Clover dreamt of unidentifiable people. She dreamt of nameless, faceless shadow people. And when she opened her eyes, she still saw them. Clo saw the shadow people in the corners of the room, standing at impossible heights and bent at inhuman angles. For over an hour, she lay there and watched them. They looked like black paintings on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, but they hung like permanent scars in the atmosphere.ooc: reaction to this thread
The dark color of her eyes matched perfectly with the darkness of their twisted bodies. As their forms wavered, she regained some control over her body. She clutched the sheets to her body, shielding herself from their sightless eyes, and slid herself into a seated position. Clo pressed her back to the headboard, but she shifted her weight to the left to turn on one of the bedside lamps. The light should have cleansed the room of the shadows, just as it cleansed her body of its shadows, but the shadow people remained. She watched the blurred edges of their forms; she stared right into their bodies to the individual cells within. For a moment, Clover wondered if they would ever leave the room. When they did dissipate, they slowly faded into the walls, as if they had saturated the wood and only just reached the temperature to evaporate.
For some reason, the room felt colder without them. Without her shadow people--and she did consider them a part of her element, if nothing else--she had nothing to distract her from the fact that Jesse had disappeared. He’d left her. Clo kicked the sheets aside and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Despite all the progress they’d made, she still felt the overwhelming panic associated with not knowing his every movement. He’d gotten better. She told herself that over and over again. Her mind convinced her to wait, to give him time. But when an hour had passed and he hadn’t returned, she gave in to her paranoia and began scouring the room for clues.
She tugged on ripped skinny jeans and slid on one of her flannel tops, just items she’d found scattered on the floor, and began checking around for his clothing. She pried open drawers, but his clothes looked undisturbed. She circled back to the bed, but she couldn’t rely on the fact that the sheets lacked some semblance of warmth. It had been an hour, she reminded herself. It had only been an hour.
But he didn’t want to be alone.
I’m not supposed to leave him alone.
If it weren’t for the fact that she spotted his phone, she might have torn the whole room apart in unbridled anxiety. There were too many unanswered questions, some of which held no value in her current situation. But when her anxiety, when her fear, found a place in her heart, she went to the depths of herself to find anything to feed the feeling and keep it alive.
Clover unlocked his phone and searched through histories of texts and phone calls. Had he wandered off again? Had he gone to set a bonfire for himself? Had he walked toward the wilderness, toward the fae that welcomed him into their false sanctuary?
“Why isn’t this telling me anything?” Clover spoke to herself as if she expected an answer. She couldn’t answer the question. “Where are you? How can I find you? Can Kaelyn find you? Can Jersey reach out to you? I’m overreacting,” Clo finished, though her voice was strained. She swore she saw a reemergence of the shadow people. The darkness rose up in her peripheral vision and became like thick veils. When Clover finished checking over his phone, she’d wasted another hour. The only clue she had was a live feed from one of the building’s security cameras. She didn’t know if there were other videos or if there were more clues, but she’d done her best. The video showed Jesse walking into an area layered in traps. For some reason, he’d taken the stairs.
Clo texted Jersey from Jesse’s phone. She did her best to make the text messages coherent, but her thoughts were jumbled. She didn’t know where his journey began, but she had to mimic his actions. Message after message went through.
I think something’s happened to Jesse.
He’s not here.
I’m going to keep looking.
Is there anything you can do to help me?
When she had nothing else to send, Clo tossed Jesse’s phone onto the bed and began rummaging through the room for her combat boots. She couldn’t find them. She couldn’t find Jesse. Clo fell back onto the floor and covered her face with her hands. There were so many possibilities. Something told her to reach out to Victor, just like old times, but she hesitated. She hesitated to reach out to anyone in Fforde. Handling things on her own had become her forte. Look where that had gotten her. Look where her inability, or outright refusal, to trust had gotten her.
Clover spied one of her sneakers, and she refocused her energy on locating the second. She had a clear plan. When she located the second, she took her shoes back over to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Jesse’s phone taunted her. He’d left the phone behind. He’d left her the phone. Out of all the things he could have left--no, why hadn’t he left himself? Why hadn’t he stayed in bed? And was he dead? Was he really gone? After she tied her shoes, she snagged the phone from atop the sheets and typed out one final text message.
Vic, I can’t find Jesse.
