You Can Only Be Brave When You're Afraid

The moon gleamed above the land, hanging in its own foggy veil, like a bone-white, luminous sickle- waiting to reap the world of its grain. Its cold, glistening light slid over the leaf blades, turning everything it touched into a silver cast, hard and beautiful. It was into that hollow of ebony black trunks, drifting mist, and silver foliage that footsteps padded into that night, searching for death.

The leaves didn’t crunch under her feet, turned to mush as they were by the heavy downpour that had soaked the forest ground that evening. The leaves were still laden down with the sky’s tears, drops clinging on to their serrated margins before dropping off to the ground with intermittent, never ending plinks. The barks were cold and damp, moss-hidden as she sought them out with her hands to navigate, mud clinging to her grazed palms long after she left them behind. Mud squelched under her soles, the back of her neck wet under the droplets that fell from above, dribbling beneath her collar and flowing past her spine in icy rivulets; and the sleeping Forest stirred around her.

Every time something flitted past the brush, a quail winging past the branches above, her neck would twitch, eyes darting here and there, knuckles turning white buried deep in their pockets. Sounds were scarce and in between, haunting calls of the night birds, the underbelly buzzing of the crickets. Sometimes, a heavy body would go crashing through the undergrowth and she’d freeze, fingers locked tight in their sockets, eyes wide and staring bare for minutes altogether; but the ominous silence would pass, and she’d start moving again, forward, step by step, inch by inch.

Three hours of painstaking, crawling pace, thighs aching, socks drenched, hair clinging to her brow in sweat; she emerged in the clearing- the moon shining down like a skylight, bathing a fallen log, a mound and a circle of toadstools in shimmering light. Her fingers fumbled as they fidgeted with an object in her right pocket, her breaths coming out as shallow pants, standing with shaking knees in a circle of clear light like a beacon to everything fey and carnivorous that bred in this place. Scarcely had this thought passed through mind that the pocket-knife dropped by sudden palpitating fingers, her teeth muffled a curse by biting into her lip hard, and she fell to her knees, feeling around for the blade in the mud-caked grass. Her fingertips brushed against cold metal, and before this shot of ridiculous courage (stupidity stupidity) could be drowned out by fear screaming her ears apart, her thumb flicked the blade open, drawing it up and slashing it through the cloth that covered her right arm.

The horribly choked cry of pain rung in the silence of the clearing, rending the air apart.

She blinked through the haze, head bowed down, shoulders shuddering in place like the bones holding them up had given way. Her arm felt heavy, and wet, and the copper, metallic tang curling through her nostrils more than the blinding pain threatened to force the bile from her throat. She breathed, air hitching in the passages, clotting in as if refusing to leave- and exhaled forcefully, shoving the carbon out, pulling the oxygen in to let her will through the regurgitating reflex, not let it win. They would be coming any minute.

A twig snapped somewhere off to the side, and hazel eyes, glazed over in pain, darted up. For one terrible, panic-stricken moment, words and rules swirled around, knocking off inside the walls of her skull werewolf packs roaming the grounds...no one’s safe....mercy to no one..

The creature that was making its way towards her now, was very, very different.

It had leathern, black skin that seemed to stretch over no flesh, melding easily with the shadows from which it emerged. Large, bat-like wings emerged from its haunches, seeming to cloak the very moon as they drew up and above, turning the silver grass green and pallid again in their shadow. Its face was like a hundred maggots had gone to feast on the chopped head of a dragon, and left nothing but pale, naked bone. Its eyes though......as they crept closer and loomed over everything else in the background......its eyes were white, pupil-less. Blank. Empty.

A hundred and ninety two hours later, the garbage bin cracked open. The pale light of dawn trickled in, and for the first time that the two of them had been tossed into the cramped space, she could see Barbara’s eyes. Paper-skin greying around the edges, eyeballs wide, gaping, open. Empty.

Death.

She didn’t know what deity, what deranged shot of adrenaline gave her shaking muscles the strength to hoist up her body. For a second, she thought she’d still be Body-bound like the first time, cursed to look into the eyes of death for eternity, but her breath pushed through, and she turned and ran, stumbling unseeingly across stones and ruts, knees buckling beneath her. Maybe ten minutes had lapsed before she rammed to a stop, literally, slamming into a tree then crawling around to the backside, barely holding herself upright, heart thundering like hammer and anvil beneath her chest. Her arm stung like liquid lava was flowing through veins, she curled her fingers into the crook of her elbow and hung on, feeling sticky thickness dribble faintly past the creases of her fingers. Her head leaned back, pulse jumping below her throat, and stared at the silver-coated leaves above her head.

Rika wanted to close her eyes and blink out the world. God, she wanted. But she couldn’t. The world wouldn’t be fooled that easily.

The concept of breaking rules was not at all foreign to the man who so recently was naught but a boy, attending the school he now stared at almost blindly. A slight breeze shifted the tree branches in front of him, obscuring the previously open line of sight towards the castle. He was fully aware of the fact that he should not – in truth, probably could not – find his way fully onto the grounds. Wards and the like were most inevitably up against his entrance. His desire to view the noble architecture of Hogwarts was hardly his reasoning for being about at the hour he found himself pushing through bushes and padding over the dampened earth, however.

No, indeed, the Ravenclaw – yes, though a University student, he still chose to identify with the house that had so fully claimed him for seven years – was being his radical and practically unintelligent self. Although the Forbidden Forest was hardly his usual haunt for late night excursions of any sort, Darren had decided that he was quite finished with walks through parks or down empty streets late at night. He had always been the contradictory sort, whose mind flipped between being a homebody and loving the outdoors. Truly, he only preferred certain times of the year for visiting nature, but he was not interested in the same problem he had come across the night before:

Drunk men wailing into the night about whatever grievances they felt the previous day had provided. Indeed, drinking was something he was only occasionally interested in, and only if provided with the proper sort. Thus, his endeavors to put up with such men did not go very well.

Lifting a hand to push a low-hanging branch out of his path, Darren also pushed the thoughts of those drunkards out of his mind. At least he himself, Darren mused, would never be like any of those sort. Not unless he had chosen purposefully to do so. The thought of running an experiment involving alcohol glanced through his mind, but was quickly lost due to the inevitability of needing a companion of sorts to take the notes that his inebriated mind would be unable to claim.

Would it be so dreadful, though, he wondered, if he chose to do something as reckless as getting smashed while alone? In truth, it was hardy the most daring thing he could think for someone to do. He had heard of much worse and had no desire to attempt any of them. He shook his head unwittingly, only realized the action had been completed when the tips of his hair darted in front of his eyes and distracted him. The rush of leaves to his right only managed to distract him further, however, and Darren’s feet stopped pressing forward, his spine straight with the anticipation of something or other breaking through the trees. He could not boast impeccable bravery as some in the distant castle perhaps could; but Darren knew a thing or two about the forest, and was easily more prepared than any rogue students might have been. His experience with strange creatures was admittedly limited, but his research and memory of classes was not.

A hand slipped down to push beneath the fabric of his shirt and grasp the end of his wand where it was tucked. He had tugged the tan hem over the top where it stuck out of his pocket, as was habit, but he lifted the wand from its flimsy cage and held it at his side, the tip following the line of his leg as it pointed to the ground. He thought he imagined the gasps that floated through the air to reach his ears, but two blinks later, the trees rustled again as someone – or something – came barreling through before settling against a tree trunk.

Darren sidestepped a fallen tree branch to have a better look across the forest floor, only to find that a girl was crouched there, clutching her arm and looking like she had just run for miles. For days. An eyebrow lifted of its own accord, ignoring Darren’s wish to remain uninterested.

He couldn’t manage that wish, though, when this girl was so obviously and painfully interesting.

The question immediately became: How could he get her attention without scaring her so badly that she keeled over on the spot? His fingers twitched around the base of the wand he forgot that he held, immediately offering an idea. Lifting a hand, he let the top of the wand press into his palm before he murmured a near-silent, “Lumos.”

The light from the incantation shone against his palm, turning the skin an odd color, but provided the desired effect. Though diluted, the light would potentially – hopefully – garner a reaction from the girl whose expression screamed of exhaustion and some combination of fear mixed with the high of adrenaline. As a student of micro-expressions and nonverbal communication, he couldn’t help but note such things in the back of his mind as he took two small steps in the direction of her tree, waiting for a glance to be sent his way so he could being some sort of confrontation if not a legitimate conversation.

For several, belated seconds: her heart beat like that of a dying bird in its last throes, agitating, flapping wildly in its cage as the knife approached the breast.

Then something seeped into the corner of her vision. Something that prompted wide, frozen eyes to blink: once, repeatedly- then slowly, slowly swerve around to the side.

There was light- soft, ethereal light emanating from a source a metre away from her, somehow warmer than the cold moon-silver than snuck down her arms and cast shadows on the ground. She raised her eyes and was caught- wide and taken unaware, by another pair, green and brown all twisted together like a forest like this, but in happier times; the only splash of colour in a world of blue, black and silver. She stared, and they stared back, and time frittered on as her shoulders hunched and her toes curled, because they were close, and incisive and direct- and she could feel her skin pared from bone, her soul turned inside-out and she’d never felt more examined, and transparent- in her life. Like a bug in a tank staring up at the shiny round lenses staring back at it.

Then Rika heard the branches behind her creak, like being shoved to the side by something large and insistent, and she forgot everything else. Her back pressed firmer against the trunk, her heart sped up again, and by now pins and needles were springing up in the fingers she still kept hooked tightly on to her right arm. The light which earlier seemed warm seemed a harsh intrusion on her visual senses now, everything about it seeming unnatural and screaming for attention- and her knees seemed to buckle under the panic that suddenly threatened to squeeze her heart and make it implode in its cage. Forgetting discomfort, her eyes sought out the green again, regardless of how very like the Thestral’s they seemed at the point.

Her chest shook under the onslaught of her harsh pants, voice a whispering croak. “Put....put it out.”

She could hear the Thestral make its way through the trees not twenty paces away, the sounds eerily quiet for an animal of that size, and her eyes threatened to recoil under the strain, the edges watering with the urge to blink, but she couldn’t, not yet; and not a thought passed through her mind of how they must look, pupils dilated, awashed with fear, begging. Because that is what they were doing, fixed on the other pair, her mind a numbed litany of please please please, because the Thestral’s head was darting through the leaves now, and it blocked the moon out, and one sound could make it direct its sightless eyes to the two puny mammals paces away from its feet.

The next ten seconds, when the Thestral remained still, the dragonish, skeletal sillhouette of the head outlined against the sky- were unrelenting, agonising hell.

Then it shifted an inch or so, ear tilted to the side, nose visibly sniffing the air, and her heart gave one last, leaping bid for freedom- and it turned, feet heavy and soundless against the forest floor, slipping into the darkness just as easily as it had come. There were several delayed seconds before the silence grew safe instead of threatening, and her knees finally wavered and fell, hands coming to ground themselves on the solid ground, head bent and hair swinging over her cheeks, fingernails scraping into the mud. Somewhere beneath all that debilitating panic, and crushing relief- where a once sharp mind dulled by circumstances dwelled, something incessantly reminded her of the fact that Thestral’s noses could navigate their journeys through miles, that the scent of blood from two paces away was no hardship, that it couldn’t have not noticed- essentially gentle creatures, drawn by blood, but only claiming what was given willingly.....but logic drowned in face of emotion, and death hardly ever came for the willing. There were those crippled by disease, those shackled by old age, yes, willing to be set free......but more often there was the spark of youth, too-oft quenched ahead of its time, bright, smiling faces cast in pallor by that stalking Grim, ramiferous lives burning with possibility constrained forever to a lonely path by that one, one plague which even Magic had yet to find a cure for.

No, it could not have spared her. Had not. It had perhaps, only considered her beneath its notice.

But if that danger had now passed, there was another- and her heart started up beneath its cage of skin and muscle and blood again, almost feebly protesting against the strain. Her gaze, now able to take in more than just the eyes, registered a grown man- seeming taller from her crouching position in the mud. Nothing about his posture seemed vaguely threatening, except his penetrating eyes and more worryingly, that palm that slid familiarly along the shaft of wood like one well acquainted with the paths of magic. Her own was shoved somewhere to the back of her boot, and clutching it now would have felt no more reassuring than clutching an actual stick- and no more useful. Not to her anyway. In defense, her fingers hung on tighter to the metal base of the blade that she had somehow, not dropped in her sprint through the woods.

He wasn’t a member of the faculty or student body. The moon wasn’t full......he could be a stray werewolf. He commanded magic- Dark or not, didn’t make a difference. Before her back could turn and she could take two steps to fling herself through the night- he could strike her down without uttering a bare syllable.

But.......when the Thestral had been inches away. He hadn’t betrayed her.

She had failed in her intent of facing down the living omen of Death. If she had ever believed she would be able to do it in the first place. And now, devoid of any feasible path of flight....she needed to gather what tattered remnants of imaginary courage she possessed and face this out.

Her knees unfolded, her palms hoisting her off from the ground, and a million aches ghosted up her thighs as her back straightened, right arm still feeling like an army of ant-bites were pulsating under the skin.

“Who.....” The back of her tongue itched, her throat swallowing dryly. “Who are you?”

His entire frame froze as the girl turned and their gazes met, shocking him into an inability to move or speak or think. Although he could only see the shine of her eyes in the light from his spell, there was something haunted about her and he could just feel it. Darren had no right to act like he was allowed to observe her, but he did it anyway. He waited and waited until finally something happened, something changed.

She too stiffened, but this time looked truthfully afraid of whatever it was that crept along in the forest in front of her. His brow tugged together, unable to spot anything, but when she caught his eyes again and spoke, Darren lifted an eyebrow in surprise. As she requested, however, he let the light fade before relaxing his arm so it rested at his side, tip of the wand pointed at the earth so she wouldn’t think it was directed at her. He was never one to use his magical ability to defend himself or unless he truly had to – mind over matter, after all – and he couldn’t figure what he would do if something really happened. His spare arm moved to his hair, brushing it back over and over for want of something to do rather than shifting his weight.

The possibility of making a noise that broke the spell she seemed to be under was very real, and he was completely against it.

She was staring at something so intently that he could hardly believe it. She had so much intensity, so much determination, so much conviction somehow mixed in with some version of panic, and it just made Darren all the more curious. All the more desperate to understand what was going on. He followed her gaze but found nothing but crunching leaves and black night as it slipped between the leaves and into the earth.

What was this girl after? He didn’t dare assume that she was imagining anything there, which meant that either he was oblivious, or something was wrong. The shaking of leaves eventually stopped, growing fainter as whatever it was moved away. Instead, he just chose to wait, to take deep breaths through his nose and prepare himself for whatever reaction she would present. But when she stood, his eyes were drawn to something she held, the light washing over it and glinting into his eyes. Was that a-

Who… who are you?

Darren blinked, eyes flicking back to hers. How did he answer that? A name would do her no good, would tell her nothing important. She wanted an explanation, that much he knew. His father’s name or his own would not sufficiently explain what sort of man he was – for it was true, now, that he was a man more than a boy. So he let the silent moments tick by one at a time, until several seconds had passed and he finally came up with something worth saying.

“I used to go to school here,” he gestured in the direction of the castle, fingers tightening around his wand as he attempted to explain. He was never good at introductions or any manner of speaking in front of others. But he was too curious about her to just leave. He had to understand. “I’m a Psychology major at University, now, though I work for the Prophet as a Photographer, too. Name’s Darren Isaacson. Ravenclaw.”

Tempted as he was to step closer, Darren decided that it would have to be up to her if they actually came into a proper range to see each other. He could make out the outline of her, the gleam of her eyes, the generally downtrodden figure she presented. It wasn’t one, for reasons he couldn’t explain, that he was comfortable with. Immediately, he wanted to know her, to delve into the little parts of her that made her whatever she was.

It was just how Darren was, he supposed, and he couldn’t claim it wasn’t usual for him to wonder what made people tick. But this girl was so different from the people he usually tried to get to know. The others, he didn’t care to really know them, but was interested in understanding how they worked. He couldn’t put his finger on it to save his life, but he couldn’t help how instantly he felt the need to just know.

Very, very little of what he said actually filtered into her mind. Her right arm, and all attached appendages were now feeling curiously detached from her body, and while his lips parted and formed words in the moonlight, her fingers tried to twitch, knuckles trying to fold, attempting to bring back feeling in the injured limb that felt like all nerve ends had been severed after the gash. It was a strange feeling, Rika thought, eyes tracing mindlessly over a face that seemed almost alien under the light, so much numbness after so much pain; so much nothing. Almost like her life.

His voice was low, she managed to note, the timbre not smooth but unintrusive, as the words Psychology major and Ravenclaw floated past her head. It was low, but not as low as she might have imagined as she’d first looked up to see him tower over her- younger then, than he seemed at first impression. His words were curiously careful, measured in exact dollops and slices, almost as if he were trying to soothe- no, soothe was the wrong word, Rika didn’t know this man at all but she knew, somehow, just as instinctively by those twenty seconds of fearful silence, of mutual eye contact, that this was not a man who soothed. Almost as if he were speaking to a spooked animal.

Which she was. Rika felt the insensate realisation sweep over her mind, with a distant pinprick of anger hidden somewhere in midst of all the desensitisation. She almost felt like prodding and poking at the feeling, like one would poke at a foreign, yet faintly familiar thing, till it reared up and struck back like a snake; but it disappeared as quick as it had appeared. It was almost disappointing.

“Th...thank you.” Something rasped, using her voice. Tremors were working their way past her calves, making her kneecaps knock into the other; she craned her back and smoothed her left palm up her thigh uselessly, trying to fortify the shuddering muscle. “For.....for not...” She straightened and jerked her head halfheartedly towards the direction in which the Thestral had disappeared, absently hoping it would suffice for an explanation. She had neither the coherence, nor the strength to attempt anything more grateful right now. A part of her wondered how the fear for her life from a prospective hostile stranger morphed even into a drop of gratitude: but something had loosened her death-tight grip on the blade grasped in her palm. Something in her, maybe that very fear, had been laid to rest the second that voice spoke.

Yes, perhaps she was naive. But that wasn’t the voice of a murderer. And she had heard murderers. Before, once.

Even if she had possessed the required social etiquette in the first place, Rika would never have known that the normal thing to do was to introduce herself right now- because in the remnant haze of confusion and pain and adrenaline, she hadn’t caught his name. She wasn’t even vaguely aware that he had offered one. Her facial muscles just flattened, her lips widening in a wavery, vacant facsimile of a smile; and she pivoted slowly on her heels, staggering slightly when she tried to take a step. Then another.

It would take hours- more than the ones she had spent in getting here in the first place, fruitlessly. But there was no other way. She needed.......not a bed, or a roof over her head- but the delusion of safety. In a castleful of magic-users, no less. The open skies of Ravenclaw Tower, the tattered blanket she wrapped around herself every night as she nodded away on the cold flagstones. She needed.......not an escape from the fear, or the vacancy, the meaninglessness. That wasn’t possible. But in her dreams, if she ever screamed.....at least it wouldn’t be real.

The hollow comfort tasted bitter on her tongue.

Darren didn’t understand the thanks that she sent his way. Not even close. It didn’t make sense for him to be appreciated for turning out his light and then doing nothing. In fact, he had watched as the girl practically trembled with fright and had let his happen like nothing was out of the ordinary. Wasn’t it, though? Or did she go around every night with this bizarre, chill-like sensation? Neither one really made much sense, though, and Darren found himself just continuing to stare at her.

His brow furrowed of its own volition at the words, unable to figure what she was getting at. For not what? What hadn’t he done? Everything, Darren decided. He hadn’t done anything, and it had apparently been what the girl was after. He didn’t quite comprehend the idea until it was too late. The girl – and, yes, he was now sure it was a knife of some kind – turned to walk away.

What? No. He didn’t get it yet. She wasn’t allowed to walk away when he couldn’t fathom what had just happened. That was not acceptable.

A spike of frustration registered on his internal scale, and before Darren knew what he was doing, he had stepped after her, his own footfalls much quicker in tempo than hers. “Wait. You can’t just – you can’t just leave.”

His fingers reached for her arm – fully aware that he was risking life and limb (well, more likely just the latter, though he hadn’t quite decided what her MO was yet) – only to halt both his reach and his steps when he caught sight of her arm. That didn’t look right. Darren briefly told himself that it was just his mistaking the bad lighting of the forest, but even he couldn’t delude himself. How he wished he could, sometimes. Delusions sounded far more sensible than whatever he was dealing with in that moment. In fact, they sounded better than most things he dealt with. So he didn’t register the surprised intake of breath, or the fact that his fingers curled into his palm. It hit him too late that he could have caused her pain, and the worry surprised him more than her appearing injured. Darren never worried after the emotions or pain of others. Not unless he had created it, in which case it was massively interesting. This she must have had done to her – or… had she done it herself? Perhaps she had just taken the blade from the offender before bolting. Hadn’t he seen her running earlier? Darren was sure he had.

But then she was afraid of… nothing, though that nothing must have been something, because people weren’t truly afraid of nothing. Either she was the one getting to have the delusions, or he simply hadn’t seen whatever it was. No, she had a strange air about her like she had been hoping something bad would happen, just as she was afraid it might. He didn’t believe she had been hurt by someone else. Not really, in his gut.

Rushing to finally reach her side, Darren chose to dart in front of her, blocking the path. Fixing her with a determined look, he refused to budge. “Look, just tell me what happened back there. What did you see?”

No, he didn’t question the injury. That would come later. After he understood the first part. The psychoanalyzing would come later, when he knew if he had actually been oblivious and blind, or if she was just seeing too much.

Something in her chest collided bluntly to a standstill, struck down by the words. “Wait. You can’t just – you can’t just leave.”

Her neck twisted, alarmed eyes flicking back to look like that of a scampering rabbit’s- even if the words couldn’t have been meant that way, something primeval, primitive, infantile in her closed up at the thought, the very sound of can’t leave.

He wasn’t there. He was ahead of her now, cutting out the moonlight, casting her in shadow. The twist of his mouth told her she wasn’t going to leave. She didn’t have the life to throw up a protest. The metallic tang of adrenaline was being drawn out, quartered from her blood, and Rika felt weighed down in the aftermath, chills skittering up her arms and peppering the white skin with goosebumps, a full bodied shiver wrenching out the last vestige of steadiness left in her limbs. The centre of her forehead throbbed, like a heavy, aching weight had settled there and was determined to bring her down to the ground.

”What did you see?”

Somewhere beneath her heavy, blinking eyelids, she peered at him and wondered why he cared. Why he wished to know. Didn’t he get the overwhelming stench of not-right and not-normal oozing out of her pores? He’d proved himself to be non-hostile, safe. The brain that must dwell somewhere within her thick skull had blankly understood that he hadn’t really seen the creature. Couldn’t see it. So he’d proved himself normal. Couldn’t......couldn’t he just be like the others, then, and up and leave already?

”What did you see?”

“Death.” The word breathed itself out past her lips, wafting out into the air and drifting upward, to nothingness. She blinked, and saw the trees and the stars and the ground meld into one. “I came hunting for it. It hunted me.”

She blinked again. The world wasn’t making sense. Her head wasn’t making sense. It was a ridiculous, useless vessel filled halfway through with bobbing odds and ends that tossed this way and that and went into places they weren’t supposed to go to and leaked out through inconvenient holes. Her arm felt wet.

She moved her tongue, dry, swollen piece of muscle that it was, running it along the sharp edges of her teeth within a closed mouth, searching for the dulled, steady kind of pain that would make sense again. Her lips parted. “I.....sorry. It was.......Was a Thestral. I’d come looking for it.”

Then why did you run away?

Her fingers sought out her arm again, perhaps as an anchor, but the thick, sticky wetness seeping into the crook of her knuckles, the creases between her fingers, the gap under her nails felt warm to the touch.

Because I wasn’t ready. I never will be. I’ll be stuck in the antechamber all my life. I’ll never go through the door. I’ll never run. I’ll never fly. I’ll squat in the dregs of life, huddle into the bottom of the well, and be content with looking at one patch of sky. I am nothing more. I can be nothing more.

Darren's eyebrows lifted of their own accord as she blinked at him. What was so wrong about how he asked the question? Darren rarely understood the fact that he lacked tact and the idea that others would take his comments badly. Often, actually, he would say things he thought utterly sensible and then be reprimanded for them. Usually by Oliver or Kip. Regardless, his wording had obviously been wrong. Darren wasn't convinced, though, that he regretted it now that she was staying and he was seeing yet another interesting side to this girl. He was reminded again that she hadn't given her name, and Darren wondered if it had been intentional or if she simply hadn't thought to mention it after everything that was happening.

She finally spoke, catching him off guard again. Darren found that he didn't enjoy the feeling, and determined to either figure her out or stay ahead of her in the future so he wouldn't have to be confused again. Thinking through that, though, Darren registered how unlikely it was that he would see her again - at least, any time soon. Or on purpose. Neither were probable. So he just stared at her, his forehead creasing into a few little lines as he tried to combine her words into something his mind could understand.

When she paused and explained, he ignored her apology and instead latched onto the other words. A Thestral. That did explain a lot. It explained why he couldn't see it, and gave him a hint into a possible reason as to the girl being a bit off her jump. Was she always like this? Darren half hoped he would be around her enough to find out. Confusing people fascinated him, and coming to understand them was even more interesting. People often misunderstood the nineteen-year-old, thinking he had no interest in those around him or their emotions. But the opposite was actually true; he cared about nothing more than digging into their souls and finding out why they worked the way they did.

Darren's gaze jumped around as he tried to understand her last sentence. She wanted to see it? A part of him was certain that those buggars were dangerous, though he hadn't studied them well enough to know. Now he seriously wished he had. But as his eyes darted over everything around him - and, indeed, in front of him - he rediscovered her arm. It still looked rather impressively injured. Yet she did nothing to make an attempt at healing it. Nothing. That didn't make any sense.

"Did you do that to yourself?" He asked finally, gesturing to her stained skin. If he got the answer he expected - a positive reply - then Darren would be all the more fascinated and curious and interested. And if not, he would have to reconsider his current opinion that there was something a bit off in her, mentally.

It was like everything was penetrating, reaching her through an immense distance. Like she was standing on a precipice, teetering on the edge of the earth and the world was shouting from far, far away. Realisations sunk slowly through the thoughts that seemed to have coagulated to a thick, viscous, indistinguishable nothing at the back of her head, her senses hers and yet not her own. Gravity had seemed to triple in magnitude- it grabbed at her tottering limbs, clutched at her head to try to press it to the ground, pulled at her eyelids that seemed to want nothing more than to give up the fight, to close themselves under the appraising, dissembling gaze of the moon, and sleep. Let the tornado of thoughts still. Let the mind die.

Something dripped from her fingernails- and Rika raised long phalanges to the light blearily, watching them feel the texture of something dark and red and sticky, watching it clot under her nails to something black and ugly looking. Heavy eyes darted down, to the little patch of grass her sneakers had squashed under their soles, and watched a puddle of the same something shimmer red in the moonlight. Somewhere inside her throat, Rika felt a muscle jump, like a reflex: almost like hurling kick in, but there was neither the comprehension nor the energy to carry it out.

Seized with the urge to look at something else and not possessing the mental ability to process why in that second, she looked up to the man-boy again: a bare outline to her rapidly blurring sight now, but that probing gaze was still there, those searingly piercing eyes, fixed almost obsessively on her- like they didn’t want to look at anything different, like they were incapable of it. Somewhere from deep within, her vocal cords managed to dig out remnants of a voice- parched lips twitching up indiscriminately for a moment, something almost unbearably tragic about the softness of the whisper clinging to the air of the forest, their very skins for several lingering seconds.

Her eyes were softer. “Never been to the zoo before?” Never seen the animals there?

Then the muscles holding up her frame gave out, and that entire lanky body crumpled- knobbly limbs ungainly folding up and shoulder against the mud and palm barely able to stem the gush of warm liquid from her arm. Blood loss, leading the fuzziness of senses, lack of coherence and weakness echoed some part of a brain that might have been hers once upon a time, but there was no attention that could be afforded to it, because then her chest was wracked with a set of coughs that seemed to shake the very bones from her shoulders, dislocate her ribs. Something cleared her throat without permission in spite of the agonising soreness, and Rika hooked the blade into the soil for support, bended forward and breathed; just riding out the waves for a time. “Course I did it. No other way to call….” Her head span dangerously for a second, and Rika brought up the wounded arm to clutch at the temple, hold it steady. “..call the Thestral. But I couldn’t….” And this time the coughs felt more internally, viscerally painful than anything else. Her eyes burned. “..I couldn’t. Was of no use.”

The left hand fastened like a vice to the handle of the blade, the steel instrument in turn embedded two inches into the ground, was the only thing holding her up. She dragged it through the soil, chopping up roots and leaf blades and what not in the process, almost like scratching a wound on to the bosom of the Earth, one that would match her own. The words spoke themselves, as if to the trees, with the air of a child plaintively asking questions about bewildering matters, while the girl barely held on to coherence. “Why are you still looking?”

If Darren wasn’t mistaken, the girl appeared to be quite ready to just fall over and sleep for days. Months, even. Something about her screamed out for help – even if the girl herself didn’t actually want anything from anybody. She just had that silent ache emanating from her. It wasn’t the first time Darren had seen someone like this, of course, considering the many studies he had been a part of over the past two years at university. But never had he seen someone so unwilling to explain, so unwilling to ask for help. From what he understood, it was easier to explain your qualms or fears to a stranger you might never see again than to someone who was important to you. That made perfect sense in his mind, and he understood it.

But he couldn’t comprehend why she wasn’t wanting to open up. Couldn’t determine how, in her mind, he wasn’t a safe out or a safe person to dispose her feelings upon. What could he do, really? Who would he run to tell? He didn’t live at Hogwarts, didn’t care for anyone there – or many people at all, so really what did it matter? Darren didn’t think it could, actually.

“Well, no. Not since I was quite young.” he replied slowly, an eyebrow lifting nearly sardonically. What use would the zoo have to someone like him? The place was overrun with little children, pesky and rude, not to mention the terrible food that inevitably went along with the animal habitats and generally uncomfortable feeling of the place.

Needless to say, Darren had not had a pleasant experience that one time he went. And he had only been a boy, then. Hardly even as cynical as he was now that he had grown into a sarcastic, usually unhelpful, and unerringly blunt man. But then, she spoke again, drawing his thoughts back to the situation at hand. So this girl really had been trying to hurt herself. Why she was actually interested in running into one of the things was entirely beyond him.

“Look,” Darren offered gently, taking only a single step towards her to gauge her reaction before he attempted anything further. “I may only be a psych student, but I do know my fair share of healing charms. I’ve been into my fair share of scrapes over the years. Turns out people don’t usually appreciate my prodding.” He offered a shrug of indifference, making it perfectly plain that he didn’t find anything particularly wrong about his studies or his innate, overt curiosity. “So if you’ll hold out your arm, I can sort it out. Otherwise, you look like you’re about set to fall right to the floor. And I’m not exactly allowed on the grounds, so I can’t take you back.”

He lifted his wand slowly, trying to make a show of good will rather than any sort of danger, but kept his feet settled where they were. “Maybe after I get your arm settled, you can teach me a thing or two about the Thestrals? Like why this would get their attention?”

No, Darren didn’t expect her to agree to it, but there was the distinct theory of reciprocity, which stated that if you fostered a sense of having done something for someone, they felt like they owed you. From there, they would want to make up for it. Provided, of course, that they were of sound mind and understood social expectations. It would tell him a lot about her, undoubtedly, whichever way she decided to go. Perhaps if he could figure her out a bit, he wouldn’t be so curious. His only worry, of course, was that his interest wouldn’t be unfounded, and he would be all the more determined to be around her and see what reactions he could pull from her. That was when he started to get into trouble with most people, and though Darren knew it, he was never very good at understanding the limits. Yes, he was worried he might start to find excuses to ‘study’ her, for lack of a better word, but was it really his fault, if she was so interesting? He sure didn’t think so.