Beneath the leaves on the trees, turning gold and brown in the autum chill, sat a building. The building was filled with windows, hallways stretching out like a maze beneath the shingled roof. On the front of the second-story wall, the words Silvercreek Public High School were gracefully mounted.

Inside room 239, in the third desk of the second row, sat a boy. He was young, but his face was mature. His blue eyes stared out from beneath chocolate-brown hair that barely dangled over his eyebrows. Long, slender fingers were curled into a loose fist and positioned under his chin. His other arm draped over the desk he sat at as his pure blue eyes gazed out the window. There was an intense sadness in those eyes... as if something had happened that couldn't ever be fixed, or he had lost someone that couldn't be replaced...

This world was too predictable. The waves crashing on the shores, the leaves falling. At the beginning of every September, an ocean's multitude of young adults flooding the building with inconsistent, predictable, exasperating chatter. Nothing ever changed, it was all the same.

-x-

She entered the classroom, peeking around to see if anyone was present. When the girl found none, she sighed in relief and made her way to a desk. Peace and quiet were to be hers, if only for a few minutes before the ringing of the bell. Peace and quiet away from all those strangers who knew not her and her ways.

Basil ó Flannagáin was not like the other girls. She did not look like the others surrounding her, with her auburn layered hair and peridot green eyes. While the rest of the student population fell into the groove of wearing short jeans and tight tee shirts, she donned on an off-white poets blouse, layered over it a dark green vest that flowed slightly, almost like a cape. Basil's shirt was long enough that she could pull off a pair of knitted off-white leggings and rusted-looking combat boots.

She sat in the desk with a leather-bound book in front of her and a pair of earphones that plugged her in and away from the rest of the world.

In the desk directly in front and to the right of the boy, a girl sat down. Her auburn hair absorbed the sunlight streaming in through the window, then let it go with an almost ethereal quality. The boy started at seeing her, his blue eyes wide. After staring silently for a moment, watching her open a leather-bound book, the boy stood up and slowly walked to the front of her desk. No sound was made as his shoes hit the linoleum floor, save the memories of sounds in his head. His fingers slid across the top of the desk, the memories of sensations flooding his mind. The sad emptiness returned to his eyes, but the tears would not come. The tears had left him years ago, along with everything else...

He turned at looked at the girl. Arms crossed in front of him, resting on the edge of the desk as he crouched before her, bringing his eyes level with hers. Pale blue orbs stared into her eyes for a moment, as they stared at her book, completely unaware of his existence. She was just another girl. Similar to all those before her, she would come and go with the seasons.

This world of his was predictable. In September, they came. In June, they left. It was an endless ebb and flow of students, coming and going, each growing older. Each leaving, without him. Leaving him in this godforsaken classroom. This horrid school. This cursed age. Anger flashed within the depths of empty sadness. A hand reached out, to sweep the book from the desk, wrench it from her hands, only to pass through. The only movement was a small flutter of pages.

He sighed, the anger drowned into empty sadness once more.

The fluttering of pages arose her from her writing. Taking the buds out of her ear, and closing the book, Basil looked 'round the room. There were no windows open, and the sky outside was still and silent.

That wasn't normal.

There was a once upon a time a story ago where she would have thought the faeries were trying to tell Basil something, but again, that was a lifetime ago. Irrational thoughts like that were intolerable and had to be pushed out of the way. There was a new year to look forward too, a new life.

But still....

She stared at the spot, feeling as though something was there, even if her eyes could not see it. Something. Just something...

The boy almost jumped back in surprise as the girl stared at him. However, after a moment he realized that she was just staring through him. He sighed, yet no air escaped his lips, as the boy settled back into his previous position. One arm sat on its elbow, propping his head up. He let out a stream of air, even though none moved, and the air almost seemed to grow colder...

Then, before another moment could pass, the bell rang, and the room was flooded with students. They all sat down at their assigned seats, the teacher settling into her desk. "Attention students." The teacher called. The strange boy who breathed no air and made no sound stayed where he was, just... staring at her.

"Today is the first day of school, and I know the last thing you want to do after a long break is sit down and go back into your old routine." The teacher, Mrs. Hugglebum, turned around and began writing the basic rules of the classroom on the board. The rules never changed, even though the classroom did.

"This will be your homeroom." The boy blinked, realizing that this strange beauty before him would be here, every day, for a full 50 minutes. If his heart still beat, it would flutter. However that had ended long ago, along with the tears, and the air...

The young man rose, moving to stand behind her, his hands hovering over her shoulders. He tried to inhale, to pull in breath. Curiousity clawed at his insides as he wondered... What did she smell like? Of everything, that was what he missed the most. The smells...

She was lost in a teenage daydream, the ink that flowed onto her pages flowed also in her mind, filling her with longing for green wooded acres and the silence of a magic novel. She longed for home and all the familiar things that went along with it; like incense and bonfires and nights under the stars. Basil missed home. And she wasn't so sure this new school and setting could ever change that.

So lost in this daydream, she didn't notice when all the others filled the room, bringing along with them chatter and laughter that came with absence from each other for months along end. She didn't notice when they noticed her, the voices dropping down to whispers. Oh no, Basil never noticed the gestures and the giggles. But she did notice the teacher's loud, booming voice- it brought the other students to silence (And their seats), bringing Basil to attention.

She put the leather-bound journal away, only to pull out a regular notebook with cream coloured pages and a mechanical pencil. With these items she pulled out, she began to take notes on the rules that were being written on the board. Basil would occasionally look up to the blackboard, only to look back down to the paper.

A pause, as there was this cold feeling, right above her shoulders. Basil looked to her left, and to her right, but there was no-one there except those who were sitting at their desks.


There was no-one there...

The boy who the girl could not see stood behind her, lurking, looking over her shoulder. He watched as her hand swirled and twisted, dragging the pencil along to create the mst beautiful script. He watched, mesmerized by the motion, gazing intently.

The girl turned to look over her shoulder, surprising the boy and causing him to step back a few times. Then the boy shook his head, only to look down and see that he had stumbled right into a desk. He sighed, taking a step foward until he was between the desks again. He had been dead for two years nw, but moving through things was still unnerving...

The boy who could not be seen held up his wrists, his eyes trailing the dark gashes that cut down his arms. H had been so convinced...

He had been so wrong.

At one point, the bell rang, generating a ridiculously powerful sound. This sound got everyone except Basil, up onto their feet and fleeting to the door. Pressing and pushing and shoving to get out, only to face a sea of similarity outside.

She quietly and slowly gathered her belongings, trying to not touch or get in the way of the others. She didn't know any of them yet.

The world outside the classroom was madness. People were everywhere. Couples leaned against lockers making out, boys and girls alike texted, their fingers flowing quickly across the keyboard. Everyone else flowed through, making the difficult task seem so easy.

Basil was freaked out by the scene; where she had last gone to school, the hallways were never this crowded and confusing and generally scary.

How was she going to get to her next class?

Just then, a boy wearing all black crashed into her. His books went flying as he fell to the ground. Glasses skittered across the hallway, and somehow every foot avoided them. No one offered to help him up, and no one even glanced in his direction. It seemed as though this happened all the time, and the students were simply used to it.

The boy scrambled to gather the scattered books and papers, his face a bright beet red. The debris now a small pile on the floor, he began frantically looking around, searching for his fallen glasses. He was blind without them, unaware of which books were where, or how to put the papers so they were in order.

He was even unaware of the black leather-bound book that had skidded to Basil's feet. A five-pointed star inside of a circle was embossed on the front, and the covers were held closed by a black silk ribbon. The whole thing looked quite professional, and well taken care of. The owner of this book obviously handled it with care.

Inside the classroom...

The boy who could not be seen stood and watched as the classroom emptied. The young girl who had been sitting before him had stood up calmly, unlike the rest of her classmates, and slowly filed out of the room. He had followed her, standing in the doorway as she tried to meld into the mass of students in the hallway.

Then, as if it had been destined to be, another boy smacked right into the girl. The ghostly boy smirked. Myron. That kid was such a clutz. He had immediately begun scrambling after his belongings, but had failed to notice the book of occult resting by the girl's feet. He whistled, the smirk becoming an amused smile. "You've done it now." He muttered. Then the smile faded.

He had almost forgotten. The living couldn't hear him...

There was the moment of nervous panic, then... nothing as all the thoughts feel out of her body as Basil got knocked to the ground. It was just so sudden, so quick and odd. A few books fell out of her bag, but not many and so the redhead was able to pick them up without a problem. She was surprised by the number of students who offered to help her up. (Not that she was asking or anything, at her old school it was common to see everyone helping each other out all the time.)

None. So odd to Basil. So odd indeed...

As she finished placing the last of her books in her shoulder bag, she noticed a new book sitting in front of her. Covered in leathers of ebony and decorated with pentacle, it was beautiful; well taken care of and slick. She picked the gothic scribe journal up gently from the dirty hallway floor, brushing the dust and filth from it.

Basil held it, thinking "whoever it was who owned this book, they might be someone to know." She had observed those in were in her homeroom, and none of them seemed like the people who would want to even touch the book with a ten foot pole.

The boy wearing all black held his hand out for the book, then hesitated, his hand suspended in midair. The fear was evident on his face, twisting his expression into one of resolute terror. The papers and books lay in a splattered pile at his feet, his glasses resting awkwardly atop his nose.

His mouth opened, closed, and opened again, but no sound came out. The color of his skin had very quickly turned from a bright red, to a pale vampiric white. The boy looked horrified, as if an emissary of the dead had come and taken his soul into the underworld, leaving his body behind to sit in a position of absolute fear.

His eyes were fixed upon that precious black book. It contained so many of his secrets, so many recipes for important potions, important rituals that he had been wanting to try. And now, it rested in the hands of...

Myron finally looked up. He hadn't really noticed before who was holding the book, just that someone was. Now that his attention was away from the book, however, his eyes could finally soak in the majesty of the beauty sitting before him.

She was unlike any other he had ever seen before.

Her clothes were old-fashioned, but on her they seemed more than natural. They seemed to lend a surreal look to her, which defined her red hair and made her beauty that much more pronounced. Here deep, peridot-green eyes captivated him in a way he had never known before. Her look made him want to go out into nature and explore its wonders. It made him want to jump into the air and proclaim that he was proud to be alive, and that he would do everything in his power to prove it.

Myron sat on the floor, frozen in space. A messy pile of books and papers lay before him. His eyes were locked with those of a strange and beautiful woman before him, his hand outstretched toward the book.

Not a part of him moved.

"Hey," Basil said, her voice breaking the awkward ice that the frozen boy had created. He was as white as a sheet and shaking like a leaf. The girl felt bad for him. He looked like he needed his book back, and he looked like he needed a friend as well. He wore all black, with thick glasses perched on his nose, papers scattered around him like flat snow.

"Ummm, you dropped this. It looks important to you. It's beautiful." She handed the book to the boy, extending a hand to help him off the ground. "My name is Basil, I'm new here."

"Mmm... Muh... Myron." The boy finally spat out. As soon as the black leather lightly caressed his fingertips, he quickly clasped the book in his surprisingly strong hands and held it to himself. The boy's arms formed a protective barrier around the book, separating it from glaring eyes of his peers. "Th... Thank you." The boy, Myron, stuttered.

After a moment of holding the book close, a bright smile erupted on Myron's face. He stood, then, offering Basil a hand up. Once she was standing steadily, he bent down to gather the scattered papers, straightening them into an orderly pile and scooping it into his arms. He stood, balancing the stack on his hip, with the black book reverently placed on top. "So... Wh-what class a-are you g-going to?"

The smile faded a little, becoming a little tense as he strained to keep it on his face. He straightened his thick glasses nervously, waiting for her response. Hopefully, and with a bit of luck, she might not be like other girls...

Maybe she'd actually talk to him...

Meanwhile...

The boy who could move through things pretended to whistle. "Very well done, Myron." He chuckled, an approving smile spread across his semi-transparent lips. "Couldn't have done it better myself..." As if it had never left, the deep sadness was back in that boy's eyes. The immense depth of that sadness almost made one want to jump in headfirst in a desperate, hopeless attempt to save this poor boy from unending agony...

She cocked her head to an angle, amusement playing on her face, a snatch of the thoughts inside her head. Clearly, Basil thought to herself, Whatever is in that book is clearly important to that boy. Maybe he does need a friend. It was a thought, just one- planted in the soil of her mind, just planted. Who knew, maybe it would take root and transform into something. Something beautiful.

A beautiful friendship. Because the Goddess knew these children needed a friend, who knew, who understood, since there was nothing like that in these barren lands desolate of artistry and creativity. The fates, perhaps they would play their tarot cards right, and something amazing would happen.

Perhaps they would play the game right, for once.

"I umm..." Basil searched in her bag for the schedule she had been given a few days back. "It says I have science back. I have no idea where it is." There was a plead in her peridot eyes, a pleading plea for help, and for guidance from this boy she barely knew. Would he answer it?

"Science? Why, that's my next class! I can take you there." With her answer, his stutter was gone, newfound confidence in its place. He held out a hand, gesturing for her to go ahead. "It's just down this hallway. I have to stop at my locker first... Which is this way." The arm pulled in and swung around to timidly point in another direction.

Myron looked at Basil questioningly. "Do you have a locker?"

Meanwhile...

The man with death in his eyes leaned out the classroom to look around the corner. They were planning on going somewhere, and he wasn't about to let them get away. But why did he care so much? I mean, they're just people.

Maybe it was her eyes. Her eyes were captivating. The way they took everything in, and yet didn't, all at the same time. The vast knowledge that seems to pass through the depths of those eyes... The great pools of imagination...

Or maybe it was her chest. He hadn't seen a chest like that in a while.

The boy shook his head. It had to be the chest.

"Really? You have-" The redhead looked down at her schedule once more, her eyes searching for the words to confine her sentence into a complete thought. "Earth science with Zorengoff?" The green woods danced in her eyes still, lighting up her face.

"I don't know if I have a locker, but I'll figure that out tomorrow, I don't want to be late for class." And so she dragged the boy and her own body off to another hour of learning, another hour of something beyond the normal and usual.

They spent much of the day together, clearly Myron was at the same intellectual level as Basil ó Flannagáin, on many subject matters. The education surrounding the gaia & the one of shapes (and how they pertain to numbers), a course on the artist writing and the dreaded one of Physical Education (but thankfully, the school had enough funds to add units on fencing, and self defense.) Basil held on her own as the new student in her AP French and Chamber choir, but was able to meet Myron for lunch, which was nice.

The sun was still high in the sky when the two departed from the fortress of study and silly teenage drama. A mile in the same direction they went, when Basil turned to Myron with those worried eyes she had after first period.

"How did I do- for a kid who's never been in an actually environment like that before? I've never done an actual day of school before this- that was really hard. It wasn't even the school work, it was worrying about getting to classes on time and introducing myself over and over again while still trying to keep a smile on my face. That was... wow." She appeared, relieved in a way.

"Do you know of any places to hang out around here? I don't have to be home until sunset. Like, are there any forest preserves out here? Just somewhere to be free?" Would Myron know? Would he tell? All they talked about all day was schoolwork and classes... Perhaps they would get onto the subject of his little black book...

"With Zorengoff? Yeah!" As soon as her mouth opened and sounds escaped, his eyes were glowing with delight. And as she dragged him away, it was all he could do not to skip behind her.

When lunch finally came around, Myron barely ate. He waved it off as having no appetite, from having a big breakfast. However, if Basil looked close enough... If she paid enough attention... Then perhaps she may notice the bags under his eyes, or the pale shade of his skin.

Myron smiled at her, and his eyes shined. "You did great! You're a natural at this." He reassured her, almost placing a hand on her arm.

At her question, he paused, slightly taken aback. Then an ecstatic smile broke out on his face, and ideas raced through his head faster than he could put them into words. She was actually talking to him! Outside of school!! He still thought it a miracle that they had walked together so far, but this! If not for the extreme feeling of not wanting this to end, he would have fainted.

"There's a park not far from here. And a bowling alley! But that's in the opposite direction... And we passed an arcade a little while ago..." Would she come? Would she back out? In his mind, he prayed, wishing her to be different...


Meanwhile...

The semi-transparent boy watched as the stunning creature dragged that poor boy around the building, discussing notes during class and asking all sorts of questions. He smiled when she dropped a pencil or made a mistake. She would put on the cutest face...

All too soon, it became time for them to leave. He walked with the duo all the way to the door, but could go no further...

"Park." Basil whispered, visions of swingsets and sandboxes filling her vision with promise. "Can we go to the park? I haven't been to a park in forever!" Sometimes, the redhead was still a little kid who believed in magic spells and fairies and teapots and flowers. "Please, please Myron, you've turned me into an annoying five-year old who wants to go to the park again." She laughed at her own naiveté.

"Anyway, lead the way Myron!"

((OOC: I had noo idea what to post, forgive me. D: I suck. Wah.))

((Doesn't quite seem in character, but ah well. It'll do for now. :) ))

Myron's eyes widened behind his heavy glasses. "Uh... Sure! Here. It's this way." He took her hand, the way she had when they were going to class, and began to lead her toward the park. It was in the same direction as his house, so Myron didn't feel the need to tell his parents where he was going. They wouldn't notice he was gone for another couple of hours yet anyway.

The park was beautiful. With a swingset, a playground, a sandbox, and a grove of trees in the background, the place seemed like a little slice of heaven. The sound of birds singing could be heard from nearly every tree, and occasionally a squirrel would scurry past.

((I think a TS would be good. This is still the first day of school after all.))