skymuffins | [Sept. 3/11] Casey's Room, Evening

Casey hadn't been out much since getting back to the academy.

He could hear them. Every last one of them. Except for the ones that he couldn't, of course, except they weren't here at all. There were the happy ones, firsties, the lot. They didn't know. Didn't know and he couldn't tell them, and it was all confusion there, and hard to tune out. Impossible. The ones whose family wouldn't look at them. The ones who missed home. The ones who couldn't find their family.

And the others. Always the others, this time of year. The ones mourning, but from a distance. They knew. They always knew. Every year, there were some. This year?

This year, he couldn't hear any at all. They weren't here. They were gone. It had been terror and excitement and worry and more terror and then sharp pain and then gone.

Gone gone gone gone gone gone gone and the only ones who knew were everybody but them. They were nothing but silence, now.

With his hands clapped to the sides of his head, Casey curled up on the floor in the corner of his room, staring at the carpet. He'd spent a summer in relative silence, well away from here. And now he was back here, and all there was to do was drown in the silence. This year, it was so much louder than the incessant chatter of the firsties.

The firsties who would be the nexties, soon enough.

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"Then think about me a bit more," Raphael said, with a shrug that meant just about anything. "I'm none of the above."

Nothing but empty, eerie serenity.

Like a glassy black lake over unfathomable depths. Somewhere in there, things weren't nearly so calm.

But it was a good night, for him, and there was nothing in his head that Casey hadn't felt before.

It was true. And Casey was taking those words as an invitation to make himself right at home, curling up in the silence in Raphael's head, where nobody else's thoughts could wander.

It's good in here. Like normal. Like summers. Summers are too short, I think. They should make them longer...

"Only if they make them cooler," Raphael said, unconcerned about the occupation of his head. Why not? There was room enough for two of them. "The sun is nice but when the humidity rises..."

He didn't much care for that.

It made him feel unsettled.

Too wet? Too wet. I don't like that, either. The only way to feel cool is to get wetter and there are always noises at the pool or the beach. The beach is worse, though. Loud, loud people. Strangers.

The voices he didn't know were worst of all.

"They should move summer to the winter, then."

"When the world is muffled," Raphael agreed. "And more lovely, besides, cloaked all in white."

The stark white with the sharply lined browns of bare trees reaching towards a painfully blue sky...

That was beautiful.

And utterly silent.

"Most people here don't like the snow," Casey observed, frowning and leaning sideways a little, slumping against the wall. "They think it's too cold. They don't want to go outside."

He shook his head a little.

They don't appreciate the quiet. The firsties are the worst.

"We didn't appreciate the quiet then either," Raphael said, reaching over to twitch the curtain shut to close out the light. There was only so much sadness he could take from it. "They are very young."

Far younger than any of those who'd made it past the first hurdle.

"They won't be for long," Casey agreed, addressing the unspoken sentiment more than the words that Raphael had actually bothered to give voice to. "They'll be young for the year, and then they'll be old like us, or they won't be. But they won't be young."

The sad bit of light was gone now, and Casey sighed a little, shifting around in the darkness to lay down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.

Nobody stays young here. Even the people who act like they do. They're usually the oldest. They know it. They know how much people need to see survivors, so they survive, and they don't feel. "Not on the outside." But in? They feel it most because they don't let it bleed.

"Survival," Raphael said, "takes all forms."

If other people wanted to pretend they didn't hurt, he was hardly going to argue with them. After all, truly, he didn't hurt most of the time.

Which he supposed was another way to cope.

"It does," Casey agreed, keeping his eyes pointed upward, there in the dark.

How is Monster today?

"Monstrous," Raphael said, with a shrug. "I saw him this morning and not a hair since. I will have to look for him before I retire for the night."

Which meant sleep was probably not happening and he didn't care. Finding Monster always took priority.

"He never warms to me."

You know how cats are. Stubborn. Proud. He'll come around in his own time.

Casey's mouth turned into the faintest hint of a wry smile.

"Try catnip again? They like that."

"It makes me scratch and bite," Raphael shared. "I am not sure that is an improvement. Still, I suppose that growing some would be a task well suited to me."

He certainly grew enough of a different plant in his room.

"It's a kind of peppermint, I think," Casey shared. Because that seemed... important, somehow. "Do cats like peppermint? I never was sure."

It seemed likely, though.

But then, knowing Monster, it was entirely possible that he didn't, either.

"I think it depends on the cat," Raphael mused. "Much like how not all of us care for sweets."

That made sense to him.

"It's all about how their brains are wired?"

Casey mulled thoughtfully on that one for a moment, and then he was sitting up again, ever fidgety.

Maybe if we put out a little of everything, he'll come to that?

Raphael considered that. It seemed unlikely, in truth, because Monster always did the most inconvenient thing.

Still, setting out everything counted as rather inconvenient, he supposed.

"We can try," he allowed. "I have more things in my room--care to come?"

He would leave that up to Casey. It mattered little to him either way if his offer was taken up or rejected.

Casey was silent for a moment, considering all the implications of that invitation carefully before deciding that he'd rather follow the quiet mind than continue sitting in the darkness. And then he nodded and pulled himself to his feet.

"I want to. You bring the quiet with you. And I can help. Inconvenient doesn't bug me."

"Most of us," Raphael mused as he stood up, tucking the heliotrope back into a pocket, "learn to not be bothered. At least when we are unable to avoid ever being so."

There was only so much, after all, that training could overcome when it came to their stones.

Casey, for example, would always hear the murmurs. He spent so much time in the heads of other people, it was a wonder he ever bothered to come back home to his own, really.

"It's a trade-off," he decided. "Chores are okay. They come with silence."

Or, at least, calm. Which was almost the same. Casey hadn't heard silence in years.

And Raphael rarely heard anything but. Which was for the best, for everyone involved.

"Come, then," Raphael said, gesturing for Casey to follow him with two fingers. "We shall see if Monster will appear."

Raphael doubted it but then, really, whenever had Monster done what he expected?

Perhaps he would show.

It was worth a shot, wasn't it? Always worth a shot, and it spared either of them from sitting in the darkness with idle hands and questionable sanity.

"And if he doesn't," at least we'll have "put things out for him." Right?

Which Monster was bound to appreciate in his own special way.

[Sept. 3/11] Casey's Room, Evening

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