[quote][color=gray]Luce woke up sharply, blindly fumbling about the floor beside her bed in search of her buzzing phone, seizing and pulling it toward her until the cable snapped out and she hit the snooze button. She rolled over onto her back, clutching the phone to her chest in both hands, awake but eyes closed; savoring these short nine minutes until the alarm rang out again and she really would have to get up. Nine minutes later she snapped open her eyes and shut the alarm off properly, before sitting up with a groaning sigh and swinging her legs over the side of the bed, bare feet touching rough carpet. She wiggled her toes and stood up, stretching in her underwear, feeling the morning chill cascade goosebumps up her skin, offset only slightly by the bright sunshine streaming through her small window. 

She dressed quickly, pulling a grubby hoodie over her head to combat the brisk temperature in the house; despite the cold still clinging to them, even in these early summer months, her mother refused to spare the money for heating. Luce admonished herself for the irritation she felt. Her mother worked hard enough already, and her father's alimony, as absent as the mystery man himself, didn't plug the gap.

She peed, brushed her teeth, and then joined the rest of her family in the kitchen, sitting up to breakfast on a rickety chair after fixing a quick round of toast, smeared thick with peanut butter, washing it down with lukewarm coffee poured from the pot into a chipped mug.
James and Owen - Luce's brothers, both of them her elder - jostled her, lambasting that she held the room to herself while they had to share; her mother insisted young women needed privacy, trying to come to her daughter's defense and only managing to further spur on her sons, who now cajoled Luce about precisely [i]what[/i] she was doing that needed such privacy. Luce didn't react to any of it, a learned response carefully-crafted from a lifetime of this routine. She just ate her toast and drank her coffee, letting her brothers wear themselves out. They soon did, and the kitchen lapsed into quiet contemplation, eventually broken only by her mother bidding her farewells, three rushed kisses on three foreheads before she was gone, out the door, not due back until the sun had set and the world dark again.

Luce watched her breath fog in the morning air as she, James, and Owen waited patiently at the stop for the bus. Her brothers chatted idly amongst themselves, occasionally pausing to invite Luce's input but she rarely gave it; often it was merely bait, and they seldom spoke about anything that had any real relevance to her. Again, it was a learned response: short answers, avoid detail, don't freely offer anything that could be later turned into ammunition. Her brothers were not cruel - not purposefully, at least - but they were insensitive, and often less concerned with Luce's teenage angst than their own amusement. There were moments - golden moments, that lit Luce's skin with a hazy warmth - where they came to her side, and in those moments the Calder's were a force to be reckoned with, and it was these moments that assured Luce they were both better men than their father had ever cared to be; but for the most part they were simply young men, past puberty but not quite into maturity, and content to exist in their own, Luce-less bubbles.

It was to that Luce-less bubble they quickly retreated when the bus arrived, and abandoned their sister for their friends at the back while Luce sat by herself up front, trying to ignore the social hubbub as friends and peers greeted each other at the start of a new day, greetings not proffered to her by anyone except the bus driver, who merely gave a nod before returning to his job.

[hr]
The school day passed like many others, quietly, slowly, each minute inching by while Luce clock-watched, not entirely sure what she was so desperate to return to but self-assured that she did not want to be [i]here[/i], in Homeroom sat in the back corner, or in Math drowning amidst equations she struggled to understand, or in French receiving a quiz sheet handed face-down, folded over the teacher's thumb, signalling to everyone she'd flunked another test, or even in the cafeteria at lunch, again reduced to a silent observer, peering in from the outside at the bubbles of affection between friends, young lovers, scholastic comrades-in-arms. Luce wasn't bullied, wasn't teased, weathered no barbs from her peers. She was alone, a non-entity, of no real note to anyone at all. She ate her sandwich and waited for the bell. 

English, the class before final recess, was her saving grace. They'd been studying [i]Frankenstein[/i], and the novel had consumed Luce's evenings as she read and re-read the tragedy; she connected harshly to the spurned monster at the center of the tale and his complicated tandem of craven rage and desperate love. When the time had come to write a report, she'd devoured the task whole, truly proud of her essay and handing it in well before the deadline, the first in the class to do so. She received it back that day - A+, gold star, and a warm smile from her teacher that she responded to in kind. She folded that essay carefully and slid t between the pages of her workbook. She'd pin it to her bedroom wall that same evening, and finish the novel again for the fourth time since its assignment.

The end of the day failed to maintain such noble heights: Phys Ed. Luce was a passable athlete, of acceptable stamina and athletic competence, but these qualities mattered little against the far more crucial measure of social stock. Lined up against the wall as teams were picked for hockey, she was used to her pick order: near-dead-last, and in actual play left to entertain herself while the puck was passed between the most popular students, boys in goal competing fiercely when their rivals shot but making cunningly poor plays when the right girl took a strike. Luce never got the chance to shoot, but she was confident she wouldn't make a goal if given the opening regardless. She felt invisible. It would probably be easier if she were.

[hr]
She walked through the woods on the way home from school. They held no malice for her, not yet anyway, and with dappled sunlight filtering through leaves that had flourished in Spring, she felt peaceful. It had warmed throughout the course of the day and Luce took the opportunity to remove her hoodie and hook it into her bag straps, feeling the comforting heat of the sun on her bare arms and the nape of her neck. Surrounding her were the steady sounds of wildlife and nature; rustling ferns, chattering squirrels, chirping birds. She slowed her pace, letting herself linger amongst the trees.

Eventually she reached home, the house still and quiet. Her mother was still at work, and wouldn't be home until late; her brothers had headed into town proper immediately after school, hot on the heels of their friends. Luce shed her boots and bag - not before removing her essay from her workbook - and drifted back through the house to the kitchen. The pot on the counter still held the dregs of the morning's coffee; she emptied it into the sink, rinsing and refilling the urn before putting it back on to brew. A bowl of cereal understudied for a proper meal as a post-school snack while the coffee began to broil, and then with a full mug and another round of toast she switched on the radio and retreated to her room, leaving the door open just a crack.

She laid back on her bed, scrunched her knees up to her chest, and squeezed herself into a ball. She felt like she was compressing everything from the day into a small, easily-swallowed pill. It didn't work; it just made her arms hurt, and when she stretched back out, splayed across her mattress, each limb touching a corner, it all just radiated out from her core and filled her bones with a despondent heaviness that weighed her down and felt like ropes trying to pull her through the floor. She rolled over, taking a drink of coffee and a bite of toast. The noises of the radio, mixed banter and chart-toppers, drifted in steadily from the kitchen, and if she closed her eyes she could pretend it wasn't a radio show but others in the house, filling her home with sound and warmth; she tried to convince herself it made her feel less alone. She laid back down and closed her eyes.[/color][/quote]
[CENTER][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/270596687540518915/1125899717516206080/Luce_Myotis.png[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=SILVER][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]Dormitories - House Myotis[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=SILVER][b]First Class #2.66:[/b][/COLOR] [I]All Too Familiar[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][sub][hr][/sub][sub][color=SILVER][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] [I][color=orange]Open to House Myotis PC's[/color][/I][/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=SILVER][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [I][url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5453435]She's In Her 'Rebel' Phase[/url][/I][/right][/SUP]
[indent][colour=gray]Luce stared at the ceiling from her dorm-room bed, having been escorted from the community gardens to the intake house to collect her belongings - a process she'd dragged out while her erstwhile supervisor tapped his foot in an almost comical display of impatience - and then escorted from the intake house to the Myotis House dormitories. She'd had the opportunity to read her invite letters since arriving, although it mattered little now thanks to her self-admittedly petulant behaviour, and regardless she felt little about any of the envelopes or their contents. 'Intuition', 'Dependableness', 'Mindfulness'; she wasn't sure any of them recognized her truly, that same petulance dismissing them as superficial, horoscope-esque ambiguities. But then she wasn't sure she recognized herself. Perhaps the letters were as good an indicator as anything else.

The dorm was quiet, with no radio this time to break the silence, and Luce felt those old ropes. She'd been moved across teams, too, no longer a member of Blackjack with familiar faces to rely on and the opportunity to forge a true sense of belonging. No, it was Eclipse now, no doubt filled with strangers and pre-existing bonds, against which she was once again the outsider peering in. 

She rolled over and rummaged in her suitcase, desperately seeking something to replace the oppressive quiet that reverberated around her skull. She found it quickly, her fingers brushing the pages buried beneath some crumpled clothes, and pulled it out; her old, battered copy of Frankenstein, spine limp and fragile, pages folded and torn, cover creased and wrinkled. She didn't even read it anymore, just held it, smelt the paper, ran through each paragraph in her mind, brushed her finger tips over the edges of the pages.

She got up. She couldn't take it anymore, lying in self-pity, letting the quiet invade her mind. Standing, she crossed her sizeable dorm room quickly (she wouldn't get used to the space afforded to her for the length of her academic career at P.R.C.U.) and headed for the kitchen. There was no coffee urn, instead some fancy, no-doubt-expensive espresso machine that could create all manner of [i]varieties[/i] of coffee, but she wasn't after a variety, she just wanted a plain black coffee in a stained and chipped mug, with enough sugar to mask the taste of cheap, burnt beans. She rummaged through the cupboards; there was an open jar of instant coffee but no kettle. She settled for a saucepan on the stove, leaning against the counter as the water began to bubble and boil.

It was soon after she'd carefully poured water from the pot into her mug and taken her first sip of some truly awful, but nostalgic, coffee, that she heard rumblings from beyond the dorm, doors opening and closing and the hubbub of students approaching. The ceremony had ended long before but the weather had been gorgeous and many students hadn't returned to their dorms, the weekend just beginning and a Friday afternoon and long evening stretched out ahead of them. Now they were coming back in droves, and Luce felt a sudden pang of panic, realizing there was the potential of being cornered by complete strangers in an unfamiliar environment. She scooped her coffee from the counter and fled the kitchen, desperately trying to head back to her room in time to lock herself in, her hands on the door handle when-

Too late.

The door to the dorm hall swung open, and the faces of unknown peers flooded through, searching for the doors with their names attached on embossed plaques. Luce froze, eyes wide, jaw tight, one hand on the door, one hand clutching her mug, knuckles turning bone-white as they clenched.
[color=white]"Hi there! I think we're new dormies! How exciting is this?!"[/color][/colour][/indent]