[img]https://i.imgur.com/JAFb3tJ.jpeg[/img]
[right][img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img][/right][right][sup][color=#5a3e85][b]#5a3e85[/b][/color][color=2e2c2c]...[/color]|[color=2e2c2c]...[/color][url=https://i.postimg.cc/7P1f3XK9/image.jpg][color=9b9b9b][b]outfit[/b][/color][/url][/sup][/right]
[indent][indent] [color=#808080]Consciousness returned to Anissa not as a gentle dawn but as a deep, resonant throb that rang behind her eyes with the monotonous rhythm of a funeral bell.[/color]

[color=#808080]For several seconds, she lay disoriented, her mind struggling to map her surroundings. A door framed a small balcony, beyond which a sheet of brilliant white snow pressed insistently against the glass. Slatted blinds cut the morning sun into parallel lines that fell across the wooden floor, and a bedside lamp listed sharply to one side, a silent witness to some forgotten urgency or accident during the night, perhaps? Then, the aromas reached her: the rich, acrid promise of coffee weaving through the lighter, floral scent of her own shampoo trapped in the strands of hair strewn across her face. She blew them away with a soft puff of air, and the world’s edges grew just a little more defined.[/color]

[color=#808080]As she turned her head, a carefully arranged tableau on the nightstand swam into view. A glass of water, its surface trembling with the minute quake of her own hand as she reached for it. A bottle of aspirin, its cheap plastic cap covering a promise of relief to the ache in her head. And a napkin folded into a neat rectangle and propped like a miniature white flag with a message scrawled in dark ink. The improbability of this curated collection barely registered, though, as a more primal thirst commanded her body to focus instead on the glass in her hand. Anissa almost drained it completely in several desperate and graceless gulps, the cool liquid a blessing to her parched throat. Only then, her vision clearing, did her gaze drop to the handwritten note to parse the text written there.[/color]

[indent][indent][quote=Ocean boy][color=#86a8ad]I’m sorry I had to leave.
[s]First day bullshit.[/s]
[s]I can’t hide from being the leader forever.[/s]
... I wanted to stay.

There’s fresh coffee in the pot. Take two aspirin and drink lots of water… please?

Happy New Years, Beauty Queen[/color][/quote][/indent][/indent]
[color=#808080]The nickname struck first—[/color][i][color=#808080]Beauty Queen.[/color][/i][color=#808080]It was so incongruent with the barren wasteland of her mouth and the leaden inertia in her limbs that an involuntary smile touched her lips. But then, the rest of the message began to assemble itself in her mind, each line a tumbler clicking into place within a lock. And behind it, a floodgate opened, releasing a cascade of sensory fragments that tumbled through Anissa’s consciousness in a chaotic, silent film:[/color]

[color=#808080]The secure lift of an arm beneath her knees, another bracing her back, the world rocking gently with a stranger’s gait. The frantic, helpless grip of her own fingers, tangled in the soft fabric of a shirtfront. The distinct, plastic [i]crack[/i] of a water bottle opening, followed by the low murmur of a voice that asked for nothing. The shocking coolness of a porcelain sink beneath her palms; the medicinal sting of mint erasing the memory of salt and bourbon. And finally, the muffled sigh of the mattress as a warm, solid presence settled beside her on this very bed, holding the night at bay.[/color]

[color=#808080]The dull tolling in Anissa’s skull swelled into a deafening clangour as the full, humiliating weight of the memories crashed down and over her. A scorching wave of shame constricted her throat, and the water she had just swallowed erupted in a sudden, choked sputter. Her esophagus burned with the recoil, and she wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist, blinking until the stinging in her eyes subsided and her vision cleared before looking back at the napkin as if it might somehow reassemble its words into something less incriminating.[/color]

[color=#808080]Yet, her eyes were drawn back to that first line specifically, which she read again, more slowly this time.[/color]

[i][color=#808080]I’m sorry I had to leave.[/color][/i]

[color=#808080][i]Sorry. [/i][/color][color=#808080]The word was a paradox, washing over Anissa's abraded nerves like a salve that simultaneously stung. It was an apology that seemed to acknowledge his departure without negating it, a particular nuance that sent an unwarranted pang straight through her core. In her experience, people rarely apologized for doing what was logical or expected. They simply vanished, offering justifications long after the fact. They didn’t tuck water beside your bed and write on a napkin like they were leaving instructions for the care of something fragile.[/color]

[color=#808080]But then there was also that final, telling line in his little verse.[/color]

[i][color=#808080]... I wanted to stay.[/color][/i]

[color=#808080]A flush crept up Anissa’s neck before she could suppress it, because [/color][i][color=#808080]want[/color][/i][color=#808080] was a deceptively simple word with a scandalously wide spectrum of meaning. There was the most basic interpretation: he’d wanted to stay because he was inherently kind. You don’t abandon a friend who has just been violently ill on New Year’s Eve, even if their illness was of their own doing. That kind of want was born of duty, a gentle, collar-tugging pull toward the right thing to do. It was safe. It was unambiguous. It was the version Anissa could most easily accept.[/color]

[color=#808080]A little to the left of that, however, lay the territory of curiosity. Perhaps he’d wanted to stay because she had proven to be an unexpected variable. Because the girl in thigh-high boots with a sharp tongue hadn’t shied away from his awkward honesty, and she’d chosen the scenic route instead of the direct path. This was [/color][color=#808080][i]want[/i][/color][color=#808080] as a question mark, a pencil hovering over a blank margin. [/color][color=#808080][i]What else is she capable of? Who is she, really?[/i][/color]

[color=#808080]And then, inevitably, there was the most hazardous category, where [i]I wanted to stay[/i] could be taken at face value, as blunt and disarming as the boy she was beginning to recognize. It could mean his mouth knew her mouth in a way she was unable to recall, and that his hands remembered the lines of her waist and wanted to check whether they’d mapped them correctly because she’d been too drunk to point the way. That even with the bourbon in her blood and the breathless way she remembered pulling him closer, there had been a thread of hunger he had [i]chosen[/i] not to pull. Want with brakes. Want that stopped itself. Or… at least, she desperately hoped it had. Either way, this was the interpretation Anissa didn't quite know how to process, leaving her with a confusing cocktail of respect and resentment.[/color]

[color=#808080]And underpinning all these layered meanings, a voice crackled to life from a speaker somewhere inside the room, severing her thoughts.[/color]

[color=#86a8ad]"Good morning, campers. This is your new leader, River, speaking. It is currently 7:30 a.m. on January 1st. Your first training will begin in one hour at 8:30 a.m. in the arena. Please arrive promptly and dress accordingly."[/color]

[color=#808080]Right…that was the last one. He had a role stamped on him like a crest. [i]Leader[/i]. And leadership didn’t go around wanting to stay in the beds of girls it’d met that very evening. Leaders dismissed themselves. Leaders left notes. Leaders showed up in arenas at seven-thirty sharp to say crisp, unaffected things into the morning air. The line, therefore, meant one more thing, the dullest and harshest of all: he had wanted to stay and had left anyway. Desire measured against discipline and found wanting—no, found [i]governed[/i]. And that, most of all, was the interpretation Anissa found herself detesting with a surprising and fervent intensity. 

Her own history seemed to coil itself around that simple sentence like a persistent vine. In her experience, whenever someone had uttered the words "I want" in her vicinity, the object of their desire was typically information. [i]What do you see? What do you know?[/i] Or, more often, it was a plea for space or a swift exit toward the nearest door. In fact, the word "want" had so frequently been a prelude to departure that it now carried a permanent chill, a draft of impending absence. 

Yet, this paper confession did not rustle with any hidden escape plans. Rather, it lay placid and bare with its corners softened by water rings and an aspirin bottle.[/color]

[color=#808080]Her hand moved with a mind of its own, picking up the napkin, setting it down, and then snatching it back again. Anissa’s mind tried, like always, to complete pictures it didn’t have, like the angle of his shoulders in her doorway, undecided, or the way his mouth might have looked when he wrote [i]Beauty Queen[/i], whether it had frowned in frustration or curved upwards at the thought of his nickname for her. It could mean nothing. It could mean everything. Both were their own type of trap, regardless. [/color]

[color=#808080]Finally, she let the napkin fall back to the nightstand. This time, Anissa’s focus shifted to the aspirin. She shook two chalky tablets into her palm, tossed them back, and swallowed them with the last of the water. After setting her glass down, she slid the napkin under it as a makeshift coaster, smoothing it flat with the side of her thumb. [i]Two aspirin. Water. Coffee,[/i] she recited to herself, treating the list like a sequence of stepping-stones across the turbulent waters of her morning so far. [/color]

[color=#808080]The smell drew her before she moved. It was the kind of scent that inhabited a room, that staked a flag and declared a small sovereignty over headaches and any regrets a person could have. Anissa stood slowly, a careful unfurling of her body, and braced a hand against the doorframe for support before navigating the short hall to the staircase. With each descending step, the aroma intensified, transforming from a distant promise into an immediate, tangible presence.[/color]

[color=#808080]The pot sat squat and earnest on the warming plate, its glass sides mottled with tiny breath-marks where steam had condensed and run back down in thin, meandering rivers. The machine emitted a low, contented hum, the sound of a task faithfully completed. Someone—[i]he[/i]—had even disposed of the used filter and wiped the stray grounds into a neat, dark crescent by the sink. This small evidence of considerate labour triggered a peculiar tightness in her throat. Anissa quickly turned away, reaching into the cabinet for a mug.[/color]

[color=#808080]She set the chosen mug on the counter with a soft clink. Then she poured, the initial splash hissing against the ceramic and blooming into a thin, oily sheen on the surface. A plume of steam rose in a lazy coil, misting the air before her and dampening the fine hairs at her temples. For a long moment, she simply cradled the mug beneath her nose, inhaling the bitter, fortifying scent as if it were a kind of medicine.[/color]

[color=#808080]The first sip was a tentative press of her lips to the rim. Anissa’s stomach, still rebellious, issued a faint protest before reluctantly settling. Simultaneously, the relentless pounding in her skull softened its assault, the note shifting from a deafening clangour to a muffled thrum. Emboldened, she took a second, deeper swallow. A wave of warmth radiated outward from her core, a stubborn inner lantern being coaxed back to life and pushing back against the cold remnants of the night.[/color]

[color=#808080]By the time she reached the final, bitter swallow at the bottom of her mug, Anissa was forced to admit a slight improvement in her condition. The world had not righted itself, but it had at least stopped its violent lurching. She rinsed the ceramic clean and set it to dry, a small, orderly ritual that felt like a minor triumph over the chaos of the morning. [/color]

[color=#808080]Now came the most daunting task of all: to scrub away the physical and emotional residue of the night and reconstruct herself one piece at a time. [i]Fun. So much fun.[/i][/color]

[color=#808080]Anissa made her way back to the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom. The light flickered on to reveal two minor testaments to last night's disarray— a half-empty water bottle near the sink and a hardened fleck of toothpaste clinging to the porcelain sink, a casualty of her rushed efforts. Well. It could have been significantly worse, she supposed. [/color]

[color=#808080]With a self-deprecating shake of her head, she approached the shower. A twist of the knob and the plumbing answered with a shuddering clang before unleashing a steady stream. The first contact was a scalding shock, a punishment for her sins, but she wrestled the temperature down to a more tolerable, if still severe, heat. Stepping under the spray, she let the stinging needles of water beat against the tight cord of muscle in her neck, the burden of tension in her shoulders, and the deep, throbbing ache nesting at the base of her skull. And for those few precious minutes, the simple physics of heat and pressure seemed to be a cure for everything that had occurred, known and unknown to her. [/color]

[color=#808080]The tiles grew slick underfoot, and steam condensed on every surface, transforming the small room into a hazy, isolated capsule. Yet, woven through the comforting heat was a sudden, inexplicable filament of cold that slid between her ribs like the flat of a blade. It felt as if a deeper current, one utterly detached from the shower's spray, was pulling at her from the inside. A frown creased her brow as she angled her body, confirming the water was, without a doubt, searing hot. Still, the chill returned in quick, breath-stealing flashes, the way the world goes silent and numb the moment an ocean wave crashes over your head. She braced a palm against the wet tile and focused on her breathing until the sensation receded, leaving only the drumming heat in its wake.[/color]

[color=#808080]Okay. A little weird. But again, probably nothing to be concerned about given her slightly hazy state of mind.[/color]

[color=#808080]She forewent shampoo as stripping her hair of its natural oils twice in twelve hours seemed like a form of self-sabotage. Instead, Anissa gathered the dark strands back from her face with one hand, letting the water cascade over her collarbones and shoulder blades, working at the stubborn knots of stress along her spine. She scrubbed her skin with a bar of soap until it tingled with cleanliness and the last bits of nausea had finally retreated. When she twisted the faucet off, the ensuing silence was a palpable presence, ringing in her ears almost as loudly as the water had.[/color]

[color=#808080]The mirror was a blank moon when she stepped out, her reflection arriving slowly before she wiped a sleeve-wide oval into the fog. She dried herself with brisk, efficient passes before twisting her hair up into a secure turban, a small ritual that always helped a sense of order click into place. Eyeliner felt like a bridge too far today, her intuition telling her that ‘pretty’ was not the required uniform for whatever trials the arena held. Still, Anissa leaned into the cleared portion of the mirror and winced. The truth of many sleepless nights was stamped beneath her eyes in smudged, dusky crescents, the skin there slightly puffy from a lack of rest.[/color]

[color=#808080]But as her mother always said, [i]if you can’t fix the face, darling, fix the frame.[/i]
The woman had been talking about contour, but Anissa had long since repurposed it for general composure.[/color]

[color=#808080]She located the satchel she’d brought to camp, knowing that beside her makeup bag, she would find her salvation: a pair of sunglasses folded beside a spare hair tie. The world softened into a muted gray the instant she slid them onto her face, and she tested her reflection without them, then with, the victory of the shaded lenses winning by a landslide.[/color]

[color=#808080]But first, to get dressed. [/color]

[color=#808080]As always, Anissa approached getting dressed with the efficiency of a soldier. First, the cross-back sports bra —the one that didn’t ride up when she had to climb or crawl. Next, the compression leggings, which she wrestled up her legs while sitting on the closed toilet lid, exhaling on the final tug as they snapped into a satisfying embrace. She padded back into the bedroom and pulled open the top drawer of the dresser. There it was, waiting like an old friend: her go-to lazy day sloth-print crewneck, its white fleece gone soft with washing, featuring a cartoon face mid-doze above the slogan [i]NOT FAST NOT FURIOUS[/i]. A snort of laughter escaped her despite her best efforts, and she pulled the sweater over her head, the fleece brushing her bare arms like a sigh of relief.[/color]

[color=#808080]Her [url=https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71W8NwipALL.jpg]gloves[/url] were next. Anissa bypassed the dressy pair she’d arrived in, her fingers instead closing around the insulated mittens she’d thankfully packed. They were a clever design: fingerless for dexterity, with magnetic, fold-over panels that sealed them into warm, protective pouches. She flexed her hands, the fabric forming a welcome barrier between her skin, her curse, and the world. And with that, the final vestige of the dream had now been dismantled. [/color]

[color=#808080]Next, she retrieved her trainers from under the bed, giving them a firm shake to dislodge a stray sock. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, she laced them with tight pulls, the task requiring her to flip the magnetic cap back on her left mitten to expose her fingers to the cool air for just a moment as she tied the final knot before sealing it shut again with a definitive [/color][i][color=#808080]click[/color][/i][color=#808080].[/color]

[color=#808080]Her hair, still damp, had begun to loosen the towel wrapped around it. Anissa unravelled the fabric, ran her fingers through the worst of the snarls, and secured it into a simple, low ponytail with the spare hair tie. The tail swung against the back of her sweater as she stood, and she slid the sunglasses back into place, the sloth on her chest staring out at the world with a boredom that perfectly mirrored her desired demeanour.[/color]

[color=#808080]Before descending, she made a final circuit. She retrieved the water bottle from the bathroom, then continued to the kitchen. She uncapped it, let the tap run until the water turned ice-cold, and filled the bottle to the brim. The aspirin had successfully muted the pounding in her head to a manageable thrum, and the coffee had filled the spaces between with a determined warmth. Nevertheless, Anissa placed the full bottle by the door alongside her useless phone and a tube of lip balm before concluding her journey back at the nightstand upstairs. [/color]

[color=#808080]The napkin remained where she had left it, a white corner peeking out from beneath the glass like a placeholder in a story she wasn't ready to finish. She didn't pick it up this time, only allowing her eyes to skim that most dangerous line once more—[/color][color=#808080][i]I wanted to stay[/i][/color][color=#808080]—before the tint of her shades veiled her reaction, and she gave a resolved shake of her head. It would have to wait. She would find him after the training session and confront the blank spaces in her memory. There was no other choice.[/color]

[color=#808080]On the way out, Anissa caught herself in the mirror one last time: sloth deadpanning across her chest, shades hiding the story in her eyes, ponytail neat down her back, and mouth neutral. The girl staring back looked like she’d made a decision. She would deal with this situation because she’d handled much worse. [i]She would hold herself together, because that’s what she did.[/i] 

She was capable. She was collected. She was—[/color]


 
 
 


[color=#808080][right][sub][s]a fucking coward[/s][/sub][/right][/color]

[/indent][/indent][hr][sub][color=9b9b9b][b][i]Location: Anissa's Cabin-->Stables 
Interactions: N/A
Mentions: River [/i][/b][/color][/sub]