((post sweltering shores -- tried to keep it vague))

Rith had yet to leave the finishing school since the fateful day she strayed too far down the beaches. The bitter irony of her self imprisonment was that she believed herself safe within the walls of the illusionary institution. Despite this pseudo sense of sanctuary, the formerly steely nerves of the raven haired girl had been reduced to a panicky time bomb. She had become prone to random episodes of breathless terror in which her body seized into in immobile bundle of knots. Sleepless nights bled into one another, dulling her sharp mind. Her attention in class wained until she found herself dazedly going through the daily motions, writing mindless drivel in in her notebooks where poignant prose had once been. Given the trauma of her experiences, she could wrap her mind, as strained as it was, around these alterations in her behavior. There were other shifts in her habits that where not so easily understood.

In the midst of a barely attended night class Rith found her pulse climbing to furious heights. The dreary monotonous lecture became an inaudible whirl as each throb constricted the muscles in her throat to the point where breath could barely pass through her dry parted lips. All eyes trailed her as she suddenly pushed from her desk, chair screeching against the linoleum floor, and rushed into the halls. trembling fingers gripped the walls as her black boots stumbled down several flights of stairs. She threw herself into a darkened hall and then into the first opened door.

Alone in the dark she dropped to her knees, an arm gripping her abdomen. An intense heat licked at her pale flesh, setting her insides ablaze. Soon she felt the same sweat from the shores sweep over her body, felt the same weakening of her thighs. Every time, it was the same. Every time the terror was followed but the heat. Somehow the two had become intrinsically linked in the twisted alcoves of her memory. A fist fell to grip her crotch through the painfully thick dark fabric of her dress - just to apply pressure, just to release the tension. She had reached her breaking point - endured the last night she could laying awake in sweat drenched sheets. Embarrassing herself in class had been the final straw.

Her hand lifted to lace fingers with the other as two full tears fell down either of her flushed cheeks. She had ceased believing over a decade ago, but desperate times drew out desperate behavior. In inaudible murmurs she begged to have her frustration taken from her - to have this nervous energy drained from her body so that she could sleep at last.