francismont:
metallicshine:
DATE: july 13th TIME: 04:01 am LOCATION: in the forest LETTER TO: @francismont & @fikkir-isilay
Twisted branches, and glistening leaves showing remnants of the morning to come grazed bare skin. Egyptian blues painted the edges of the dark sky, washing away the stars with each light streak of sun. A false dawn cresting the horizon, illuminating the edges of the two students stumbling their way through the forest. Drunk on cheap spirits, tired eyes swallow the scene.
Twigs snapping, there were things in these woods, creatures. Animals, McKenzie would tell herself as she looks down to her feet careful of where she steps. While the night air is cooler, it’s still warm enough that she’s comfortable in her spaghetti strapped singlet that left her mid exposed, and baggy pants. Other students returned to their cabins long before Frankie, Fikkir and McKenzie did, the three of them too lost in conversation to return until now.
Perhaps it was the things she thought she heard, scurrying around like warnings before an attack. Or perhaps it was how empty the forest felt even in all the sounds that prompted her question, looking across to the others. “Do you believe the stories?”
Frankie hadn’t planned on drinking, but he found that McKenzie could be particularly persuasive. Insulted integrity and classic peer pressure and the alcohol soon made attacked his senses. By the time they were walking back towards the cabins, every sound felt like a dream. The crunching of leaves beneath their feet was fascinating to his drunken mind.
His eyes wandered around their surroundings, his fingers touched the bark of a tree. He pressed his hand against it, the roughness of it against his hand making him smile. He soon realised he probably looked a little insane so he retracted his hand and kept walking.
He liked how lonely it felt, despite having two people walking by his side. He decided he didn’t hate the forest as much as he thought he did. “The stories?” he repeated, like he was struggling to grasp what she meant. “Oh. The stories. The scary ones.” He snorted and kicked at a stone — which turned out to be a rock embedded in the ground and it hurt his foot very much. He winced, pretending nothing had happened. “I don’t know. I don’t like to think about them much.” Despite his claim, he glanced over his shoulder, like he was expecting to see something sinister. He thought he had heard something.
@fikkir-isilay
She was half listening to her friends, half making sure neither of them decapitated themselves on a low hanging brand or managed to break a leg in a ditch hidden by fallen leaves, scattered dirt and God knew what else that made up the floor of the forest. Though she wasn’t as strict as others that shared her faith, she had always maintained a halal diet, even when her father took her and her brothers to Denny’s for bacon, sausages and cheesy eggs whenever their mother was away for the weekend on business. As such, the haram nature of alcohol meant that Fikkir was the ultimate designated driver, with duties including guiding her friends through the dark depths of the forest and waiting patiently if they needed to throw up on any nearby trees.
“The stories,” Fikkir repeated, amused. Maybe it was the way Frankie said it, maybe it was the way the phrase embodied such a profound meaning when spoken in reference to Broadripple Academy’s colorful history. She shrugged her shoulders, though she was sober, it didn’t stop her mind from wandering a little and if asked about it, she’d blame that on tiredness. “I believe the story about that girl that killed the nuns- I’m pretty sure there’s a record of that,” man, what was her name? She couldn’t recall it now. “-but shit like devil worshippers out here? No way- like ninety percent of stories about devil worshippers are just goth kids or crazy hillbillies in the middle of the country that blame demons for everything that happens and blame alien abductions for everything else- like Faith for example, I bet she believes all of it,”
@metallicshine














