life observes itself

[Cicada]

((OOC : Because I tend to like writing without actually explaining myself I feel this thread concept deserves an OOC explanation.

Anyone entering this thread may choose to interact with the box however they so please. Leave something inside, use it as a backdrop for something else, cut it up to make a theater prop, steal it, read other things people have left in it. Do whatever.))

-----

Beryl was careful to loosely nub her two fingertips against the plastic wrapper in her grasp. Empty plastic wrapper! The last of the little sugar candies had been popped into her mouth. Sweet, a bit tart. And, hm. Tart referring to the conceptuals of sweetness? Tart referring to the colloquial for attractiveness of maidenhood? But, okay. Beryl did mean tart in the conceptuals of lemon, zetsy sourness. Though perhaps something sweet melting over her tongue was oddly akin to the third-person and visceral, pleasurable experience of womanhood, via some manner of castabout metaphor.

Beryl was careful to properly dispose- trash, remove, recycle- of her candy wrapper in the nearest of forlorn deep blue recycling bins that happened shyly into her field of vision. He was the brethren of many who looked exactly like him. He seemed a lonely figure tucked into the quietest corner of the art block, by the emergency exit. Beryl gazed into his maw. It turned out he didn't have a single morsel! 'Trash repository' was ultimately the default definition and thus purpose of a trash can. Also, hm. Maybe usage as a hat. But he was too big. And, he belonged to the school anyways! The immemorial oddities of property rights...

She left him one gift. Her candy wrapper, scrunched up into prototype origami, a flowery sunray burst of wrinkle-creased triangles.

>[B/e/r/y/l/M/a/h/e/l/o/n/a/V/7]<

Exhaustion tracked muddy trails through Beryl's thoughts as it usually did.

She wasn't entirely sure why she'd deviated away from the school's stoic auditorium door. Ooh, and. She wasn't entirely sure what time it was. She glanced at her finger, where a technicolor party of hair ties slightly choked her own circulatory system. Each finger was tightly adorned by very much welcome guests, dressed to their nines in red and green and yellow and blue and teal neon dyes. Party! And, also:

Pretty! Or perhaps, hmmmm, garish! Ooh, but:

Was life Herself not the most flamboyantly bawdy explosion of hues that could replicate by the generations into an Earthwide kaleidoscope? Food for thought! Beryl stared at her fingers, a moment longer.

Until, her eyes began to water slightly and her thoughts began to drift into the warm and cozy sugar slush. There, in her sights, a baby blue blur. Right on the left index finger that belonged to herself! It reminded her she had a job to do, stirring an old memory associated with the color from when she'd triple wrapped it around her finger that morning.

She walked into the, um.

? Time passed. It passed, in a Gaussian blur that she promptly forgot, though it had seemed rather enjoyable all while she'd meandered through the fragmented moments of time!

She found herself at some point in the future having entered the auditorium. She stared at the empty stage in thoughtless contemplation.

She mulled. Was her gift to belong to the public? Was it to be stolen from the public eye, to become the centerpiece of another story? Beryl knew not of plans that had yet to be written, but she was certainly entitled to wonder. Or! Perhaps even speculating on the temporal river downstream of one's wading self was a phenomenal waste of time and energy, to where it was criminal per the laws of a fickle Nature. Beryl did not know the answer! Ooh, although… She perhaps existed in an uncollapsed bubble of reality where she was happy to waste her time. Waste her time productively. Gorgeous oxymoron!

Beryl imagined a spider web's worth of map drowning every inch of the auditorium's flooring, sluicing into every crack and crevice where a resting body might lazily wander where would people go? Where would her project most erupt from the background noise and imprint itself onto the observer with a 'oh hi there what's up please look at me'? Beryl simulated the illusion of people sprawled out over the auditorium, standing and sitting and chatting and falling into teenage romances in a phantasmal cross-section of oddly contorted human bodies.

Beryl ultimately...

Some long amount of time- very long- later picked a spot right by the auditorium door for her to rest. Not the her that was Beryl herself, rather, the her she'd fashioned with cardboards and paints and other such artifices of and from Nature. She was cute, a waist high box, slightly distorted from a pure cuboid shape by… several degrees of shear on one side, and bulge on another side. And she was carefully dolled up! All plastered in a bright and slightly unevenly dried, flaky pink paint that was perhaps pleasant to the eye- Or, or. Perhaps brutal upon the eye, or, perhaps reminiscent of the most classic of bubblegums one could choke themselves upon, like a particularly squishy looking marshmallow prom dress.

Beryl felt a pride for Box as Box stood proudly, nestled between the back of a chair in the back row and the overbiting lip of a wall. Box announced to the world, voiceless, with a somehow familiar neon green and glossy and glitter and slightly wobbly applied lipstick of dried acrylic, that she was:

accepting all your thoughts! No pennies to give back though
:p

And Box was left behind by Mommy. And, also, Mommy moved on distracted by wonderment. Distracted by something along the lines of that eternal maternal question, 'what will become of my daughter?', as her daughter left the roost and found a new home in George Hunter High.

[:p]

[Espi]

((Paloma Salt continued from Stillness in Motion))

What the hell was up with this box?

Paloma had only been walking by the auditorium on her way to the exit when she saw the...thing. She'd gone to the art room in a free period to try something with the supplies there since she couldn't go home yet and also the supplies were free. It wasn't working out so after the bell rang she scrapped it and cleaned up.

But the auditorium door was open, and Paloma was decently perceptive so she'd seen the uncharacteristic bright color, so she'd peeked in. This...large pink box was not what she'd expected. A freshman's misplaced coat? Sure. Prop hidden for a prank? Why not?

Big pink cardboard box? What the hell.

Standing in front of it, Paloma absently played with the zipper on her coat as she bent to investigate it. It had a label, and reading it gave her the impression it was an art project. A weird one, yeah. No slot for paper or anything. Was it just supposed to sit here?

Paloma cocked her head and studied it further. This was probably one of those weird meta-artistic pieces. It wasn't pretty enough not to be, anyway. She could get behind that, kinda. What was it for? Paloma looked back into the hall, which was empty by now. She poked the box with an outstretched finger, then pressed on it with an open palm.

Just cardboard. Exciting. Paloma stood straight again and cracked her neck. Whatever this thing was, it wasn't worth trying to study it when she could be going home. So she walked away, but only after considering one thing. Just to throw a bone to whatever sap made this.

As Paloma left, a single penny, plucked from her wallet, was left directly on top of the box.

((Paloma Salt continued in Black Box Ice Box))

[Aura]

(Aleksandra Prudius continued from Stillness in Motion)

Aleksandra was walking through the art block when she decided to take a detour through the auditorium.  She didn't go there that often, usually just to eat lunch sometimes.  But today, for some reason, she decided to come through.  She had a free period coming up, so she had the time to spare.

It was a good thing that she had that sudden urge to explore though, because otherwise she wouldn't have found the box.  It was way at the back of the auditorium for some reason, and it was kind of in the way.  She thought that maybe she should move it so that it wouldn't be in the way of anyone who might be walking through.  The writing on the side gave her pause, though.

"Accepting all your thoughts.  No pennies to give back, though."  She read aloud.  So she presumed that someone left this here on purpose.  Was it a suggestion box?  An art project?  Something else that she couldn't think of a description for off the top of her head?  She hadn't seen anything else like it before, except for maybe some of the abstract sculptures that she had seen in the art room.  This was just a box, though.  It was a really brightly-colored box with writing on the side, but still a box.

The color bothered her, actually.  It was far too garish.  For something that seemed so uncomplicated, it was just far too much going on.  Far too bright, and far too flashy.  She kind of wanted to find a more subdued color, like a nice forest green, and repaint it.  She couldn't do that, though.  It wasn't her project, and it wasn't her choice as to what should be done with it.  The person who made the box decided to paint it pink and drop it in the back of the auditorium.  Aleksandra didn't know the reason, and it wasn't hers to decipher.

Huh, that gave her an idea.  She opened her backpack, tore out a piece of a notebook from a class that she rarely had to take noted in, and make a quick note.

Art is in the eye of the beholder

There, that seemed appropriate.  She dropped the note in the box and looked at it for a minute before deciding that she was satisfied.  This little experience had given her a sudden desire to do a bit of casual artwork before next period came around.  She left the auditorium and headed for the art room.

(Aleksandra Prudius continued elsewhere...)

[Cicada]

(she's continued from this place)










.. Wait hold up. Turned out Charelle did not know da wae.

Seriously where was she? Was this even the school still or some alternate dimension? Man she had to lay off the siestas for once. She kept waking up in strange places but like, yo. Why be awake when you can be not awake ??

Charelle stumbled forward as her legs snapped back to earth. Apparently she'd fallen asleep in one of the cushy theater chairs, feet propped up on the chair in front of her. She was pretty surprised no one had toppled her over while she'd been Z-ing it up. Wait, was it even actually lunch time? Now that she thought (?) about it she'd probably missed a class or something, by now. RIP. Whatever.

No point in like, trying to go to class now. She could just chill for a bit and wait for the bell. She wandered around and found a cool box. Kinda pretentious looking. She checked out the note inside. Yeah, totally pretentious. She tossed the note back in.

...




Aw hell, why not.

'For a good time call-' and then the rest of Charelle's phone number, and then she carelessly tossed the crumpled up piece of not-turned-in-yet math homework (2 whole problems done, a Charelle first!) she'd written it on into the box.

(she continued in some other place)

[Pippi]

((Lyra Doyle continued from The Glorious Evolution))

Lunch time.

Lyra sat alone at the back of the auditorium, staring along the row at the bright pink cardboard box, perfectly happy to be nestled there, as though it was the exact sort of place that neon pink cuboid vessels normally belonged. The box stared back. Or maybe it didn't. Hard to tell when something lacked eyes.

"Mmmm…"

Lyra brought their hand up to their mouth and took a slow, methodical bite of the sandwich it held. Sliced chicken, goat's cheese, and BBQ sauce on white bread. The absolute perfect combination, in Lyra's mind. They narrowed their eyes as they chewed. The box continued to remain Schrodinger's starer, choosing to hold its opinion of Lyra's sandwich choice close to its chest.

Normally, right now, Lyra would be in the cafeteria, sitting at a table with their friends, discussing the previous class, or some dumb internet video they'd all inevitably seen. But today, they all seemed to be doing other stuff during lunch; clubs, or detentions, or, in one person's case, being bombastically ill at home. So whenever something like this happened, Lyra would always skip off to the auditorium instead. It was quiet and peaceful in there, and they would happily sit down and read whilst they ate. Better that than having to share a table with strangers who might just be one of Those Sorts of people, after all…

The box, however, had demanded their full attention the moment they'd walked into the room, their dog-eared book of Incan mythology forgotten about at the bottom of their bag. They finished their mouthful of sandwich, looked at it for a couple seconds more, then put the other half of their lunch down to stroll over towards it.

Standing in front of it, the box was a little less… well… box-shaped, to be honest. Kinda… bulgy. But very pink, a cute bubblegum pink! Lyra scanned the message on the front of the box, then once more.

"Well, that's a goddamn lie right there, isn't it, Box?" Lyra muttered, looking at the shiny penny sitting next to the slot on the top of the box.

Still, though, they couldn't blame the box for that. It, obviously, wasn't the box's own money, as cool as that would have been. Whoever the box belonged to, they obviously wanted it to act as some sort of anonymous thought box, for whatever reason they might have. Art project? Genuine altruism? Whichever one it was, Lyra knew they were gonna end up putting something in there. They couldn't help themselves. They'd feel awful if they didn't. They always ended up putting loose change in the hats and guitar cases of the buskers and street performers they passed by.

Lyra dashed back to their bag, then returned again, this time with pen and a scrap of paper in hand. They thought for a moment about what they should put in, because gosh, it was so, so tempting to make a joke or a pun. After a moment's hesitation, they smiled, and scribbled something down, dropping the folded up paper into the box, and leaving it behind with a skip in their step.

"Be Excellent To Each Other"

((Lyra Doyle continued in Lo Mein Event))

[MethodicalSlacker]

A tithe collection bin, the box was not, though one had already made an attempt to frame the ignoble cardboard as a platform for donation. Donation to whom? The needy? The weary? It was more likely that the measly penny would wind up in the grubby mitts of someone socially leprous than in the fingers of one who had to hang on to every cent out of necessity. He would have to leave the penny alone, but he wanted to find some way to monitor it without being present, so as to make sure that it would not be used for immoral purposes. Then again, his own presence would necessarily dictate the behavior of anyone who saw the box in an unnatural way, a deterrent to any sort of interaction. For that reason, he'd have to pass on from the box eventually. Baseball practice was cancelled for the day—it appeared that the weather was in a disagreeable mood, unleashing a tantrum of a torrent against the surface of the Earth—so, theoretically, he could remain for as long as he wished, but there was nothing to be gained from such an action.

The curious object decorated the auditorium garishly, its presence an inarguable affront to any sense of aesthetic delicacy left in the world. Who had placed it here? There was no doubt that it had to be the work of some student or other, but what kind of student would they have to be in order to place something like this here? What compelled them to do this? For what purpose? The inscription read that the receptacle was intended to pay host to people's thoughts. Carefully, he peered into the slot on top of the box to see if it had been used for that purpose. A few pieces of paper were left inside, seemingly bearing writing. It occurred to him that this could be the work of someone who intended to make some sort of art project out of the pieces of paper inside. He shook his head disapprovingly. The digressions and diversions of the world of art never ceased to amaze him with their frivolity and needless posturing. In his mind, he could already read the artist's statement on the card below the imaginary tapestry, a diatribe on the nature of human thought, et cetera, et cetera. It left him with a bad taste in his mouth.

A thought then crossed his mind, and he smiled. If he had been correct in guessing the intention of the self-styled artist in leaving this box in the auditorium, all he had to do to poke a hole in their argument for their view of human thought would be to insert the thoughts of someone else in his place. Swinging his backpack off of his shoulders, he unzipped the front pocket and fished out a book, one that he immediately recognized as perfect for the job. The book balanced the sincerity of what he guessed the intent of the original project to be with the paradox of including a book among the menagerie of idle thought that the box would no doubt become were he not around to highlight the irony of the entire endeavor. He held the book up to the slot to make sure that its proportions were not too large to fit inside the hole. Seeing that it was just small enough to make it in if he pushed it just hard enough, he held it over the opening and prepared to force it in. He hoped that the artist would understand his intent not as malicious, but as merely critical, in his own indirect way.

A few moments later, Max left the auditorium, but not before leaving the box one copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations heavier.

[Max Rudolph continued in Disk Rot.]

[backslash]

If there was one thing in the world that Mercy hated more than anything, it was centipedes. Centipedes were closely followed by millipedes, because millipedes weren't poisonous, but they were still creepy and gross. Scorpions too, and spiders. Anything with more than four legs that wasn't a butterfly or moth was probably right out. Aside from those things, Mercy especially hated okra, broccoli, celery, mushy peas- most vegetables, let's just say. After creepy crawlies and vegetables, she hated boys who strung girls along, racists, people who laughed at her, Ivy Langley, and pretensiousness.

So there's a few pennies' worth of thoughts for you, box. You're pretentious, and in being pretentious, you've brought up a whole host of other ugly associations. Hope you're proud of yourself.

...Mercy didn't have anything to leave here for others to find.

All her latest photos were in digital format and hadn't been printed yet. She had a few scraps of half-written poetry in her notebook, but somebody would probably recognize her handwriting or her style, and she would be soundly mocked for giving in to the pretense.

So in the end, she left nothing behind her, and took nothing with her except a confused sense of judgment towards whomever had decided to deposit an entire book in the neon box.

((Mercy Ames continued in Pretty Girl (420 remix)))

[BlizzardeyeWonder]

[Meilin Zhou- Pregame START]

Word on the street had it that a new decoration had found its way into the auditorium, and whaddaya know, the word on the street was right!

Meilin pulled the can of soda she just finished away from her face, and bent down a little so that she was eye-level to the bright and bubbly, painted and pink cardboard box. Well, the box didn't have eyes, but if it did they would be a very nice shade of sky blue and also be having a staring contest with her right now.

"Accepting all your thoughts," she read out loud. Oh, isn't that sweet? She remembered that sort of thoughts box being put up for mental health week in middle school, though not a lot of people used it. Did anyone use it? Actually no... that was kinda sad. Truly showed the internalized stigma those with mental illness faced. But people were using this box! Somebody even put a whole book in there-

"Wait, what?"

Meilin aired her confusion out loud, but it didn't really make things better. Why would someone put another person's book in a place that was (probably) supposed to be about your own thoughts? Well... maybe they just really agreed with the author! Don't you love that feeling when you're reading a book and character says something and you're like "Yessss, someone finally understands!"

Whoops, did she say that out loud? No, that was just the normal muttering.

Well, if the person here put the whole book here, instead of just a quote, that probably means he agreed with the whole book! Rare, but what's wrong with that?

Ah, but this was supposed to be for her own thoughts, no?

"Hm..."

What was on her mind right now? Well, she knew what was in her ears. It's a really nice song called Primal by a really nice composer called Sean O'Loughlin. If you didn't know who he was, that's okay! Nobody has the time to hear about every single artist in the world. Still, he was a good composer. Had that energy in his pieces. Ten-outta-ten, would recommend.

"Oh! I know!"

She put the can of soda on the floor, then used her freshly-freed hand to pull a tiny notebook, one with a fluffy pink cover, out of her side-bag, along with a pen.

"Hey there, art-box person! If you're reading this, I'd like to recommend Primal by Sean O'Loughlin as a song you might like. (But I dunno, I don't know your tastes.) P.S. If you don't like it, that's okay too! We're all different and that's what makes us all wonderful." she wrote.

Clamping down on the pen with her lips, she tore the tiny page out of the notebook, and slipped it into the box. She took her pen in her fingers again, and slipped it and the notebook back into her side-bag.

As she left the auditorium, Meilin had the feeling she was forgetting something. She just let the feeling slide.

[Meilin Zhou continued in ...But I just can't place it]

[Frozen Smoke]

((Parker Green - START pregame.exe█))

Parker had dressed himself with a surprising degree of consciousness today. Normally he basically picked up whatever was atop of the pile of clothes in his room that he had decided was just the most efficient way to store and pick out clothes that didn't need hanging up like shirts and trousers and jackets. It wasn't like hoodies or t-shirts got enough wrinkles in them for it to matter. Today had been an exception though, he had deliberately picked out a specific shirt and disrupted the vaguely orderly pile of clothes, in order to protest the overabundance of chartreuse that had invaded the palette of the school. It had started off as a statement, then as a trend, then as a fad, and now it had become a meme. The very sight of it was starting to hurt to look at, and if people were allowed to annoy his eyes with their fashion, then he would return the favour.

He hadn't actually bought this shirt to annoy people, it had actually been something a friend had linked him in Discord two years ago, and just looking at the picture had made his eyes feel funny. And that had reminded him of basilisk hacks, and you know who wanted a first generation basilisk hack? Everyone. They just didn't know it yet. It had turned out to actually not be that bad off the screen though. In all honesty, he thought it looked pretty great, being a stereoscopic view of a tundra treeline meeting the lake at the foot of a mountain. Maybe not that effective of a protest against chartreuse after all, in actual fact, but he liked it. And now he had the necessary excuse to wear it, not that anyone would ask him for it in a million years.

He was contemplating all this as he walked between one of his breaks and another class, having little else to occupy his thoughts at the time. His laptop back was slung over, resting against his right hip, sliding back and forth with each measured step. He was trying to make sure he didn't limp noticeably, which he knew he could do, even if it twinged a bit. He didn't want to have to deal with any attention that required him to talk to people right now, and people asking him if he was OK meant he had to show thanks and be gracious then continue on his way. That was why he wasn't making eye contact with anyone, very consciously not lowering his gaze, just looking at the space around them as opposed to their faces.

Unfortunately there were always going to be the people who didn't notice that sort of thing, no matter how hard he tried, and that was how a flyer for the 'party of the year', #SwiftBall had ended up being pushed into his hand. It had been easier to just say "Yes, ok." and take the flyer than tell them he didn't want one. Except now he had a flyer in his hand that he had to get rid of, and the one or two blue tinged bins where waste paper belonged, if he wanted to do an inconsequential act of good for the environment and recycle the thing like he was supposed to, had remained elusive in the few hundred metres of corridor he'd walked through so far. Not that a single sheet of paper mattered, when compared to the 10~ million hectares of forest that were destroyed every year, primarily for food production. Primarily burnt too, and not even for energy. Somehow that was the worst part of it to him, how utterly inefficient it was. Not that he would ever be able to do anything about it, of course. The chances of him changing the mind of some individual who's future depended on having farmland to not burn down a few acres of the Amazon were probably infinitesimally small. And ultimately just as futile as recycling the flyer, compared to the bigger problem.

His thoughts on the necessity of recycling and environmentalism dispersed as he spotted a box out of the corner of his vision, decorated like it had fallen through a portal from a flash game. All garish pink and covered in the real life equivelant of particle effects, designed to make sure the viewer paid attention to it. Green text adorned the front of it, and as he looked inside, he saw what people had decided described their thoughts. Folded up pieces of paper and a book he vaguely recognised as Meditations. How very pretentious of everyone.

He declined to get pretentious about the idea of being pretentious and instead simply placed the flyer in the box. Now the flyer no longer was something he had to look to get rid of, and the flyer would most likely be seen by at least one other curious person. Mutually beneficial. Not like he'd need a flyer to remind him of something as obvious as the idea of there being a party on 4/20. By the looks of it, everything would be on Twitter, which was a social media platform he vaguely used. Which meant all the information would be there. Or he'd have to slide into someone's DMs, which would be a problem to solve at the time. Eventually school staff would probably recycle the whole thing, too, which wrapped up that problem with a nice, neat bow. Or they'd throw it in a dumpster, but that would be their decision, not his.

With that minor diversion taken care of, he turned both his thoughts and physical direction towards the next class.

((Parker Green - GOTO thread/Book of Sparrows█))

[Cicada]

It was the white hair tie crossed over the pink, choking a mauve red patch of skin onto her leftmost pinkie- rightmost, when she moved her left hand far enough right- that reminded her.

She was cute, a thigh high box, slightly distorted from a pure cuboid shape by… several degrees of … on one side, and … on another side. And she was sloppily dolled up. All plastered in a dull and horrifically unevenly dried, flaky … paint that was dubiously pleasant to the eye… Or, or.

Perhaps brutal upon the eye,

((Beryl Mahelona))





Box was still there. Slightly different in a way Beryl couldn't guess at. It'd been a while since Beryl had abandoned her daughter... with a question, was it? Something about wondering if the box would still alive when she came back. It had never been too alive in the first place. Beryl was pretty sure she'd been too enthusiastic the first time around.

Maybe, now, she was not enthusiastic enough. It went both ways.

Much, rather, had changed since the last time. Even this emaciated pulp of paper still in her pocket, still unreadable, still somehow relevant in a way she couldn't recall, had long since shed skins and drowned in puberties.

Last time was a long time ago, and Beryl had lost most of the in-between. Either she couldn't remember or maybe it was more along the lines of her not wanting to remember. She didn't care much for the terminal velocity of dread- it was much too fast, and she couldn't see where she was headed when all was said and done. She couldn't bring anyone along with her for the ride when they all came and went fast as her eyes could track.

Didn't matter anyways. She forgot the names and the faces, with time. Much as she tried to enshrine them, her efforts were only as mortal as her worst fears.





She sat beside the box, tilted it and rested its crown on her folded lap.

Her hands worked unconsciously, carelessly wrestling flaps of pink away.





She thought that Swiftball had been fun. She could almost smile, that someone had cared that dearly for it that it had been the foremost of their thoughts, at least, in the moment.





She knew that song. She could almost smile, that some unknown someone had appreciated the possible differences between themselves and another, much as they had the possible similarities.




She knew that book. She could almost smile, that someone had sought to pass on perspective in such a heavy handed way, with conviction as utterly weighty as their efforts.





She did enjoy that saying. She could almost smile, that someone had with such brevity captured such meaning on such a simple scrap of paper, that someone had wished goodness for others more so than themselves.





She knew that number. She could almost smile, though she certainly couldn't remember having ever taken up Charelle on her passing offers of a, paraphrased, hot and salacious tryst.





She knew that saying. She could almost smile, knowing that her unknown somebody had taken to art with the same ingloriously human passion that made art what it was, indeed, the eye of the beholder.





She pocketed the penny. She could almost smile, for it was a simple subversion, giving back more than what was owed to the giver and infinitely so, giving where no giving had truly been expected.

:p

She couldn't smile.

Her backpack, otherwise empty, was carefully burdened with the assorted bits and pieces of trinkets, loose papers folded into the tome with creases pressed until crisp. She would keep them, and hopefully remember them, and hopefully always wonder who had been so kind as to bless her. Whatever their actual intents had been, those intents were divorced from the intents she could imagine. The dialogue between herself and a stranger that she could pretend into her twisted kaleidoscope of reality. Just a stranger, yes. That was right. There were less colors strung over her fingers, nowadays. It seemed she'd at some point lost the material of her person, the presence of her existence here in the halls she'd called home for four years. She drifted.

Sans strong feelings it was hard to truly tell. She merely wondered without the vividness of wonder unadulterated. She painted abstract images, generic silhouettes who left her things with meaning. Did the meaning still exist if she couldn't scry at it?

If, it seemed, that her divinations had all slowly become foggy? She could see nothing more of the bright future than she could look into her own eyes and hope that there was still color.

She held her backpack, full of her treasures, so tight she might have been a child looking for security.

Funny. That cozy vulnerability was the most recent memory she could remember, sometimes, oftentimes, nowadays.

She was so fucking tired.





Her foot, at an angle, smashed the box into the wall, carving cardboard around the sole of her shoe until she casually rebounded off the wall. Pink scrap caved in, the taped together bottom of the box some sort of skeleton, bones pounded and caved in as twisted and jagged shards echoed off one another. The box lay in a crumpled repose.

Beryl adjusted the pink and white hair ties on her leftmost pinkie as she left.

((Beryl Mahelona continued in Washington DC))