The next month dragged on like a snail across a leaf, daunting and uneventful. Temperance continued to get her affairs in order, paying off as many bills as she could without dipping too much into her savings, and working as much as humanly possible. Although, more often than not, she could be found in the employee bathroom either popping Ibuprofen like they were Tic-Tacs or vomiting up bile. Her coworkers were nice enough to look the other way, some going as far as to ask if she was pregnant. Of course, she always denied it, but they still kept eyeing her belly whenever she bent down to pick up a heavy box. She did not bother to correct them after they insisted on carrying out the tougher, more laborious jobs. Less hard work, the less taxing on her body. And she was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

All of her exhaustion and pain seemed to flee the moment the gilt-edged letter arrived in the mail, stamped with red wax with an ornate seal in the center. She had been sound asleep, laying on her stomach with her tangled hair sprawled across the pillow, one leg kicked out from under the torrent of blankets that piled so high that a human form was scarce to see. A shriek woke her up, her senses immediately on alert. She sprang from bed, eyes blurry and blood pumping as her brain took a moment to reboot, categorizing the scream as Constance's. Before she could act, Constance came barrelling through the door, letter in hand.

"It's here, it's here!" she screamed, waving the letter around.

Temperance gaped at her younger sister for a moment before she locked eyes on the letter, and the thought of the scholarship forced her to fully wake up. She snatched the envelope and stared at the front. Handwritten font, in sleek black ink, curled her name into something that looked precious.

"It's here... Oh..." She sunk onto the edge of the bed, eyes wide.

This was her deciding factor — if she got in, she would go to St. Văduva's; if not, she would tell Constance about the diagnosis and let whatever sadness and lifelong trauma make its way into the MacKenzie household.

Constance squirmed with excitement. "Jesus, Tempe, open it already! I'm dying over here!"

Temperance wet her lips with a quick jut of her tongue and stabbed her thumbnail into the space where the wax met the paper—

And lopped it off.

Her future was determined in the letter that was to be unveiled by shaking hands.

☽☼☾

She got to cross off flying from her bucket list, and she now knew that she hated it more than anything. Flying overseas for twenty-five-plus hours with a massive migraine, intense nausea, two flight changes, and an infant screaming on every plane right behind her is a combination that would make anyone want to leap from the itty-bitty window that overlooked the sea. But she refrained, beyond grateful when she was given a bag of earplugs and an eye mask on the last flight. She was also grateful that her nausea subsided for a glorious moment, allowing her to eat a rather large meal on the plane before she landed and departed the skies. Props to St. Văduva's for providing first-class plane tickets with their scholarship.

The goodbye send-off was emotional, to say the least. Constance was a crybaby on her best day, so this was not any better. Tears and snot and blubbered words that barely made any sense being absorbed into the crook of her shoulder. Temperance just smiled, patting her little sister on the top of her head and giving her promises of visiting as soon as the semester was over. Her stomach ached with the guilt of lying to her. Truth be told — something that she put off thinking about until she was sitting on the plane where she could sob in semi-private — this was likely the last time she would see Constance again. At the very least, it was the last time she would see her with a semi-coherent mind.

Upon landing, she was almost immediately retrieved by a blank-faced man with a sign that read her name. He was anywhere between his mid-thirties and forties, with a brown crew cut and narrowed green eyes. He wore a black suit, with a name tag on the breast pocket that read "Dmitri".

She clutched the strap of her bag tighter as she ventured forth, into an unknown world. Her eyes were puffy and red, her nose was scraped raw from countless tissues, and her greasy hair needed a shower desperately.

Her suitcase was relatively light, even with the textbooks, but the easel she was required to bring was not. She had dug it out of the storage shed in the backyard, battling cobwebs, wasp nests, and surprisingly docile black widows. It had been so long since she had painted something worth needing the full easel, but when her fingers browsed over that familiar grainy wood, the creative spirit overtook her.

She painted something for Constance the night she retrieved it. Sitting by candlelight, hair lifted into a sloppy bun, sitting around in old paint-splattered pajamas. The light reflecting off the mason jar paint water created bright gleams to cast across the cherry wood desk. She eyed the brush in her hand and took a deep breath, dipping it into a color, and getting started.

It was only then that her brain decided to reboot, causing another blackout. When she surfaced from the murky dark, she was surprised to find that she had finished the painting, but it was not her intended scene in the slightest. It was very obviously a winter scene of the Rio Grande, muted grays and blues and moss-greens wove into a gorgeous scenery, but that was where the beauty ended. Bright oranges and yellows streaked through with messy strokes, curling around and blending into strange shapes and parallelograms that turned it from a Thomas Kincaid to a Salvador Dalí.

Before she had time to scrap it, Constance came into the room, asking about where the batteries for the remote were. Luckily, Constance adored it, jumping around and singing her praises.

"Tempe! Is this for me? Oh, it's so pretty! Your style has improved so much. I love the colors; it reminds me of the graffiti on the overpasses."

Temperance's jaw set as she looked at the swirls on the canvas. It was not beautiful. It was a reminder that her brain was not working. A reminder of a death quick to come. A gift wrapped in despair and cancer. Yet, she still smiled through clenched teeth. 

"You're welcome, Connie."

The driver immediately assisted in taking everything from her, placing it all in the trunk as easily as lifting a sheet of paper. He led her around to the passenger side of the vehicle and opened the door for her, exchanging pleasantries.

The drive was anything but elite, although the dapper, black SUV was a nice touch. The road went from uneven cobblestones to rocky dirt roads, and then eventually, mountain trails intended for park rangers. Or in this case, drivers that worked for some mysterious university that had trustees that were all recluses — absolutely no trace of their names or faces existed anywhere online. Constance remarked about how it was all anonymity. It gave Temperance chills. Nevertheless, she still was attending.

They hit a bump and Temperance cursed to herself, hand flying out to grab the handle on the interior roof to steady herself.

"Much hills," the driver muttered, staring daggers at the road ahead. His speech was heavily accented, and Temperance remembered the little girl's accent from that night at the art show. She had been Romanian. That could not have been a coincidence. "Will get better soon."

Temperance did not believe him in the slightest, as they traveled up the hill and further into the woods.

At least the scenery was beautiful. Large, strangely twisted trees interspersed with moss-coated rocks lined each side of the car. A twilight gleam bathed the forest in a lovely pinkish hue, and the skies above were clear and bright with the beams of light that gradually crept behind the horizon. It was not as vibrant as New Mexico sunsets, but there was an old-world charm to it, as they passed several people who bore colorful linen garments that looked like they jumped straight out of a history textbook.

"You happy to go to Văduva's?" the man asked suddenly.

Temperance winced as the next bump caused her teeth to sink into the meat of her tongue. She suppressed a groan and worked at trying to not do it again as the copper filled her mouth. "I guess happy is the right word. Is it a good place?"

"Da, very good. Nice people. Good music. You play?"

Temperance shook her head, keeping her eyes on the road ahead. "No. I paint."

"Ah, you painter! Like Michaelangelo, no? Paint me picture, yeah?"

Temperance smiled — her first genuine beam since she started this godforsaken journey. "Yeah, I'll paint you something."

"Make surprise, yeah? Don't care if portrait of me or of mountains."

Temperance nodded thoughtfully. "Got it. I'll paint you something nice, Dmitri."

He smiled brightly, tapping his fingers against the wheel to an imaginary beat.

True to his word, the path smoothed eventually, and her death grip on the handle finally relaxed. The night had drifted into the day, overtaking the sky with a blackness so deep, the stars seemed to be like headlights. She leaned forward in her seat, eager to see more of the nature around them as the darkness laid thickly over everything, shadows warping and spreading out as the sun died.

A tenseness caught her eye and she turned to the driver. Dmitri seemed to be the one on edge now, white-knuckled as he gripped the steering wheel. His eyes darted off to the shadows on more than one occasion, as though he expected something to lurch forward and block the path.

"You okay, Dmitri?" she asked cautiously. Maybe he was nervous about driving in the dark. Her grandmother had always been, and Temperance had to be the designated nighttime driver.

He gave a curt nod. "Hoia Baciu is strange place at night."

"Strange? Strange how?"

A string of Romanian left his lips. "It is, uh — how you say? — scary. Much scary. Shadows are like people, people are like shadows. Trees do not stay in same place."

Temperance furrowed her brow. She was never one to believe in the paranormal, but she knew that Constance and their grandmother were. "Do you usually drive at night?"

"Nu, nu, nu. I pick girls up during day, never at night. You are first."

Temperance hummed thoughtfully. She went to ask more questions but judging by the clenched jaw muscle and the sweat bead on his temple, there were no more words to be said.

They sat that way for another twenty minutes. Then, over the hill, she saw it — a glow of white light beyond the horizon. Dmitri immediately relaxed upon the sight, body slumping back into expensive Italian leather. The school was not immediately visible, but the light was enough to acknowledge that something was close by.

A thick, iron gate blocked their path, thick brush on either side of it. Dmitri rolled down the window hurriedly and pulled a keycard from the cupholder. He ran it through the machine with a quick familiarity as though he had done this thousands of times. He looked over his shoulder more times than he should have, making Temperance uneasy. The lights on the pin pad blinked red twice before switching over to green. Her breath stilled in her lungs as the gate clanked and squealed, opening up like the jaws of some metallic snake.

A thrill shot through her, as Dmitri quickly rolled the window up and punched the gas. What was she getting herself into?