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message 1:
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Willa
(last edited Apr 01, 2016 04:46PM)
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Nov 02, 2015 02:13PM
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"Well, Grandmother, you can't just go about saying hi to people. You do know you're a ghost, right? You chose me to be your haunted. No one else can see you. No, it is not normal for people to hear some empty air say, 'Hi', Grandmother!"
Luna Moody O'Dove, pouring tea for herself and her invisible ghost grandmother, would seem crazy to anyone but herself. She sat at her mini-teatable next to her bunk in the corner, using fine china and jasmine tea to get to know her lovely grandma, Sasha O'Dove.
"Luna, dear, isn't just good fun to see them look up with surprise, though? It's much better then having you out with that Azreal girl, she's much to cynical for me." Sasha, who for the sake of our saneness we will pretend to see, was very hateful of Luna's friend Azreal, and had such taken Luna away for the day.
Miss Lunadove, ever the angry one, drank the remains in her teacup and glared at her grandma. "I never liked Frank Budapest when he came over, but I let you think I did!"
"You really, truly didn't? Dear, that's very rude of you. Frank was a very nice man determined upon making me happy!" Sasha exclaimed.
Luna took a very deep breath. "Grandmother, he was insane."
"He did not eat Maine! That's absurd, Luna--"
"No, Grandmother! He was insane. Six letters. I-N-S-A-N-E."
It is at this point we may leave the couple, young and dead, for their conversation was much like this the whole time, and I need not bore you. So wait until the next conversation comes along, hopefully between two friends, and then we may return to this pair elsewhere.
Alexandrina limped into the bunks area. So she'd only been in Ivorymark one day and was already injured in the foot from stepping on a shard of glass she didn't see.
Sighing, she sat on what was now her bunk and wondered who had been there before. Were there any ghosts haunting this room? The place had that odd mysterious air just right for hosting them.
Ellie looked up from her bunk at the girl limping in. Furrowing her brow, she set down her book and wondered if she should ask what was wrong. It would be the proper thing to do, after all, since she could possibly fix the issue, but she was a little shy...
Oh, go away, she thought, and stood. "You okay?" she asked, nodding at the girl's injured foot.
Alexandrina cradled her foot in her hands.
"I don't know. It's not a huge deal, but I think there's a decent-sized cut. I've been here a day. What about you?"
Ellie cringed. Cuts were painful. "That's too bad! I've been here two years." Sitting beside the girl, she examined the cut. It was shallow, but probably would take time to heal on its own. She looked up. "I can fix your foot, though. You might not have heard yet, but this place... it's strange. If you make a wish, the wish comes true — and somehow, everyone wishes. But it twists and bends and then you get stuck without what you wanted. Sometimes, people get strange abilities and powers. I'm a healer."
Alexandrina nodded. "I know. I had a mild disorder before coming here that gave me slight issues with my temper and emotions and the like and I've always thought if I didn't have it all my social problems would be solved. When that wasn't the case - after only a day - I wished I would revert to my original self and now I'm kind of stuck with it.
"Oh, and it would be nice if you fixed my foot. Thanks."
"At least you've already made a wish," Ellie said, giving her a sad smile. "It's hard to try to not make one." She took Alexandrina's foot and focused on it. "I'm Electra, by the way. You can call me Ellie." She let go of the foot and set it back down. "There you go," she said, smiling.
Alexandrina nodded. "Thanks. I'm Alexandrina, by the way, but most call me Sandra. I guess I have a lot of this place to learn about."
Ellie shrugged. "Everyone does," she said. She tucked her brown hair, wild as ever, behind her ear. "You said you had a mild disorder. Did your wish make it disappear?"
Alexandrina nodded. "It wasn't such a big deal until a few years ago, but after that point I really did want to be free of it. The thing is, it also had some positive effects I lost and it really didn't do a whole lot to me. So I wished to have it again and now I'm kind of stuck."
Frowning, she wondered what that would be like; to go from having a disorder to not having it, realizing what a difference it had really made in your life. "That's pretty terrible," Ellie replied finally. "At least you didn't wish you could leave, though. I've seen some people who did, and that... well, it wasn't I fate I would wish upon anyone."
"Do they, like, leave ... this life?" Alexandrina asked hesitantly. "Or is it some whole other idea?"
She stared down at the dusty wooden floor.
"There are different fates for different wishes. The people I've seen have gone so crazy they kill themselves by running into the barrier too many times." Ellie let out a breath. "It is all together awful."
"What's a barrier?" Alexandrina asked. "What does it do and why do people choose to run into barriers?"
"The barrier is what keeps us trapped here," Ellie explained. "The same force that grants our wishes surrounds this orphanage, making it impossible to leave. So when you wish to do just that, it kills you, driving you crazy with the need to leave." She shuddered, her brown eyes full of fear. "I try my best to find people like that and stop them before it's too late, but so far most people end up slipping away and running full force into the barrier anyway."
Alexandrina nodded. "Is is a physical thing or is it just some force you sense or something? How do you not run into them by accident?"
Ellie shrugged. "You can't see it, but you can see the signs that things are going wrong. Like a scorch line, or a twisted bush. But running into it once won't kill you. Most people just try to stay closer to the orphanage, but I doubt you'll actually be killed by walking into it on accident." She shrugged a little. Wondering how many times she'd run into it, Ellie tugged out one of her loose eyelashes.
Alexandrina fidgeted with a loose lock of hair that had escaped her bun. There were so many questions about this place. Why was it so impossible to leave?
"How big is the place?" she asked.
"I don't really know," she said. "There's the actual orphanage, which is quite large, and then there's the little scrap forest, so I'd say it's about an acre large? I'm not the best with measurements, though." Ellie studied Alexandrina. "I like your hair, by the way."
"Thank you," Alexandrina said. She processed the idea of the forest. "How big would the forest be? And what is in the 'actual orphanage' apart from this?"
"The actual orphanage is what we're in now," she said. "The forest isn't too big, just large trees. I like to call it the Rhode Forest."
((just got back from a trip))"Why Rhode?" Alexandrina asked, fiddling with her hair. "Someone's name?"
She stared back down at the floor.
(( Ah, okay! ))Ellie smiled a bit. "Sorry, I guess I should have been more specific. Ah, well, I have been told I'm a bit vague at points..." For a second, she drifted in thought of her old friend Anna, telling her to be more clear just before the plane crash ended her life. Struggling to keep her smile up, Ellie said, "I based it off of Rhode Island. As in, it's the Rhode Island of all forests because of how small it is. Kind of dumb, actually." She shrugged.
"Can you count the number of trees there are, then?" Alexandrina asked, oblivious to the falseness in the other girl's smile. "And is there anything dangerous in it?"She took a mental step back from her questioning.
"Sorry, I've only been here so long."
"It's fine," Ellie replied. "Once upon a time, not that long ago, really, I was just as curious! But to answer your questions, I've never encountered anything other than the usual creatures — squirrels, birds, sometimes a few pheasants — out there, and while I've never counted the trees, I guess if you have enough time and patience, you might be able to. The whole forest is about the size of maybe two large banquet halls put together." She thought about it for a minute. "Actually, maybe a tiny bit bigger. So, large in comparison to our usual buildings and rooms here, but small in comparison to other forests." Ellie pushed some escaping strands of her hair behind her ear, toying with her feet a little.
"That's actually decently large," Alexandrina said. "The way you initially described it I thought of a small cluster of trees and nothing more."
Ellie nodded. "Sorry about that," she said, smiling at Alexandrina. "Like I said, I'm not always the best at describing things. But while the forest is big, there's not much inside; trees, a creek, maybe a deer if you're lucky."
Alexandrina nodded and fidgeted a bit. "So what do people generally do around here?"
"Well," she started, "I usually read, or talk to the other kids, or try to find people who need to be healed. There's not too much to do -- we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you can get snacks any time, and there's paper and books and such in all the bunks." Ellie bit her lip. "But some kids just sit there, and do nothing, just blink and breathe, slowly waste away. It's terrible."
