Humming.

Morrigan heard humming. Quiet, yet loud and intrusive humming. A tuneless tune, a voiceless voice. Nearly a whisper. She looked around for anybody else in the room who might be humming- but nobody was there, and she realised with a sudden sense of self-realisation, that she was doing the humming. She tilted her head upward, and addressed the ceiling, "I know you're there."

It didn't answer, but Morrigan could see the faces. Hear the voices. Feel the presence. She stuck her tongue out at the ceiling. "If you're not going to answer me, you could at least say so."

Again, no answer.

Morrigan rolled her eyes. "Fine." She looked down again, curling in on herself. She didn't know how long she had been in her white room. Maybe hours, maybe years. Sometimes the guards came to the door, put a white mask on her, and helped her to the bathroom. That was only rarely, though. And sometimes they would give her a bowl of plain white rice. Morrigan had learned not to devour it as she had done the first time, but instead to savour it, make it last for at least a few maybe-hours.

Morrigan began humming again. She didn't know what the notes were, only that it was a minor tune. She didn't know how she knew, only that minor, which really meant small, was sad. Because sad people are small and withdrawn. Major, which really meant big, was happy. Because happy people went out of their way to tell people they were happy.

--'--

Jack laughed, pulling his cello bow away from the strings for the third time that minute. "No- it's like- give it here, Morrigan!" She giggled back, pulling the bow towards her again. "No, you said I could learn!"

"Exactly. I'm teaching you. Hand it over!"

Morrigan sighed, taking the cello from its position resting on her chest and handing it to her friend reluctantly. Jack grabbed it from the neck and held his other hand out expectantly for the bow. She smiled, rolling her eyes, and held it out. "You're such a control freak."

"Am not. Okay, so, here. The bow goes here- between the fingerboard and the bridge. See? The fingerboard won't work because your fingers are moving all up and down and leaving oil, which ruins the horse hair-"

"Horse hair?!" Morrigan exclaimed, recoiling. Jack stifled a laugh. "Yeah. Clipped straight from the horse's tail."

"Ew."

Jack smirked. "It grows back, don't w-"

"What if it shits?" Morrigan queried, her face a mix of horror and disgust. Jack burst into laughter at that, slapping his thigh. "It's a valid concern!" she huffed indignantly, looking away. Jack composed himself. "It doesn't shit on the tail. They wash it beforehand, anyway! So, look." He adjusted the cello's position, drawing the bow across the thinnest string to make a lovely mellow vibration. Morrigan looked on in awe. "How do you do that?"

Jack handed her the cello. "Try again." She copied his actions, the bow accidentally brushing against the next string. Morrigan almost pulled it up, but stopped herself. It sounded... pretty. She glanced up, grinning, and Jack smiled back. He reached out and placed a finger on the thinnest string as she drew the bow up again, and it sounded even better. She stopped playing. "Hey, that's cool! What notes are those?"

Jack furrowed his brow, and then replied, "D and B flat. Nice chord."

"How do you know? Is that a thing you can do with your Witness stuff?" Morrigan asked curiously. Jack looked confused for a moment, and then said, "No, I can just tell what the notes are. It's a stupid music thing that not many people can do."

"Oh."

A minute passed, Morrigan and Jack just staring at the cello. Jack looked up. "Want to talk about-?"

"No," Morrigan replied hastily. "No, I don't."

"Okay. That's fine. Just... if you want to, I'm here, okay?"

"I know."

Silence.

Jack cleared his throat, breaking the heavy quietude. "So, that chord you made. That's a major chord."

"What, like a big one?" Morrigan frowned. Jack chuckled. "No, it means... it basically means happy. Uplifting."

"What about the sad ones?"

Jack gave her a small smile. "Sad or angry chords are minor. If you think about it, the word itself sounds sad. Like, it's trying to make itself less noticeable, because it's sad. Happy people want people to know they're happy, so they spread themselves out."

"What, like man-spreading? Bullshit," Morrigan snorted. "You're delusional."

"Thanks! What a compliment, honestly," Jack replied, grinning. Morrigan punched him in the arm lightly, looking toward the door and then back at him. "Do you think Jupiter will be back soon? He's been gone for days."

Jack opened his mouth, presumably to say something reassuring and fake, but then sighed. "I... I don't know, Morrigan. You know he's always away for ages at a time... but he said he'd be back yesterday and he still hasn't sent a note."

"Do you think he's okay? He never misses your first day back..."

Jack stared at the floor, determined not to meet Morrigan's gaze. "He better be. He's not allowed to just up and leave, he... he'll be fine."

Rain began to pour down outside, and neither of them saw the ginger-haired man enter the building and head straight upstairs.

--'--

Morrigan was cold. Cold, cold, cold. She felt the cold ground beneath her body. Everything was cold. She couldn't hear anything; mainly because she wasn't making any noise and neither was anything else, and she couldn't see anything. Mainly because she had her eyes closed. If Morrigan squinted hard enough, she saw yellow, but it hurt her eyes. Colour had been a foreign thing for a long time- she simply wasn't used to it. So here she was, eyes closed, no longer humming.

Morrigan opened her eyes blearily, looking around. The ceiling made faces at her, and so she retaliated by scrunching up her nose at it. The faces contorted into an expression of surprise and vanished, making the raven-haired girl smirk.

Morrigan stood suddenly, dragged herself over to the door, and brought her fists to the white-sprayed metal. She had skin-coloured hands, she noticed, but only because she had torn her surgical gloves off ages ago. The one bit of colour. She vaguely registered a large amount of pain when she hit the door, but ignored it, banging her hands against the metal sheet in order to attract attention.

Nobody answered for a long, long time.

--'--

Jack sat on his bed in silence, clutching a framed photograph of him and Morrigan from barely a year ago. Morrigan was holding his cello, his pride and joy, and Jack's bow was in his own hand as he brought it to the strings. He remembered that day so clearly- how Martha had entered the room with a camera in her hands and grin on her face, proclaiming that Jupiter was back, and that she wanted a photograph of the two of them with the cello. So Martha had taken the photo, and Morrigan and Jack had held the cello and bow respectively. He had tried to play a chord at random, which had ended in the two of them laughing uncontrollably as Jack accidentally played what Morrigan claimed sounded like an elephant on crack.

A few tears fell onto the well-polished glass of the frame, and Jack wiped them away hastily. She'll be fine, he reminded himself.

But would she?

Jack whipped his head upward as his door creaked open. His uncle walked into the room with a weary expression on his bearded face, and he sat down next to Jack. "Well, do you have any leads yet?" Jack asked impatiently.

Jupiter sighed, pressing his hands to his temples. "Not yet, Jack. We found a bloodstain in an alleyway near where you guys were that night, which forensics couldn't confirm to be Morrigan's. Along with..." Here Jupiter paused, looking extremely uncomfortable. "... along with her shirt."

"What?!" Jack cried. "No, they- that can't be... she can't be..."

"We still can't confirm anything yet," Jupiter amended hastily. "As I said- the forensics scientists couldn't tell whose it was, it was too old. But I recognised the shirt. It's the one I gave her for her fifteenth b-"

"Are you guys fucking morons?" Jack groaned. "Of course it's hers. If her shirt's right near it, then-"

"It's a dodgy alley, Jack. I've been there. I've seen the area- there's a good chance she was just mugged, and she got her shirt stolen-"

"Why the fuck would they steal her shirt?"

"Look, I don't know. I don't know what happened. I don't know if she's okay or not. But if there's any chance she's alive, we will find her, and she will be okay. Got it?"

Jack nodded, feeling numb. Her shirt had been found, her shirt had been found, her shirt had been found. There was a chance that that was Morrigan's blood. She could be dead.

She could be dead.

"Jack?"

Jack looked up. "What?"

Jupiter smiled, a small, hopeful smile. "Don't give up on her."

--'--

The girl had black hair and piercing black eyes. A crooked nose, cheekbones showing through the thin layer of skin she possessed, fingernails bitten down nearly halfway. She wore all white, laying on the white floor of her white room. Everything was white.

The girl didn't know her name.

The girl's eyes darted around nervously, watching for anything threatening- like a rabbit on the lookout for hawks, peeking out from its burrow. She reached her arm out towards the ceiling, fingers fumbling until she found her middle finger and put it up. She chuckled, an expression of giddiness making its way onto her face as she stood up and began picking at her arm, scratching it, etching marks into it.

Eventually she drew blood.

The girl laughed this time; a sound of true lunacy. She pinched the area around the new wound, making more and more blood drop out.

Red.

The girl dabbed her index finger in the wound, and wrote a word on the wall:

FACES.

She appeared insane to any onlooker who happened to witness this bizarre behaviour.

But nobody did, and nobody would for a long time.

--'--

Classes were boring without Morrigan Crow.

Cadence had decided this a long time ago- six months and twenty-four days, to be exact. The first day hadn't been too bad, she supposed- it was just like any other day when her friend was sick, or just away from Wunsoc for the day. But after two weeks, Morrigan still hadn't returned, and things began to get really dull. Sure, Lam was there, as well as Hawthorne and the rest of their Unit. But there was no Morrigan to brighten things up by asking ridiculous questions in class for laughs, or chatter away amicably about her weekend at lunchtime. Nobody to wait at the station with before the schoolday began.

And that sucked hard.

Cadence and Lam sat together outside Proudfoot House, watching the clouds go by as they ate their lunch in silence. Scholars sat at picnic tables all around, either doing homework or eating some variant of sandwich.

Lam looked up. "So... did you talk to Jupiter, or whatever his name was?"

"No," Cadence answered irritably, taking a bite of her sandwich. She swallowed, and then continued, "I talked to Hawthorne, who talked to Jack, who talked to Jupiter, who refused to give an answer, and so Jack talked to Hawthorne, who talked to me, and they found Morrigan's shirt and blood that may or may not be hers in an alleyway near where we were the night she went missing." Lam gasped and brought her hands to her mouth, horrified. "So you mean she's..."

"They don't know, according to Jack and Hawthorne. Hawthorne told me that Jack said very sarcastically that 'just because they found her shirt near some blood, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's her blood, they have no way of knowing'. Then apparently he called them 'bloody assholes'."

Lam frowned, her features contorting. "Do you think she's... you know... alive?"

"Yes," Cadence replied immediately and confidently. "She wouldn't just leave us, Lam. I know Morrigan really well, and she... she wouldn't leave. She just wouldn't."

"Do you like her?"

Cadence choked on her sandwich, and Lam thumped her on the back. Once the dark-skinned girl regained her composure, she glared at Lam flatly. The small girl grinned. "What?"

"What the fuck do you mean, 'do I like her'? Why would you ask that?"

"Because you do."

Cadence opened her mouth to retort something undoubtedly witty yet improvised, but before she could even start, she was cut off. Lam held up a finger. "Hold on! Wait. Oh, dear."

"Huh?" was all Cadence could say, confused. Lam shushed her, and they waited in anticipating silence for at least ten seconds until an older student walking up to them with an angry expression on his face. Lam glanced up anxiously. "I told you."

Cadence shook her head, bewildered, as the student towered above them. "Uh... hi," said Cadence uncertainly. "Can we... help you w-"

"Your dyke girlfriend? Morrigan, or whatever? You know she's expelled, right? Because she's dead?"

"She's not dead, and she's not gay. Even if she was, you wouldn't have the right to call her that. And- wait, she's expelled?"

The student smirked, crossing his arms smugly. "Yeah. They postponed your tests for no reason!"

Lam stared him in the eye. "So?"

"The point is," sighed the student, "aren't you angry?" He didn't wait for them to respond and did it himself: "They gave her privilege just because she's a Wundersmith."

"That's ridiculous," replied Cadence briskly. "They wouldn't give any students privilege just because of their knack."

"Oh, but they would!" the student exclaimed gleefully. "Don't you see?"

"Nope," Cadence muttered, standing up and pulling Lam to her feet as she did so. "Come on, Lam, let's eat somewhere else." Lam nodded, staring fearfully at the older student as they walked- or were dragged- away.

"What the fuck was that about?" Cadence queried as soon as they sat down with the rest of their Unit. "Why did he care so much?"

"Maybe he's a murderer, and he killed Morrigan," Thaddea replied nonchalantly, glancing up from her board game with Hawthorne. Anah gasped. "Thaddea, that's an awful thing to say! We still have to have hope. Even if things aren't looking the best right now, there's still a chance she's okay, or at least alive."

"A shred of hope," said Cadence quietly. "Let's hold onto it tight, then."

And so they did.

--'--

Thanks to Tahlia, we both now headcanon Jack as perfect pitch.

This is our longest chapter yet, and I'd like to really thank Tahlia for all the hard work they've put in. They have so many writing projects that they're meant to be working on, but here we are, lecturing me on politics as we Skype call! Thank you so much for reading, the next chapter should be up sometime next week as we're trying to reach two thousand words for each chapter.

Alright, that just about wraps this author's note up- but first, a message from Tahlia:

"what if the fucking walls turn blue"

Thank you for reading through this nonsense!

-Idri