unlikely acolyte

early june, 19XX

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the moon hung over the scene. a waxing crescent, she thought, or a waning crescent - she wasn't too sure of the difference. not like it mattered to her, though gabriel would be so meticulous of the finer details, he knew so much about the moon. not to mention the stars, by name and constellation, he knew everything, and that's what made him so.. like that. like him. and she wasn't him, so she wasn't as smart. it gnawed at her from the inside out, she was never enough compared to her older brother.

which is exactly what had driven her unusually reckless motive as of late.

she kept her eyes focused on the gates, visible through her dorm's window. she fiddled at the straps of her bag, full of things she needed, or thought she needed - she was always one to overprepare. she closed her eyes and clicked her heels. the clock struck twelve, shadow-like tendrils slowly creeping from where she stood, down the walls, and out. those were her eyes, for this part. she couldn't be caught leaving the grounds so far past curfew, and certainly not for the reason she had.

"if there's one thing he can't do," she thought, a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. "it's pulling shit like this, and getting away with it."

she stifled a giggle, oddly playful for the situation. that was one of francesca's "unique" (because people didn't have the heart to say "weird", though she always knew that's what it meant. she hardly appreciated the sentiment.) quips, her reactions were rather odd most of the time. she was soft, delicate - in this world that meant fragile, and it came to no surprise that francesca was to be handled with care. if her brother could attach instructions to her when handed off to teachers and the like, he absolutely would - why he was so protective of a girl he seemed so clearly exasperated by was a mystery, even he didn't know. but he grew up with her, saw everything she went through and vice versa. he knew the deeper meanings to sentences that would leave her on edge, make her remember things she didn't want to. the other actually had a grasp on what she was, and if you were to ask him to describe her, he'd say something along the lines of;
'she's..kind of like a knife, in a sense. like, there's the smooth side of the blade, harmless and hard to miss. but the blade, now - that was sharp. if you were stupid enough to hold a knife by its blade, the serrated edges would cut into and tear apart your skin in an instant. and yes, it would be your fault, because only those who are careless mouth breathing morons would fucking pick up a knife like that. francesca is the same - just have a lick of common sense, and you won't set her off. people fail to understand that far too often.'

she shook her head, pulling herself back to reality (she had a bad habit of zoning out, although it didn’t seem to affect her studies despite the teachers accusing her of such whenever she had her head in the clouds). the tendrils that crawled from beneath her feet had come back to her, now returning to their more humanoid form as they drew closer - a tall, jet-black figure lurking on the wall behind her, clinging like a shadow to any solid surface. the thing reached the ceiling in its height, a few dozen eyes meeting the girl’s gaze as she turned to face it now, flurries of abyssal purple staring holes into the back of her skull.
francesca felt small compared to its presence - she felt alone, save for the moon and stars keeping her company as the open window allowed their dim light to dance softly along her features. white blonde hair fell to the middle of her neck, framing her face and messily brushing atop her round glasses, brushed out of the way of her eyes - bright, blue, and burning with both childlike wonder and grappling paranoia - one could only wonder what had happened to this girl in her earlier years.