Main Wing, Spare Room

  Unlike the rest of their family Veronique and Rhea were kept out of the public, temporarily both girls had been ordered to stay in a spare room in the Main Wing under the watchful eye of Miss Hawkings and their own personal maids, along with Veronique’s dogs and Kain, but he was standing guard outside the doors with another knight.

  In this occasion Veronique personally meet Penelope, Rhea’s maid, some young peppy teenage girl with bright orange hair…or at the least she was supposed to be peppy from what Rhea had told about her.

  Penelope, or Lope as Rhea affectionately called her, seemed far more akin to a guard dog from Veronique’s prospective.

  The maid kept putting herself in between the redhead and Rhea, as if she were afraid Veronique would hurt the kid.

  Penelope even seemed close to overreacting when Rhea started playing with Mos and Bos, but ultimately stood down when she saw the activity was distracting her charge from the recent grim event.

  There was something about the way Rhea had closed off that just seemed wrong on all levels, guess seeing an usually happy child shut down gave that effect.

  However it was clear Veronique was on Penelope’s shit list and any other day Veronique would have got upset about it, but her head was currently elsewhere, even if she was trying to distract herself by reading her book it was proven to be simply an useless endeavor.

  She was half way through the first volume, yet she had been stuck on the same page for the last hour.

  Veronique simply couldn’t get the image of Margaret’s dead body out of her head, she thought she had been used to seeing such things and to be completely immune, but seeing that body had made her realize that her apathy was no other then one big illusion she had pulled over herself.

  There was simply no comparison to what she experienced everyday to the real thing.

  Her hallucinations would have looked perfect on a movie set, could have fooled all the audience that knew no better, but they were in no way shape or form an accurate depiction of reality.

  Looking at Hanging Jaw she could now see the way it was more like a complicated plastic puppet with good paint job, a quite realistic one but a fake one regardless.

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  They were all that way and she couldn’t unsee it.

  It was as if she had got used to a poor animated show and then got introduced to an high quality one, the difference was so high all the flaws she previously couldn’t see were right on the nose and she couldn’t ignore them anymore.

  Maybe the real reason she had been unaffected by their sight was that she instinctively knew they weren’t real, a luxury that the original Veronique didn’t have and so she had got terribly affected by it.

  Such conclusion brought other questions, some old like what was the original Veronique actually seeing and what caused it? Cause logically she couldn’t have been seeing walking movie props, there weren’t movies there.

  Was all of this part of her mysterious second skill? Did it project things that only she could see? Could she control them? Or maybe she got too fixated on the skill part and she was simply crazy.

  She did know Veronique hit her head before she came to inhabit her body, so maybe it could be just a blood clot pushing on her brain and causing hallucinations.

  She had no idea and she couldn’t think at the moment.

  Not with Margaret’s dead body flashing behind her eyelids.

  She doubted she will ever forget it.

  Unknown Location

  Inside a woodland remote area, near a river was some run down cottage made out of stone, it was covered in vines and the water mill at its side wasn’t moving an inch.

  Nothing indicated that anyone had lived there for a long time, yet now there was smoke coming out of the chimney, a small path was forming in and out of the front door and some of the vines had been cut and removed.

  On the inside a figure was impatiently pacing by a lit fireplace, its shadow was clearly feminine

  “How I am supposed to fix this mess by myself? I didn’t even have the time to settle down properly” she said with a clear lisp “and trust me when I say off grind life is overrated” it seemed as if she was talking by herself, the only other sounds came from the crackling of the burning firewood and the boiling of the pot sitting over the fireplace.

  “if the girl split can’t you just go and guide her back out?” the figure questioned as she bent down to stir the pot, a small scar on the back of her right hand was visible on her white skin.

  “Oh great, of all places she had to end up” she had said sarcastically then let the wooden ladle rest on the top, its handle was damaged at the top as if something munched on it.

  “Alright I will think of something, but the little stray you gave me started chewing on everything” she agreed at last and complained, only to huff in annoyance when she was apparently ignored by whatever she was talking to.

  She stirred the stew again, more out of nerves then necessity as she thought of her next step since it was apparent she was the only one that could solve this problem.

  An idea came over her, but it wasn’t the best plan

  “Ugh I really shouldn’t trigger this event so early, but we already made a mess and she has no way to stop it in the future regardless” she wondered out aloud, not sure if she should go through with it given the unpredictable ripple effect it could bring, it could actually make things far worse then they already were, a sudden low pitched barking broke her thoughts and forced her back on the present “yea calm down I am coming to feed you little fur ball” she took a bowl and filled it with some meat she fished out of the stew with a slotted spoon before she headed away from the fire.