Nora: Prologue and Start

Trinity high-school had to be the most boring and backwater school in the world. It was mere months before Nora would be free. The frost had melted and spring was in full **** outside. Crocus had come and gone. Leaves hung again from the trees. The days were getting passably nice again, most the time. The North-East was beautiful, but damn it was boring.

The clock ticked like a metronome.

It was study hall, and she couldn't wait for it to be over. Trinity college was a small, all-girls, catholic-boarding school, and the sisters kept her to a tight schedule. But the girls had at least an hour of free time after study hall. And, as a senior, they were a bit less strict about the rules with her as long as she didn't push things. She wasn't going to push things though. It felt odd to look forward to more homework.

At the start of the year, Sister Evelyn had approached her. There was a special class she wanted Nora to take, but this would be entirely voluntary, wouldn't go on her record, wasn't even the sort of thing to talk about, a secret class.

When she had first arrived, it had surprised her that the sisters weren't all old prudish spinsters. They tended to be younger women, and rather than a bunch of prudes, she found a fairly wide range of ideas and attitudes among her instructors, but Sister Evelyn was special. It showed up in weird ways, like when she asked about other religions, other gods. Most the sisters, when she would ask such things, would engage in a clever sort of duel. The answers she was given always related back to god, Jesus, and Mary. Most the time, the answers felt rote. Mantras the sisters told themselves to assuage the fears that rose when such questions were asked. Not Evelyn. When she had asked about such things, Evelyn would ask her to go explore. "Well, what do you think?" was usually the first thing she asked. But more, she'd point her on the right road. Many times, she'd leave her house with a handful of books to digest over the next month.

This year, they'd been studying witchcraft, exorcisms, and the occult.

[Oracle Rolls -Objective 1 = Eliminate a threat Adversaries 5- a horde / Rewards 3- knowledge and secrets
Random Event - What it does - Seek - What it's about - Plot arc
Set the scene - 1 Hostile opposes you ]

Sister Evelyn had encouraged her to start studying some of the more bizarre tales. That had lead Nora to ask about ghouls and ghosts and demons and devils, to which, Evelyn had sent her away with piles of books. But, when her curiosity wasn't sated with the descriptions of strange practices and rituals, Evelyn encouraged her to go try a few. So, she did. She learned how to consecrate a sacred space and learned symbols to carve in chalk and salt. She created a small altar in her room, and found interesting spots to practice in the woods around the dorms. Tonight was a new moon and it was spring. She planned on welcoming the year with a ritual of awakening. It was the first ritual she had written her self, a hodge-podge of old Christiaan practices, modern Wiccan studies, a smidge from the Pagans, and a little bit of her own creative spirit. So, each moment that she was **** to be here in study hall, with all her work down, felt like torcher. Patience had to be the hardest virtue.

When the Sisters dismissed them, Nora extricated herself from the chatter quickly and made for her room. Gathering her supplies she headed down the stairs and out the back before almost any of the other students had even made it back to the dorms. She didn't really care if people knew what she was up to, most knew her hobbies, but the less she was a topic of conversation, the less frequent the teasing would be, so she tried to go about her practices as quietly as possible.
[Roll: Hide - 12 Move silently - 4]

She had found the spot last fall, but had hardly had any chance to use it for ritual purposes before the winter set in. It was a perfect place to do this sort of work. The school was surrounded by forests. They were in a town, but small New England towns hug the few small highways and local roads that crisscross the area. Half the reasons they didn't have problems with student behavior is that there was nothing to do. The neighbor to the east raised sheep, and she would wake to the 'baa, baa, baa' that they made each morning. But, the patch of forest she had found last fall was special.

A circle of stones lay in scattered about a large, pinkish boulder of limestone. The trees gave way, she presumed because the soil was so rocky, and only a few scattered grasses and herb grew in the clearing. Looking up, she could see the moon and stars, and while eventually her view would break upon the canopy, it was still the best place to look at the night sky she knew. It was perfect.

Arriving, she opened her backpack and pulled out the things she would need. Buds of bright red flower, a pound of salt, a silver chalice, candles, a lighter, a robe. As the items came out she placed them on the the limestone bolder, some glacial erratic, distinct from all the other rocks in the area.

Most of her books on the occult said that this sort of ritual should be practiced naked, but allowed her to stay clothed. She compromised: She had brought down a long bathrobe, more of an evening kimono that a bathroom really, the soft, thin, silk would not be good at absorbing water, but it was also the sort of garment that one could not imagine wearing in public. She pulled the robe out from the bag and quickly started undressing. She knew the forest floor would be uncomfortable, but it was still shocking to touch her bare feet to the cold ground. Perhaps she should have waited another month before trying to do any sort of ceremony outdoors. But, she was already here, and her ceremony was not long. Soon, she was down to just her underwear.

The school was all about Jesus, Peter, Mary, and the horde a horde of Saints, but Nora wasn't really sure she was even Christian. It seemed that so many people had come up with so many ideas of the divine, that whatever the divine might be, must be large enough to encompass them all. And, while most of her teachers and mentors were not fundamentalists, they were certainly bastions of orthodoxy, save for Sister Evelyn. Still, it was one thing to question whether there was a god, and another to walk into the woods at night to lay down salt-circles and chant out Latin invoking various names of Saints, angels, devils, and demons.

She began consecrating the space. Walked the in a small circle, pouring salt along her path. As she walked, she spoke the words she had written for the occasion.

"Heims occidit. Ver advenit. Exaudi, die, angele, et sancte, ad vobis orationem do."

She had been struggling in Latin, and these special assignments from Sister Evelyn had helped. By taking the subject out of the class and giving it use, it became fun, instead of a chore. Her Latin class taught classical pronunciation, but whenever she heard Latin spoken, it was church Latin. She preferred the archaic forms with their hard "C's" and drawn out syllables. She completed three circles, and retrieved a bottle of water, a chalice, some candles, a lighter, and a knife from her supplies. After pouring the water, she put the bottle back and set the chalice at the north of her circle. The candles, lighter, and knife made more than a handful, and she wished her robe contained any pockets. She wished any of her clothing had pockets, usable pockets. The decorative flaps that teased pockets in some of her blouses certainly did not count.

She moved around the circle, lighting candles at various points. Each time she would light a candle, she would say a prayer, invoking a certain saint or aspect of the divine. Not one candle wanted to light easily. the slight wind making each a challenge. The frustrations with the material was far more prevalent in her mind than any sense of reverence. Frustration and cold.

Yet, there was something exhilarating to being this naked outside. What would she say if someone saw her now? What if it was warmer - could she dare doing this naked?

She liked her body, or was starting to. Puberty had started early, and it had mostly felt like a punishments. The periods painful, and while she had wanted breasts, it sometimes felt like they were all that had grown during her growth spurt. Her body had stopped growing years ago, but she still the image she held of herself in her head always felt a few years behind. She wasn't tall, as she would have liked, and her breasts felt like some monkey-paw-wish-come-true, but she had started to realize she was attractive, With so much of her time surrounded by other girls, it was hard to judge sometimes. I mean, it wasn't hard to judge if she found herself attractive, but it was hard to know if the boys would. But, the last couple of years she had noticed some of the few boys she talked to stumble over their words and make awkward passes that she never picked up on until it was too late.

She tried not to think too much about boys - about dating - about sex.

She wasn't a prude, at least she liked to tell herself she wasn't a prude. She was still a virgin, but what did that matter. That was mostly by choice...

At least half her classmates were also inexperienced, and all of them claimed to be, at least in public. Some were open about their sexuality though, despite the scorn of the sisters. Abby, talked playing around with her ex over the summer, and even Sister Evelyn had hinted that not all the sisters had taken vows of celibacy. That didn't sound right, so she didn't pry. She often misunderstood or mistook peoples meanings regarding romance and sexuality.

She was eager to experience sex, but also scared. When she would go home, she would overhear how poorly they thought the church did with sex education, so she tried to learn on her own. She felt she got the mechanics, but, there was such a mix of information as to how it would really feel, and how she could actually do it well, she was nervous. And the thought of a partner was terrifying.

She dreamed of finding a good partner. She almost always fantasized about guys her own age, but , her fantasy life was a wilderness she relished exploring. Sometimes she'd think about her classmates, mostly Abby. Abby was athletic, assertive, sarcastic. She thought of her as a friend, wanted her to always be a friend, but she also thought she was hot. It was complicated. Sometimes she thought Abby crept into her fantasize because of envy or admiration, sometimes she thought it was because she was a person whom Nora felt comfortable around, but sometimes, sometimes it felt like Nora just wanted her body. Her legs were toned from all her time in sports, her breasts were a much better size, and her impudent attitude made Nora think she might know how to have fun in bed. But, it wasn't serious. She didn't feel like she had a crush on Abby or anything. She fantasized about everyone, everything. In her imagination, she could find an emotionally available, strong, yet not controlling man, or a dominants lesbian mistress. When she was feeling really creative, she'd imagine devious devils and noble centaurs and sea of sensuality. In reality, it was terror.

She didn't trust her self to judge people well. And, she knew she was clingy. She suspected almost all the girls she knew were, a little. In an ironic twist, being sent to live away from home for much of highschool had made her feel like she could live independently, but like everyone was bound to reject and abandon her. So she stayed away from sex and romance, wanting to find the right person, wanting to be sure.

Yet, when she found that person - there was so much she wanted to do...

Here, outside, in the cool spring evening air, to have a warm body to curl up to. to spend a night in the dark, sharing a sleeping bag, seeing the stars, but feeling each other. The thought was erotic, romantic, and wholesome. Not all of her thoughts and fantasies of late were.

She tried to bring her mind back to the ceremony. A goodbye to winter and a welcoming of spring. She was supposed to spend time on reembrace, and concentrate on the hope of things to come, but all she could think about was sex. The wind blowing through the thin robe made her more aware of her arousal at this point than it did the cold.

The rustling of leaves drew her attention.