{ brief injury detail }

CHAPTER THREE
Tortured Artist

˚ · • . ° . · • . ° . °

  MALLORY HASN'T QUITE BEEN herself for the past few days, and it's really beginning to show.

Her sisters fret over the disengaged way her brain seems to work during the day, as if there's an integral cog missing in the machinery of her brain — the mistakes are all concealed in the smallest details, like missing her goblet by a fraction and dousing the breakfast table in cranberry juice, or having even the most trivial spells backfire on her unexpectedly. Ever since she had started being plagued by nightmares, sleep essentially became a fairytale to her. She walks about, discarnate as a spectre, her eyes clouded over as her head is polluted by the things she has concocted in the cobwebbed confines of her own head.

  "Are you feeling alright, Mal?"

The answer will always be yes. It's become ritualistic, a repeating pattern that she stumbles across on the daily. The response is so habitual that she doesn't even register what she's said until the person speaking to her has moved on to something else, leaving her to drown in her all consuming doubts. It's becoming remarkably difficult for her to remember things with all the distractions misting over her better judgement.

The waning crescent takes its place in the night sky, mirroring the purple crevices sculpting Mallory's under eyes. Her blank papers are strewn before her, a quill in her hand that she has yet to dip in ink. Professor Aldebaran whittles on about things that scramble when they try to sieve into her brain, so she focuses on doing absolutely nothing instead of paying attention. A scrawny bat flaps past the window — a flashing blot of darkness racing past the lens of her telescope. She feels a sharp bolt of familiarity strike through her heart, her atoms twitching with desperation to follow after it into the all consuming midnight. Instead, as the Pleiades twinkle above, she has to sit and wonder why she even decided to take Astronomy in the first place.

  She doesn't have the same passion for it as she used to. Every star chart only makes her worry more and more about what's in store for her, not to mention the foreboding clouds she sees when scrying with her telescope. The moon cycle will repeat until she's on death's doorstep, and yet every New Moon only promises another month of unchangeable emptiness when it should ignite new beginnings in her heart. She can only ever feel completely free when she's whisking along the piny canopy of the Forbidden Forest, feeble and nocturnal in the windswept skies. ( No matter how long she's been an animagus for, Mallory will never get used to her insatiable appetite for moths. It makes her feel ill every time. )

She misses her brother. Maybe that's childish, but she couldn't care less. He's her anchor in the midst of a gale, keeping her one wrong move away from inevitable shipwreck. Yet, she hasn't heard a word from him since the start of term when he gave her a lift to the station — which is weird, since he usually sends her letters every weekend. Goosebumps rise on her forearms as the thoughts begin to churn and spin in her head, grinding her brain to mulch under the sheer weight of her troubles.

  She jumps when a hand rests on her arm.

"Are you alright, my love?" Nina whispers, her silky voice a sanctuary that drowns out their professor's drawling voice.

Mallory pauses, a deer in the headlights. "I drew the Tower in my morning reading," she replies eventually. "Just feeling a bit under the weather, is all."

Nina smiles warmly. "I'm sure it'll get better. Remember, the Star always comes after the Tower."

Not always, Mallory thinks to herself. She doesn't want to worry her anymore, so she zips her lips shut with a simple, tight lipped smile.

The candles flicker in their aureate holders. As Professor Aldebaran waffles on about the Mercury retrograde, she comes to a bitter realisation. Surely that's her source of bad luck, and it'll blow over in a few weeks. Everything will return to normal — her migraines will cease, Julian might finally piss off and her spells won't go all awry. Right? Or is that all just wishful thinking?

"Scarrow." Her heart drops when Aldebaran calls on her. "Name the meteor shower you see in your telescope, if you please."

She peers into the eyepiece pensively, frown lines carving into her face. "The Geminids, sir."

  "Very good," he praises. "Can anyone tell me anything significant regarding this meteor shower? Yes, Miss Black?"

  Mallory tunes out whatever Narcissa Black has to say and begins drawing on her hand, admiring the way that the ink bleeds into her skin. There are other illustrations tainting her tawny flesh, four animals smattered in an intricate stick-and-poke over her veins — a bat, crow, hare and spider. It's a mixture of creatures that bemuses others, but it makes sense to the four of them, like some sort of bizarre secret or inside joke. She supposes that it is, in a way. Her flesh tingles from the itch, veins thrumming with the poisoning as she relishes in the feeling of the stars upon her fingertips, the phenomenons in the sky that they're studying digging deep into her palm with every stroke.

  A sudden pain tugs at her hand. Her eyebrows draw together, eyes darting down. The quill has perforated the skin in the centre of her hand, piercing clean through onto the other side where its tip rests against the oaken table. It hits against a protruding artery that refuses to weep, allowing for silent realisation.

Or at least, it does for a minute.

Black ichor bursts from the mark like a geyser, trickling down in between her fingers. Where it should be red and warm to the touch, the liquid is as cold as thawing icicles, the worrying colour reflective of the dark night sky above. It forms tributaries across their shared desk, melting into the papers and completely infecting everything with her onyx blood.

She blinks rapidly. Her hand is suddenly back to normal, smooth and free of punctures.

  Cold air grazes the shell of her ear, a chill weaving in between the knobs of her spine. Mallory brushes her fingertips over the exposed flesh, confusion addling her mind when all she feels is the flyaways from her bun. Goosebumps streak over her flesh. She looks around to see everyone with their heads down, scribbling down information from the blackboard.

  "Is there a problem, Miss Scarrow?"

  A few heads turn to her. She wants the ground to swallow her whole.

  "No, sir," she breathes. "Not at all. Er, Professor? May I be excused?"

  He waves his hand in dismissal, turning back to the blackboard with fleeting interest. "Very well. Be as fast as you can."

  The legs of her chair scrape against the stone floor, her muddy shoes thumping as wildly as her pulse. Nina tries to catch her eye as she hurries from the classroom but Mallory wastes no time. She's on the verge of running to get far away from all the prying eyes, scrambling down the spiralling staircase at a speed that makes her head begin to swim.

  Something is tormenting her. It's clearly not a poltergeist or the average friendly ghost that you'd see inhabiting the castle, so she whittles it down to a vengeful spirit. Though, what has she done to invoke such wrath? Mallory tries her hardest to be kind everyday, to show respect to the earth and all the creatures that walk upon her surface. She doesn't know what she's done to deserve any of this.

  Her hair bristles and sways under an invisible breeze that sweeps across her nape. Dark spots dance over her eyes, weariness clinging to her bones. She's anchored to the earth, drawn towards the cold hard ground that looks oh so inviting to her bleary eyes.

  And on that note, Mallory faints dead away. 

author's note

I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN ABT THIS FIC

...not yet

this is a bit of a filler icl but this is just the beginning of mallory's delusions lol!!! they're only gonna get worse the more and more the story advances xoxo