The Hours Tick By [closed]

He'd thought the nightmares would go away when he left home.

Peter was in a new environment, with new people, fresher air, and new goals in mind. This wasn't home. He wasn't living directly under the over-achieving scrutiny of his parents any longer. They still expected things out of him, but being extensively lectured at the dinner table every night about having to be the prime child of his age was no longer a concern of his. Here at Beata, the primary focus wasn't how well you knew your calculus, or how many elemental properties you could memorise, or how accurate your Russian pronunciation was. Here, the primary focus was to embrace the capabilities of one's gift. It was a safe, fantastical place for people like Peter, born with supernatural abilities that most humans did not possess, to freely exercise their unusual talents without fear of persecution. It was exciting. He didn't see a downside to it.

But the nightmares that had plagued him every so often at home had come back at full force tonight, and Peter had woken up with sweat glistening on his forehead and his hair slicked down to it. The dreams were the same every time. They were always violent, and terrifyingly realistic. Thinking about it made his stomach turn, and sometimes he would check is hands for blood spots. There never were any, of course.

The Spring tipped his head back to rest on the gnarled bark of the old oak tree at his back, watching the unmoving stars above him with half-hearted interest. Sometimes he wondered if he was just going insane under all the pressure. Psikh, his younger sister would call him if he made a comment about the dreams. He'd always thought they'd been brought on by stress - That they were an exaggerated fantasy of stress relief through violence. Sometimes he went on jogs, or preformed some other sort of physical activity to ease his worries, so it made sense that dreams would warp his preferred method of stress relief into something a step further than he liked. What he found puzzling was why he was still getting nightmares here, at Beata, which was far more laid back than his home. Perhaps the mantle of his parents' expectations would would never really leave him, no matter where he went. Or maybe the telepathic students' gift practice was getting to him. He sniffed with mild amusement.

Peter loosed a tired sigh and breathed the crisp night air in through his nostrils. He'd been sitting on Diane's Hill for a couple of hours already. He didn't know what time it was, but it was probably late enough that it'd be no use to bother going back to his dorm until sunrise. It wasn't like he would be able to fall asleep again, anyways.

The corners were the wildest places in the whole of Madison's imagination, in the fault lines of her dreams and realities. They were there, dark, waiting and festering with the microbes of her mind, the things she made and the things that were real, had she chosen them to be real. Corners. The night held plenty of creatures on its own, but it was the corners that were infested. The things that lived there climbed over each other, stayed cowering and small and unwilling to leave. That day she found herself sitting under the yellow buzz of a streetlight, bag in her lap, the unopened wrapper of a fast food sandwich perched unceremoniously upon it, and staring into these corners. All she could do is look. Look across the stretch of Diane's Hill to the many different creatures that wandered, the few that looked at her and did a mime routine against the invisible dome of the old light. The light, it almost reeked; in its archaism she almost hated it as much as the monsters that beckoned her with ambivalent hisses. But she stayed and looked to the corners, the real bowels of the night atmosphere, to the niche where a piece of roofing slanted against an old shed and where goblins lurked in dozens, or the undergrowth where wormy creatures wriggled with arms and hands the size and multitude of centipedes. These were the places where the lowest of her people lived. They seemed to grow in number each time she looked.

She had seen the boy a long time ago. She thought him a hallucination.

Madison paid him no heed.

Somehow, despite all of his acute, technologically-enhanced senses, Peter hadn't noticed the girl sitting a little ways away from the hill he was on top of. While glancing in the direction of a passing car he spotted her, crouched next to a flickering road light that seemed to be on its last legs. He could make out the signature Beata school uniform, but she had her back turned to him, so he couldn't properly make out the details of her face. He was positive that he'd probably never met her before, though. He was still new to to the academy, and hadn't become properly acquainted with too many students.

The Spring boy's eyebrows tilted downwards. She looked not unlike a penniless beggar, sitting cross-legged and alone next to the road in the middle of the night with a hunched posture. It was one of those rare, nippy summer nights tonight. The air didn't bother Peter - mostly because he was a walking furnace - but the girl below didn't look very well-dressed, considering the chilly breeze and the cold gravel ground she was seated on.

With a tired heave, Peter rose from his spot against the tree and started making his way down the gentle grassy curve of Diane's Hill, attempting not to create a tinkling racket as he walked. It was pretty hard for a man with steel limbs and joints to be quiet, but he tried his best not to sound like a collapsing tool cabinet as he approached the lonely stranger. His pace slowed as he neared Madison's spot, and he tucked his hands loosely into the drooping pockets of his sweatpants.

He could see that the girl's eyes were fixated on something in the distance, but he couldn't see what it was that she was looking at. "I guess I'm not the only insomniac around here."

Madison's feet hit the dusty ground like gavels, like her heart hit the floor as she turned to the figure who had gotten near her. Too close, so close, it seemed the mirage had broken through her wall, had gotten into the light. She knew she had seen his face before, somewhere, a nameless face, and she stood wordlessly as he advanced nearer. Yes, it had to be an illusion. The girl tightened her lips, the lower one once pouty now disappearing under the upper, and she tilted her head in an uncertain way. A small blade had come to her hand, seemingly from nowhere, a dark pocket or place in the drone of the light. "I am your queen," she said, "Can't--you, you, you...can't harm me. You are mine."

Peter's backlit amber eyes leaped instantly to the knife in Madison's hand as she shot up from the ground. He staggered back a few steps from the girl and raised his hands in front of him in surprise, light dancing around the metallic roundels that made up his knuckles. He'd clearly frightened her out of her wits.. But had she really not heard him coming? How'd she not heard a literal walking toolbox clambering down a hill? "Whoa, whoa, hey!" He understood being surprised at a random person in the middle of the night, but it wasn't like he was trying to mug her, or something. "No need to point sharp objects.. I'm a Beata student. Spring house." He tipped his head in the approximate direction of the academy, but his gaze never left Madison's defensive figure. He licked his lips, which were quite chapped from breathing in the dry, cold night air for so long, and continued, "I don't think I've even harmed a fly on purpose before. I'm just out here because I can't sleep.. So I'd, uh, appreciate it if you didn't skewer me with that, yeah?" He mustered up a lame attempt at a friendly grin and gestured to her knife with one hand.

It had become increasingly clear that he boy was not an illusion. No, he was just a boy, a normal boy. The realization played out in her eyes, the increasiny horror of how crazy she had to have looked. Madison's lips grew even tighter, her skin even paler, and she rushed the blade into the waistband of her skirt, moving so fast she ripped a bit of the garment before shoving it where it had been kept. "Sorry, I--." She searched for a respectable answer, one that wouldn't make her seem like such a kook, the words in her head spinning in circles like a tornado or hurricane or one of those swing rides at amusement parks, faster and faster in a blend, until all she could do is laugh without the least bit of humor on her face. No, there was no humor, only terror at the embarrassment of the situation.

"I, I'm here--here just sitting, sitting here, I--um, well, I lashed at you but...ignore...ignore that, I didn't mean--well, I meant it, but I didn't mean it, I didn't...know..." The more she spoke the more her words jumped over each other in an uncontrollable blend, and after a while she just stopped and breathed, breathed as well as she could with a person watching her breathe, and her hand shot out like a spring distatched at one side from its module, like a released lever. It shot up stiffly, almost accompanied by a boing sound. "I-I-I'm Madi--Madison, um, yeah, yes, my name is Madison."

Peter's shoulders and expression relaxed as Madison's defensiveness melted away into a different, more awkward kind of fear. She just managed to stammer out an apology and struggled to introduce herself coherently. Peter sighed in the wake of knowing he wasn't going to be flayed, and allowed the tired smile he'd been sporting a minute ago to return to his face. Muzhchina, he'd really made her jump. "Ah, don't worry too much about it. I was the one creeping up beside you at such an ungodly hour of the morning. Looks a little bit fishy, I guess." He chuckled and took her stiff hand in his, shaking it gently in greeting. "Peter. I'm a little new here." He retracted his hand and slipped it into one of his pockets once more. "What brings you out here at this time of night? Are you not cold?"

Truth was, she was cold. She'd sat on the bench to group herself together, to retain body heat more efficiently. When she stood up and when he spoke of it did she realize the chilliness of the summer night, and when he put his hand in hers did she realize how warm it was. Her face flushed at his question. "I'm..." she went on before pausing. "Training. I'm... training." Or she was thinking about it. On the bench beside her was a small plastic lantern, cheap enough to suggest its shape was entirely for an antique feel. It seemed like nothing more than a 360 degree, one-dollar flashlight. She needed it to get out there, after all. There she was completely surrounded by darkness, and far enough away that to run back to her dorm would be arduous and full of plenty of time to second-guess her cowardice.

Still, she'd sat there alone for a while, taking in the chill and the uncertainties that came with each growl the monsters outside the lamp's dome made. To walk outside was training, at least according to Charlotte, the guardian that mentored her through her difficult 'gift.' But it was easier said than done.

She hadn't looked to be training when Peter had spotted her from up on his spot atop the hill, but it was the logical assumption. Midnight was certainly an interesting time to practise the use of one's ability. "Vampire abilities, huh? Can only be out at night?" The Spring sniffed and waved his hand in dismissal of his lame - and quite unnecessary - joke. A nippy breeze drifted past the duo, and Peter did up another button of his coat. So much for summer.. The air was feeling a lot more like autumn than anything else. "I would offer you a hot tea at a local cafe, but I don't think any of them are open right now." He approached the bench Madison had been planted on a few moments ago and sat down net to her lantern, exhaling sleepily. He was a little relieved he'd run into somebody at this hour. It gave him something to do while he awaited the morning sun as opposed to staring across the landscape by himself. He slung one arm around the backboard of the bench and glanced back at his new acquaintance. "I hope you don't mind if I kill some time here. Sleep isn't really an option for me."