spirit_of_vitriol

She'd been sad to miss it, on the night. She'd thought about going, enjoying the festivities, the warm crush of people, hot cider, maybe, and laughter with her friends. Of course, that had been before...everything, really; before the frantic texts and calls, before the whispered conversations in the hallways at school, the rumors flying about who was fine, who'd been stung, who was hurt. Who'd been killed.

After that, Flavia wasn't quite as sad to have spent the night at home.

It had been at lunch today, the stories still flying from table to table--I heard Pablo lost all his toes, can you even believe it? I heard Angie McConnell has a piece of Todd Chad and she's keeping it in, like, a shrine or something--that she heard a familiar name float up out of the general furor. "Not the Clementine in the year below us?" she'd asked her friend, suddenly, surprising herself at her own worry.

"Yeah, her, the little kid, wears that old baseball hat all the time," Helena confirmed. "I heard she got stung a bunch and, like, twenty people stepped on her afterwards."

It's not as though we're friends, really, Flavia thought, walking home.

We helped each other pick out costumes at that odd store, and I've waved hello at her in the hallway when I've seen her between classes, came next, as she opened the kitchen cupboard and put a box of tea in her satchel, before walking out the front door again. She might not even want any sort of visitors at all.

They were feeble excuses, taking her all the way to Chelsea Cloisters and up to the sixth floor. And since she was here already, it couldn't hurt to knock on Clementine's door.

So she did.

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"Oh, no, I was making something to eat," she explained, stepping aside to let her in. Bailey would follow, just like she always did. Once inside, she closed the door behind them, locking it. Just like Andrea always taught her to do. "Do you want a sandwich? 'Cause I didn't put the stuff away yet or anything."

"I would," she answered, following Clementine to the kitchen. As she walked, she took the box of tea out of her bookbag. "I brought tea--it always makes me feel better whenever I'm, well, not feeling very well," Flavia finished weakly. "If you don't like tea, you don't have to have any. I just wanted to offer."

"Oh, I like tea! Thank you," she said, brightly. She would have been grateful even if she didn't. The visit was unexpected, but a nice one. "Um, if you want to make some, we have a kettle over there. Or I can make some later. Did you just come from school?"

She was already going back to making her sandwich. For what it was worth, she was honestly getting better at doing things with one hand the more she did it. Practice made perfect, she guessed.

"I'll put the kettle on, then, and make my sandwich once you're done with yours," Flavia said, picking up the kettle and positioning it under the tap.

"And, I did. Someone at lunch mentioned you'd been hurt, on New Year's?" She fell silent for a moment, watching Clementine's awkward, one-handed assembly of her sandwich. "I'd hoped they were lying."

"Okay," she said with a nod. She probably would do better making tea than her, anyway. At the mention of New Years', she paused, glancing over. "People were talking about me? Um, it's okay, really! It was scary, but I only got stung once. It's not going to even make a mark, the doctor said so. I heard people got hurt lots worse."

That thought made her frown. Would she find out eventually someone she knew got real hurt? She wasn't sure, but she knew she might have to prepare for that.

Flavia turned on the burner beneath the kettle, watching it begin to glow a dull red-orange. "I'm glad it wasn't as terrible as people made it sound, at lunch," she said. "That's the way rumors are, I suppose--a little bit of the truth, just made to sound worse than it is."

"Is that why you came? To make sure I was okay?" she asked, turning her head to look at her. It would mean a whole lot to her if that was why she was here. Even if it wasn't she smiled and added, "I'm okay. I can even go to school soon. Which is good, 'cause I'm so bored here."

She smiled back at Clementine, almost confused she'd even asked the question. "Of course that's why," she said simply.

Flavia had to laugh as Clementine started talking about going back to school. "You know, before I arrived here, I never thought I'd be bored not going to school."

"I was bored of school too. It was too easy," she admitted. It was funny how things looked after everything changed. Even little things like getting on the bus would have been something she might have never experienced again. "Then all the bad things happened back home and I don't think I'd be going to school if I didn't come here. I guess that's why I like it, even if it gets boring here sometimes too."

She liked her teacher a whole lot more than the one she had before, too. The last teacher she had back home was someone Clementine was convinced didn't like her.

"I didn't go to school, back home," Flavia says. "Father just hired Various Governesses to come in and teach my sisters and I."

The kettle began to huff out a thin whistle, growing louder as it built up a considerable head of steam. Turning off the burner, she hefted the kettle up and poured the hot water into two mugs, considering how to phrase the question forming at the back of her mind.

"What happened back where your home is?" she asked, almost shy. "If you want to tell me."

The word Governess sprung to mind thoughts of shows her mother used to watch, set in an old time with pretty dresses and fancy accents. It was hard to imagine anyone she knew in a place like that, even if she knew some people came from the past and future compared to her.

"Oh, um, I don't mind," Clementine said. It was just something she didn't really know how to bring up. She put aside a plate with one of the sandwiches on it, grabbing another for the sandwich she was going to make for herself. She focused more on that than on Flavia as she spoke. "I lived in Georgia, in America. Everything was okay until people started getting sick. And when they passed away from being sick, they came back, but they weren't normal anymore and attacked people and those people got sick too. Things got really bad really quickly after that."

As Clementine spoke, Flavia carried the mugs out to the kitchen table. She looked down at the deepening, swirling color of the steeping tea, trying to understand the story the other girl was telling.

"They died...and came back to life?" she asked, puzzled. "Like..." she trailed off, trying to think. "Like Dracula? Or Frankenstein's monster?" Flavia tried to picture Boris Karloff shambling from the film screen and through the streets, lunging at passers-by, but it all seemed too absurd.

"Uh-uh," she shook her head. Puzzling over how to explain things, she sat herself down at the table with her.

"When they come back, they aren't...they aren't people anymore. They don't think, they just attack and keep attacking because it's all they know how to do. There's nothing there but that," she clarified quietly. That wasn't much like either monster she mentioned. Definitely not like Dracula, that was like Spike. Spike wouldn't do what the walkers did. "As more people died, it just kept getting worse and worse, because they all came back. It was scary."

For Clem

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