Chapter Text
(( CAYRIE REFS: Outfits, Playlist, Pact Marks, House of Lamentation Map ))
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“...Me…”
“...Save me…”
A voice echoed to her through the foggy haziness of the dream. It was a voice she didn’t know...or did she? There was nothing and no one to see. Just an empty haze, like a thick fog, and a voice that touched the edges of her consciousness.
“...Please save me, the bad guys caught me…”
Bad guys?
“...You are different, so I am sure you can save me…”
I can hardly save myself.
“...I beg you, you must find me…”
And then the dream ended with the jarring sounds of daylight.
⥈
Cayrie awoke to the barking of dogs a floor below her. Her housemate's, reacting to everything that moved in the rural development she’d found herself in...so, that was a lot. She groaned and checked the clock on her phone, finding it to be one in the afternoon.
She hadn’t gotten to sleep until 9-9:30am and would have to be up and going in two more hours. Her own pets were sounding off now, encouraged by her stirring. The eye mask was skewed off her face, her earplugs had fallen out again, and to make matters worse, an odd dream had unsettled her sleep - sleep that was scarce and hard to find when you worked 12 hour night shifts and had to try and rest during the bustle of the day.
With another frustrated and exhausted groan, she covered her head with a pillow and seethed at the entirety of the world.
One more night and she would have some days off. Days to catch up on rest and chores and whatnot after the exhausting slog of the week.
It was pointless to try and get back to sleep and she knew it. After a half hour of trying, the idea of sleep was given up on entirely. So she went about getting herself ready for the next shift, moving around the small room she had made into an apartment.
This had been her life for quite some time now. Sleep little. Get up. Make breakfast. Shower. Get dressed. Pack lunch. Spend time with Miri and Quinnigan. Avoid the awkward housemate and his wife. Leave for the night. Maybe do something enjoyable on a day off. Maybe. Rinse and repeat.
It was an existence to be real proud of.
⥈
Cayrie had found herself here after years of bouncing around from place to place, drawn by the offer of a childhood-friend-now-housemate to a well paying production gig that gave her the slightest hope of an improvement in life.
It had been years of running from job to job. Relationship to failed relationship. It seemed that every year brought a new change, ever since she had turned 18 and left a broken home. College had both been a bust and the greatest financial scam of her life. She was in debt up to her eyeballs and probably would be forever. It didn’t matter how much she worked, or how many jobs - Cayrie felt that she could never get ahead. The rug was constantly being pulled out from under her feet. It was just her always roaming, always drowning, searching for the next rung of the ladder that got her absolutely nowhere. Now she was 30 years of age and nothing had improved for her, in spite of how hard she had tried.
And after a mere year or two on the current job, things were complicated again.
Lonely and wanting, she had engaged in a relationship with a coworker. Yeah, she knew it was stupid and risky, but lonely hearts have a way of fucking you over. It was good for a while...but that had inevitably gone south, and in the fallout, she found that her work life and friendships had been sabotaged.
Cayrie now questioned the intentions and integrity of everyone around her. Those she had trusted, especially. She had been ever-sexualized by the men in the workplace. The women were two-faced and made uncomfortable by her, maybe due to the former. She was lewdly ogled, called a bitch, too-difficult, etc.
She was simply very unhappy with her current situation overall.
And she was not on good terms with her ever-chaotic parents, always felt angry at the world around her, and was seriously considering leaving everything behind to go back to the one person who did care about her - her brother.
Because Cayrie was tired...of struggling, alone, and for nothing. Tired of being tossed aside by most everyone she cared about. Tired of being both too much and not enough all at once.
She knew she deserved a lot better than this. That she was worthy of so much more than this endless bullshit. So Cayrie had come to the decision that she was going to live for herself and the few things she cared about, and that the rest didn't really matter anymore.
Kneeling down, she kissed her old kitty on his head and said goodbye to her little bird before leaving for the evening. Those two, along with frequent retreats out into the wilderness, were the few things keeping her sane.
She detoured to the post boxes before heading to work, hoping for a package containing the latest distraction she’d ordered. What she found instead was a lot of junk mail and stuff for her housemates. The only thing addressed to her was an odd looking letter, the addresses handwritten in a fluid script. The sendee was one “Lord Diavolo” out of a Hotel Corvo in New York City, and the stamps were legit fancy ones.
Intrigued, she opened it right there in the driver’s seat. The letter was written on very fine paper, in the same beautiful script that was on the envelope.
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at the Royal Academy of Diavolo. Please return this letter with your signature to confirm your participation. We are looking forward to welcoming you as part of our new exchange program.
Yours Sincerely,
Diavolo
...An exchange program? Cayrie hadn’t been a student for many, many years. Nor had she ever put in for anything like this when she was. How could she have ever afforded it?
She double checked the address. Her name and everything was right there. It was even spelled right - but it must have been a mistake. There was no way it was meant for her.
An internet search revealed absolutely nothing about this Academy, as if it didn’t even exist. A search of Hotel Corvo revealed that it was a fancy new hotel chain that was popping up all over the country, but nothing more than that.
She did, however, find a photo of the owner, Diavolo - a large, redheaded man with golden eyes, standing in one of his hotel lounges, smiling widely next to a smaller, poised, dark haired individual.
Well, at least it seemed that Diavolo was an actual person at least…but the letter he had sent was super suspicious and entirely unsolicited. Not to mention the whole “Royal” and “Lord” stuff was really...odd for this part of the world.
It had to be a mistake, and not even remotely legit. Confused and weirded out, Cayrie tossed the letter in the passenger seat and drove to work, trying to put it out of her mind.
She could probably send an email to the Corvo company asking for clarification - but even so, how would she ever swing an exchange program? How could she just pick up and leave somewhere out of the blue? How would she make money? Pay her bills? Would they even allow her pets with her? Was it some weird human trafficking scheme??
There was no way any of it was going to work.
And there was no way she was going to give this dude her signature.
⥈
Two weeks passed since the arrival of the strange letter, a letter that had joined a pile of long-forgotten mail on her table.
Cayrie now relaxed in her room after her shift, taking it easy after another long, exhausting week of little-to-no sleep. Sitting on her bed and having changed into something comfortable, she began to watch a show on the television. Settling into the nest of pillows she had made for herself, she took a long, relaxed drink of the beer in her hand. All was well for a moment.
Then the air changed.
It began to shimmer and feel very weird.
Her little bird fluttered frantically back and forth in her enclosure, squawking alarm calls. The cat yowled pathetically and slunk under the bed. The dogs downstairs barked loudly.
A strange feeling welled up in her gut, and Cayrie, filled with a strong sense of anxiety, stood up from the bed and promptly stepped into another realm entirely.