Blythe Sullivan
She wasn't afraid of the past; she was afraid of repeating it.
The sky was clearer than she had ever seen it. Cities didn't let you see the stars - they blocked the beauty of the universe with their inconsiderate streetlights and vain skyscrapers. She'd only ever known the safety of suburban lampposts on every corner; never before had she seen such sweet stars.
The buildings were almost as strange as the stars. Blythe had loved history when she was young, loved thinking about wearing gowns or living in a time when New York City was filled with horses and suffragettes instead of Hondas and skyscrapers. This city looked like something out of her picture books - crooked houses dripping with lacy decorations and big, shuttered windows; narrow, cobbled streets not built for the modern world, but something out of time; ghostly fog swirling around her ankles which, she could see now, were one of the only things that still looked modern in this world. Everything else had a ghostly pallor to it, a sort of darkness that stemmed from the air that even smelled like the past.
She had stepped back in time. She could only hope that her old self had been left behind, too.
Her footsteps were quiet in the streets, strangely - it was like there was nothing to echo off of. Brick buildings and concrete sidewalks made heels loud - this strange cobblestoned, wood world was too silent for her liking. Her throat itched to scream, to make any sort of noise, but she remembered the warning and kept quiet.
Kill or be killed.
Blythe had never killed anyone before. She'd never even thought about it. Certainly, she moaned about her annoying classmates and joked with Kylar about getting revenge on those who'd made fun of them when they were freshmen and words stung like bee stings, but she'd never entertained the notion further than that.
She turned absently as she walked, the streets winding and thin, the alleys even worse, so much that she could barely squeeze through one to find another street to walk down when she'd exhausted her original. The feelings of the walls of the two buildings pressing in on her made her breath catch in her throat, and she had to swallow down the thoughts that rushed to her mind. She didn't need to skip dinner or go to the gym one more time. It was irrational. The alley was just tiny, even for someone her size.
Still, it was with relief that she shimmied out of the alley and could breathe fresh air again.
The city was still strangely silent - the prickling thought of just shouting to fill the quiet stillness spoke at the back of Blythe's mind again, but she forced it down. Although she had a lot to scream about, she would not put herself in danger.
It was laughable to think that she was not already in danger.
She swallowed the screams and kept walking, shivering in her dress. Somehow, they'd gotten her dress, her favorite, from her closet back home. They'd given it to her before the drive, before the van, before she'd fully realized what was going on.
Her shoes matched - black wedges, to go with the black background. Her jewelry, even, was coordinated - the sakura flowers printed on the dress were the same shade of pink as the gems set into her earrings. It was one of her favorite outfits, but she didn't know how they'd known.
She didn't want to even think about what they were, much less face the fact that she was one of them.
It was easier to keep walking than think about how when she'd woken at Kylar's dorm, she hadn't known where she was or who she was with. She had barely known her own name, but it didn't matter to her much, because the scary part was her dry mouth and pounding headache and need for the one thing that she couldn't get.
