(KAI) Well, here's some het.
Chapter One: The Eighth Day
Ah.. here... Still here...
Still waiting, and reading, and wondering...
Raven... will you ever know me, without hating me?
For a while, she thought she might be dying. It was a quaint fantasy she held, for a short time, to name and handle the pain that ripped through her chest and burned, and most of all ached, until it seemed she might never stop crying, but it was unreal. It was words and play, and eventually she grew tired of it, opting instead to go by the "bottle-it-up-and-ignore-it-until-no-one's-around-and-then-exorcise-it-with- the-help-of-dead-people" school of thinking. The only challenge was finding enough dead people to do some serious soul surgery, and of course, a containing unit large enough to house the trauma Malchior-the-book-man had caused her.
It was thinking like this that led to those looks. Oh, sure, you could be dark and devastating reading a book or holed up in the dark of your own room, but stop chewing a bite of pear for longer than three minutes while hovering in the middle of the kitchen like you're having deep, complicated dialogue with the toaster, and suddenly there's something actually wrong with you. Pfeh.
"...Um, Raven? Hell-ooo, did you hear me?" his voice grated on her ears, on her nerves. High, and whiny, and childish, and it was always directing at her. Stupid child. Cute, simple-minded, little child. She turned in the mid-air, one eyebrow raised in annoyance.
"What do you want, Beast?" her pear finished being chewed in the words, and was swallowed.
"Oh... I thought you'd spaced out for good, there!" he laughed, jumping off of the counter with a twist. "Anyway, just wanted to let you know, we're all going out for pizza, so if you wanna come, well... come on!"
"I don't feel like pizza," the dark-haired girl responded calmly, turning from the kitchen to leave for her room. This was definitely a pattern- the way her room-mates moved around her, trying to "get to know her" and "include her" and "aggravate her to no end with the ridiculous insistence, though not voiced, that she was depressed beyond belief and an inch from the suicidal toss off a noose".
So they weren't very subtle.
Her room was shadowed, as was par with the usual, but suppose in the corner where a peculiar wooden trunk sat, the shadows clung and doubled and stretched from, like fingers reaching for... her. She shuddered, and a jolt of the fake-pain ran through her heart. She touched down to earth lightly, like a dancer. She'd never taken dance. Something amusing about ballerinas and a pathetic joke rose to mind. She banished it.
Raven found herself unwanting to read, a state she'd forced herself to ignore on more than one occasion. Forcefully turning the aching pages of her booked collections again and again. She gave up today. It was definitely time to give up.
She stared across the room at the dark and ever-so-spooky chest, and twitched a finger up to her hair, without really noticing, and played with the lock of hair that hung so much shorter than the rest of her collective coif. Had it become a habit? As had her hair begun to trail over her shoulders in disarray. She hadn't felt like cutting it. Or maybe her friends had hidden all of the scissors. One could never tell.
The box was staring at her. It couldn't, because it was a box, of course, but that fact did not negate the box's intense glare in her direction. Did it envy her freedom of movement? Or was it pissed off because the only object in its copious depths was a book? One book. Raven could recall a story, of cardboard boxes, who quivered with joy to be filled, to be filled oh-so-full, and feared the water of lakes and puddles like nothing. Though it came to pass that a box fell in a lake, and sank, and was the happiest box in all the world for being, one-hundred percent and completely full. What a lucky thing.
Raven felt like part of herself, speaking of which and such emptiness, was empty. Like it had been full, but current circumstances- and those of a week in passing- seemed to have ripped that fullness away from her. Maybe she had lost a cup-size.
She sighed, crossing her legs. Thinking had become so hectic lately. It was all the new knowledge in her head, to be sure. So many spells and words and mis-understandings all trying to file themselves away at the same time. God knew what kind of havoc using so much of one's memory at once might wreak on the thought processes. In a few days, she might start speaking in 1337.
He- that is- it, was in the chest. It was difficult to believe that he, it, was. It had changed her way of looking at things, to be sure. Or in fact, had changed the way she felt. She remembered the white of her clothing, like his hair, and the blue, a befitting color of sadness, fading away. She looked at her arms then-stretched them out to reach for her toes, and peered at the false shine of her outfit of choice. It was not very provocative. Just blue.
She relaxed and continued staring back at the chest. A dragon. She had fallen in love with a dragon (it was easy to admit now, given the peculiar air in her head). She kicked her legs at the side of the bed. A dragon had taught her a million spells and a curse and had given her license to be care-free... for just a few days... everything had been wonderful. And then, in the moment she had given him- the dragon she thought was a man- her complete trust, it had taken her as though it had chewed her little body and spat it out. With fire.
It would seem as though her trust and faith would be shattered, and that the constant niggling and run-around of thoughts in her head would eventually drive her into a realistic insanity, but staring at the chest, she was overcome by the sensations. The loss, the love, the hatred, and the strange persistence at the back of her soul, a red flag saying "No... this isn't right."