everything you are, everything you were {Open}

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Sunny stared into the mirror, and wondered what horrible thing she had done. She put a hand to her hair, which was now something like ten shades lighter than it had been before, and she caught a few golden strands between her fingers, holding it up to the light like she couldn't quite believe what she'd done to it. She couldn't remember if it had always been this way? It hadn't looked this drastic when she had first washed the dye out...but the dryer it got, the lighter it got, and then she'd gone to that Halloween dance and something had happened...until now it was this honey blonde colour, and she had no idea if she even liked it yet or not. Was it this dry when she went to the dance?

"Oh," she whimpered, lacing both hands through the hair and holding it out at her sides. She hadn't cut it, so it was still down well past her waist, but it was so different, and all she could think about was whether Beowulf thought that she was silly for doing something so superficial, or...or if he would think she was trying to be a Viking woman and was silly enough to think that all Viking women had blonde hair, and....had he seen it like this at the dance, had it...

"I can fix this," she said, out loud, oblivious to the fact that somebody had come into the area. "I can fix it." She was standing at the full length mirror in the little lobby area outside of the public restrooms and she turned to rush off to the drug store to get some darker dye to put her hair back to its original colour...except she discovered that there was a person in the way, darted to get around them, and promptly tripped on her own feet and nearly fell down. She recovered, barely, and looked up at the other person apologetically.

"Sorry," she blushed. "Accident."

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Of course Della had anticipated strange dreams post Halloween. She would have had to have been undeniably thick to think that she could watch another friend die, turn into Wednesday Addams and then "wake up" (although she had remembered everything, so that strange state of being conscious, yet not being in control of her own actions didn't help in the slightest) to find a mess that only proved that school parties should never be trusted and not have her subconscious do everything in its power to make sure she didn't get any damn sleep at night for at least the next week.

What she hadn't expected was the nature of the nightmares. Actually, she wasn't a hundred percent sure she could rightfully call them nightmares, especially since she found the details becoming so blurred as the hours marched on, along with her and Rook (armed, of course. Again, Della wasn't an idiot). Sure, she found her heart beating too fast and the feeling that something had been snatched right out of her, something precious upon waking up...but could you call something a nightmare when all you really remembered was running while you held something, incoherent screams and the shine of...was that gold?

On this November morning, she woke up at around 4:30, on her day off to boot. There was no way she was going to go back to sleep for quite some time, though, and that was when she noticed that Rook was jumping up to make sure his mistress was all right. That at least warranted a nice long walk, didn't it? And maybe getting away from the school for some time would be good for her, and Rook was probably ecstatic, knowing that he had earned this by being such a good dog. She just hoped that he wouldn't expect this to become a habit or, even worse, that this would have to become one.

Quite some time later, where the two of them were probably tuckered out, they were heading back into Tartuffe Ridge, yet Della's mind wasn't quite cleared. Even when they had stopped for her to perhaps write it out, she still felt the confusion of the dream weighing heavily on her thoughts, which was probably how she managed to not see the girl when she opened the door, because...well, she couldn't say for certain that she was responsible for her falling down, but the girl looked so apologetic over something that small (especially when she seemed far more hurt than Della was), she couldn't help but feel guilty.

Being the good dog he was, Rook tugged at his leash to make sure the girl was okay, sniffing around her a bit, as Della said, "No, it's okay...are you okay? And he's fine, doesn't bite at all."

((Sorry if this being post Halloween isn't okay, I'm more than happy to change it up. It was just an idea that came to me.))

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For someone as skittish as Sunny was, running into a person and a dog in the hallway, even a well-lit indoor hallway in a perfectly safe place, could be genuinely nervewracking to the point of leaving her a shaky mess the rest of the day.

"I…" She struggled for words. Words were hard enough to find when she wasn't startled and flustered because of her unnatural hair color and when she wasn't genuinely horrified by her own appearance and certain that the one person who seemed to be trustworthy in her whole life (outside of her family) was going to find her repulsive when he saw her…if he hadn't already.

She looked at the dog nervously, holding her hands close to her body in case he decided he wanted a snack of Sunnyfingers, and smiled as best as she could. The girl said he didn't bite. Maybe she should just let her guard down just for a little bit, just for a little while until she had her head back on straight. The dog was on a leash. If he was horrible and the girl wanted him to eat Sunny, she wouldn't have had him on a leash, right? She would have just let him run free and gobble her right up, right?

Sunny unclenched her fists and tried to flex her hands, tried to relax a little bit.

"Okay." she said, nodding. Words. Come on, words. "I'm okay. Just scared." She closed her eyes and rubbed at her head with one hand, trying to summon up the presence of mind to conduct a conversation. "Not of the puppy. Of my hair."

Well that was stupid, no-one was afraid of their own hair. That wasn't what she meant, either, she was just afraid of the reactions people (or person) were going to have when the saw the hair, and whether they'd already seen it or something at that dance that she had already been nervous about going to before things went wrong.

"Does it look awful?" she asked, uncertainly.

((nooo worries, I changed a couple of things too!))