dancing on glass;

metallicshine​:

DATE: july 13th TIME: 04:01 am LOCATION: in the forest LETTER TO: @francismont​ & @fikkir-isilay​

Twisted branches, and glistening leaves showing remnants of the morning to come grazed bare skin. Egyptian blues painted the edges of the dark sky, washing away the stars with each light streak of sun. A false dawn cresting the horizon, illuminating the edges of the two students stumbling their way through the forest. Drunk on cheap spirits, tired eyes swallow the scene.

Twigs snapping, there were things in these woods, creatures. Animals, McKenzie would tell herself as she looks down to her feet careful of where she steps. While the night air is cooler, it’s still warm enough that she’s comfortable in her spaghetti strapped singlet that left her mid exposed, and baggy pants. Other students returned to their cabins long before Frankie, Fikkir and McKenzie did, the three of them too lost in conversation to return until now.

Perhaps it was the things she thought she heard, scurrying around like warnings before an attack. Or perhaps it was how empty the forest felt even in all the sounds that prompted her question, looking across to the others. “Do you believe the stories?” 

Frankie hadn’t planned on drinking, but he found that McKenzie could be particularly persuasive. Insulted integrity and classic peer pressure and the alcohol soon made attacked his senses. By the time they were walking back towards the cabins, every sound felt like a dream. The crunching of leaves beneath their feet was fascinating to his drunken mind.

His eyes wandered around their surroundings, his fingers touched the bark of a tree. He pressed his hand against it, the roughness of it against his hand making him smile. He soon realised he probably looked a little insane so he retracted his hand and kept walking.

He liked how lonely it felt, despite having two people walking by his side. He decided he didn’t hate the forest as much as he thought he did. “The stories?” he repeated, like he was struggling to grasp what she meant. “Oh. The stories. The scary ones.” He snorted and kicked at a stone — which turned out to be a rock embedded in the ground and it hurt his foot very much. He winced, pretending nothing had happened. “I don’t know. I don’t like to think about them much.” Despite his claim, he glanced over his shoulder, like he was expecting to see something sinister. He thought he had heard something.

@fikkir-isilay

She was half listening to her friends, half making sure neither of them decapitated themselves on a low hanging brand or managed to break a leg in a ditch hidden by fallen leaves, scattered dirt and God knew what else that made up the floor of the forest. Though she wasn’t as strict as others that shared her faith, she had always maintained a halal diet, even when her father took her and her brothers to Denny’s for bacon, sausages and cheesy eggs whenever their mother was away for the weekend on business. As such, the haram nature of alcohol meant that Fikkir was the ultimate designated driver, with duties including guiding her friends through the dark depths of the forest and waiting patiently if they needed to throw up on any nearby trees.

“The stories,” Fikkir repeated, amused. Maybe it was the way Frankie said it, maybe it was the way the phrase embodied such a profound meaning when spoken in reference to Broadripple Academy’s colorful history. She shrugged her shoulders, though she was sober, it didn’t stop her mind from wandering a little and if asked about it, she’d blame that on tiredness. “I believe the story about that girl that killed the nuns- I’m pretty sure there’s a record of that,” man, what was her name? She couldn’t recall it now. “-but shit like devil worshippers out here? No way- like ninety percent of stories about devil worshippers are just goth kids or crazy hillbillies in the middle of the country that blame demons for everything that happens and blame alien abductions for everything else- like Faith for example, I bet she believes all of it,”

Diana had to suppress a roll of her eyes. To her it seemed like the cooks must put sarcasm dust in the food the way the students relied on it. It was almost like you couldn’t come to broadripple without at the very least taking an introductory course in it. Diana didn’t have the energy to come up wiht a sweet response to that so she opted to just smile at her. 

“I lost a shoe. And what are you missing?” Diana could understand how bitter Fikkir was. She herself was almost ready to boil over. This whole situation was absolutely ridiculous. It’d only been a few hours since they had discovered everything and she was exhausted. 

“One?” she questioned incredulously, it wasn’t that she hadn’t heard the other girl, it was simply that she failed to understand what the heck anybody would want with somebody’s used shoes, let alone just one of them. “My tespih,” she explained, “Prayer beads,” she clarified a moment later. “It sort of looks like a bracelet, round green stones with silver charms,” she expressed, going into detail in case the other girl had seen it somewhere. “It was on my nightstand this morning, I never lose it,” she rarely lost anything and had her meticulous, near neurotic type A tendancies to blame for that.

Location: The cabins

Time: 4:15

@ba-central​

Diana was seething. Someone had dared to go through her stuff. When she found out who did this they were going to find life very hard for themselves. And she was sure she wasn’t the only one on the war path. They better hope they never got caught. And after she had spent so much time making sure everything was in it’s place the other night to. Now she had to do it all again.

Most of the student’s were making an even bigger mess trying to see if anything was missing. Idiots. Diana had decided to go about it by starting on cleaning it up. She really didn’t know how they expected to find anything, or not find anything, in an even bigger mess. And it really was a big mess. She had found one of her T-shirts on the other side of the room. The idea of someone not only going through her stuff, but throwing it around to? 

She had to take a deep breath when she finished and realized what exactly was missing. The right shoe of her navy blue boots. And only the right one. Who even dose that. You can’t even wear them if you only have one.  The only thing they would gain is inconveniencing her.  She was tacking up the last of her pictures when a shadow fell across one of them. Turning around  she faced whoever had approached her. 

“This is just awful isn’t it? I don’t see how someone could do something like this.”

“At least your observation skills weren’t stolen along with the rest of our stuff, Di, this is awful, very astute,” Fikkir commented rather bitterly, her words dripping with sarcasm as she bent over to pick up a Broadripple field hockey hoodie that looked a lot like hers, judging by the bleach stain on the back of the arm. The stain was from the days before she’d learned how to do her own laundry without destroying her entire wardrobe in one way or another and on any other occasion seeing it might have made her smile but she was pissed.

“Have you got anything missing? Literally, everybody I’ve spoken to has said there’s something they can’t find no matter how hard they look. It’s weird,” 

Faith and Fikkir were…well there wasn’t really a label for it. Friends one day, adversaries the next. Teammates on the field, opponents when they were off it. Still, she had missed the other girl as much as any other Broadripple student during her time away. However, it seemed that niceties would have to wait. She didn’t drop the cross from her hands, adjusting her posture so she was standing tall as she prepared to argue. “I’m going to dust it down first!” She protested, a little offended that anybody would think that she, Faith McKay the resident clean freak, wouldn’t refurbish her newly beloved decoration before she hung it on the cabin’s walls. “I found it down the hall, the volunteers mustn’t have had an opportunity to look through all the rooms before we got here,” This was not a battle that she was going to let Fikks win, not when she’d already dragged the thing halfway down the corridor with no help. “It will keep us safe,” She insisted, pushing the wood against the shoe that was currently acting as a stopper. What exactly they needed to be kept safe from? Well sin of course.

“Do you just happen to have an industrial leaf blower handy? Damian’s handkerchief isn’t going to do the trick, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she insisted, her eyes glued to the crucifix that appeared filthier and filthier with every inch in travelled toward their sleeping quarters. She wrinkled her nose slightly at Faith’s reasoning. Fikkir had every reason to believe, based on the state of everything else at the Retreat, that regardless of whether the volunteers had the opportunity to move things like that out of the cabin rooms, they weren’t exactly leaping at the chance. Would it have killed them to spray a little Febreeze on their way through?

She couldn’t help but laugh at that, “No,” Fikks responded bluntly, the wooden cross may have given them splinters, it may have provided a habitat for various breeds of endangered arachnids and hell, it may have even made a half decent hat rack but there was no way it was going to be keeping anybody safe. “It’s a safety hazard,” she expressed, “What if somebody trips over it in the night and breaks an arm? Or what if it gives somebody a splinter? Do you want to be the one responsible for the suffering of your classmates and friends?” she was trying a new angle in this argument, knowing that guilt was a bit of a cheap shot with kids like Faith but a good one none the less.

Frankie didn’t like how she was looking at him, but he stood tall as ever. It was like he was inviting her scrutiny, wasn’t that what a good politician did? He would allow her to form her opinions and then he would work to drastically change it. He smiled his most charming smile and said, “That sounds like a challenge.”

He looked at where she pinched him, surprised by the casual touch. “Manhattan,” he repeated. “I lived there for a few months with my mother, when I was a child,” he explained, sounding like an old man recounting his glory days. “I’m no scaredy cat,” he assured her. “I like to think of myself as an er- curious cat?” He smiled awkwardly, “And what are you? The brave heroic lioness?” he tried to joke.

“It’d be unlike you to not rise to it if it was,” she noted, finding herself increasingly curious about what things might surprise her about her classmate.

“I didn’t know that,” she didn’t know a lot about Frankie, admittedly, outside of his academic achievements and the role he played as a prominent member of the student body.  It was one of the stranger things about boarding school, she supposed. You could know what days somebody liked to wash their hair or how long it took them to brush their teeth in the morning without knowing when their birthday was, where they lived or how many brothers or sisters they had. “Where else have you lived?” 

“Wasn’t it supposed to be curiosity that killed the cat?” she reminded him with a chuckle. She didn’t think it was much better than a scaredy-cat if that was indeed the case. She hummed thoughtfully for a moment or so, “I kinda like the sound of that- your words, not mine though,” she reminded him, a feeble attempt to not sound conceited as she accepted the title of brave heroic lioness without much hesitation at all.

“You’d be surprised what I do and don’t receive,” Francis said. He hadn’t meant it, but it just slipped out. It was like his mind had just decided that the opportunity was there and he had to take it. He cleared his throat and swiftly moved on.

“You think so?” He looked wearily in the direction of the creature before deciding to turn his back. “Are you well versed in woodland creatures? If you are I might need your help out here. I’ve been seeing too many things I don’t recognise.”

Fikkir raised an eyebrow curiously, taking a moment or so to eye the boy critically, digesting what he’d said, “I’m not sure that I would,” she countered candidly.  She found it hard to believe that anybody has goal-oriented as Francis Montgomery was anything but a snake in the grass. Shake with your right hand, hold a rock in your left, isn’t what they said of budding politicians? She didn’t doubt that Frankie had plenty of secrets disguised by a blazer decorated in school awards and commendations.

She laughed at that, “I grew up in Manhatten,” she informed him as if that was a sufficient explanation for her lack of knowledge when it came to tree-dwelling mammalian. “The only creatures I know in the woodland are the pigs like Aleksei Saarinen and the scaredy-cats like you,” she teased, pinching his elbow lightly. “-but that’s definitely a possum and it’s definitely the most harmless thing you’re likely to run into out here,” 

“What videotape? Your sex tape, you mean?” Luna said with a laugh. “You’re a terrible human being, did you know that?” Luna asked. “I could’ve fallen into it and died, I could’ve died.” She exagerated playing along, in no time she was already laughing and leaned with her back against the well. The wall rocks that formed the well were warm against her pants due to the sun shining its light on them all day day long. “I have no idea what you’re taking about, I’ve never been scared a day in my life. You just caught me off guard.” She lied. Luna was easily scared, a microwave going off could freak her out. “Nothing really. But starring down the well i somehow the most fun I believe I’ll have while they keep us here.”

“You wish,” she commented rather childishly with a smirk tugging at her lips as she did so, “It was a reference to the Ring- you know, Naomi Watts watches a videotape and then goes to find some fucked up little orphan girl down a well,” that wasn’t exactly the plot of the movie but in her defense, it had been on in the common room recently and she’d mostly been on her phone throughout the viewing session. Besides, it was from 2002, it was ancient and she barely had time for movies like that.

She peered into the well as Luna continued lamenting, deciding that yeah, she was right, had she fallen in, she probably could have died...but she didn’t, “-but you didn’t,” she noted in fact, thinking that it was quite an astute observation on her part. 

𝐇𝐀𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃. 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓. Rion scoffs, shaking his head. Though, he has to admit, there is something… unsettling about the Lorehill Woods, a darker presence that he’d never experienced before, even in the thicker forests back up in Maine, but he’d chalked it up to the old-timey vibe the entire area gave off. Like they’d never seen a smartphone or a franchise store in their life. 

Nudging her arm with his knee, he gives her a faux-disappointed look, sighing loudly. “Should have told them to shut up, Fikks,” he tuts. “I mean, you tell me all the time, so you should only extend the courtesy to everyone else.” 

“Aw, come on; history isn’t boring by itself, it’s just sitting there in class, it’s constant regurgitation of the facts. There’s no critical thinking involved,” he counters. Rion throws her a look, almost as if he’s challenging her to an argument — an added bonus when it came to getting closer to him 

At her mention of a hit list, he laughs. Rion knows better than to cross Fikks, but still, the thought of her going up against anyone elicits a well-meaning smile from him. “Oh, come on. I don’t deserve to be on that list. I’m nice. I brought you that muffin last week, remember?”  Only after he’d taken a healthy chunk of it, but hey, a nice gesture is a nice gesture.

“I’m saving it for a special occasion,” she assured him. There were only so many times you could tell your classmates to shut the fuck up when they were being annoying before the impact started to lose effect. Thus, she was keeping her cards stowed discretely up her sleeve until the right moment called for it. God, if she was a house captain it would be so much easier she thought. Perhaps that was why Ryder had been elected over her, however. She would use her position as a student leader to enforce a good night’s sleep while Ryder spared the rod and made sure he was everybody's pal first and foremost. A charming tactic, she supposed but it wasn’t particularly productive. 

She raised her eyebrows slightly, mildly surprised by Rion’s ability to start waxing philosophical on demand. He was a smart guy, she thought, though she rarely gave him the satisfaction of saying so but he wasted his intellect on sarcastic quips more often than he used it for anything good. “Then you should obviously start a revolution in class. Nobody ever made a difference to the world by napping,” she noted, though she’d have no part in the coup herself if there was a chance she’d get into trouble for it. She was perfectly happy playing by the rules, ticking boxes for her teachers even if it meant her critical thinking skills were lying dormant in the meantime.

She laughed at the male, “Right, I did forget about that actually- but only cos you’re not wearing the medal you must have received from the American Philanthropy Foundation,” she teased, playfully poking his chest around where she imagined such a medal, if it existed, would rest.

ba-central

On second thought, perhaps wandering into the woods upon hours of arriving at the Retreat wasn’t the best of ideas. Luna hadn’t even bothered to ask around who she would be sharing rooms with, she simply dropped her things, made her bunk look somewhat to what her room at the academy looked like and called it a day. She wasn’t good with change and when her grandmother had recovered enough for her to go back to the academy she wasn’t expecting to come back to this. It was already bad enough that she had missed almost four months of her last year, but coming back to find they were moving them into middle of nowhere? Yeah, she was having a hard time adjusting.

For the past twenty minutes Luna had been walking around without really paying attention to the directions she was taking, therefor, she hand’t paid attention to which path she was supposed to take to go back to the cabins. It hadn’t really struck her that she was lost until she managed to circle the well for the thrid time. Luna sighed and leaned on her elbows on the walls of the well, she propped her head in to get a good look inside, it went further down than she would’ve imagined. She softly hummed a melody to see if the well would return it back to her, and in no time the melody echoed back to her. 

At the very bottom she could spot her distorted reflection on the water, it wasn’t much of a reflection as it was a shadow she was casting due to the sun. Luna was ready to try and find her way back to the cabins when another shadow joined in next to hers. It she hadn’t covered her mouth she would’ve screamed, instead what came out was an agitated gasp. “Jesus fucking christ! What the— you don’t do that to people!” She said turning to face them. 

There was officially little to nothing to do at the Retreat once a person had toured the entire place, decorated their limited bunk space, complained to Sister Michael about the situation, and had even used the disturbing lavatory situation out of sheer desperation. With that in mind, Fikks had taken to the woods for a lack of anything better to do. If she got lost, at least it would be time-consuming and if she happened to run into a black bear, at least it would be interesting.

She wandered without direction, not even bothering to check the simple map of the place they’d been offered. She knew not to go into the very thickest parts of the woods, she knew to stay out of the water and as far as she could tell, that was perfectly sufficient knowledge. 

Fikkir realized by the time she spotted Luna with her head nearly down a well that she was not the only person losing their mind from the numbing boredom they were subjected to. “You didn’t watch that videotape did you?” she spoke, her words cut off by Luna’s overwhelmed reaction. She couldn’t help but laugh at her classmate, “Wow, jumpy much? I didn’t take you for the scaredy-cat type. Yeah, this place is creepy as fuck but save your horror movie screams for after dark at least, when everybody else loses their minds,” she suggested, tucking her hands into her pockets and stepping back toward the well, “What were you looking at?”

@ba-central​ Location: Outside the Main Hall

Damian was peeved. Back when they were on the bus, the data on his phone worked but now he couldn’t even get signal. It was incredibly vexing for someone who made a habit of checking their school email throughout the day. He had people to write to, you know. Projects he had to help coordinate. It was quite inconvenient that the only time they had access to working internet was at school. It was a major hindrance to his productivity. Not to mention it also made it impossible for him when he wanted to Google things like what kind of mold something was and the best ways to get rid of this cluster of dirt or that. Students had a lot of questions with their move to the cabins and Damian hated feeling inept because everything about this Retreat was so far out of his realm of knowledge it was laughable. He sighed, pocketing his phone for the nth time today before taking a look around. He spotted a close-by student and asked, “Is it just me or did signal cease to be a thing on your phone the moment you got off the bridge too?”

“Like some kind of cruel joke, I have a signal- or it says I have signal, like, I have full bars and then when I try to send a text message it tells me to retry and when I try to refresh my Instagram feed, it just keeps trying and trying and trying and never getting anywhere,” she looked down at her phone with animosity, “-at least have the decency not to lie to my face,” she warned the screen.

@ba-central​

Francis had absolutely no ambition to live in a cabin in the woods, not even a house in the Hamptons was very appealing to him. He liked the safety of hundreds of bodies in hundreds of houses all crammed within a five mile radius. How was he supposed to leave a lasting impression on campus in his senior year when he wasn’t even living on campus? Classes were one thing but sleeping there and living there was a different plane of existence, and now it was stolen from him. His hopes that they would be returning soon were slipping away with every little comment he heard from his peers. They seemed to be settling in.

Frankie had absolutely no desire to do such a thing. He had unpacked very little when they had arrived. Now, as he approached the bonfire he caught sight of something sitting in a tree. It seemed to be some sort of animal but he wasn’t familiar. He stood and stared at it, completely enamoured. “That is by far the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.”

“You’ve obviously never received unsolicited dick pics before,” she noted somewhat disparagingly, she was pretty sure it would change his definition of ugly forever, “That thing is adorable in comparison,” she added, in case the sentiment wasn’t clear. “Anyway, it’s just a possum, get used to the sight, you’re gonna see a few of them,” she wasn’t particularly thrilled by the fact but she could think of worse things too. “Be grateful it’s not a skunk. Somebody is bound to run into one of those before the end of the semester,” Fikks was almost willing to put money on it, in fact.

𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐏𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐒 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐍, 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐁𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐄 𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐊𝐊𝐒, and he’s known her since… well, since before his much-needed growth spurt. “Watch it.” But he still leaves ample space for her to sit down and stare off into the green. The beauty of the northeast comes in cool, quiet mornings, even as the sun continues to beat down on the quad, and he turns, watching the sunbeams reflect off the dewdrops, an expanse of sparkles shimmering in the sunlight.

It almost makes him believe in God, the way the morning looks. Almost.

But Rion doesn’t, and he removes his eyes from the view, shifting back to throw a glance over at the brunette, who looks and sounds every bit as tired as he does. “You heard someone talking?” He snorts, a single brow raised in incredulity. “Plenty of time to sneak in a quick nap during History, anyways,” he counters, shrugging. Out of all the subjects, Rion found History to be the worst, considering he could gain the same information by reading the textbook, a view that he’d made sure Fikks knew.

“Nice of you to suggest that our fellow classmates don’t shower.” He chuckles, Like himself, she’s clad in something less presentable, though thankfully, there’s no one around to care. “Honestly, I’m surprised that no one’s cut off anyone’s head yet,” he continues, fingers tapping on the cover of the book. “Taking bets that it’ll be you.” Rion throws her a smirk. “Jury’s still out on who you might behead.”

“Or what, you’ll use your mind powers to set a fire in my bunk?” she asked, raising an eyebrow curiously, entertaining herself with her own banter, made clear by the cheeky smirk that tugged at her lips.

She shrugged her shoulders, “Making noise at least. I couldn’t make out anything that was being said so maybe it was just half-conscious murmurings but I heard a voice and unless the cabins are as haunted as they look, I assume it was somebody in one of the other rooms,” she offered, she didn’t have much to go on. 

“I’d be willing to put money on it,” she assured him, thinking of a few students in particular that she thought could put a little more effort into their personal hygiene, particularly after gym class, if she had anything to say about it. “Ah yes, the development of mankind as a social species in perpetual motion, - what could history possibly offer us that we don’t already know?” she mused sarcastically, unable to spare the opportunity to disagree with Rion. 

She chuckled lightly at the accusation, it was ridiculous but perhaps it wasn’t entirely unfounded. She was a city girl through and through and most certainly not cut out for the Retreat at large. She might not be the first student to lose their shit in the woods, she reasoned but it was possible that she wouldn’t be far behind in second place once things started to really fall apart out there. “I’d offer to show you my hit list but you’re on it and I don’t want you to know how high up,” she teased in response, waving a hand in the air, motioning the various levels of her apparent hit list as she spoke.

𝐖𝐇𝐎: Rion & ANYONE. ( @ba-central ) 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍: Early morning. 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄: A stray bench on campus.

𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆, 𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏, Rion wakes with a start. A quick check of his phone reveals it’s much too early for his liking, and huffing, he pulls himself out from underneath his covers. Ever since the impromptu move to the cabins, every single night had been restless staring up at the half-rotting wooden beams, nose filled with the stench of mold. 

Groaning, he tosses aside his uniform in his trunk, grabbing something more comfortable before he sets out for campus, a book tucked underneath his arm. Long, lanky, he takes up the entire bench, cracking open his well-worn copy of Carrie — but it isn’t long before his silence is broken by another person approaching the second bench on the quad. 

Rion peers over his book, eyeing his companion. “Mildew’s fuckin’ bad, isn’t it?” He flattens the book on his chest, crashing the spine. “Haven’t gotten a proper night’s sleep since we moved in,” he grumbles.

“Very creepy,” Fikkir noted aloud, speaking of Orion’s taste in literature as she tapped the edge of his novel lightly with the tip of her index finger. She nudged his hip with the back of her hand, encouraging him to move over at least a little bit so that she too could occupy the bench, though she didn’t have a book to distract her, just a view of the campus. She groaned softly; tired, cold, over it. The cabins were, as Rion had so eloquently pointed out, extremely unpleasant and any sense that they were a novelty was starting to wear off.  

“I heard somebody talking in their sleep last night- I don’t know if it woke me up or I was already half-awake but I feel like I didn’t get more than an hour of sleep all right,” she confessed, looking down at her sneakers. She was wearing gym clothes a lot lately, she noticed. It was easier than trying to dress up in the cabin, avoiding anybody seeing her changing or attempting to do her makeup in the limited lighting provided by the dusty cabin windows. Not to mention she had little reason to dress up when she was only taking a bus from the retreat to the campus to sit around with Rion.

She thought about things for a moment, “At least we’ve got one of the better rooms. Faith probably speaks in tongues in her sleep and the other rooms are so packed. Like sardines in a can. By the end of the week, I bet it’ll stink like that too,” 

BASICS

Name: Fikkir Işılay

Age: 18

Grade: Senior

House: Melleray

Cabin Room:

How long have they been at Broadripple: Four years

Where are they from originally: Washington Heights, NY

Extracurricular: Speech & Debate, buddy club, swim team, Women of Broadripple, yearbook Club editor. 

TRAITS

Positive Personality Traits: Clever, driven, logical

Neutral Personality Traits: Critical, conservative 

Negative Personality Traits: Aloof, condescending, competitive

FACTS

First-generation American, her parents are migrants from Turkey though she has family in Turkey, Georgia, and in New York and other parts of the United States.

She was born in the State of New York and has lived in Washington Heights her whole life. She spent a week in Boston before she and her parents drove to Broadripple for her first day of high school but that was the first time she’d ever been to MA.

Though she hasn’t traveled much of the U.S., she is well-traveled. Her parent's value international travel and consider it a foundational part of her education. They believe their children would be lost without an understanding of the world around them, other cultures, and other places. 

Went for Melleray house captain and obviously lost to Ryder and she is totally salty about it.

She’s proud to be the Speech and Debate captain but it’s not as shiny as house captain in her books.

She’s not great at field hockey but A for effort and she might be a little better if she wasn’t nervous about getting trampled by Gwen or Faith on the field.

HEADCANONS

She wanted to be a marine biologist when she was young, after snorkeling off the coast of Greece on a family vacation.

She now wants to be a lawyer, her father jokingly told her she would make a good lawyer because she was so good at arguing with her parents but the idea stuck in her head.

She’s meticulous about her school uniform, her shoes are always shined and her shirt and skirt are always neatly pressed. She’s a big fan of de-linting her blazer as well and you probably can’t borrow her lint roller, soz.

She pretends her father doesn’t let her date to make rejecting gross boys less awkward   ✌️ but if she has a reason to be mean, she’ll just be honest with them.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

TUTEES; She’s a smart kid and she’d be more than happy to tutor your student as long as she can mention it on her college application. 

FRIENDS OF HER YOUNGER BROTHER; Open to any nerdy juniors bc he’s a nerdy junior (and another wanted connection). 

ANTAGONISTS; for whatever reason, somebody that clashes with her.

FRESHMEN FRIENDS; Somebody she made friends with during orientation, we can figure out where their relationship stands now.

WE TEXT BUT WE DON’T REALLY TALK; Pretty self-explanatory, somebody she messages on social media or texts but doesn’t really have a strong relationship with at school. Maybe this could change now that they no longer have the internet as a buffer.

Faith was basically a professional optimist. Sure she had chosen to return to Broadripple at an unfortunate time, what with the insects invading their very expensive dorms and therefore being shipped off to some creepy cabins deep in the woods that she swore she’d once seen hell hounds in. Definitely could have picked a better moment. That might have gotten somebody else down, but not Faith. No, she was determined that this was a situation that could be turned around. She’d start with making the cabins a little less creepy and a little more cosy. Unfortunately for her fellow students, her version of homey might have been a somewhat different to theirs. 

That was exactly how she had found herself dragging a four foot crucifix down the Senior cabin’s hallway, hoping that she be able to hang it and officially start her decorating before she had to get ready for dinner. She was also wondering why anybody ever would have hidden it away in that long abandoned room and contemplating if she should have found somebody to help her before she started trying to move the large wooden cross by herself.

@ba-central​

“No, Faith, absolutely not,” Fikkir spoke as she pressed the sole of her sneaker to the edge of the oversized ornament, stopping the blonde before she dragged the object into one of their new bedrooms. “I have so many objections to this, I don’t even know where to start,” she expressed in an exasperated manner, “Actually, I do- that thing is covered in dust and spiderwebs, and I don’t see any spiders yet which means they’re probably on the inside, waiting to crawl out at night,” goosebumps formed on the surface of her skin at just the mere thought of it, “ Allah aşkına, Faith, I am telling you, I am not sleeping with that thing anywhere near my bed- not unless you hose it down from all sides. You can choke on spiders in your sleep in the name of Jesus Christ if you want to, doesn't mean we should all have to,” she was usually pretty tolerant when it came to Faith’s weird shit but after moving into the cabins, Fikks’ patience was understandably wearing thin, “Push it back to whatever horror movie set you got it from,” she instructed bluntly, she’d really meant to say please in there somewhere but it had fallen away somewhere in the interim.  

location: behind cabin 2

time: 2:15pm

starter: @ba-central​ ( open )

Ella wasn’t totally sold on the cabins. She loved the idea of being out in the woods, delving into the trees for winding walks with her notebook and a bomb-ass writing playlist. But the romantic allure of the greenery and scent of soil faded when she had to return to a cramped bunk room with five brand new mosquito bites and no internet to download the audible release of Little Women. Her opinion, however, had shifted the moment she’d seen a white and black circled tail vanishing into the depths beneath her cabin. “Oh my god.” She’d already yanked her backpack off her shoulders, shoving her way through a contained catastrophe of math assignments, paperback books, and an array of gel-colored pens for the emergency snack living at the bottom of the bag. Probably a few months old, deformed from having melted, reformed, and melted again, Ella’s fingers were sticky with chocolate as soon as she peeled back the wrapper. She gave little heed to the inconvenience, dropping to her knees and holding the bar out. A token of friendship. The school might have disallowed pets in the dorms, but how could they argue with nature. The raccoon would be their mascot. Wendy and Harlan would love it. And Ella could already hear Kat shrieking. It wasn’t a tiktok of a cute cow with a flower crown, but in Ella’s opinion, it was infinitely better.

“pstpstpst.” It was the same sound Ella made when trying to summon the stray cats that would occasionally wander through Broadripple’s campus. She gave the protein bar what she hoped would be a tantalizing wave. She gave little heed to the twigs crunching behind her, far too focused on the mission at hand to be distracted. “There’s a raccoon,” she whispered, squinting into the dark pit beneath the cabin.

Fikkir’s family were most definitely not the outdoorsy type. According to them, an adventurous holiday was one that was spent outside of a major city and that could easily mean staying in a private villa in a coastal town or on a tropical island but anywhere that had room service and cable didn’t really amount to what most folk would consider intrepid. Still, Fikks tried to find the silver lining among the towering pine trees and debris lined floor of the forest that encompassed their new home; it was sort of peaceful, she supposed. 

She was on her way from the edge of the woods, back to the main hall to fill up her water bottle when she came across Ella, her attention very clearly consumed by something less than a foot tall in the nearby scrub. “Under the cabin?” she asked, though it was mostly rhetorical since Ella’s behavior was fairly self-explanatory. 

“Break a piece off and put it at the edge there- make it come out step by step, it’s not gonna just go the whole way, straight into your hand. Lead it a little bit,”

Location: The Creek

Time: Mid-afternoon

Open to: anyone!

Aurora enjoyed the outdoors, most of the time. Her family had always made it their mission to get her and her brother involved with nature in anyway they could. I mean….not only did they live on a farm, but summers were usually spent camping truly ‘roughing’ it. So ultimately?  she was very, very familiar with it. Unlike some of her other fellow peers, she didn’t mind the trees, animals, and even getting a little dirty. 

The brunette found herself craving alone time, which wasn’t unusual for her. God, being around a lot of people for too long just killed her already low social battery. What was an easy way to try and fix it? Finding her new favorite hiding spot with her most beloved past time; reading. She was currently in the middle of a True Crime book that she was completely engrossed in. The case being investigated and spoken about in the text was extremely fascinating to her. Blue orbs were approaching an exciting paragraph when she heard a crunch a few feet from her. Great, who was gonna bother her now?

“Looks like you caught me red handed,” she spoke out in a sarcastic tone. 

( @ba-central​ )

Fikkir tucked her hands into the pockets of her jacket to keep them warm. Though the sun was shining, there was a cool breeze that seemed to linger on the ends of her fingertips longer than what was comfortable for the teen. When she approached Aurora, she’d been mildly curious about what she was doing but once the younger girl spoke, she absolutely needed to know.

“Caught you doing what?” she asked, raising a neatly trimmed eyebrow in an inquisitive manner as her tone lifted with inflection. “Last time I checked, it wasn’t a crime to read,” she noted, “-and I hope that hasn’t changed because I literally had to leave the campsite because the screaming junior girls were giving me a headache and I wish more people were reading quietly by themselves,”