𝐓𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐞 (ʳᵒᵗᵗᵐⁿᵗ; ᵈᵒⁿᵃᵗᵉˡˡᵒ)

𝔠𝔦𝔫𝔮.

— echoes of the past —

   SOMETIMES—okay, a lot of times, Eloise could see it. It mostly occurred in her dreams, the extremely realistic dreams that could nearly pass as memories. She dreamed about herself, except it was not her. Well, this version of her, at least.

It was difficult to explain, but in a nutshell, Eloise often dreamed of herself in different time periods living incredibly different lives. She was never able to tell what brought it on. Normally, it had to do with her previous day.

Perhaps she had encountered a familiar smell or a tune or even acquired the oddest sense of deja vu. She had simply touched someone before only to fall into a daydream that took her somewhere else.

Eloise wrote it off as her ADHD because that made it very easy for her attention to drift off. But even Eloise had to admit these sensations were far stronger than simple slips of focus. It was almost as though she would fall into weird flashbacks.

To the outside, not even a second would go by, but for Eloise—it felt like hours. Right now, she was actually sleeping—it was a dream.

Eloise was by no means supposed to be sleeping. It was the last class period of her school day, and she was snoring softly in the back of her math class. Her teacher was far too zoned into teaching a class full of minors who did not give the slightest fuck to even think about scolding Eloise.

Besides, she was not the only one sleeping, there were like five others doing it as well. Not to mention the few students whispering and gossiping to each other or the ones texting. Barely anyone was paying attention.

However, that was, unfortunately, the normalcy at Chief Hill.

This mattered not though, for as Eloise rested her head on her desk, her eyes closed peacefully—she was mentally somewhere else entirely.

This was no stable dream. She bounced around from scene to scene.

The balls were magnificent, a beauty that few were rarely ever able to behold. Satin gowns of every color, glamorous men and women laughing with tight and high updos. Everyone was happy, and they all danced in sync with each other.