Knock on Wood PV Sandy Thompson

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⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅ | Homesick ! | ⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

1:24 ───────────────────────●────────────────────────── -2:56

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

Solitude.

There was a desperation in silence, a lingering presence that Sandy just couldn't shake off.

Growing up, the blonde had always been surrounded by people, loved. She was formed by the gentle shaping, each crevice and cavern that she overlooked being lightly packed with the care and affection of her family, sickly sweet like brown sugar in the instructions of recipe books. There was kindness in the jokingly snarky comments and worry in the reprimands of her brother, but above all there was familiarity in someone being there to care. That little reminder was enough to keep her going, to fix the unease of trying a new food or riding a bike for the first time, to experience something new without the constant crutch of someone trying it alongside her.

Hogwarts was different. Hogwarts was unfamiliar, solitary to the point of being a constant ringing in her ears. It was prominent in everything, in the way that older students would laugh with their friends and how her classmates seemed to gravitate to those they liked better. Majority of these times, Sandy just wasn't in that picking, and she tried her best to be okay with that. She knew this place would be new for her, she knew that her family wouldn't always be that little crutch.

But sometimes in the damning silence of it all, Sandy is ten again, alone in her room. It's summer and the air is humid as it infiltrates the deafening emptiness, and Danny never shows up to hang out with her. More often than not, she feels this way. More often than not, Sandy doesn't feel anything at all, content displaced by the occasional joy of an interaction only to be removed once more. She recognizes this as a pattern, a terrible temptation that she consistently runs back to like the high of a sugar rush and the fall as her tired body is carried to bed by her momma. There's no instructions to how you remove this feeling, no water-stained papers with lists of ingredients on how to feel better about not being constantly in use of someone else, and there's no brown sugar left to pack into the holes she digs in her mind after the silence becomes too much. All that's left is half of the ingredients from a recipe you vaguely remember, and an egg short of what you need to make it.

To fix it.

Even now, creeping down the hallways with half a mind to not get caught, dressed in a worn down Crass t-shirt she stole from her brother and black pajama pants that had been sewn back to shape with pink thread, that solitude weighs heavy on her shoulders. Everything of hers that she had here was a remnant of her family, even the clothing she was wearing, but just the simple collection of items wasn't enough to lift any of that emptiness from her. The pants would still get worn down with age, and cold nights in the castle would still feel dull like the weeks she spent alone locked in her room.

If it were up to her, she'd repeat that. Lock herself in her room and hide away from others until she became a better version of herself. One they would love, one they would choose over anyone else. She knew better than that, though. If her mother found out, she'd never get away from the guilt of seeing her worried again. Sandy just couldn't repeat that, couldn't see how even Frazier toned himself down around her. Everyone around her needed to alter themselves just to deal with her, and maybe she should keep herself away to allow the imperfections that they refuse to show, but she continues to trudge down corridors and pass down stairs as though a corpse reanimated with no stark purpose.

Footsteps heavy against the quiet of the halls, she finds herself in a small nook. The area is dingy, dark and reminiscent of the oil stained floors in her garage, and yet it feels like home enough. If she stood here long enough, closed her eyes and let the pastel twinged shapes overcome the darkness in her vision, she'd be back at home. There would be the almost obnoxiously stereotypical dad rock playing from uncle Razz's pitiful speaker, and Atsumi would be lounging on the cold couch in the corner attempting to teach her physics she couldn't comprehend with her young age. Frazier would walk in later, complain about Atsumi misplacing one of her jackets, and Atsumi would give a cheeky shrug with the attempt of a straight face. Eventually, the music would drown out their bickering, the two long into quiet conversation as Sandy allows herself the fortune of silently enjoying their company.

She missed it, she really did, but she wasn't there. In a few months. Once the time here was up, she'd be back, away from the people who couldn't care less about her and the work that never quite made sense to her. Right now, though, Sandy was in a damp shithole in a part of a castle that she had never known to exist, away from her family and anyone who loved her in the way that she wanted.

And as she walks further in this tiny nook, steps small and unsteady with how weak she felt, Sandy can't help but hear the droplets of water as a cacophony against the jagged edges of her thoughts and zombie-like tingle against the flesh of the body. It doesn't feel like it belongs to her as she slumps down against the wall, more like dragging the remnants of whatever she owned before the overthinking and brain fog hit. Oddly enough, though, as her head hit the cold of the wall, she can't help but feel like the fog was clearer than it had ever been normally.

Sure, overthinking had problems. There was always problems. But they kept her safe, thinking too much and staying in her own head kept her safe from other people and things and-

"Hello?"

FUCK.

Jolting upright, Sandy can feel every relaxed muscle in her body tense up with a foreign amount of fear, wildly looking around for something that was never there. Her glasses had slid down from their place with the action, now resting dangerously close to the tip of her nose as she zones in on the place of sound. It's such a displaced feeling, being forced back into her own body with no warning to the point that it almost hurt to be herself again. It should hurt to be her, should be a painful thing that she deserves, but she really didn't want that this late at night.

"Um... Howdy." Sandy starts off, picking at the sewn pink thread of her pajama pants with her nails until they slowly loosened, "You uh... Come 'round these parts often, pardner?"

2:50 ────────────────────────────────────────────────●─ -2:56

↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺

INTERACTING: @Cirrus Nam

Knock on Wood

W/C. 546 DATE. 01/18/2025 OUTFIT. Pajamas SONG. Reborn - PARIS The Prince

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@Sandy Thompson .INTERACTIONS #564d2e .HEX Dungeons, Hogwarts .LOCATION none .OTHER

AMONG THE LOVELESS WHO'VE LOST THEIR WAY I LOOK FOR THE INVISIBLE YOU

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Cirrus squinted his eyes as he slowly leaned closer to the small crevice in between the brick slabs, once again placing his ear against the cold damp wall. "Um... Howdy." Cirrus jumped backward from his squatting position, which would've been fine if he hadn't slipped on his oversized slippers. He went flying abaft, and as a defense mechanism he shot out his arm behind him to catch himself. Hitting his arm that was still recovering, after have broke it during a new year's eve party, against the hard dungeon floors. He screamed in silent agonizing pain, as he flailed quietly on the floor like a fish out of water. All before regaining his composure with small tears. His arm was still throbbing from the pain as he inched over so that he was now closer to the wall again. He just sat there in silence for a moment, processing whether or not he was hallucinating or dreaming, also how did he reply to that? "Um... Not really," Cirrus left another awkward pause before painfully speaking up again. "Dae ye? It's kynd o late dinnae ye think?"1 The hypocrisy left a sour taste in his mouth. Cirrus put his head against the wall to quietly curse himself for making it weird, but he accidentally did it to fast banging his head against the wall. OW! He thought rubbing his forehead that was now a pink, there was no way she DIDN'T hear that loud thunk, considering the silent ambience of where they stood. He felt his whole body go hot with embarrassment as his lips contorted, he tried to stop the welling up in his eyes as he started laughing. A silent wheeze, he held his stomach as he laughed, having trouble breathing before tears started falling out his eyes like a broken faucet. His laughter turning to sobs, why was he so clumsy? why did he always have to embarrass himself in front of EVERYONE!? He tried to choke back his sobs, rubbing his face profusely as his nose begun to run. He even had to take off his glasses, which he found just as annoying as everything else in the moment. He hiccupped slightly as he stifled his sudden little crying tantrum, now even more embarrassed than he had been previously. His face felt hot and raw to the touch, he had been crying profusely recently, of course it wasn't his decision to. That night.... When his grandfather had roamed into his room, Cirrus found the papers from the hospital. Out of curiosity and a demand for answers Cirrus read through them, which he now looks back at shamefully. He had hoped the papers would have just put his mind to ease, prove to him that his grandfather was okay and that he had just been sleepwalking. But as tragic as it was, tis was not the case. His grandfather, his beloved sweet grandfather, had been diagnosed with dementia. The feelings as of late had been overwhelming because of this as well as the combination of his growth spurt, announcement of his soon baby sister, his lack of connections, and struggling academics, it was a recipe for disaster. Cirrus sat in small silence before opening up his mouth to utter a broken apology to the girl who had just had to witness all of this.

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✩ ACTION ✩ Reducio None

✩ OOC NOTE ✩ Reducio None

✩ POST TRACKER ✩ Reducio None

0:24 ─●───────────────────────────────────────────── -2:56

A loud thump is the first thing Sandy hears after being shoved back to reality. She isn't quite sure what happened behind the scenes, aside from the notion that something happened, something painful from the sounds produced, and that she definitely should not have spoke up as well. What in the world happened? Just moments prior, she was enjoying... Uh, whatever she was doing. Truth be told, Sandy didn't quite remember. All she remembered was walking around originally, and then... Being here. It was like she had entirely blanked, lost in some ridiculous train of thought.

But this time wasn't about her, it was more about whatever just happened, and who the hell was speaking to her from behind this wall.

"Uh, yeah. Bit late, but guess we're both sinners in that category, huh?" Sandy hums, eyebrows furrowed, decoding whatever the hell this kid said, "I mean... Not much to do but escape late at night. It's like every coming of age movie... Sneaking out, getting into trouble, generally being pests. Ain't that how life is supposed to be? Not, uh, being trapped in some Luigi's Haunted Mansion-esque building? Um. One that seems to particularly hate you, if... I'm picking up whatever incident just happened."

Another thump follows, and her eyebrows furrow just that bit more. She's still so detached from reality, caught up in that middle ground between life and lie, that every sound feels like a personal attack on her. They're amplified, a horrible sound that thrums throughout her ears and ruins any ounce of availability that common sense had. Check in tomorrow, Dr. Sense is out. Laughter, chased by sobs follows. She takes light note that these walls weren't quite the best when it comes to keeping sound out, or maybe whatever hole they were using to communicate just happened to be more useful than the entire damn solid structure between them.

There's a small hint of laughter at the chaos of the sounds, soothed, "You alright, love? I-I can't really, um, see you, but... Sounds like you're being put through hell and back." Sandy hums, head tilted to instead rest against the wall between them, feeling cold on the side instead of the back, "I, uh, I get being clumsy. If that's what happened. You know, my counters back at home... They still have these like, crude pieces of foam on them. I used to bump into everything, so... My aunt Jackie workshopped something to make the impact softer, I guess. It works pretty well."

Silence.

Sandy doesn't say anything for a moment, continuing to pick at pink thread. She's at a loss for words, not quite used to speaking to someone she can't see. There's so much to pick up on with sight, to notice their body language and see what they're doing, but with the space between them she can't pick anything out. It feels like ear training, in a way. Frazier would always talk about it, mention different chords and picking out intervals. Major, minor, perfect, diminished. He was always skilled with things like that, picking up tone and things that Sandy could never decipher. He was better than her at a lot of things, but she supposed that comes with age.

"What are you doing up so late?" Sandy asks, if not to just break the silence, "Should be getting your beauty sleep. I mean, I'm not, but... Hypocrisy is in, I guess. New trend. Sleeping is hard sometimes."

2:50 ─────────────────────────────────────────────●─ -2:56

INTERACTING: @Cirrus Nam

@N/A :MENTIONING

OOC Notes‎‎

Actions

Additional

Reducio WC: 580

Reducio being confused, mental yapping, more confusion, music???? luigi's haunted mansion??? no clue.

Reducio tell me if anything needs to be rewritten </3 it's like midnight rn, so im going off of a two braincells. holding onto that 1 wis hard.

CIRRUS NAM!
HOGWARTS | FIRST | HUFFLEPUFF | OUTFIT | HEX #385370 | 01.18.2025 | WC 381