Fallen Arise

Welcome Nephilim: Improved

Outside, the sal palmetto trees were close to snapping in half from the roaring wind that pulled the grey sea apart. Aurora could see the white water curling over the pier's white walls, the pier she wished she could walk along. Stretching out from the double doors of the lunchroom, the sound of it alone felt like enough to break the glass, it shook them violently and pushed against their wood frames. Albeit, the sound calmed the anxiety Aurora felt snowballing in her chest.

The young girl sat alone at her table in the corner of the mess room at Shoreline, eating the lunch her Mom had packed for her, she looked out onto the wet decking outside as she contemplated her own existence.

The idea that Cam would be picking her up from school in precisely three and a half hours warmed her up just a little bit. But for now, she was freezing cold even if her thickest of sweaters.

She wished Jason was here, or Cam or anyone really. Her old friends sat around a bunch of tables they'd compiled into a massive community table, specifically for Eden to cater for the vast amount of friends she had. Aurora hated to think she used to be one of them.

Jason was different, he was her only friend now, and had been for friend for years. She imagined him at work right now, surprised Luce and Daniel hadn't forced him to come to Shoreline too.

Even now, Eden and her gang sat on a table in the centre of the room, chatting excitedly about the dance that was coming up. Aurora watched out of the corner of her eye as she chatted up to boy with waving pastel blue hair who sat on the table across from her. He looked like he didn't care.

And Francesca had asked Aurora to sing, at the dance, I mean. It only made her anxiety worse, she imagined it would be like Carrie.

She listened in as they talked about what everyone would be wearing, who they'd be going with, Aurora's old friend group talked with a youthful glee that she felt she'd lost now that she didn't have any friends. Friends were something teenagers were supposed to have, right? She remembered that Eden had a crush on Nathan Wicken. A boy descended from Demonic parents that had all the charm of a stick insect. To be super cliche he was on the Nephilim's poor excuse for a football team but to be honest it was just a angsty gang of hormone ridden superhumans that wanted to roll around in mud and punch each other so hard they're faces concave. Since Shoreline didn't have any official cheerleaders, Eden had resorted to wearing pig tails in her blond hair and jumping around on the side of the field.

Aurora sat, nibbling at the sandwiches her mother had happily cut into squares on what everyone seemed to recognise at 'her table', she pretended to look comfortable in her own company when really she felt the eyes of everyone on her. No one else was on their own, she thought, looking around coyly, even the boy with the red contact lenses had a group. Arriane said she'd get make friends eventually, better ones, but all Aurora wished was that Arriane, Roland, Tessa, Cam, her mum and dad would come walking through those those doors at any minute and surround her on this lonely table. It wasn't the fact that she was sat alone that bothered her, she didn't have to talk, she didn't have to meet people, it was just that she was surrounded by couples and groups that was enough to make anyone feel lonely.

Music was her refuge, when Eden's conversation turned to things she didn't want to hear, she put her headphones in. She walked around Shoreline with headphones in, blocking out the stares and the accusations she couldn't escape and replacing them with the happiness music gave lent her. She longed for her violin or her piano.

Daniel, had been happy to learn she'd taken Art as a subject as well and was excelling at it enough for him to just show up randomly at the window to see what she was doing. He was the Brad Pitt of the angel world and ,in turn, Aurora didn't appreciate the attention it put on her. She knew people thought she was a snob, brought up with famous parents, so she avoided conversation with everyone and anyone.

It was fun for her to pretend her life was a musical, making up songs in her head that she would create a tune for.