middle of the night many times before, long ago, when neither of them had these stupid powers or worries. She'd thought it would be like that again. "If I'm upset about school, I can't go home and mope, and escape. School is home. …I kinda hate it here, so far." She stared at the curtain again for just a split second, then laid down on her own belly beside it, and pulled up the very bottom of it to peek inside. "Dun worry, Drag - you're not alone."

[Ixtlilton]

Dragon, if later pressed about it, would have sooner died than admitted she was tearing up, but she was. She might have rationalized it with all that she'd been through, but that kind of rationalization was for pansies, and Dragon was no pansy.

She just kind of felt like one right then.

"I-I-I" she stammered, her throat tight from choking back on the tears. "I lived th-there for three y-years. S-since I was twelve, you know? A-and... I guess I f-forgot there was another world outside of that one. I-I thought that was [hic] all there was. A-and I'd never g-get away and that was just going to be m-my life for the rest of time." She hiccuped again.

"And now it's NOT and everything here is different. And I can't cope, I-I'm stupid and I don't know how to look at people and I-I have all these stupid triggers and I feel like a fucking invalid a-a-and..." About that time, Bonnie decided it was his sworn duty to snuggle her, which helped. He felt a bit better until she started using him to wipe her face.