My Phair Calen [ Closed ]

[Pyper]

[ I had to quit school. ]

That was enclosed in a confidential email between the telepathic Altaire and her childe. Pyper was the reason that Ethan could no longer attend his classes and learn what he needed to know to excel. She snuffed out his progression prematurely. She influenced his future. All due to spying him on happen stance in a division of books, unaware of the pull to him but following the intuition basing it on pure curiosity. The idea of higher education was loosely based off television programs and dramatized slasher films. At universities, it was hard to see anyone being able to drop into rigorous study sessions when everyone was busy taking their clothes off and exploring each other and not the dangers lingering nearby.

Ethan wrote, in addition, a budding epiphany. He wrote to her that everybody lies. There were many reasons why. It meant the scenes in her less active method of passing time may be false depictions of how colleges functioned on a day to day standard. That being the case, it left her wondering what things were utilized in auditoriums and lecture halls. Their items could be useful to her. Usage itself was a knowledge, and the trek into a new area could inspire project ideas. Those gifts still needed to be made. One for Calix. One for Freyja. One or two for Nevaeh, she needed to return a favor of an equal caliber. Charles was to receive something as well.

As of late, another bout of what Paige had diagnosed by the symptoms of depression had begun to take its toll. Ideas were fumbling around in her head and with an unsteady grasp, Lucretia tangled with vague details but they escaped each time. Many glass objects had been dotted with fibrous surface fractures. She had to move the necklaces so they wouldn't be damaged. The tools she snatched from junk piles had to be replaced and items relocated to their exact prior positions. This phenomena was expected when the Altaire's frustration hit a cap. It happened more dramatically in the presence of Simone. Their conversations were emotionally taxing.

Then it targeted her side activities, a worm within the core of her excursion on self discovery. The portfolio remained malnourished of her pride. Of who she was becoming. The benefits outnumbered the reasons why it wasn't a good idea to put herself in their hallways.

The apartment hadn't been visited by anyone but Ethan in a while. Pyper entered all of the rooms, with half hope. Slow to catch on, being alone opened up time for her thoughts to undergo metamorphosis. The bastardizing implications were over reaches, they were the epitome of the definition of paranoia. With unseen hands, her actions pulled people closer. The grip that they had was crushing, and devastating. That need to be near other social forms of spiritual life (as they were, they had all died but somehow still operated well beyond their prior peaks) ruined her own space. It was too quiet; there was herself and her thoughts. The slithering insect to murmur its fallacies and distort her understanding. The call made to her sire, to Phoenix, resulted in an unintentional dismissal. More accurately, it had been imperative for Phoenix to end the call. Yet that hanging in the hollow parts of her sternum remained several minutes after the screen blacked out with that message: Call Ended.

Sleep wasn't going to rescue her, if choosing one extreme sensation over another could be considered the equivalent. Tonight turned into the night she would despoil the local university of its respective valuables. This called for her scrubs, a dress was for social occasions. Phoenix and she had agreed that they were. Harvesting was part of work, and plenty of her favorite dresses were casualties now. The scrubs were black, the pockets deep enough to hold the peculiarly folded map. Fifteen minutes ticked by, of pacing and staring at her route. Then she could curl inside, and reinforce the anatomy lessons she's had so far. Replaying the procedures soothed her, it sharpened her attention until it wore her brain down enough to open up to the notion of stilling herself in a bed and resting.

On the transit, a forefinger traced a straight line in the condensation. Two more lines recreated the same 'Y' incision implemented to dissect the body. So absorbed, the stop at Newborough nearly sailed by without dropping her off.

HR West University was south west from the station. The parking lot had lights, a few held dull life. Others flickered periodically. Those things were immediately observed. A side door into the main building proved to be more vulnerable than any of the others during a partial sweep. A light hung over her shoulders, hovering and shedding some clarity on the illegal activity. The pupils of her eyes contracted as that inquisitive gaze set on the oversized lamp. That top to the bottle of overwhelming emotions popped off, it shot into the glass in a trained wave. It startled her, and both palms had to quiet the knee jerk laughter coming out. A dark blanket blinked to permit more time to make a way in. The fissures were abrupt, the energy grinding the edges of glass to sigh out with a spray of shards. It was a game of Connect The Ends that paid off when a triangular shape fell and shattered when its flat surface met pavement.

From there, more plunged to the ground like icicles until the window was open air. Lucretia climbed through the opening and through a door on her right several steps down the hallway. She was about to see a university classroom for the first time.

[Calen (DELETED 5969)]

The lights flickered out in the hallway as I made my way about my office, eyes scanning over the various notes I had written for my latest project. Haitian voodoo was a hotly debated topic in the circle of occultism, and as the matter of my Master’s thesis, I felt the need to provide my evidence of it being more than mere ‘hoop-blah’ or whatever that phrase was. A recently published article had discredited the creation of Haiti zombies, setting scholars of the occult into an uproar. Some believed, while others didn’t. There was a fine line to stand on either side of, I just wanted to be on the right one.

Most, if not all of my colleagues had left the night, leaving me alone to my studies, and for that I was more that grateful. During the day there was constant interruptions, people going to and from offices, asking for notes or paperwork that all hardly mattered. It was all so distracting, and I wished beyond hope for a soundproof door that locked from the inside with no master key. Not that I would ever receive one, but the desire was there. Besides, the janitors had to be able to come in and clean, eventually. Whether I wanted them in my office, or not.

I paused in my pacing, frowning at the words on the page as if they had insulted me in some way or another. They were utter rubbish, a piece of **** disguised as a scientific article. The men that allowed it to be published deserved to be shunned from the community, as they had disgraced occultism as a legitimate form of study. And that irritated me beyond belief. With a scowl, a tossed the article away, uncaring of the mess I was slowly making on the floor as more and more papers gathered there.

With a heavy sigh, I moved from my office to the lounge down the hall, hoping to brew myself a small pot of coffee. The lounge was spotless, the only light coming from the bar over the sink. I didn’t bother with adding anymore, silently filling up the pot with water to add into the machine. The grounds were stuffed in the very back of the cabinet and I groaned as I shifted sugar and various spices out of the way. What we needed spices for in a professor’s lounge, I hadn’t a clue, as none of seemed to do much cooking? Whatever the reason, they were in the way.

Having managed to bring down the grounds after too much effort on my part, I set up the coffee machine and let it brew. In the meantime, I dropped myself into a chair with a heavy sigh. I rub at my shoulders, wishing I could get a back massage. My stress level was perhaps at an all-time high, but it all needed to be done. Classes would be starting in a few days, and my own research demanded equal attention. If anything, it was more important to me, but teaching was also a joy. There was no easy way to do both.

The sounds of breaking glass startled me from my thoughts and I jumped from my chair. In most situations, a normal human being would not go toward the noise, but I was hardly normal. I peered out the doorway down the hall, looking for the source of the noise. With quiet steps, I searched down the hall, looking the various classrooms and office windows. Why anyway would break into these rooms, I couldn’t fathom as there was hardly anything worth stealing.

Each room after the next was as empty and untouched as it should have been. Until I came upon an open classroom, a slight blonde in the room poking around. I stopped in the doorway, watching her go about her business. Only after a good few minutes did I say anything, ”Can I help you with something?” I raised my eyebrows up in question, still unsure how to react to someone snoop around a classroom, of all things.

[Pyper]

The essence of academia collected in the trapped air perfumed from the built in shelving opposite of the doorway. Books were filed alphabetically by the last name of the author. The information that displayed their literary origins dropped letters vertically along their leather spines. The indentations were filled in with hard pressed, gold foil, it exaggerated each symbol; the sheen, even in the spotlight of the moon’s aura overlaid half of the closest case with stripes from the venetian blinds. No vacancies left gaps in any of the rows. The amount of thick volumes the slabs of mutilated trees carried was impressive. They did not groan any protests in the opposition of their stagnant existence. 

The hardwood was polished to an anxiety-inducing shine. Marring the flawless buffed foundation she recognized would be rude to someone else’s work. Floors take a lot of muck from the bottoms of shoes. On the nights she spent time in her apartment, Pyper roamed around and showed each closed off room a touch of manic cleaning. It meant finding herself down on hands and knees parked at the front door, scrubbing the dirt caked on the floor. Chiefly, from Ethan and herself. Ethan had his own routines and those frenzied deep cleaning sessions overlapped the (assumed) calculated times Ethan came home. Pyper listened for footsteps at the door during those particular hours, so as not to be unexpectedly whacked upon the crown of her head. Her floors never came out as breathtakingly pristine.

The area rug did not quite reach the black leather couch. It would fit three bodies if she created one pair of herself. Standing at the base of the furniture, the bulky desk with its hulking mass made itself the superior focal point in the quarters. Two more single-body chairs were angled so that the outside of the arms conceived the letter “V” with the corners of the desk. The intricate designs brought together the effect with muted earth tones. There was sand leaflets woven in beyond the black void backdrop. Dark forests of green highlighted sharp, jagged edges. Like the ivy vines escaping from the colorless sternum and the front parts of her shoulders. Some of the black star shaped blossoms peered from the dive at the front center of her scrubs.

This wasn't the standard classroom she expected.
Lucretia discovered an office.

"Can I help you with something?"

Star fall had come and gone, the sun had been brightly lighting the other side of the hemisphere for hours before her arrival to the school. The doors were locked to keep people out. No one was suppose to be in the building until the next violent burst of fire to dry up the dewy peaks of hills first. Her body should have been the sole higher organism in the maze of teaching rooms and drafty hallways. This man's voice froze a layer, chipped nail as it was grazing the gravel - embossed binding of the third Encyclopedia Britannica volume.

The owner of the male's lower registered tone appeared older. A tone Charles might have used to rouse her attention to center on him. If he holed himself up in one of the other rooms, he'd have keys on him. Meaning that he belonged among the protected scripts. The bridge separating her education level from others could shorten. If this man put himself in the position to grant her request. It came out of the mouth of a girl, not a woman. Lucretia's understanding would mark her in the phase of adolescence until something changed. 

"I, want to learn, things. Everything, in here. Everything, anywhere."

Was this man the catalyst to that transformation?