𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖔𝖈𝖙𝖆𝖛𝖎𝖆: “it was buried on campus.”
tossing and turning in interrupted sleep. this was, regrettably, the new normal. norah liked to speculate that some of her newfound restlessness came from the energy emanating so loudly from the room on the other side of her thin wall. the one that didn’t stay empty. not for long. she was raised under a catholic roof – and maybe that’s why her emotions are as transparent as stained glass, a sacred imitation, reaching – and spirits were supposed to be angels, the very presence of a divine god. she repeats this like it offers any comfort, like it’s something she still believes in. could still believe in. she’s dreaming, wracking the pages of scripture imprinted on her mind as clear as the assignment she’d been handed in biology only hours before when she sees octavia. spectral. ethereal. “ norah bardot. sweet flower. i NEED you. ” she doesn’t offer anything else, not at first, as norah stares and stares and stares. her mind desperate to make sense of the vision. counting her fingers, like her father used to instruct her to do after a particularly terrifying nightmare. she loses count once and then twice and then octavia speaks again. “ listen to me. LISTEN. it was buried on campus. ” and her voice is so clear it cuts past the fog of sleep and norah shoots up, her breath caught somewhere in her throat. “ what is? ” she asks first, demanding, with all of the irritation of being awoken far too early by lysander with questions about a class that could wait. sleep rubbed from her eyes, sleep forgotten and yet still calling to her. “ you? ” like it’s normal to respond to a hallucination, a dream, and if she wasn’t so tired, so distraught, she would have thought far more rationally – all logic and reason. knowledge that bites, tampers doubt. “ octavia. ” and the word is a whisper, lest someone overhear, report her as unwell, unfit to return to class. mad with grief, whispered worry she overhears when others bring up theresa. “ you know, bug. please help me. ” a name she hadn’t heard since their last interaction, a nickname unique and packed with painful memories. she’s stifling tears when she finally falls back into a sleep full of knives and guns and lead pipes. of course she knows, even when she doesn’t. she always knows.
