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lessons in the woods
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. ✧ ・゜. +・o ✧
The ghost of a breeze swept across the town of Hawkins on an early summer night, caressing cheeks and providing some relief to the wall of heat that had surmounted it during the day. It sang softly as it passed through the town—past the middle school, great and foreboding in the trepidation of darkness, past the high school, which lay right beside, past the playground and the cream and beige houses and the quarry, with water glistening far below the cliffs, past the park, with trees bunched with green leaves, past the desolate array of shops lined in the downtown, past the mall illuminated by a glowing neon sign—and landed right at the outside of a cabin that lay in the middle of the woods.
Its gentle touch flicked the loose strands of curly brown hair out of Alina Fairgrieves-Byers' eyes, something she was immensely grateful for. She'd rake them away herself—her hair had a tendency to obscure her vision in the most unfortunate of times, even after she'd cut it a couple months ago—but both of her hands were busy at the moment, one thrust out in front of her, aiming at the cherry-red target that hung from the tree twenty feet away, and the other curled into a determined fist.
"Focus, Alina," instructed the girl beside her. Her brown hair, a lighter shade than Alina's and definitely not as wild, was tied back into a ponytail, and she dug her sneakers into the dirt as she spoke. "Channel your anger. Force it into your hands."
Anger. Alina hadn't felt a lot of that lately, so she found herself focusing on anger from the past, bringing it back as if it was brand new, letting it fill her like it had so often when she was younger. There had been a lot of reasons to be mad back then—she didn't have any friends, her mother had abandoned her, and, to top it all off, she was being hunted by government-issued men from a laboratory. Oh, and then she'd also nearly been killed (more than once) by creatures from another dimension and been possessed for a short span of time. Bringing her old fury back was almost easy, and she let it consume her, her face darkening into a scowl as she remembered everything all over again.
As she concentrated, she let her outstretched palm spark to life, letting it burst with energy. Without a sound, a bright ball of red light suddenly bloomed on the surface of it, hovering slightly above and emanating a light heat. Narrowing her eyes, Alina focused on the target, which was swaying slightly in the wind, and, using a tip she'd learned over the past six months, compacted the light into her hand into a tighter ball. Then, with a gritting of her teeth, Alina let the energy fling out, hurling it like a comet at the target. Before she could even take a breath, the red light had crashed right into the center of the cherry red, bursting it into pieces.
