<strong>Maggie Foss</strong><br/><strong>Location</strong>: Ruins of the school<br/><strong>Tag</strong>: Robert, Cern<br/><hr/>Cern's voice is like black honey, striking a chord in her that is both familiar, comforting, and repulsive in its strangeness.  She stares at the being, uncertain that he is some hallucinatory figment just as she is uncertain of the reality consuming her, stifling her breaths so that she strains painfully for air, her lungs burning like when she fights to complete the last mile of a long run (cursing every cigarette she'd ever snuck along the way)...<br/><br/>"No," she says, soft enough for Robert barely to hear, "I don't--" she blinks at him, her large eyes glistening in the light of the glimmering little spirits.  Through the denim jacket sleeve, Robert can feel the long, slim arm beneath trembling as she turns to face that crawling darkness, feeling with certainty that it is a living thing-- many, in fact.  A swarm, a pestilence of<i>things</i>that are reaching for them in the dark, tightening upon them with every exhale so that the next breaths are harder and harder.<br/><br/>Knowing that, she grows the same cold, emotional distance that she holds toward her mother's drunken insults, toward her stepfather's dehumanizing stares, toward her principals' indifference when she had still bothered trying to explain why she didn't have her homework because she spent all night carrying her possessions from an eviction to a low-income flat, why she couldn't let her little brother ride the bus alone, or why she didn't have a gym uniform because her mother had used it to clean her bong...<br/><br/>She's been ready for this her whole life, it seems, and the fear evaporates as surely as the venomous things in the dark part before her level stare and the cold, assured determination that, yes, they<i>will</i>move... she can feel her pulse in her breast and in her head, a throbbing pressure with the effort of focusing her will.<br/><br/>At 2013-09-11 18:05:17, Mags (uid: 768) rolls: 1d100 Result: 22 (http://elliquiy.com/forums/dicebot.php?r=49989)