Closed Isolation

.–⭒′˙°ˑ⋅⤜∽●∼⤛⋅ˑ°˙‵⭒–.
⋖ 10/MAR/2023 ⋗
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Leaves rustled overhead, agitated by the whistling wind. The sound of water breaking over stone could be heard not far in the distance, its melody adding to the creaking of branches and rustling of brush. And all around, rain hammered, adding its incessant drone to the natural symphony. There was something almost hypnotizing about the melody.

Far removed from the rest of the school where feet drummed against the walkways and the drone of voices echoed off stone walls, it was almost possible to forget that there was anything at all beyond the here and now. Feet propped themselves along a branch perilously high above the bed of sodden soil below; and a head lolled back to rest against an unyielding cushion of coarse bark. Eyes of hard steel flicked up towards the canopy as light shot across the sky and sent the forest into a moment of stark relief. And then they closed again.

One...

Two...

Three...

Fo—

Thunder rolled between the blanket of trees and through her veins, its song the frequency of her own simmering discontent. Every now and then, a drop of water pierced the shielding foliage to splatter against ghostly pale skin. It was ice cold. She hardly noticed. In fact, these days there seemed to be very little that took the lioness's notice. Days... Weeks... Months had passed in a monotonous blur of routine schoolwork and an accompanying isolation to escape the noise that never seemed to give her a moment's rest. Sleep had been hard enough to come by before. Slumber's embrace had always been a fleeting thing for her. Difficult to come by and harder to hold to once it had arrived. In previous years, the common room had become her sanctuary in the early hours of twilight, before her peers had risen and protocol allowed them to leave their dorms. It had been peaceful once.

But that was before the summer. Things had changed with camp when the first of the voices had made themselves heard. She hadn't realized it at first, had thought she was simply hearing what others were speaking. The peculiar looks had come with increasing frequency, however. Whispers of speculation and hushed conversations cut through with undercurrents of suspicion when they thought she couldn't hear them. There had been a few too many occasions where she had answered a question that hadn't been uttered. A few too many times she'd responded to voices only she could hear.

If only it was only voices. Now and then, visions would come as well. Like waking dreams, vivid and colourful, they would rob her of her sense of self and now, wholly taking over her awareness for a time. Sometimes only a moment, like a flash of a frame flitting too quickly for her to fully make out. Other times like a waking nightmare that seemed it would never end. Like the shadows and spiders that had reduced her to her knees as easily as it had done to Seilun. At first, she'd thought it connected to the hags. Davenport's presence at the camp had not gone unnoticed.

For all the expectation, however, there never seemed to come an expected confrontation. It wasn't like the festival. Like the pursuit through the woods. And she still couldn't understand why. Why everything had just... stopped. The lioness would have loved to believe that the struggle was over, that they were no longer required to watch their backs for the next wave of deceit and horror. But she couldn't. The coven had been too persistent. Too clever with their selections of hosts and spears of underhanded assault.

True, their tools were slowly peeling themselves away from influence. Lestrange... Burnett... Ryan... At least as far as Evelynn knew, they had all been ultimately saved. But who was to say? This wasn't the first time she'd allowed herself to think that perhaps it had finally ended. That they'd won. And then Grey had been proven to be a vessel. She couldn't remember what had come of that encounter. For all she knew, one of them—or perhaps an innocent bystander—had been reinfected, the slug remaining dormant until those who knew had forgotten and moved on, their guards dropped, vigilance waning.

She wouldn't be one of them. Evelynn wouldn't forget. Couldn't forget. She had born witness to too many horrors. She had seen what happened when students were left to fend for themselves. And she had learned that even those most shrouded in knowledge could succumb.

And so her withdrawal had been motivated twice-fold. The more involved she was, the greater the influence she wielded among her peers, the greater the target she painted upon herself, logic dictated. The more bonds she held, the greater the risk. Friends could be exploited. Could be used as points of attacks or to force inaction. She needn't worry about their safety if she kept them far removed. There would be no risk of being a source of infiltration if she kept herself uninvolved. And so she'd pulled back from her activities and dropped her responsibilities. It hadn't been an easy decision. But it was a necessary one.

Besides, it meant she could escape. If she'd thought the camp had been grating on her patience with the incessant voices, it was nothing compared to the cacophony that had arisen with the start of school. She couldn't explain it. Didn't understand. At first, she'd thought perhaps they could have been prophetic. Confusion and prompted her to seek the aide of Professor Booth, but he'd been less that useless in that regard, dismissing her as eagerly as one might swat away a gnat. Desperation had driven her to try again. And again. Until a vision had shown her something that had already transpired. And another gave an image of something impossible. Then confusion wove itself around her like a well-spun web.

Trapped thereafter in perpetual uncertainty, she could neither find explanation for the errant images and voices, nor put stock into their significance. As far as she knew, she was going mad. Was this how it had started for Ryan? Before she'd begun to spew paranoid nonsense at the turn of a hat? The most Evelynn had ever managed to glean was that the voices were loudest and most frequent in the midst of dense population, and eased the farther removed she was from her peers.

Only here, surrounded by nothing but nature, was she left to her own thoughts, and hers alone...