Closed crumbling edges pv miriam

10 january, 2022. monday, 2nd period.
pv thread with @miriam stube. following the events of a spitting image.

Ivy left the castle in a trance-like state. She couldn't seem to focus on anything or anyone other than the feeling that she needed to escape; the surrounding students appeared to move in slow motion, their words sounded muffled as if speaking on the other side of a window, and any greeting or attempt to interact would be met with a blank stare. All she could see was her little sister's eyes and nose and smile on another girl's face, all she could see was Alison, who had died weeks ago and somehow found a way to haunt her when she was still trying to figure out how to hold herself together. She'd tried not to think about Alison's death at all, but bumping into this girl, whoever she was, had shaken her badly and cracked open the box of memories she kept locked up.

Her breath hitched in the back of her throat, and with the sudden realisation that she couldn't breathe properly, Ivy's world came back into motion and her senses flooded back to her in an overwhelming sense of panic. She realised that she'd slowly strayed off the path and was now somewhere in near the Quidditch Pitch when she was really supposed to be somewhere in the castle. She could not remember what class it was exactly, but it was certainly nowhere near here...

Ivy pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the thumping of her heart and the rise and fall of her chest, and tried to take in a deep breath. It didn't work.

Her mind kept going back to the day Alison had died. She couldn't stop picturing the way Alison had looked in her coffin at the funeral, so prim and pale and young. Had she always been so thin? The maddening thing was, Ivy could not even cry over her sister's death. It was like her heart had completely closed off, a part of her had died with Alison, and Ivy did not know how to get it back. Of course Alison deserved her tears, but she had none to give. Perhaps she had spent too long forcing herself to shut away any negative feelings, and when something like this happened, she no longer had the "right" emotions to react with. Ivy had avoided her grief, but now it was staring right at her and she did not know what to do.

With a dry sob, Ivy sank to the ground, barely noticing how cold the snow was. She hugged her knees to her chest and did not move, watching the snow on the ground in front of her melt slowly in an attempt to distract herself from her own mind.