12:22 PM, December 24th
Jess was in the foyer.
She was slipping on a coat, and leaving Benjy’s home for another day. After all, the hunt wasn’t done yet.
Another week of…
Well, Jess shouldn’t complain. She wasn’t dead, which was frankly more than she had expected to happen.
Unfortunately, it was Christmas Eve. This didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, and Benjy was continuing to be a gracious host, but even so, the fact that she was so far from her dad, from her brother, from Mikey, from Matt…
It was grating. It hurt. Every morning she woke up without finding it was like stepping onto a bed of needles.
But she couldn’t turn back. Not now. She was close, she could feel it. Her dreams were getting worse, and they always got worse just before something big happened.
Before her first skeleton.
Before she was sent to camp.
She could only hope that this signified something good…
12:47 PM, December 24th
Jess was at a bus stop.
Her hands buried were in her pockets, and she sat staring into the sky. She probably looked weird, but at least it was Christmas Break. With school out, no one really cared about the teen wandering the streets of Chicago.
To anyone wandering around, she was practically invisible. When she tried hard enough, and with enough rather harsh manipulation of the mist, she was literally invisible. Of course, the one time she’d tried that, a rather gruesome scene involving a mob of bird skeletons and a small cyclops had ensued, and she hadn’t eaten for two days after that.
It didn’t matter. She was close. She was closer than she’d ever been, and whatever it was, it was radiating enough magical energy to keep her up at night and make her see purple when she closed her eyes.
Actually, seeing purple when she-
Jess paused, and took out her phone, staring at herself in the reflection. She was thinner than when she’d left, despite Mrs. Ross’ fantastic cooking. Her hair had gotten a little bit tangled in places, since she’d spent less time brushing it.
Most notably, her eyes glowed a purple that only came out on very high-magic times. She’d dispelled her skeleton a while ago, and that was the only thing that had triggered it before…
Gods, she was so close.
But where? Where was the building? Where had she dreamt o-
Jess was floating, and before her stood a red-haired woman, dangling in the air and suspended over a black ground, a ground that oozed fear.
She was locked in place, unable to move.
Her corporeal body was a prison, and as she watched the gruesome lowering of the ginger woman into this frightful, terrible ground, she flinched.
Her body did not move, though she felt her view change at the twitch.
Aside from herself, she floated away, and saw clearly for the first time.
She was the red-haired woman, and the red-haired woman was her. Their time was different, but they were the same.
The red-haired woman lowered further, and suddenly she was no more.
There was no red-haired woman. There was only Jess, dangling down further and further and further, every inch making her just a little more scared.
At the last, creaking movement of the rope, Jess screamed, and she awoke.
5:17 PM, December 24th
Jess was in a bed.
How did she get here? The last thing she could remember was the bus stop a few blocks away from Benjy’s.
Had she…?
Yes. She’d fainted. Thank god someone had gotten her, picked her up. She sat up, and pain wracked her body, making her fall back into the soft mattress and shudder, a raw cry erupting from her mouth.
The door burst open, and Benjy burst through.
“Jess, are you okay? Don’t answer that, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck… What the hell happened? No, shit, stop. Sorry. Umm, I’m gonna get some tea or something… Sorry.”
As quickly as he had entered, Benjy left, and Jess was alone with her thoughts.
A few minutes later, she had a cup of tea next to her.
An hour later, she could walk again, and the pain was mostly gone.
With a stifled goodbye, she told Benjy that she needed to leave, and that it had been great seeing him, and that she’d talk to him soon.
With a worried look, she left the house. She knew where she had to go.
7:02 PM, December 24th
Jess stood in front of a rather ragged looking thrift shop, staring at the door.
She'd expected it to be... taller.
Whatever, it didn't matter, she had one last thing to do before she walked in.
A quick prayer, and three envelopes were thrown into the air and snatched up in a flash, gone from before her eyes. Thank the gods for the Hermes Express...
Now that was done, she had only one thing to do.
With a deep breath, and a tightened grip on her bag and her wand, Jess opened the door.
[Storymode]
Submitted December 24, 2016 at 02:06PM by CaptainAltvious http://ift.tt/2hcL1PG
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