Post by Anouk DeLaurier on Sept 21, 2015 0:43:49 GMT
Before the school had been modernized and rebuilt to house the hundred of students ages six and up, it had been a castle in Sussex. Top of the line for its time but without basic amenities such as indoor plumbing, central A/C, and heating. Thus, it had eventually been necessary to tear down a good chunk of the original structure to make room for a newer campus. For many years after, the original building had served to house campus janitorial staff as well as the holding of a few invocation classes - holding that the older materials served as a stronger connection to the spirit world. In modern times, it was left as a beautiful skeleton where upper class-men hazed their peers with frights on All Hallow's Eve after the festivities, when energy was still running high.
Today, a lone dark-haired student found herself wandering through. Pale blue goulashes with her jeans tucked in kept the damp dirt and accumulated leaves from wetting her socks and catching a cold. A thick grey coat kept out the early Autumn chill while her hair stayed out of her face in a loose braid. Humidity had several strands already frizzing out of control, but she hardly paid that any attention. All the faculty and students were inside socializing, unpacking, or preparing their syllabuses for the impending start of classes.
Anouk was a sophomore in the Rookhaven University. Her mastery was Natural Magics, but to the outside world that just meant her major was in Environmental Sciences. As such, she'd dedicated one of her electives to the class. Her secondary elective after dinner had caused her to pause. At first the obvious choice had been Music Theory. She wasn't particularly adept at any instrument and would never have dared sing in front of anyone, but music in general fascinated her. The problem was she felt her class load was already a bit heavy. Class hadn't begun, but she felt the onset of stress seeping. No, this year she would get her nerves firmly under her control. The next idea had been Culinary Sciences - she loved to cook. The mixing of flavors was not unlike mixing ingredients for potions and elixirs.
Ultimately, she'd settled on Photography. Something she could do every day after dinner that would take her outside, breathing in fresh air, experiencing and seeing without having to speak or react. It was because of this choice that she now found herself in the old abandoned courtyard of the former campus with a small black camera in her front right pocket. In the dimming light of the late after noon, it reminded her of old black and white photos of Toulouse - where the sun hit the brick and tinted the air. Standing in the middle of tall sage, wet from the light earlier rain and giving off a pungent herbal smell, she lifted the camera to her hazel eyes, shutting one and only looking through the other. She turned in a slow circle, hearing the shutter *click* every seven seconds to snap another picture.
Pausing, she lowered the camera and squinted at a window. Her free hand raised and made a brushing motion causing a faint wind to rustle the old musty curtains through a shattered window. Staring a half-second longer, her eyes closed and allowed the wind to approach her, caressing her hair, making her turn to follow it just a moment longer. On it, as always, she could swear she could hear faint whispers in another language carried along. But as always, they died as soon as the winds did. With a sigh, she turned back to the window that had originally caught her eye. Raising the camera once more to use the magnifying lenses, she snapped a picture, intending to capture the faint fog in a nearly-human shape that stood there. Once she looked back up, however, it was gone. With a sigh, she proceeded to wander through the older grounds...
