#this is the first of many unfun times for sophie yay

[hatmaker-sophie]

Into the Wasteland (Self-Para)

“Lettie!  Martha!  Fanny!” Sophie shouted into the house as she removed her shoes at the door.  From afar, she could hear the footsteps coming down the stairs until she saw the source of the noise.  A wide smile on Lettie’s face as she jumped onto Sophie and wrapped her arms around her neck.

“Sophie!” she heard another voice cry, her head unable to turn due to Lettie’s restricting arms.  But, from the voice, she could tell who it was.  “Hi, Fanny,” she said with a smile, hoping her stepmother could see.  As soon as Lettie released her grip, she stepped back, holding her sister at arm’s length, and examined her.

“You look thinner, Sophie.  Have you been eating?  And where did you get this outfit?  It’s surprisingly more tasteful than what you usually wear,” Lettie teased.  Sophie tsked at her sister when Martha finally appeared.  Sophie quickly gave her youngest sister a hug and a greeting before giving her stepmother the same treatment.  When Sophie finished all that, Lettie helped her move her trunk up the stairs and into their shared room.  Martha jumped onto Sophie’s bed, looking with eager eyes, the same look Lettie was also giving her.

“What?” Sophie asked cautiously, raising her brow at her sisters.

“How’s the magic world?  Have you learned more magic?  And you said there was a ball?  How was the ball?  What did you wear?  Did you go with anyone?  Is magic ball different from regular-people ball?”  The onslaught of questions came at Sophie and all she could do was laugh.  She should have known that her sisters always had a million questions to ask about the wizarding world.

“It’s good.  Yes, I have, that’s why I’m in school.  Yes, there was a ball and it was nice.  I wore a dress, and I think I brought it home with me.  I suppose I had a date, but that was a little complicated.  And a ball there is very similar to the balls here, I would imagine, except some of the decorations and things are magical.”  Sophie tried to answer all those questions as quickly as possible, even though she knew that her sisters would ask for explanations, particularly the answer about her ball date.  Thankfully, just as her sisters were chattering once again and bombarding their eldest sister with questions, Fanny came into the room.

“My, you girls are quite chatty,” she chuckled.  “I’m afraid you might wake the neighbors.  Besides, it’s the middle of the night.  I’m sure Sophie is tired from traveling and from her ball tonight.”  Sophie smiled, actually quite thankful that Fanny stepped in to put a stop in the girls’ interrogation.  The other sisters, however, sighed and pouted, but ultimately agreed.  They decided to save the rest of their questions for the next day as they all got ready for bed.

As Sophie laid in bed, her mind started to wander as her eyes fluttered closed.  She recalled the night, the ball, how she went with Holden who had also invited Anna, and yet she ended up dancing with Denahi.  It was a weird night.  From the beginning of meeting Holden, Sophie knew he must have been playing her, that he saw her as easy prey to tease who would easily get her hopes up. And then Sophie felt bad for Anna; she didn’t know he had asked her, and if she had, she wouldn’t have accepted his request to the ball.  It was just all such a disaster, and Sophie felt at fault.  If she had just said no to Holden, if she had caught on earlier that he had no serious intentions with her, she wouldn’t have caused so many problems tonight.  And then with Denahi.  She wasn’t sure what was happening in that area.  They danced and she’s cooked for him and she even kissed him on the cheek after their dance tonight, but it wasn’t really anything, at least that’s what Sophie was sure of.  Besides, she was positive that Denahi would be better suited to someone who was a little more lively, a little more adventurous, someone pretty.  And the more she thought about it, the more she thought the same for Holden.  He deserved to have a date who was more fun and more interesting to talk to.

The pestering thoughts kept her from falling asleep quickly, but soon enough, she fell into a light slumber.  Dreams began to form as they regularly do for her, but with her last thoughts being so full of doubts and negativity, her dreams soon turn unpleasant.  In her dream, she found herself back at the ball, dancing with Holden.  There was no music, but there still seemed to be a pleasant rhythm.  However, after a few steps into their dance, Holden smiles sweetly and dips her gracefully only to drop Sophie suddenly towards the ground.  Except, her back never hits the wooden floor and Sophie continues to fall back into the darkness with Holden now evilly smirking at her from the top.  Sophie’s arms wave frantically in the darkness, trying to find something, anything, to hold onto when she lands into someone’s arms.  Her face looks up to see Denahi’s kind face smiling at her.  At the sight, Sophie let out a small sigh of relief, a smile on her own lips matching his, but only for a brief second as his kind features turned dark.  And he too, like Holden, dropped her onto the ground where she found herself falling once more.

This time, after falling for a brief but indeterminate amount of time, she lands on what seems to be a carpeted floor, much like her own living room.  The darkness begins to fade into light and her living room comes into view.  In the armchair sits her father, looking weary and tired and almost as if under some kind of... spell?  Sophie gingerly arises from her spot and slowly approaches her father, calling out to him, first softly and then a little more urgently.  His gaze finally looks up at her, but his eyes are dark, as though his pupils have filled the entirety of his eyes.  With a gasp of shock and fear, Sophie takes a small step back, and she stumbles back a little more as the figure of her father stands up and moves slowly towards her.

“Sophie...”

The voice is chilling and Sophie seemed to have lost her own ability to speak, a lump formed in her own throat.

“This is what your magic is done to me.  This is what your magic has taken from us.”

Black veins trickle throughout his arms and visible skin, starting from the eyes and down his neck.  Behind him, her sisters appear, looking the same terrifying way their father does.  Fanny close behind stood next to their birth mother, monstrous and horrifying.  They all seemed to be closing in towards Sophie, their voices low and drawn out, blaming Sophie for her magic and for the fate that seems to have fallen upon them.  Her legs, the only seemingly functional body part on Sophie, scramble backwards until she’s cornered in her own living room.  She is face-to-face with a terrifying image of her family, all inching towards her closer and closer until their hands are just inches from her face when-

Sophie let out a small scream as she sat upright in her bed.  The darkness of the night still flooded her room as streetlights from the outdoors peek through the window curtains.  Breathing heavily, Sophie looked around, checking to see that she hadn’t woken up her sisters and that they were still well.  Lettie and Martha both appeared sound asleep, breathing slowly and deeply in their restful state.  At least they were safe, and Sophie couldn’t help but feel a little relieved.  Still, her nightmare nagged her.  Oftentimes, Sophie wouldn’t remember what she had dreamt, but this was all too vivid.  Holden, Denahi, her family, all as if to torment her.  But it was just a dream... and there couldn’t have been any hidden meaning behind them... at least that’s what Sophie tried to convince herself of.

Laying back in bed did nothing to bring Sophie immediately back to sleep.  She was much too worried and frightened about the images and just how real it had all felt.  But soon, exhaustion won out and she somehow managed to fall asleep once more.

But not too long into her second slumber did her vivid nightmares come crawling back.  Or rather, her family, in their horrifying appearance, crawled closer and closer.

“Sophie...” their voices echo in low, eerie tones.

But Sophie, like earlier, had found her back against a corner with nowhere to run.  Her family crawls nearer and nearer until suddenly, Sophie feels a pair of arms wrap around her from behind and pulling her away from the scene as it fades into darkness as if she was falling backward into a tunnel.  But the faster she is speeding backwards, the harder she was finding it to breathe as the arms tighten even more with every second.  She was gasping for air, unable to free herself from the grip as she struggle to wriggle herself free.  Her throat is closing, choking and gasping for any bit of air to enter her lungs and just as she is about to pass out from strangulation, she gasps loudly and awakens.

The sun was up now and her sisters were still lingering in bed.  Sophie finally sucked in some breaths as though her lungs had somehow never tasted air before.  She smoothed her hair and her clothes.  Two nightmares in one night, both vivid, horrifying, and terribly haunting.  But, Sophie thought, they were just dreams.  They had to be.  And with that she let out a sigh and swung her legs over the side of the bed.  Despite the horrifying nightmares, Sophie still had work to do and she still had a hat shop to tend to.  She’ll just have to survive the day on what little sleep she got.

The rest of break continued in a similar, routine fashion for Sophie.  In the day, she tended to the shop, helped with house chores, cleaned the house.  Of course, Lettie still kept trying to persuade Sophie to give up the shop and pursue her own interests.  Sophie would only reassure her that keeping the hat shop was in the best interests of the family.

Being at home was quite relieving for Sophie.  School had been getting increasingly stressful and difficult and the prefect work was slowly draining her.  Usually, she’d be able to handle those things just fine, but she thought back to the nightmare and realized that Denahi and Holden had somehow preoccupied much of her thoughts.

However, those weren’t the main things draining Sophie.  She kept it entirely a secret from her family, but the nightmares continued, each night getting worse and worse.  The more she tried to ignore it or write it off as something unexplainable, the dreams would become more vivid and more painful and haunting.  The images of her family, blaming her for her magic, the feel and look of Denahi and Holden, both expressing that Sophie was indeed not good enough to be friends (or possibly more?) for either of them.  And the fact that these dreams, these messages, were reoccurring only seemed to solidify such thoughts in Sophie.  That her magic was dangerous to her and her family, that she wasn’t good enough for her friends and for the people she cared about, that ultimately she was just a hat shop girl.

The tiring nights left Sophie restless, often only getting a couple hours of sleep each night before she gave up and worked some more.  The concern began to show in her sisters as they tried to persuade her to take a break, but to no avail.  By the end of the break, Sophie had all but stopped sleeping altogether.  The dreams had become too much, too real, that she became terrified at every moment her eyes would drift close.  Now, she just had to keep this up for... the rest of the semester...