Goblin Castle

[Fiori]

They weren't alone.

Well, they never were to begin with, but Lily was certain she just heard another plate get broken. Just like all the ones that were left on the lawn outside the house next door, along with a glint of what looked like...

She peeked her head past Amaryllis and Liya ahead of her, seeing a small face peep out through a gap in the door. It took her a moment to recognise it as Elodie, one of her quirkier classmates from what she knew of her, which given her particular friendship circles was saying something. She remembered overhearing some of her classmates refer to her as "that weird little gremlin", though in fairness they tended to be the same folk who dubbed her Lilith the Satanist, so the two of them had that much in common at least. 

At any rate, she knew enough to surmise that she was pretty harmless. The Phantom Violets could probably handle her by themselves, which meant she and Richard can go do a quick bit of investigating of their own.

She stepped forward and gently nudged Liya's shoulder. "Richard and I are just gonna check a thing out, won't be too far..." she whispered to reassure her, before turning back to Richard and motioning with her head for him to follow her. She then slowly crept over towards the house next door, taking great care with every step to avoid drawing too much attention to herself, especially after she heard the unmistakable sound of glass shattering somewhere in that house. No doubt about it, there was someone apparently ransacking the place, though whether or not they were friend or foe remained to be seen. One thing that might clue her in however was the pile of shattered porcelain outside, especially if her suspicions were correct about a particular detail she'd caught out of the corner of her eye.

Sure enough, as she squatted down to pick up and examine a long slender shard of broken plate, her worst suspicions were confirmed. Blood. A small but noticeable smear along the edge, along with several drips all over the ground. Not a big splatter by any means, but enough to suggest that there had been conflict of some kind. How recently she couldn't tell, nor did she have any inkling as to whether or not whoever was inside that house had anything to do with it, but it was enough to make her aware that they were in potential danger.

That of course left her with a big question: Now what? She bit her bottom lip and scratched the back of her neck. She didn't exactly want to get into a fight they could easily avoid, especially when there were plenty of other houses and nothing stopping them from just going somewhere else. But what if whoever was causing a ruckus decided to venture elsewhere? What if they went to Elodie's house next, they couldn't just leave her at the mercy of a potential... God, she hated the term, player.

But in that case, what exactly could they do? Say hello and alert someone who could be armed and on the hunt? Try to scare whoever was in there off? Convince Elodie to follow them? And who was to say that whoever was in there had anything to do with the blood on the ground, far as she was aware that could be one of her friends venting their frustrations or something.

It was in moments like this that it was Lily's turn to find herself stuck in a rut, albeit more out of indecision than fear or anxiety. It was usually at this point that she relied on a second opinion, someone to snap her out of her analysis paralysis and stop overthinking things, force a decision if need be.

In this particular case, said decision was forced by a pair of sudden gunshots.

Lily jolted out of her skin and stepped on a plate, cracking it loudly underfoot. Panicked and alarmed she quickly darted forward and threw her back against the house, accidentally kicking a plastic bowl out of her way as she clung tightly onto that porcelain shard with her left hand like a makeshift dagger. She looked around, trying to figure out who was shooting at them, only for her eyes to fall on Big D and his tiny smoking gun pointing up into the sky.

"DICKIE!?!" she exclaimed quietly. "What the hell are you-?!?" she continued, stopping as she heard another noise. Or a lack thereof, as whoever was inside that house stopped whatever they were up to. She chewed her bottom lip and fumbled for the handle of her sword whip, ready to unsheathe it at a moment's notice. 

She gave Richard a quick glare, before trying to silently ask him via hand gestures if he could see anyone in the windows. This wasn't the time to argue about whether or not he did the right thing, for now she just focused on dealing with the situation at hand and try to make sure things didn't escalate any further.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Someone was shooting. Olive jumped and then dropped to the ground, laying facedown in the snow. It was cold and icy on her cheeks, and she tried not to breathe. She knew that this was real. She had seen evidence of it already, but only afterwards. That was different from somebody shooting right now.

After a few seconds, Olive calmed down enough to be more logical. The shooting had been nearby, but not right by her. It came from the other side of the row of houses, and off down the street at least a little. So whoever was shooting wasn't shooting at her. She didn't have to be immediately afraid. Also, the snow was very cold.

Olive pulled herself back up and brushed the snow off her hoodie and pants. Then she cleaned her glasses.

It was quiet for now, but Olive was angry. She hadn't found what she was looking for yet, and of course the whole situation was terrible, and now she was even colder. She turned her head back and forth, and then found a pile of stones partially covered in snow.

Olive threw another rock at the smaller window in the back door. She missed and it thumped off the siding next to the door instead. The next rock was too high and went thump again. The next was slippery with snow and she released it badly so it plopped into the snow halfway to the house. The next scratched the door's paint, too low.

Olive stamped her foot in the snow, shaking and shivering. She grabbed the next rock.

It smashed straight through the window.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Before she could tell Liya to stay back and wait with Elodie while Amaryllis checked the back on her own, she went deaf.

The lacrosse stick dropped to the ground. So did she, making herself small against the snow as her eyes darted across the surroundings for the source of the gunfire.

It turned out they didn't need to look very far. For there he was, gun aloft, pointed straight up, several paces behind her. He was a typical man; he felt like he lost control, and so he acted out, made an objectively stupid decision, in order to get it back. Her fear turned to nausea, sublimated into rage.

Talk about a Dick move!

"Fucking moron!" Amaryllis said above the ringing in her ears. Elodie had shut the door and locked it tight. Someone screamed, either Liya or Lily or somebody else. She couldn't tell, over the goddamn ringing. Which bugged her. After all, she was less than a stranger to such loud sounds. Just not guns, really. That's what it was—she recognized gunfire and the sound got louder to her than it was as a result. Purely psychological. Using the lacrosse stick as support, she helped herself to her feet. It felt better to stand, and the quiet that followed the gunfire began to envelope the ringing from all sides.

So, how far did that sound really carry? It was cold, so the air was thin. Probably at least over the vicinity of the town. Audible inside buildings within a thousand feet? No. It was a small gun. And yet the edges of the ringing still lingered in her ears. Now probably all the big guns knew where they were, and they'd be on them in minutes, if that. It was time to either make scarce or get inside. Scarce was a bad idea, considering that they'd probably run into someone coming to check out the source of the noise on their way out. Inside was better; it was a place to hide. But both houses were occupied, and besides, there was somebody around the back—

"The back," Amaryllis said, "come on." She motioned for Liya to follow her as she started to walk around the side of Elodie's house.

At the sound of breaking glass, she broke into a run. All the same, she wasn't exactly sure why she was running. It wasn't like she owed Elodie anything. No, this was entirely selfish—she wanted to see what it was, who it could be, for herself. But, why? Why, when there was a chance it could mean certain, near instant death?

She skidded to a stop at the other side of the house, kicking up a cloud of powdery snow. Behind Elodie's house, there was...

Nobody. She whipped around and there she was, right in front of her shattered windows. It was someone Amaryllis barely recognized—if she didn't know better she might even think this person was from another place, another school—and then, not by name. Just another face lurking in the halls, on the periphery, unthought about. Since waking up, she figured that if it was going to be someone, it would be someone she didn't know well. This could very well be that moment.

But she didn't see a weapon. And so,

"Hey!" Amaryllis said. She brandished the lacrosse stick with both hands, holding the netted end out in front of her like the point of a sword, and felt immediately ridiculous, but stood sturdy all the same. It was a familiar talk, to her, that came next; she told somebody else what she really wanted to tell herself.

"Stop that, right now! Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

Liya glanced back - then looked away and gritted her teeth even harder. Only one person in their little group had a gun, so the gunshot was either him or some new troublemaker. If she gnashed hard enough she could remind herself that this was the best out of all possibilities. If she gnashed hard enough, she could force down her annoyance - she had to, because she nearly buried the billhook in his neck for far, far less.

Nobody was shooting at her, may the mercy she paid unto others be paid unto her. But god, what a stupid move, what was even the use? So said all the noise that came in response, and so said some part of her. Liya didn't believe in The Devil, but she was beginning to believe that very cruel and petty part of her was the devil talking.

It came as a relief when Amaryllis' request came through - the back. Liya followed behind and followed the noise, billhook in tow, and it seemed 'ryllis was off about the source of the noise, but by only one house. There was indeed someone there, breaking windows. If she could run some coolant through her brain, she'd recognize that her first, uncharitable thought wasn't the only option. But alas, she did not. Anna wasn't here. The farm's chickens weren't here. Only her classmates, who Liya felt no particular need to be gentle with, not even the ones she liked - that was why she liked them.

She was about to raise the billhook at the burglar (maybe not necessarily a burglar, but throwing stones through windows didn't do much to convince people you weren't about to do something shady) but stopped midway when Amaryllis stepped forward instead. The sight of her wielding that lacrosse stick like it was a deadly weapon made her look to the side and scoff. What exactly would that accomplish?

But, she didn't say that. She kept the billhook raised, and stared ahead at whoever-it-was. Amaryllis could threaten, Iliya could follow up. Hopefully if it came to that it would be because this person was actually trying to rob and hurt people, and wasn't just like, freaking out. In that case (and only that case) Liya could live with whatever happened next.

[Buko]

His wrists shook and for a brief few seconds his ears rang and eyes stung through a hard blink.

The goal had been a response and the desired result was reaction. On a basic 1+1=2 level, shit had gone as it should’ve. Just not how Dick wanted. A crucial and critical difference. They did not see Dicky’s gun as a rallying point or call to circle his wagon. They were dedicated to going forward as individual pieces rather than a united force. What had he expected? He had provided no explanation! Bullets didn’t make bonds, he knew this! His fault, sure, but his intention was pure and part of pulling the trigger was to prove to himself that he could. He didn’t have to use it, they just had to remember he had it. Big Dick’s goal was to calcify their bond before clarifying his intent and provide himself as a rallying point and ginger lighthouse—none of them were on that wavelength. Their loss. Dicky was thinking ahead, they were still stuck in the moment. Paranoia was just a cousin to premonition. Dicky’s persona had been so caught up in perception that he had no choice but to trust his own. However limited or flawed it may have been.

The responses from the group gathered were varied and yet all in line: they cussed, they stared, another window was smashed with a crash of glass. A loud voice screamed and sloppily stomped through the scene. It was a cacophony of chaos, a swamp of stimuli. It was the screaming and stomping that stood out in his mind. It was the screaming and stomping that shook his spirit as much as his wrist and created a ringing in his heart as loud as the one in his ears.

Dick had fired in the air as a sign to the others—the scream was a sign to himself. A sign blinking a ‘f’ word that out on Murder Island counted for more than gold...

Familiar.

“Iris…?”

Dicky’s whisper was hoarse and he felt his knees buckle before his legs moved themselves forward. There was an urgency there that had been present in the church when he heard Amarylis’ cry and it revealed a speed in his step that had been previously absent. His stomach growled—that dog in him howled.

“That’s my friend! I-I-I,” he stuttered and spat, “fuckin’ follow me!”

He ran in the direction he felt the steps had gone. Dicky wanted to be a hero. Welles Crowther running into burning buildings, but he didn't know what that meant. He didn't know how-to. His own answer was in his response—he had no time to look for other's reaction.


[ Big Dick Continued In: A Girl's Feelings ]

[Yonagoda]

It would be so easy. All of these generations up, and it took one premature death, one early chance meeting with someone else, a couple of steps too late here or there and he wouldn't have to *be* anymore. She thought a lot, in the past few hours, about generational trauma. About the Kims, about the Klansmen, the sons and daughters of people who never deserved to have children, of hate and cruelty being taught and trickling downstream, and how easy it was to end it all, just one change, just one person deciding that the pattern would stop with them, or one person from the outgroup putting an end to it themselves. She thought about that a lot, because she was a product of her environment, and some odd, irrational, soft part of her thought that maybe Danya was, too, some stupid boy, voice barely a decade older than her, stumbling and trying to fill his father's bloody footsteps. What would've happened it someone, anyone, just whisked him away, when he was young and vulnerable and easy to mold and carve and hurt?

What would've happened if She was a better mother?

Would she be happier? Would her anger be a feeling than some force of nature, an unrelenting tide? Would she be anything more than a mad dog with heart collar on, howling and scratching but too afraid to bite her teeth down?

Maybe not. She didn't think so.

Everything could be happening all at once. Millie stood, there, a bit frozen. She couldn't see much. But she heard a lot of noise, and glass, and fracturing noises, and a gunshor and voices and glass blew out from a window behind her, little shards too far away to cut but close enough to make her yelp. She wanted to do somethint more bombastic, maybe, but seemed to be a lot of people, and at least someone with a gun, and she was scared. She was scared of dying, and of dying painfully and early. The rock skidded next to her foot.

Millie looked out an open window, next to the shattered one.

''Ugh,'' she said, a bit awkwardly, a bit outmatched and out of breath to the people with weapons, ''Hiiii....? What... what are you guys doing here?''

[Fiori]

Dickie didn't respond. Lily wasn't sure why at first, though she could tell that he was distracted by something.

She'd heard a scream earlier, but she assumed that was either Elodie or one of the Violets. Had there been someone else nearby who they ended up scaring off by accident? The town wasn't that big, so it wouldn't surprise her if a lot of people heard those gunshots. Hopefully nobody who'd view them as an invitation...

Liya and Amaryllis were rushing around to try and seek out whoever was raiding the house, and Lily was about to follow suit to back them up when Dickie called out to them again, confirming that scream belonged to an apparent third party.

"W-wait, what?" she replied, but Dickie didn't stick around long enough to elaborate, instead making a mad dash in the opposite direction. Realising that she needed to act quickly to keep the group from splitting up, she glanced back at the Violets, biting her bottom lip when she realised they were confronting someone.

She didn't like this, not one bit. Too many variables, too many unknowns. Perhaps Dickie had the right idea in cutting their losses and bailing before someone got hurt.

"Fffuck..." she cursed under her breath, before biting down on her finger and thumb to blow a loud whislte. "LIYA! AMARYLLIS! WE GOTTA GO, NOW! THIS HOUSE AIN'T WORTH IT!"

On that note, she would wave them over to follow her before darting off to try and catch up with Dickie.

((Lillian Larsen continued in A Girl's Feelings))

[Grand Moff Hissa]

A girl called Olive from the side of the house, but when she looked there were two girls, one with a stick and one with a big cleaver. Olive froze and lifted her hands to surrender. She dropped the next rock and it landed on her toes.

"I'm not," she replied to the question of if she was trying to get herself killed. Then she looked down at the tail of the noose around her neck, and quickly tossed the loose end over her shoulder. Out of sight, out of mind.

A girl then called from inside the house. She asked what they were doing and Olive frowned. What was she doing? She wasn't doing anything with these people. She was doing something with the girl from the house. Together they were smashing everything they could, at least that was what Olive had thought. But now she alone was being scolded.

Maybe there was someone else inside who'd been smashing things? Or maybe this was a misunderstanding? So she answered the girl in the house.

"Breakin' windows," Olive said.

She tilted her foot so the rock rolled into the snow, ignoring her stinging toes.

There was lots of noise from the street on the other side of the house, where Olive couldn't see. Someone was shouting for the armed girls to go. Olive felt sort of offended that her house wasn't worth it, but she wasn't going to say that when someone had been shooting.

"What's happening there?" she asked. And then she said, "I think your friends want you."

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

At some point, Liya couldn't keep looking the stranger in the eyes while leveling the billhook at them. When she raised her hands, Liya lowered hers. Amaryllis had no need to do the same because what was she gonna do, bonk this girl on the head with it? Actually, if you did that hard enough, that would cause significant damage to the head, and the danger of which had been drilled into her head multiple times as a member of the lacrosse team and- she breathed, and breathed out the thought (what's this? one of her parents' stupid meditation techniques that annoyingly worked so much she repeated it to Anna? Argh.)

A concussion on the island felt like a worse fate than a sliced neck. At least the latter killed you quick. She didn't want to imagine all that, though.

Still, she narrowed her eyes at Olive, before tapping Amaryllis on the shoulder. "It sounds pretty urgent..." she commented, as she walked away from the scene, billhook lowered. A few steps away, she started running to keep up.

Like, what was she actually gonna steal from that house? Broken plates?

[Iliya "Liya" Polaris continued in The Flesh Is Weak]

[MethodicalSlacker]

Amaryllis didn't want to go.

It was correct that this place was likely not worth the trouble for what it actually was. She came to that conclusion when she heard the plate smasher's voice out the window, and when Olive threw the rope over her shoulder. Nobody was in any real danger here. Her intervention was not needed and even if it was, she could not meet that challenge as it stood. Not with her useless lacrosse stick. Still, night would soon come, and in the abstract they needed a place to sleep, something insulated and warm, defensible, anonymous. A house among many houses made the most sense. So what if there was someone inside, or someone nearby? If they could make peace, a large group holding two houses had a much better chance of detecting any threats, anyone who had already gone off the deep end, than a smaller group holding one. They'd have to organize, taking sleeping shifts, designating sentry posts, but of course they would. Anything worth doing here would require that they organize in some capacity.

But when Liya went, Amaryllis didn't have a choice. Where Liya went, she went, to a point. As long as she was wanted nearby. But she wouldn't leave her bandmate - her friend, first and foremost - in the care of that fucking moron Dick, and his lackey Lily.

She looked up at Millie, standing in the window. Poor thing. She'd ask her to come with, but given the state of everything, she wasn't sure if she'd be ready to make the journey to wherever the fuck.

"Just so you don't get scared," Amaryllis said, projecting her voice, "there's someone in this house next to you, behind me. Her name is Elodie, and she's freaked out at the moment, but you probably should group up, somehow, if you want to have a fighting chance."

God, was that all she could do? Play matchmaker with three lost souls? Now kiss.

"Get that foot looked at," she said, now to Olive, "and stop making noise. Next time someone runs up on you it probably won't be to make sure you ain't killing someone."

Amaryllis turned and saw that Liya wasn't there. She was already running to catch up with Dick and Lily, who were stomping off through the snow, receding into the pale distance.

"Fuck," she muttered under her breath. Then she started to run after her, trying to catch up.

"Liya! Wait up!"

[Amaryllis Peszek-Byrne continued in A Girl's Feelings.]

[KamiKaze]

A year ago during quarantine, Elodie strode into the kitchen to see Bridgette with what looked like a miniature plastic guillotine. While Elodie had always been about the great outdoors and nature and fantasy works, Bridgette had thrown herself into acting and illusionism. Two different ways of coping, of embracing things, really.

Bridgette had smiled as she placed a baby carrot through the tiny hole, and dropped the blade down on it. It went clean through, like a blade through a neck. Then, she offered to let Elodie stick her finger inside.

It took some coaxing, but Elodie was brave.

The blade went down, but her finger wasn’t hurt. Not even a little knick.

The way the trick worked was simple. The blade rotated at exactly the right spot, so it’s not like the blade just slid through your finger harmlessly like brushing against water. It just safely tilted upwards, and was so quick you wouldn’t notice. They’d both laughed about it, and even got Trisha with the trick.

Not too long ago, Elodie had brought a rock down on a similar guillotine to free the blade so that she could make a shank. She’d whispered apologies to Bridgette the entire time.

---

Elodie slid out from under the dining room table’s musty plastic table cloth, with her shank of flimsy steel and plastic and gauze and tape in her hand.

She wasn’t sure what just happened. There was more shouting, and more breaking glass. It seemed to quiet down for a moment, but eventually, after what felt like forever, she felt like crawling out from her hiding spot.

Elodie slowly crouch-walked to the sink window, then, with both hands on the edge, peeked out, which gave her an okay-ish view of the back neighbor’s house.. They were leaving now, it looked like. Running for it, even, as if desperate.

What did her neighbor even do?

She thought she saw another girl, but she was uncertain.

Elodie quickly slid down, thinking about her next play. That group was gone, but she still had to contend with whoever her neighbor(s) was/were. She’d heard guns, and they were still probably smashing things. Greeeeeeeeeeeat.

She looked at the back door. Maybe the other way, back towards the front. Or the window.

[Yonagoda]

...

Is it safe now?

People ran. People screamed. And then they were gone, but not in the death-way, which was good.

Was she going to die here? Will somebody see her, some distant sniper, someone far away with worse intentions? Hopefully not. The thing about her was that she never was good as noticing people as she was good at being noticed by others- she shouldn't have dyed her hair blue, she shouldn't have worn something so bright, she shouldn't have this and that. All these little innocuous details crashed down. She never thought that she'd have to fight for her life in this getup, in this environment, and it felt a lot worse than if she would've been prepared- if she was a frog in a boiling pot instead of being flash-fried.

Millie closed the window. It made a loud, audible squeak, and she cringed. She looked down at the room- evidence of her rage littered everywhere. Maybe she should clean it up, but she didn't see why she shouldn't just move house- common courtesy, she realized, wasn't needed here. She could get away with neglecting a please and a thank you and leaving everything messy, because she wouldn't come back here alive anyways, probably.

Tiredly, she kicked some of the shards, moved to the next room- a toppled little bookshelf, more like a nightstand in shape and stature, laid gutted on the ground, spilling its contents. She stepped over it. Next window. Looked out again. It was awfully routine. She felt like she was playing a video game with someone guiding her hand motions.

Sometimes, Millie wished she was a little more imaginative. A little more capable of depicting the world in a more interesting way- that she could draw or sculpt or write, that she could express how she felt in a better way than to hurt herself and everyone around her. And, also, that she could starve off this unsuspecting boredom, all-encompassing, her brain desperate for stimulation. She was just... there. Helpless, in a way, without a gun. With nothing to do to substain herself any further. She was inching towards some kill or be killed scenario that would happen eventually, maybe it already happened, because she was pretty sure she fucking killed the boy she dropped a plate on. She saw his blood splatter to the ground. Oh, god. Did he actually die? Did she actually murder someone? She didn't, right? She couldn't have. She couldn't.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Olive stood there in the snow as the newcomers went away again. She was frowning. She was making too much noise? What about whoever was shooting? And besides, her toes didn't hurt that much.

The girl inside the house shut the window. It was pointless, because some of the other windows were busted, but Olive didn't judge. Habit was powerful. This girl probably shut the windows at home before she went outside, in case it rained.

Olive waited and rubbed her hands together. The gloves warmed her through friction. She puffed out a big breath and it fogged her glasses, and she let them stay like that. This was taking a while. She rocked her weight from foot to foot. Her toes only hurt a little. What was the other girl doing in there? When would she come out?

Olive wanted to talk about what they were going to do now. She thought that they should go and talk to Elodie. Olive knew who Elodie was. She was weird and had been wearing a big green cloak. Olive always thought Elodie was like one of the cryptids she read about but a person. Or maybe she was a person who was adjacent to cryptids? Olive could imagine her playing with the Cottingley Fairies, only without the fraud. She was also tiny, so probably not dangerous. But maybe the girl in the house wouldn't want to do that.

The fog over Olive's glasses had completely melted by the time she realized the girl inside wasn't coming out. Olive had been ditched. She'd been right to think she was being blamed, like she was the only one breaking things. She was unwelcome. The window shutting wasn't a sign that a meeting was imminent. It was a sign that Olive was supposed to stay outside.

Her frown deepened and her eyes scrunched up. She bent down and ran her fingers over her toes before picking up the rock that had fallen on them again.

It sailed through the window that had been shut with a crash of shattering glass. Olive stomped up to the back door and yelled, "Um, excuse me, but I want to talk?"

[KamiKaze]

Elodie heard someone call out next door alongside more clattering of glass. She tightly blinked. A breath, in and out.

Then, she slid up to the backdoor, peering through the glass window. Elodie saw Olive Mayo– a girl with an even odder name, who does that– hanging out outside at her neighbor’s house. What was she doing? Going up to their backdoor, it looked like.

She felt the shank in her hand. It seemed like a lot had happened at once, then it quickly dissipated. Like what you’d imagine tossing boiling hot water into snow would look like, one moment of cold solid meeting boiling liquid, but ending in an anticlimatic sizzle. Strange analogy, but there you go.

Olive, Olive… what was Olive like? Didn’t she like cryptids? Cryptids were cool. Elodie liked Mothman, and Sasquatch, and Nessie, and the Alien Big Cats, and the Chupacabra, and the Yowie, and the Jersey Devil, and and the Mongolian death worm, and the–

Elodie knew a decent amount about cryptids, she realized.

Olive was one of the more gullible ones, but also maybe had some medical knowledge? Kinda also one of the weirdos, like her.

Elodie opened the backdoor a few inches to get a closer look. Another risky maneuver. But it squeaked really loudly. And she had to wince at that.

[Yonagoda]

There was a noise, squeaking.

Everything hurt. Mentally. Physically, a bit, too.

The glass near another window exploded. It sounded like a pop. Or a crack. She wasn't sure which.

A rock was tossed, halfhazardly, towards its sender.

''What do you want?''

She wasn't sure if she had the energy or anger to do anything against the girl, now. And if she did, that meant coming out of this (honestly very unsafe) coccoon she built around herself, a chrysalis of glass and rage.