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FUR YER SLEEPING PROBLEMS," Delilah's voice said, and out of the corner of Alethea's eye she saw her friend reach into her bag and pull out a handful of glass phials. The shattered silence fell to the floor as she watched in astonishment as the murky morning light filtering through the tracery windows into the corridors made the liquid glisten golden and could be mistaken for the purest sunlight.
"I tried them i so wouldn't poison ye. They work, 'n' they didn't killed me. Falling asleep lik' a baby in a bottle, recipe from mah grandmother." A proud smile formed on her lips as the vials disappeared back into a velvet pouch.
Unprepared, Alethea accepted it, her mouth open as insufficient words formed on her tongue. "I..." she began her stumble and Delilah just shook her head. "No cheers wanted, it was not an act of selflessness. Yer lack of sleep brings out very bad - aye, almost tairible - traits in ye 'n' ah prefer not to get grey locks at my young age," Delilah said, latching onto Alethea after running her fingers through her aureate hair.
She neither contradicted nor confirmed the words of her only friend. Delilah was right, of course, and Alethea couldn't be angry with her for her mild provocations. An uncharacteristic petulance was her closest companion these days, and every time she said a sentence that was too harsh and the dark man on her shoulder applauded, it filled Alethea with remorse that he tried to swallow away.
"Still: Thank you."
Instead of offering her a smile; making her gratitude evident with more than just words, Alethea chewed at the torn skin of her lips. Briefly, she thought of the dark lipstick that was now smudged and let a few strands of her dark hair fall into her face, disappearing behind it.
Delilah noticed the slight inner change in her friend as she began to lose herself in her thoughts and continued to usher her through the corridors, as she tried to find a topic to distract Alethea.
"Have ye heard that Dippet has now made Binns' replacement official?" she began repeating the rumours that seemed to keep the students alive. Nothing important, nothing truly interesting, but nevertheless a distraction. And everyone needed a distraction at this Academy.
Alethea let out a pleased sigh and shouldered her leather bag again as it tried to slip from her grasp.
It was time for the headmaster to intervene and finally replace the professor, putting an end to the gruesome act. The insidious rigor mortis had taken hold of almost his entire body, turning his face into a distorted, paralysed mask that made him appear a little less human with each passing day.
Soon he would lose even the last human features he had clung to so tightly, becoming a nameless and faceless corpse with no history and no memories. In the early years of her time at the Academy, nightmares of him had haunted her, and the fear of one day succumbing to the same fate had pursued her like a shadow.
