[hr][center][h1]|| [color=teal]Irvette Reimer[/color] ||[/h1]
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[b][code]Eisbeulf University, 11:00 PM[/code][/b]

[color=teal]“Bye Adrie!”[/color] Irvette called, waving goodbye to Adrie as the girl opened the door to her car.

“Let me drive you sometime, won’t you?” Adrie called to Irvette as the girl unlocked her bike from the rack. “I feel like an abusive friend, making you bike home so late at night every day.”

[color=teal]“You could always join me,”[/color] Irvette called back. Adrie rolled her eyes before starting her car and waving goodbye. Waving back, Irvette slid on her helmet and kicked her foot on the sidewalk, breezing through the crisp night air of Eisbeulf.

While both Adrie and Irvette were heading back to the Eisbeulf dorms, they lived on opposite sides of the campus. The Eisbeulf campus sprawled across the northern side of town with dorms scattered south of the main campus. These dorms stretched from east to west, and Adrie resided in the eastern dorms while Irvette and Ceto lived in the western ones. Irvette had a whole dorm room to herself, but in exchange she’d been given a dorm on the fringes of the campus right next to the outskirts of town that faded quickly into forest. In fact, on some rare, early mornings Irvette had woken up to the soft footsteps of deer passing by her window before the break of dawn.

Tonight, however, the woods were dark and foreboding, seeming almost to lean towards the girl. Scraggly branches reached towards Irvette as she passed, the tips of the branches stretching to touch her. Against such opposition, Irvette shied away from the forest, walking on the other side of the lane towards the familiar outline of her dorm room.

Rather than being situated in entire buildings, the single-person dorms at Eisbeulf took residence in little cabins that didn't have much else other than a bed, desk, and rudimentary bathroom that somehow managed to connect with the town's sewer pipes. Irvette's room remained relatively empty save for the clutter of clothes near the closet and the stacks of books by her meager but growing bookshelf. Her desk remained at the constant threat of collapse, the numerous textbooks and papers piling up high despite the terribly thin wooden legs of the structure.

Irvette was searching her backpack for the keys when a rustle in the woods caused her to snap up, eyes wide. [i]It's probably just a deer,[/i] she reasoned to herself, going back to searching for her keys. The graceful and silent animals seemed to approach only in the dead of night and leave with the dawn, although Irvette had never met on at night yet. Still, a prickle of fear remained, creeping slowly down her spine and stirring up goosebumps on her skin. Her eyes flicked up again, dartingly quick, catching a quick movement in the shadows of the forest.

Irvette's breath caught, her hand clutching tightly around her keys. The metal edges dug into her skin in pricks of pain, but the girl was preoccupied with what she'd just seen--[i]thought I'd seen,[/i] she corrected herself. As a person who liked to stay up-to-date with all the going-ons, Irvette had seen the reports about bears in the area. However, she also knew that bears rarely ventured this close to the university, and her nerves were alight with electricity. 

[i]It was just a stray bear,[/i] Irvette told herself harshly, hands shaking as she hurriedly unlocked the door to her dorm. [i]Just a bear, Vee. Nothing to freak out about. You're fine.[/i]

Still, Irvette felt the same prickle of unrest stay until long after she'd closed the curtains and turned off the lights, and it wasn't until long after she got into bed that she finally drifted off into oblivion, prickle and all.

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[@tsukune]