Thrones Academy

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.