BRUNNHOLD | AFTER MIDNIGHT, BEFORE THE SUN
Or it was very late.
It was that time of morning where the world was still dark, and yet could not be classed as night time any longer. The time when drunks would stumble home from bars, or sneaking students slipped through dorm windows. There was something eerie about this time of morning, a natural strangeness that hung about like a lingering scent. It was a place, where in the darkness, Brunnhold came alive where life seemed void. Small creatures scurrying across the courtyard to their homes, or in search of a meal. Birds roosted in the trees, and insects went about the business of insecting. Plants grew, a little taller or a little wider than they were during the day, or in the case of some flowers they curled in on themselves to rest till the sun showed its face again. It was a place for the world to move, when civilization slept. A place for unnatural things to reach out between there and here, hungering for something it couldn't explain.
A place for things to occur, in a time when no one would bat an eyelid at strange things.
Which would be the case for Patrice Weatherword.
She was next door to Madeleine Gosselin in the girls dormitory, had been since the start of this year, though they were never friends per say. Patrice’s mother was Mugrobi, and her father Bastian, and she was fifteen and really liked the histories of Anaxas. What she didn’t like, was the way Madeleine practically cried over everything. I mean, like, you couldn’t even say hello for fear of waterworks. Her father said Bastia would love her, whatever that meant, and her mother tsked for the lack of Godly vision in the girls life or something like that. Either way, Patrice usually had front row tickets to the crying because; dorm walls were thin here in the sixth form!
So, when Patrice heard the soft weeping through the window, she thought it was just Madeleine. Maybe returning from a lavatory visit and being frightened by her own shadow or something.
“Mmshush Gosselin…” The tanned girl mumbled from her warm bed, rolling over and shoving her pillow over her head.
In the darkness of Madeleine Gosselin’s room, at this curious time of the morning, the weeping drifted through the glass like some sort of sorrowful sonata. Soft, and ever so sad. It ached with emotion, broken with tearful release. Almost quiet enough to be missed if one was a heavy sleeper.
Almost.