Change of pace

Cool breezes blew around the ground signalling that autumn was at its best and it was going to be a rather chilly one. Soon winter would be setting in and he wouldn't have many more opportunities to go outside, down to the lake or the CoMC paddock, or anywhere else, unless he risked getting sick. Then he wouldn't be able to go outside anyways, so he had to make the most of the time left to be out there without getting sick ... if he wore the right clothes.

Inside of the castle it was warm and somewhat stuffy, so when the cold breeze outside hit him, Jayden immediately felt a chill run down his back. He smiled at it, and pulled his Ravenclaw scarf up over his nose to keep himself warm and he put his hands in the pockets of his jacket. There were barely any students outside today, probably too cold for them and that actually made Jayden happy. He didn't have to deal with any annoying students being out there ruining the day for him, like some of them usually did. He didn't know if they did it on purpose or not, but it was just really annoying and he hated it.

Jayden wandered around the grounds, wondering where he should go. He'd been spending quite a bit of time at the CoMC paddock, and frankly he was getting a bit bored of it. No matter how much he loved animals, sometime being only with them got kind of boring. That didn't change the fact that he preferred them over most humans, but he didn't want to go to the paddock today. Instead he decided to go to the lake. He hadn't wanted to go there for a while, since last year and he didn't remember why, so he thought that it would be a good idea to go there. Leaves crunched under his feet as he walked and he sat down under one of the trees that still had a few leaves on it, he looked up at the nearly bare branches and watched as the wind blew some of the remaining leaves off them.

[OOC: Outfit]

It would have been an utter, foolish lie to claim that nothing was blighting, assaulting, the young mind that twisted and turned like a cog in a grand machine inside Cerelia Avery’s head. Christmas was burning on the horizon like the dying sunshine in the sky and though the latter failed to break through the cloud cover, the former hung over her like a malevolent force determined to ruin her grander moods. Christmas never meant joy for the Avery household and though Cerelia did her best to avoid the rather difficult family she had been born into, she knew that there would be three days unbroken by walks or retreats to her bedroom for a lie down in order to nurse a splitting headache.

There would be none of that. Her father had even been so kind as to write to her just to tell her so. There would be no tom-foolery this year, he warned, lest she want to feel the true weight of his wrath. Despite the rather macabre warning, Christmas had been put to the back of Cerelia’s mind and she opted instead to worry over Gisele Delacour, the sweet brunette that had been attacking her every defence whether she realised it or not.

As the young woman made her way through the frosty grounds of Hogwarts she seemed to retreat further and further into the soft duffle coat that was wrapped tightly around her waif-like frame. She was frail again, anyone that knew her would have noticed. Her cheeks were sunken and her cheekbones seemed to press through the skin pulled taught over them, threatening, almost, to slice through the surface at any moment. Her fingers seemed long and claw like to any onlooker but thankfully, out in the chill of the world, they were clad in thick woollen gloves. Cerelia knew what worrying did to her. It did the same to her as it had always done to her mother and pacing around by the lake would do nothing to help herself.

The pacing did not help her balance. In fact, the placement of foot in front of foot in front of foot again placed in front of that other foot left her somewhat dizzy and before she knew it, Cerelia had slipped on a particularly damp patch of grass and was sent tumbling to the floor with a shriek that disturbed the crows that were roosting in one of the trees at the edge of the Forbidden Forest.

The girl landed with a dull thud, her hands digging into the soft, supple earth as she tried to straighten herself. She was, for a moment, a mess of limbs and with a sight she lowered her head to the earth, pressing her forehead against the dewy grass, wishing upon anything – a deity, a star, an asteroid – that she could just disappear.