Mess of a life

8- Early morning Earl Greys

The next day and a half passed by quite sadly for me. After my stunt with the guard, and Elliott's reaction, I was more hesitant to go exploring outside. I didn't understand why they made such a fuss about it, but it seemed important to them. Charles even came to me when he got back from work in the late afternoon, softly knocking on my door to make his presence known. He was gentler than Elliott had been, but the bottom line was the same; he asked that I not go exploring so far away on my own, and that I should ask one of them, or a guard to accompany me if I wished to go anyways. When I asked why, he just said not to worry.

Safe to say I didn't do either, and was therefore confined to the inside of the house and the lawn, where I was starting to feel like a caged animal. My restless energy was heightened by the air of tension around the house. If Charles had said not to worry, he was certainly. I didn't run into him much, because he was often in and out of the house, and when he was at home, it was with a laptop open in front of him and a deep frown etched onto his features. The others were quite the same. I barely saw Jesper and Dane, and I quietly avoided Elliott.

Deprived from the solace of exploration, I quickly grew bored of scrolling through Netflix, and the sound of TV shows became highly displeasing to my ears. I did find a library in the house – huge, with floor to ceiling windows and bookcases, plush chairs and deep sofas. It was my dream library, the one in every Pinterest board I made. I spent a few hours there, looking through all the books, climbing on the ladder to reach the highest shelves. The books were classified by genre, and in alphabetical order, every work in its rightful place, which highly satisfied me. But then, I grew tired of this too. I found I couldn't sit down and read, because in the quiet of this room my head was too great a whirlwind of thoughts. My focus slipped away from the pages after only a dozen seconds.

My next night was as restless as the one before. I tossed and turned between the soft sheets, unable to find peace and rest. My unbearably loud thoughts kept my eyes open, despite the exhaustion weighing me down. In the darkness of my bedroom, I couldn't help getting lost in everything I tried to bury during the day. I felt like I was underwater, and I had to remind myself twice to breathe slowly. My dreams were short whirlwinds of memories and senseless scenarios, in which I was chased by shapeless dangers in the woods, and I woke up from them panting and covered in sweat, only to see that a handful of minutes had passed since the last time I checked. At some point during the night, maybe around three in the morning, I got out on the balcony, needing to get out of the confines of the four walls of my bedroom. Despite it being summer, there was a chill in the air that made me go back for a sweater.

One of the advantages of living on such a property as this one, was the isolation, which meant minimal light pollution. Discreet leds enlightened the pathways of the garden, but save from that the night was dark as ever, the almost full moon hidden behind a few clouds. I spent a long time leaning on the handrail, looking at them, until I ended up sitting in one of the comfortable armchairs. The cold numbed the growing pain in my chest, the stars absorbed my attention, and I must've fallen asleep at some point, because the next time I opened my eyes the sky was starting to parade its pinks of oranges of an approaching dawn.

Refreshed by these peaceful two hours of sleep, it was almost with a smile that I went downstairs. A book in hand, that I had selected yesterday in the library, I was determined to give reading another chance. I stopped by the kitchen to prepare some tea, and was pouring the water from the kettle in my mug when Charles entered the kitchen. He didn't see me at first, focused on his phone. He was wearing sportswear, and his sweaty skin and slightly more rapid breath betrayed the run he just came back from. So he could go outside, I thought bitterly.

"Camille? What are you doing up at this hour?" he asked, startled, when he finally noticed my presence.

I only shrugged. I wasn't the one coming back from runs at five thirty in the morning.