The first day of classes back from winter break was not an easy time.

Nellie, for as long as she could remember, had been the kind of person to worry over the most ridiculous things that were fully out of her control.

When she had been younger and yearly classes had ended, she could remember with way too much detail the way in which child-her had laid awake at night, mind so focused on all the different possibilities that had popped up before her over what summer camp she would be sent to that she had been incapable of a proper night’s sleep. Every year, for way too long a chunk of her life, the uncertainty of being taken to a new summer camp so her parents would have somewhere to drop her off while they worked had rendered her devoid of rest. That had only really stopped when she had reached the age where she could take care of herself at home during the summer; not because she had managed to somehow grow out of the horrible habit.

So, it wasn’t like she had been surprised by the time 3 in the morning had hit and she had not been able to think of a single moment in which she had been able to get anything similar to rest. Her mind had been so focused on the contemplation of how many disasters awaited her returning to society after having spent the tail end of her winter vacation cooped up within her apartment that she had been incapable of closing her eyes for longer than a minute before it was ravaged by images of classmates jeering and pointing; pitying her over her rash decision making; whispering behind her back over how much of a fool she must have been to have let a good thing like Benjamin Pryce slip through her fingers.

Eventually, she had given up on any attempts to sleep. With a heavy sigh, she had tossed her covers off her body, stood up, and stomped her way over to her laptop.

The rest of the much-too-early-morning had been spent at her desk in a valiant yet ultimately disastrous (as generally went, unfortunately) attempt to get some answers from the tarot deck that had arrived for her not more than a week ago.

Quite frankly, she wasn’t sure if she had done something wrong with the deck.

When she had gotten past the cleaning-up stage of dealing with her first encounter with the tarot deck, she had made quick work of opening up her laptop and searching up the best way to cleanse a deck of cards. She had scrolled past a couple of articles, taken notes, and then returned to her most trusted source of information on anything occult to make sure that what she had found could have been viable. With a quick search on CaveTube, she had wound up watching an Ainsley Aimes video in which they had explained the top ways they enjoyed cleansing just about anything; there had been no video dedicated specifically to divination decks, unfortunately.

Seeing how she had no crystals nearby and would probably get kicked out if she set the smoke alarms off with incense or other such smoking paraphernalia, didn’t think running water would be particularly useful for something that could get destroyed by it, and many other suggestions had just been flat out of reach, Nellie had decided to just wait for nighttime. The moon’s beams were supposed to be enough to cleanse the deck, especially if she made sure to make her intention clear before leaving it there, and so she had.

Once morning had come, she had attempted to pick the deck up and found that the odd feeling of buzzing was still in her hands as she attempted to handle it.

Ever since, no matter how much she shuffled the deck, breathed on it to clean it, no matter how loud the music she played to cleanse it was, no matter how much she salt she dumped on the whole thing… she couldn’t handle the deck. Well, she could. But after a couple of seconds of her skin being in contact with the cards, there would come a time that her arms would burn and she would need to put it down.

On this particular ungodly morning, she had attempted to ask a simple question to the deck: How is my day going to go?

No matter how much she had shuffled, how many times she had checked that all the cards were standing upright in the deck before she shuffled, and how careful she had been in handling the cards… every single card that wasn’t negative in its upright state had appeared upside down as she had pulled it.

So, with only omens of a horrible day filled with betrayal, heartache, obsessive delusions, and other such wonderful things and with deep, dark rings beneath her eyes that let everyone know she had not slept at all, Nellie had made her way down to campus to just… get the day over and done with.

Moscow Northwestern University had been a campus that she had fallen in love with as soon as she had seen pictures of it in the brochures that had been handed out in the innumerable college fairs she had been forced to visit in her time in high school. It was ‘small college in not quite sleepy but clearly not over busy town’ brought to life- from the cozy but large-enough campus all the way to the form of architecture all buildings were built with.

Technically speaking, this wasn’t much of a university by itself. It was a branch of the much larger University of Idaho, but specialized for all that were looking to make a career in the social sciences or humanities- absolutely perfect for someone like Nellie. But that was precisely what had made it so attractive to her when she had been researching places to go and make a new life in, far away from the constant noise and buzz of the city she had grown up in; good old Austin, Texas.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Today was a windy day, with winds so harsh that her hair had come out of its lazy ponytail and whipped behind her- once she went inside a building, she would redo the hairstyle, but she had learned very quickly that there was no styling hair in this kind of weather. There were only clouds in the sky with no sun in sight, the sky so gray that it would be no surprise if it began to rain at any moment and kept on raining for the rest of the day.

Even if the beginning of this day had been the worst, at least the climate was perfect.

This was the kind of weather her family would complain about; the exact type of weather that Bennie insisted was horrible, dreary, and it was odd of her to so enjoy. But, in truth, this had been the exact weather to reassure her that the big move from a place like Texas to a place like Idaho was the right choice- this was the kind of weather that made her the happiest.

With a small sigh, Nellie’s hurried steps lost their quickness. She slowed down as memories of Bennie’s positive interactions with her family began to flood her mind.

It was cruel.

Life was cruel.

She had always known about this nature of cruelty, of course, for she had grown up in the kind of family that had made her pay for any form of innocent gullibility. Her childhood had been the kind in which she had been forced to rip off the wool over her eyes unless she wanted to be swallowed up by the messed-up family dynamics her parents and siblings all insisted were just ‘unique’ to them. Said dynamics had consisted of the kinds of behaviors she had been led to believe were normal for much too long in her life; she had only begun to deconstruct the patterns and meanings behind such things when she had begun to open up to her friends about her family life and learned how her family’s dynamics weren’t at all similar to those of her friends’ families.

She couldn’t believe that this was what her life had become.

In the past, when she had finally broken through the long trek to the campus and caught sight of the wind buffeted, clouded wonderland that surrounded the Humanities building, she would feel a lot of happiness. Now, all she could think of was Bennie’s particular way of calling out her oddities because who in their right mind enjoyed a cloudy sky over a sunny one?

----------------------------------------

She could feel eyes on her.

Even if she wanted to turn around and attempt to find who in the world was so intrigued by her, she knew that such actions would only make her look weird. In the library, everyone was either focused on their own work, whichever friend or companion they had come in with, or their own despair. Why would anyone be looking at her?

Because you broke up with Bennie like a complete lunatic. You’re a walking freakshow. You should hurry up and curb the market; start charging people to be able to gawk at you. At least then you’d get something out of this.

She did her best to ignore such horrible thoughts. Not only was she tired, but she also acknowledged that she had a very real issue with paranoia and assuming the worst in people. For as long as she could remember, she had just expected the worst to come; that had been yet another thing about Bennie that her family had loved about him and disliked about her… well, now she could see that she had been right to get to expect only the worst in people. She had believed at one point that Bennie would be the man she would marry; the man that would become the father of her future hypothetical children. And then he had gone and cheated on her.

With a sigh, Nellie attempted to focus on her laptop’s screen, rather than on her own mind.

The first class had come and gone without any true fanfare. The professor had handed out the syllabus and explained it, her fellow classmates and her had been subjected to the torture that were first day’s introductions, and a group chat had been made on the most popular messenger app they all had access to. Within half an hour, the professor had given them their first assignment and told them they were dismissed.

Now Nellie found herself in the library, hidden away in one of the dozens of cubicle shaped, private tables that had three other spaces in its structure, but sectioned off to allow all four people that could utilize it at once the same luxury of not having to see the complete stranger they shared a space with.

It wasn’t like she wanted to be in the library… but it also wasn’t like she wanted to be anywhere else.

When she had chosen her classes for this semester, she had done her best to take courses that would leave her with free time during the afternoons. She had been lucky enough to get am classes to fill up most of her schedule; all electives to give herself a semester of ‘chill’ after having worked so hard to the past two and a half years on getting great grades on core courses. Much to her misfortune with recent developments, the way she had built her schedule meant that she couldn’t really leave campus grounds on days when she left one class early; she had to stick around because her next class would be set to begin in less than two hours.

She was sure that the whispers she heard behind her had nothing to do with her. Why would anyone even care about her, anyway? Now that she was no longer dating one of the most well known students on campus, the only interesting thing about her was the fact that she had dated one of the most well known students on campus. Aside from that, there was a grand old amount of absolutely nothing that would make her interesting to anyone around her. She was average; and she was proud of that.

Did her understanding that she wasn’t the center of the universe change anything, though? Of course not. She was still going to worry over the fact that someone had managed to look over her shoulder and read the title of the video she was focused on, which would then lead to them ridiculing her to their friend.

With a sigh, she attempted to force herself to pay attention to the video she had put on. It was, as all of Ainsley Aimes’ videos were, informative, well put together, and would have kept her entertained if not for the fact that she kept becoming distracted by the possibility of someone watching and ridiculing her.

Just perfect, she frowned to herself as she barely listened to what Ainsley Aimes listed off in the video. A perfect first day, huh, Nellie?