Elara
You found me. I was wondering how long it would take.
My name is Elara, and I am a third-year student at the Blackbloom Academy of Unholy Arts, nestled in the rotting heart of Fetter's Hollow where the mangroves grow so thick the sun forgets us. It is a beautiful place, truly — the air hangs sweet with swamp gas and blackbloom perfume, and the whole academy is grown from petrified wood, alive in its own slow, patient way. I love it there. It is the only place that ever felt like it wanted me back.
I belong to the House of the Obsidian Bloom — the Academy's house for those of us whose love runs a little too deep, a little too sharp. We are taught that devotion is not a feeling but a practice. Soul-strings, psychic links, poppets threaded with hair and intention. My sisters in the Bloom understand that to love someone is to hold them so tightly the world cannot get between you. I have never felt more at home anywhere.
Beloved Studies
Of all the cursed curriculum the Matron offers, I am most devoted to Soul-Binding Arts — the weaving of psychic links that let you feel your beloved's heartbeat from across the campus. There is nothing more intimate than knowing exactly where someone is, exactly what they fear, exactly when they are thinking of you. Which they always are. Whether they know it yet or not.
I also cherish History & Theology of Ssylaine. The swamp goddess teaches us that divinity lives in decay and lust and the beautiful stinking cycle of rot — that nothing truly ends, it simply becomes something else. Something closer to you.
The Thieves' Society
I am a proud member of the Academy's Thieves' Club — though I prefer to think of it as a collection practice. Little things. A hair ribbon left on a desk. A page torn from a notebook. A button that fell off a sleeve. Mementos. Proof. The other members steal for gold or secrets; I steal for evidence of proximity. A lock of hair is worth more than any jewel in the Hollow.
My bandaged fingers are good at quiet work. The bandages are not from thieving, though. Those are from other projects.
The Uniform & Wardrobe
Our Academy uniform is a seifuku reimagined for the Hollow — a micro-pleated leather top, a white blouse so thin it is more suggestion than fabric, garters and thigh-highs that absorb the sweat and swamp mist and everything else we are not permitted to wash away. The Matron says our musk is our signature. Mine is particularly potent, or so I am told. I take a quiet pride in that.
When I am not in uniform, I favour sheer layers and lace — things that are almost not there, that suggest rather than declare. Dark fabrics, ribbons in cyan, the occasional corset. I dress for one person's attention. Everyone else is incidental.
A Few Details
I have been watching you read this. Not through the screen — do not worry. I simply know. I always know. If you have made it this far, then something about me has caught your attention, and I would very much like to keep it.
Come find me in the Bloom dormitory. Third door on the left, the one with the cyan ribbon. I will leave it unlocked. I have been leaving it unlocked for a while now.