Old Lightbulbs and New Plants (open)

The rain came on a cloud unseen, one obstructed by trees and the dark night Kaya bathed herself in. I'll be back in an hour, she told her roommates, insisting it was just going to be a walk. They cared so much for her, and she couldn't help but smile when she thought of them, her friends. Just saying their names brought whispering laughs to her lips. She walked through the forest, smiling up at the leaves until the patter of drops decorated her nose, and she stood there, in an ensuing rainstorm as it came to vivacity. She watched it, held tilted back so she could bathe herself in the downpour. If there was something she'd never experienced before moving south, it was rain. Though she was jaded of it following her altercation with Arbor Banks, it still made her stop. Every time it rained, she went into a trance, standing there, arms hanging limply until it dripped into her eyes and she snapped back into focus. And she blinked. She blinked.

The conservatory was a beacon, a light left on in the new spring wave, and she marched through the glistening undergrowth, moccasins wet and a darker brown brought out in the reflective moonlight. The conservatory was before her, and when her resistance to cold failed her and discomfort began to shoot up her bones, she decided that the dormitory was too far. She could not go back then; she was too far and too weary. Finding the building open, she went inside, and flickered on the lightbulbs that hung humming over the plantlife below them. She was a glass house exposed, but it was dry and nice and she hummed as she went inside, ringing out her braids and singing an old Inuit lullaby, something fresh in her mind from mamas voice, the kind of song she'd sing at the kitchen. It was not the kind of song papa sang when he hunted, when he distracted himself from a numb face and distracted her from blood. It was less lively, less intense; mama's song was sweet minimalism, a whisper as soft as fresh snow, as soft as Kaya's skin as she rubbed her cheeks with her palms, bringing her hands across in circular strides until bloodflow pumped a hot vermilion. And she looked at the plants. She wondered if anyone ever considered harvesting plants hunting.

Each footstep she made toward the rows of leaves crunched like she too was in soil. It was the old dusty floorboards, the leaves that had fallen long ago, parts that the erect plants left behind to be trodden on the floor. She smiled at them. She picked up a leaf from the ground, yellow and dirty, and leaned against a wooden wall, twisting it in the pinch of her fingers and rubbing her arms, twisting at the sleeves of her sweater until she was a dry kind of wet. The kind of wet where she could no longer influence the water and it was up to time. It was still cold, but not overbearing. It respected her, refusing to send water down her arms like it had been, like little foxes running across pallid plains.

The lean became a sit, which became a lay, and she found herself reclining on the shallow wooden wall that barriered the row and the floor, inspecting this leaf, this dry pathetic leaf, until sleep overtook her in its cold embrace and the pallid girl succumbed. Her breath was powder, a light airy cloud, and from her sock dangled the handle of a knife, a miniature clever, its black leather rising, falling, rising, falling, mimicking her chest in its awkward silence. Like her chest, it stirred in arbitrary severity. When she rolled slightly to the side, it stayed in place and dropped on the floor.

The beacon was on. The old lightbulbs whirred their tunes like old radios, and the waves beckoned for company.

Night time. It was the purest, most quiet time of the day, yet it was meant for sleeping. How on earth could she get sleep when it was raining to beautifully? When the moon was frosting the tips of the trees lining the edge of the forest, decorating them as though it were truly winter time again? Elisa's arms rested on the windowsill of her bedroom, her chin resting on them, her small, upturned nose touching the icy glass of the window, her breath occasionally leaving a circle of fug on the cold surface. Her blue eyes were half-closed, but she wasn't tired. It was easier this way, her eyes narrowed as though she were focusing on specific parts of the landscape, to see what was happening in the strange land below. The night was unfamiliar to her and never had she been more curious about it than she felt at this moment.

Softly, with more agility than she had ever displayed in her life, the girl swung her legs off her bed and set them on the floor. A sharp intake of breath meant the floor was colder than she had expected it to be, but she stood still, tugging her pajamas closer to her skin. They did nothing, but the idea that she had tried gave her skin the false sense of hope that, maybe, it had done a little something.

Her shoes were placed neatly by the door, on the back of which hung her thick jacket, the only one she had bothered wearing the past few weeks. With the cold that clung to the mountains in the winter, there had been no escape from biting breezes or freezing rains. It was nature's own way of getting back at them for building a school out here in the middle of her beauty, but the placement could not have been better, and Elisa felt appreciative of Nature's attempts at taking a stand against humanity. It was a vivacious spirit she could only hope to emulate someday.

Jacket and shoes on, the blonde gently pulled the door open, determined not to wake her dormmates. It was the middle of the night, or at least late enough she knew they would be angry at any disruption, and she had no desire for confrontation. She faced enough of it when her phone rang each week. But they were in their own rooms, doors shut, ignoring the lived-in look of the center room with its television and couches. Books and papers, possibly homework that had been abandoned, were scattered across any available surface, as well as a few plates and bowls that had dried food stuck to their surfaces. The air was warm, and as she passed the surface of the television, it reached out to the ends of her hair with its static arms, telling her to stay in the warmth of her new home, and she ignored it, continuing on to where the door to the hallway was. It, too, opened without a sound, a sure sign from the universe that this was Elisa's moment, it was her time to step outside and learn about this school. She had been here for too long to know so little.

Cold air and soft raindrops met her outside. Smiling, she stepped into them, feeling as though she were greeting an old friend. It was a chilly embrace, but comforting. Wandering further into the grass outside and ignoring the pathways, the girl realized she knew very little about the campus layout. Despite the months she'd had to get used to it, despite having walked the tightly packed hallways more times than she could count, the truth was that she hadn't taken time to learn the extras, the small bonuses that came with any property. It was large, stately, and sprawling, with many hidden secrets that she'd only heard whispered by other students. Prepared to discover them herself, however, was something new, a slightly terrifying thought that had her walking slowly across the grounds, turning her head at every sound the night made. It was trying to distract her, both with its beauty and its ugliness, each feature something new and equally thrilling. She walked in this fashion for ten, twenty, thirty minutes, her feet carrying her around to some unknown place. Only when she began to feel tired did she pause and look around, hoping to get a gauge of how far she had come from her dorm.

In front of her was a tall building. From outside, she could see plants of all kinds, hanging from the ceiling, growing in designated beds, blossoming in the warm air they created within their building. It was the conservatory, a home for flowers, someplace meant especially for them. Elisa wondered if there would ever be a place meant especially for her. Surely everyone had one. They all had a purpose in this world. Her purpose right now was to get somewhere warm in order to rest up enough to try finding her way back to her dorm.

She was met by a blast of warm air as she pulled the door open, the earthy smell of soil and rotting vegetation mingling with the sweet scent of flowers rushing up her nose, causing the girl's eyes to flutter and her mouth to tug up in a dazed smile. The lights in the conservatory guided her way down the path of plants toward some large flower that was leaning outside of its box, begging her to touch it and feel its petals. Moving forward, hand outstretched to touch the flower, her eye was suddenly caught by the glint of something on the floor. Palm up, fingers half-straightened to pinch a petal between them, she froze, gazing past her arm at the shiny thing on the floor, her eyes taking a moment to recognize the shape of a blade. Her heart skipped a beat. How on earth had a knife ended up here? The hand that was reaching for the flower instead moved to reach for the knife. It was then that she realized there was a person lying there on the edge of the flower box, their hand closed around something. Surprised, Elisa straightened up and took a step backwards, only to trip over her own feet and fall backwards onto the floor, landing hard and forcing a sharp cry to escape her lips.

A thump. It was a dull sound but it vibrated up the wall of the flower box. Kaya's eyes opened. She wasn't even sure she slept. Rising, alarmed, she dropped the leaf and shot her hands forward, fingers trembling with a red light, and it fired before she knew who it was, whether it be a good human or a bad human or a bear. The red light traveled like a disc, like circular pizza dough, and this girl was trapped, trapped in the red light that would paralyze her. Kaya scrambled for the knife, and stayed close to the ground. She looked like a tiger in the hunt, but her eyes were like a puppy's, inspecting and wary. The only thing harmful about her appearance was her crouch and the blade, she looked like she knew what she was doing, but at the same time she was confused. It was like a trapper padding through the bushes to see their game; she did not move, however, and kept crouched there, where the knife had naturally lay, and blinked. Blinked, blinked, blinked again, her small hands stay half-visible under the sleeves of her sweater, a black and white sweater depicting winter, a shadowy star.

Could she move? Could she speak? It was a basic trap, one of the smallest variety; she'd need to touch the girl if she wanted to render her further into the deep. Her fingers were cold, however, a soft pale; she rubbed them against her cheeks, aglow red, and rose from her crouch. This girl; she wore pajamas and a jacket, such casual clothes for such a sneaky visitor. Kaya's eyes danced in a sudden wonder; was she an evil omen, and did evil omens wear pajamas? Or perhaps she was just a normal student, or an outsider, or everything at once, or nothing, perhaps she was nothing. Kaya's eyes were alight with her imagination, but her mouth kept in a taught frown, a small and neutral frown, an inspector's frown, and she sat on the flower box, looking down at saying nothing, waiting to see if the girl could speak and if she would explain herself, if she couldn't speak and if Kaya would have to infer. Perhaps she could even move; the strongest of people could sometimes move, but this uneased Kaya, and her left hand glowed with red like a concealed nightlight. She put her right hand down flat on her knife, which she rested on the flower box, the tip of its blade jutting over the air, over the paralyzed girl's leg.

She had barely fallen on the floor when, suddenly, there was a bright red light hurtling towards her. As it collided with her, Elisa found that she was unable to move, her entire body frozen, paralyzed, not cold but stuck. Panic started to set in as she attempted to move something, anything. The person she had seen was crouched, the knife from the floor in her hand, ready to attack if necessary. But when Elisabeth didn't move, the girl stood up and sat on the flower box.

Her head spun as she looked at this girl. How had she learned to wield such a weapon? The way she had immediately reacted told her that the girl had some kind of history of being attacked, a history of constantly being on the defensive, and she didn't know if that was more or less comforting. Anyone holding a knife to her was terrifying; the blonde had no idea how to handle that sort of thing. She lived a quiet, comfortable life, free of worry from street thugs or otherwise. Now, she felt vulnerable, exposed, helpless. Desperately, she tried to make a sound, tried to move her mouth to say something, anything, but it proved futile, her tongue and lips frozen in place, not allowing her to say anything to protect herself. Her heart pounded erratically in her chest. Elisa had never felt more like a mouse than she did in this moment, every other fear-filled experience of hers flashing through her mind, her every instinct holding her to that floor, keeping her blue eyes wide and fixed on the girl with the knife. She hadn't come here to die, but there didn't seem to be anything she could do to stop it.

Kaya saw her lips twitch with a trembling endeavor, and the wide-eyed girl blinked, opening her mouth as if to speak but stopping to think of what to say. Stopping to decide what to think. In in a moment of hesitance, her mouth a vacant darkness, she put her tongue forth and began to speak.
"I'm Kaya," is all she said at first, her voice light as the leaves around her, the ones dried and scattered across the floor. "Ai." Her fingers began to trace symbols across the knife blade absentmindedly, and it shook with the precarious suggestion of falling. The girl didn't seem to notice, and stopped when she'd sketched two invisible triangles onto the blade, biting her lip at completion and succumbing to more silence.
"You should be able to talk in a short moment," she finally vocalized, and a concerned look washed over her the more she stared down at the girl, who seemed pretty terrified. "I do apologize, you in ways startled me." It was sort of a lie; if this girl had been a wolf, starting would get Kaya killed, so she had risen with a deceptive calm, had had enough time to think about her attack. Something in her just chose to do it. She thought the girl could have been dangerous, though she seemed pretty pathetic then.

Pathetic in the most wonderful degree. Kaya didn't want to fight. In a way, she was pathetic too. She looked down, shoulders raised as her hands stayed planted at where she sat. She was waiting for the girl to regain speech, or movement or something. At one point her eyes seemed to droop a little, but she snapped out of it. Rain continued to patter outside.

The girl's name was Kaya. She spoke in an odd way, as though she had been raised elsewhere, and it only served to heighten Elisa's interest in her. With reflexes and instincts like that, it was certainly fascinating, and if she could get out of this trap and talk, maybe she would be able to find out more about her. But as the knife wobbled, its tip dangerously close to falling and cutting her leg, Elisa stopped wondering and began worrying, focused instead on moving so she wouldn't have to fear the blade slipping and injuring her.

It was with a breath of mingled relief and agitation that she found her mouth working properly. The action had taken so long that Kaya seemed to have drifted off, the rain tapping on the ceiling and walls of the conservatory creating a monotonous sound that would have put the blonde to sleep as well had she not still been on high alert, her limbs frozen in the same position she had fallen in, supporting her weight and the joints beginning to ache from the pressure. Now that she could speak, however, she managed to clear her throat politely in an attempt to clear any possible sounds that would betray her fear.
"I-I'm Elisa," she said. So much for keeping the fear out. "I'm sorry I startled you. It was an accident."

"Ai," she repeated, suddenly wide awake, eyes still curious over her, and she smiled, tucking away the knife in her boot. She seemed about to say something, but was delayed by a burst of windy pattering slamming hard against the side of the conservatory. She looked up at the glass ceiling and frowned. "I was hoping this storming would cease." Kaya stifled a yawn. "I do want to go back to my dormitory, my roommates are probably worried." She kept her head up, hands resting on her hips as she thought. Her sweater was finally feeling dry again. Did she want to run back so far in the rain?

Lying on the floor as Kaya talked, Elisa listened to the rain that had become a downpour pounding, a sound that would have been much easier to listen to in her comfortable dorm. She mumbled an agreement with Kaya, still focused on trying to move. The feeling was slowly coming back to her fingertips and toes, but it was hardly enough to do anything other than twitch strangely.

Returning her attention to the girl that had trapped her, her fingers still trying to close, she spoke again.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" Not that Elisa had a better reason to be in the conservatory at night in the rain, but she was curious.

"I was in the forest." The girl could see the tips of the trees over the glass of the roof and stood on her toes to get a better look, to see the gusts kick branches around, and the ones that seemed to reach out to the conservatory threatened to fall. It didn't help that the corner of the glass ceiling was splintered in a small crack, little drops lining along the opening in trickling permeation. What caused that? Could it happen again?

She hopped up on the flower box and continued. "It's nice out there, at night. I go out a lot in the middle of night." Perhaps this was a warning sign against it. Would they have to stay the night there? She looked down at the still girl, squatting so she was closer. "What are you doing here?" She could still be a spy. Perhaps Kaya should have kept her knife in hand; it was peculiar that anyone would intrude on her.

In the forest? What on earth would the girl be doing in the forest at night? It's nice. Elisa couldn't imagine being in the forest so late at night, especially with the weather being the way it was. But she had come out here in the same conditions, and while it wasn't a densely wooded property, it was still dark and wet and miserable. As she considered this, her fingers managed to curl up to her palm, a warm feeling that gave her reason to hope she'd move again.

What was she doing here? With Kaya closer to her than before, fear returned to Elisa, and she had to pause and remember why she had ended up here. Curiosity. Hadn't curiosity killed the cat? Perhaps she was next.
"I couldn't sleep," she told Kaya. It was close to the truth, she supposed. Her hands were moving as well as her feet now. It would be another twenty minutes before she could function properly if it kept moving at this pace.

"I understand," Kaya said with a smile, a dimpled smile that came up to her nose smally. "I can never sleep." Before she could continue with this, or before Elisa could interrogate her further, there was a distant cracking, a small splint than a subsequent larger one. Kaya looked up, and her mouth trickled ajar. The tree that was peeking over the building began to sway, at first so gingerly, but in a whip of wind a final, defining rake came over the massive plant. It began to curve, to topple, picking up momentum toward them, and before she new it, Kaya was diving on top of the immobile girl, flinging her body over her as the tree crashed into the glass. She squeezed her eyes shut, harder than she ever had before, harder to expel the shattering, harder to expel the ripping, the horrible ripping, screams flooding her ears, shouts of bears and wolves and foxes and her father, Kaya get up, Kaya turn your head up you need to keep her head up she is going to be fine you are going to be fine look up.

Silence. Kaya looked up. She opened her eyes, her vision blurry from the force she applied to close them. Her eyelids stung with fatigue, and even to blink seemed to be more work than to keep them open. She looked up to the tree's powerful form looming over them, glass still falling like a dusty rain as the shattered roof kept hold, fortified some kind of grip long enough to sustain the powerful tree. It stayed suspended over the two girls, and Kaya stayed suspended over Elisa, cradling her head, keeping her eyes up, wondering in that serene silence when the extra drop of rain would prove too much weight for the glass. But she felt more immobile than Elisa ever was. Each second was a second she stole. Her heart beat like the paws of Nanook.

"You are going to be fine," she whispered shakily. "Look up, it is okay, you are going to be fine." But there was a sudden lurch and another window broke from the corner of the conservatory. Kaya flinched, held Elisa harder for a moment until she gave a sharper intake of breath and crawled along, pulling the girl with her until they were out from under the tree's shadow. Rain came in murmurs, louder with each compressing shatter, but the tree hadn't yet fallen. She dragged Elisa to the wall, which she sat next two, and breathed for a moment. She felt like she'd run from Arviat to North Dakota.

She hadn't seen the tree before it fell, she didn't have a warning aside from the cracking that had sounded outside the conservatory, but suddenly everything was dark and loud and it was all Elisa could do not to cry out of fear. Her blue eyes squeezed shut, even though Kaya was hovering over her and blocking her face. Heart pounding, breathing heavy, she only opened them when Kaya spoke to her, the other girl's voice as shaky as Elisa knew hers would be if she attempted to speak.

The tree hovered above them, its thick trunk being held up by flimsy glass and beams that had seemed so strong only moments before. Even as she looked, it shifted, and she cried out as more glass shattered, raining down on the plants in the previously warm conservatory. She didn't realize she had closed her eyes again until she opened them and found herself near the wall, Kaya breathing heavily beside her. The blonde stared up at the tree, rain falling freely through the hole it had created, the wind quickly causing the temperature to drop.

Her heart seemed to pump movement back into her much more quickly than it had been returning before. She could move her hands at her wrists and her feet at her ankles, and she felt it moving towards her torso, but it still wasn't fast enough. Not now that they could be trapped here. Panic froze her vocal chords and she could only look at Kaya, her eyes wide and mouth hanging open slightly.

That made a loud sound. That sounded was the loudest sound that Kaya had ever heard. Had anything ever made such a loud sound? Her heart still fluttered as she waited for the roof to give way, for a tree to fall with the remaining glass that they were not clear of. She already had little glass splinters that she had not noticed until then, pinpricks of pain coming into her senses. Every single glass shard was accounted for in her mind, and she began to pick them out of her skin, almost nonchalantly. "We need to go," she said, looking up every now and again at the precarious condition of the tree, wincing at the bigger shards in her skin. They were mostly in her legs, the rest of her covered, and thus her shins and thighs were dotted red after her inspection. When she was finished, she repeated: "We need to go, can you move?" The rain seemed to be picking up, not slowing down, but Kaya felt the growing need to run out, to feel the cold water on her skin. And, of course, danger lurked above.

Elisa hardly dared to breathe, her hands and feet moving automatically as though she were trying to get rid of a tingle in them. First her wrists and ankles rotated, then she could move her knees and elbows, but as Kaya repeated her question, the movement hadn't quite reached her shoulders or hips.
"I can try," she said, and even as she thought it, the movement reached her hips and shoulders. Her torso still felt stiff, but she managed to push herself into an awkward sitting position beside Kaya, eyes still wide as she returned her gaze to the tree.

"Grab on," she said suddenly, and keeping a steady and determinate eye to the tree above, put Elisa's arm around her shoulder. She hauled herself up, feeling the drag-down of the girl's half-immobile body. Kaya wasn't too big or strong, but she persevered long enough to put in a few steps. One, two, one, two, she felt like a hulking beast with a massive body, supporting herself under white fur and a piercing roar. When the tree began to rock towards the ground and the glass began to break, she let out this roar, using her strength to throw the both of them out of the door they had sat beside. The glass roof caved in a crystal night, a cocktail of glistening shards that shattered behind them with the collapse of the tree. Kaya couldn't help but collapse to the rain-soaked grass, bringing Elisa down with her as she breathed for a moment. The muscles in her back ached.