INHALE, EXHALE « [r]

[cécile alabaster]

and all we know for sure
is what we're fighting for,

The last time she had been to the library, it had been stuffy and covered with dust. It seemed that not many ANTi-HOLiCs enjoyed occupying themselves with reading. And, really, it was quite a shame. If the books were sentient and not inanimate, maybe, Cécile would have pitied them. Just a bit. But alas, they weren't. Unlike sentient beings, they were unable to do much of anything. They were only capable of bring people like her amusement; some way to relieve them of their apparent boredom. Hah, boredom. Only boring people got bored. What kind of person would get bored in this kind of environment, anyways? She was living out every adventurer's dream! Except, one in her situation wouldn't call it an adventure. More like a survival game of sorts. Similar to some of those western television shows some of the residents of the Alabaster House enjoyed watching so much. To be honest, Cécile had never been too keen on watching television. To her, old, bounded books was considered better company than a box filled with images of people with normal lives. Whenever she watched television, Cécile couldn't help but want to punch someone. Preferably Arlynn and preferably in the face.

Maybe, just maybe, if I wish for it hard enough, the next time I punch someone, it'll really be Arlynn! The thought made Cécile particularly giddy as she slowly entered the mostly book-inhabited room. Like the last time she had been to the library, it was still stuffy and it was still covered in endless amounts of dust. Sweeping a finger along the shelf of a book shelf, Cécile looked at her finger with incredulity. Her finger was now covered with dust. Makes you wonder if the maids are doing their jobs properly. As soon as the thought entered her head, Cécile snorted. Proper. Who cared about being proper these days? Certainly not herself or anyone else, for that matter. This was a madhouse, after all. Nobody was concerned about being proper when they were fighting to keep their sanity; fighting to stay alive. So, really, Cécile blame whoever had done the poor job of cleaning the library.

Even so, it was still awfully bothersome. Not only that, it was also quite a shame.

Cécile slid a randomly picked book out of its spot and opened it, only to drop it a moment later. One blink, two. She had gotten a papercut on her finger. The young woman narrowed her eyes, frowning in disdain. It was nothing big, really. Just a papercut; nothing more, nothing less. With these thoughts in mind, Cécile watched with little interest as a small portion of blood bubbled out of the cut. Cécile hastily wiped the blood on her skirt as she bent down to pick up the book, only just remembering that she had dropped it in the first place. As she crouched down, out of the corner of her eye, the title of another book peaked her interest. Setting the book in her hands aside, Cécile pulled the much more interesting-looking book out of it's place. It was filled with old, English riddles.

Usually, one would put away a book filled with riddles. Not Cécile, who was absolutely enamored with such things. She had always had a penchant for riddles. Making the mind twist and turn, trying to find the answer; not knowing that it was right in front of them. Reminiscent of mind games, but just not as fun and mind tweaking, in her opinion. Watching the gears turning, turning, inside someone's head—it was utterly fascinating. Watching their faces contort, watching as their eyes glazed over. Watching, watching. It was all a very enjoyable experience. It wasn't the riddle that she enjoyed, but the effect of it.

Skimming the the book, Cécile found herself landing on an old, wrinkled page. The text was faded and could be barely read. It was challenging to read it, to be completely honest. Even so, she didn't mind, because, honestly, challenges—Cécile lived for them. You didn't go through life without facing an endless amount of challenges, after all. While they were tedious and difficult, Cécile had long since grown accustomed to them; even found them quite enjoyable. There was nothing wrong with pushing your limits. Who didn't enjoy the thrill of pushing one's limits and knowing you could go way beyond them? Dumbasses, Cécile thought, People like Arlynn, probably.

Just at the thought of Arlynn, made her want to spit on somebody. And then disembowel them. Preferably someone male. Cécile couldn't help but want to burn some genitals, at the moment.

Shaking thoughts of her stupid sister away, Cécile began reading the riddle aloud. The silence was getting old and, just a little bit, lonely. "The beginning of eternity," Cécile spoke, uncharacteristically softly, "The end of time and space; the beginning of every end—" And then she stopped. This particular line was hard to make out, unfortunately. Unhappily, Cécile squinted at the tiny, faded words. While it was challenging and hard to make out, the young woman refused to be discouraged. "And the...is that an 'e'?" Maybe it was an upside down a, Cécile really couldn't tell.

"There's a lot of dust down here. The maids' really aren't doing their jobs properly~"

NOTES! lol fail
TAGS! roxanne~
LISTENING TO! all at once by the fray
WORD COUNT! s-sob i don't even care

[/size][/blockquote][/justify]

[micheline bonheur]

i only photograph my fascinations
until the stress of the flash makes them fade

[/font]
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •[/center]

Dust; the dreaded allergen. It appeared everywhere, on everything. She could swear on her name that no matter how often she cleaned something, within the next week it had gathered the same amount of the stuff as it had been the last time she looked upon it - or even more, on some unfortunate occasions. There were thick and thin layers of it, sometimes so dense that no matter how she wiped her cleaning cloth against the surface, the dust collected beneath it moved not at all and she had to polish, and polish, and polish again. When things were sparkling to her satisfaction, she put them down on the dusty surface that they belonged to and wiped around them, cleaning everything but the bottom. It was not such a well thought-out tactic, but it was the habit that she had gotten herself into for however many years of cleaning she had done. And that number would only grow - certainly - if she could not find herself an eventual out of this mansion of terror. Years and years of picking up dusty objects and wiping them down with the care of a mother, sponging her head as she lay in the bath at night cautiously - hoping for no random disturbance. So many years of it, she could taste it. That was why it had to end.

The idea of such a failure was brought to face her as she looked at the dusty shelf she was working on. The thin layer had been swept away, but beneath it sat grim that she cared not to even dwell upon. All that mattered was that she was spending her time wiping and looking down, a personal hell. This was going to be the rest of her life – this trivial task. No one would come whisk her off of her feet, tell her that she needed to put down the mop and broom and hop onto his mythical beast. It was in her power to change her present and her future, but all she could do was sit there and sweep from left to right, look down to note her progress and continue on to the next shelf. It was such a rut, such a horrible place. It made her both comfortable and disgusted. Why was she stuck here? Why?

Glancing upwards at the spines of the book she was passing by without a previous idle glance, she toyed with the binding and wondered what lay within. While literature was an interesting subject of itself, she had never been the one to grab a book and go with it. Something had to be recommended or assigned, forcing her eyes to scan along the page. Some of the things that she had been force-fed were interesting to an extent, and some even made her rave on and on about them for months. Lately, though, she hadn’t been thoughtful of such things and never stopped in her rutted movements to open one up and dive into a story. Had it been months? Perhaps. The last book she read she recalled vaguely, perhaps something about a mystery or a murder. It had to have been before she began her stint here. The irony was dripping from her memories.

Drifting further down, she recalled none of the titles that her eyes now – almost eagerly – passed by. Now her dusting fingers were itching – along with her nose, which was simply doing such a thing given the motes that had passed into the air – and she wanted to just grab one and take it back to her room. Maybe, a new installment could be added to the routine that she so treasured and hated. A careful maneuver of placing herself in the bath with a novel riding in the air, amusing her with tales of romance and tragedy, history and fantasy. It’d be like her own little escape from this hell hole, this dead-end job. Maybe, for once, she could smile without nervousness riding in the backseat.

However, her swirling imagination came to a sudden halt when she heard the voice of someone rising from the folds of the labyrinth of a library. “Excuse me? Is… someone… someone there?” her voiced jumped suddenly, surprised that she was joined in her placement. Usually no one stood about in such a place – to busy fighting or planning some strange conspiracy against each other. But, she turned the corner to find one of the daughter’s of the Alabaster House there, commenting on the job – or lack of – of the maids in the library. She held the duster that she had been using close to her chest as she blinked once or twice, trying to think of a good excuse to cover the butts of her fellow maids. None of them liked to go anywhere alone.

“Oh, hello Cécile. Is… is something the matter?” she fidgeted, glancing from the one she had addressed to the area all around them.

word count: shorter than yours, fer sure.
muse: :c
tag: céecile alabaster.
listening to: NOTHING. BU
credit: the lyrics areee st. exquisite's confessions by of montreal.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
the danger is real, but I'm mute to the feeling
we started by giving each other interesting sobriquets

[cécile alabaster]

and all we know for sure
is what we're fighting for,

Blinking, bewildered at the sudden voice of someone else but herself, Cécile looked up. Oh, it was a maid. Just perfect. Now, she had someone to complain to about the outrageous amount of dust. Which was probably an exaggeration, but Cécile really couldn't care less. "Why yes, something is," Cécile said, her voice slowly raising, "It's this atrocious amount of dust!" Which she actually didn't care about. Cécile just enjoyed alarming the staff, making them think that they were in some kind of trouble. It was always fun to see them break into sweat and start to fidget. However, that was probably just her, though. It was almost sickeningly fascinating to watch their faces distort; just a bit.

"You should start cleaning it now, spiffying the place up a bit," she said, a seemingly amiable smile on her face. The maid had probably already been doing that, but there wasn't anything wrong with telling her to do something she had, before now, been doing. It was just a reminder, really. That if they just did as they were told, everything would be all right. Everyone had a role to fufill after all. It just so happened that faculty's role was do the bidding. Who's bidding? Well, it depended on what kind of job you had, right? If someone had a job as an assistant doctor or a researcher, they would probably report to the big honcho, himself. Her father, Doctor Alabaster. Disgusting man, not even worth thinking about. He had always thought that Arlynn was better than her. As for the maids and cooks, well, they probably did the bidding of either of the HOLiCs or the ANTi-HOLiCs. Cleaning and cooking was, apparently, unuseful to people like her father.

Standing up, the book in hand, Cécile ambled over to the older woman. "Also...who are you again? I don't think I ever caught your name." Cécile very much preferred calling someone by their name instead of a variant of "you". Besides, the other woman, unsurprisingly, already knew her name, it'd be a bit unfair if Cécile had no idea who she was.

Looking at the dark-haired woman, Cécile couldn't help but be a bit curious. It was just that she looked so...submissive. An assumption, really. However, Cécile took pride in her assumptions, mostly because they were usually accurate. So, brazenly, Cécile asked, "Where are you from? How long have you been working here?" There was nothing wrong with being impertinent in Cécile's opinion. You wouldn't get whatever information you wanted if you weren't bold. Besides, she was just curious about her. And there was nothing wrong about being curious, either.

It was only after a moment that she realized that perhaps her onslaught of questions may distract the other woman from cleaning up the dusty room. So, almost a little bit after she had asked the few questions, Cécile spoke again. "Answer while you clean," she ordered, "It wouldn't do to get distracted, you know. You'll never be able to clean the dust off of these book shelves, that way~" Then again, maybe she was the one distracting the other woman from her work? Possibly. Even so, Cécile had never been on to care about being bother to someone else; which often, if not always, lead to her being called a bit callous, a bit uncaring. And often times, Cécile would show only apathy to being labeled as such. It was a bit true, after all. Cécile never denied of affirmed the claims of her callousness, though.

She never really thought it was necessary, to be honest.

Then again, who was she to judge what was necessary and what wasn't? Everything had some role, some purpose made them necessary. No matter how miniscule that purpose was, it was still a purpose worth fufilling, right? Nothing was completely unnecessary, Cécile was adamant in believing. Whether it's role was to amuse and entertain others or something much larger than that, they were still necessary. Personally, Cécile couldn't imagine throwing anyone or anything away just because they were unnecessary. Why? Well, because, sometimes, Cécile couldn't help but picture herself as the unnecessary one. Especially when compared to Arlynn. The person she hated even more than her father. Her own sister.

Was it wrong? To hate your own blood and flesh that is? Wanting nothing more than to see them suffer; dismembered; tortured; dead? Having lived in this asylum all of her life, Cécile's sense of right and wrong was a bit twisted. Meaning, that she couldn't tell right from wrong. Most of the time, anyways. But, who could, anyways? In a place like the Alabaster House, the standard of what was considered right was way lower than that of the standard in the outside world, wasn't it? In everyday life, the whole concept of the Alabaster House would be wrong, right? Sending criminals to a place where they were turned against each other; basically battling to the death in some situations. It was all wrong. In fact, wouldn't it be considered immoral?

Looking at the nearly forgotten book in her hands, she couldn't help but feel like she didn't care. About immoral and wrongness and everything else. Hardly anyone did these days, Cécile included. So, instead of thinking more about it, Cécile held the riddle up to the other woman to see. "Hey, does this look like an 'e' to you?" Cécile asked as she indicated to the faded letter. Talking made everything better. It was a good distraction from all the calamitous things around her.

NOTES! sob, i didn't think i'd be able to pull off this long of a post. also, there are probably typos.
WORD COUNT! sob
LISTENING TO! 私の愛ステープラーです by ｶ-オン
TAGS! roxanne~

[/size][/blockquote][/justify]