"...doing it too fast."

"Excuse me, but I don't recall YOU being awarded 'best at embroidery' three times in a row."

"That's because I can tell the difference between embroidery and person!"

"I'll have you know-"

"Guys, guys, hold up! I think she's awake!"

As Edna's eyes came into focus, she could make out the dim sunlight peeking through the curtains of the room she was in. She was laying in a bed with the covers to her chin, a cold towel laid across her forehead. Thankfully so, as her head was throbbing with pain.

The girl had awoken to the sound of voices gradually breaking through the fog, along with a sharp feeling of pain constantly sticking her in the leg. As her head became clear, she managed to get her bearings and looked around to see three other people sitting beside her.

Seated at Edna's left, and the source of the pain in her leg, was a redheaded girl with a pair of glasses that sat at the end of her nose. She held a needle and thread in her hands, and was in the process of stitching a nasty cut above Edna's exposed knee. Next to her was a shorter, dark-haired boy who was holding the medical kit in his hands, with a look on his face that showed he would rather be doing something else.

On her right by Edna's head was an older boy with light-brown hair. He moved the towel and felt her forehead.

"Are you alright?" He asked concernedly. "Can you hear me? Yell once if Birgit's stitching hurts at all."

"Just be quiet, Capu!" The girl Edna assumed was Birgit snapped. She stuck the needle into the skin again, making the former asylum patient squeak with pain.

"And make her stop fidgeting! Oh, now look! I'll have to undo this whole cross-stitch!" Birgit snapped her fingers. "Freeman, pliers."

"Get your own stupid tools." The black-haired boy, Freeman, grumbled. "I'm sick of babysitting the Little Mermaid here. She's concious now anyway, so why don't we just leave her?"

"You heard Mother Superior." Capu said. "Nobody leaves her side until we're absolutely certain she's not dying."

Freeman rolled his eyes, scoffing. "This is so ungumbo..."

Edna grunted, lifting herself up a bit. She winced in pain, clutching her chest. It, along with most of her body, was wrapped tightly in bandages.

"Where am I...?" She asked wearily.

"Everybody just calls it 'The Convent'," Capu said, handing her a glass of water. "Mostly because the Templars didn't bother naming it when it was built."

A convent? That would explain the outfits. Edna had noticed earlier that all three of them were wearing Catholic school-style uniforms. She sipped the water, coughing at the unexpected dryness of her throat.

"Hey, hey, take it easy!" Capu said, patting her on the back. "Take it slow, will you? We don't want you getting drowned all over again."

Edna cleared her throat. "Drowned?"

"Half-drowned." Birgit corrected. "You should be thanking me for rescuing you, by the way. We found you nearly dead, washed up on the shore during our yearly trip to the beach. If I didn't know what to do, you'd have died in minutes!"

"All you did was point out that she needed CPR." Freeman muttered. She yanked the medical supplies out of his hands with a huff.

At this point, Edna was trying to recollect the events from before she blacked out. Her head was still a little fuzzy, but her days of constantly losing memories were long behind her.

Her escape from the asylum had the most clarity. The people she had met, the planning, the dangerous twists and turns... it had been an adventure she wouldn't soon forget.

But then the rest came. The traumatic experiences came one after another, and she felt more and more sick as each one played out in her head, all the way up until the moment she had given up completely. That moment when she knew she could never be without-

"Harvey." She gasped, sitting up and looking around the room in a panic. "Where? Where is he?"

"I told you to stop moving..." Birgit started again.

"Wait a second." Capu interrupted before turning back to Edna. "Where's who? Who are you looking for?"

"Harvey!" Edna frantically began checking everywhere. "Harv? You here? Come on, stop playing games, buddy!" She tossed her pillow aside, finding nothing. "Please, say something!"

The other three stared in bewilderment. "I told ya she was probably a loon." Freeman chided.

Edna swiveled to face them. "When you found me," She asked with desperation in her voice. "Did you see a little blue stuffed rabbit anywhere? J-Just a little ragdoll, made of terrycloth!"

Capu looked at the other students, unsure of what to say. Birgit had an unsympathetic frown on her face, while Freeman simply shrugged.

"Um..." He said hesitantly. "You were the only one there when we found you. We didn't see anyth... anyone else." He awkwardly rubbed the back of his head. "Sorry..."

Edna wanted to throw up. She couldn't have survived only to lose Harvey. Not after everything that they'd been through. Not her Harvey.

"I have to find him!" She grunted as she threw off the covers. "I have to go find him right now...!"

"Whoa, wait!" Capu yelped as the girl tried to drag her still bruised and broken body out of bed. "You can't... you're still... stop!"

"WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON IN HERE?"

Everyone stopped as the door to the infirmiry swung open, and in stepped a very angry looking old woman. She was a nun, Edna could tell by the outfit, and had a small crucifix hanging from her neck. A small pair of specticles did little to hide the pale, permanant grimace embedded on her face.

"Can't I leave you ch-ch-CHILDREN alone for one moment without any of you making a mess of things?!" She spat through a heavy British accent. "What in heaven's name are you doing?"

"I'm SO sorry, Mother Superior!" Birgit's voice had suddenly switched so that it was downright dripping with a sickening sweetness. "I tried to keep things in order, but the boys wouldn't cooperate-"

"Liar!" Freeman butted in.

"SILENCE!" The headmistress snapped, making him back down. Mother Superior turned to glare at Edna, still halfway out of bed. "I see the girl is awake. About time! But why is she not resting?"

"She just started yelling and kicking while I was just trying to help her!" Birgit continued as Edna started to hate her more and more. "She's trying to leave!"

"Leave the convent? Nonsense!" Mother Superior huffed. "Believe me, there's nothing I want less than one more ch... ch... CHILD to drive me crazy!" She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "However, it is my unfortunate duty to take care of lost souls, so she isn't going anywhere."

"But..." Edna tried to speak up. "But I need to find...!"

"Young lady," Mother Superior said harshly. "I'm going to explain this only once, now that you're awake: you've been unconcious for two weeks."

Edna froze.

"What's more, nobody has come looking for a missing girl in that time." She continued. "And I can't be bothered leaving to file reports! As far as I'm concerned, you don't have anyone or anywhere to go to. So whoever you are or wherever you came from, I couldn't care less. If you're absolutely certain you must leave, then go. But know that this place may be your only chance!"

She made an about-face and marched right out the door, slamming it behind her while grumbling all the while about 'these damnd ch-ch-ch-children'.

"Old nag..." Freeman mumbled. Birgit whirled around and stuck him with the pin, which lead to even more yelling and arguing.

Edna was sitting in a state of shock. Two weeks? She had been out for that long?

She had only half-listened to what Mother Superior had said, but that one statement had pierced through her like a knife. Two weeks.

There was no way Harvey could have survived. He was gone.

Capu noticed the tears welling up in her eyes. "Hey...?" He asked softly. "I-It'll be ok..."

Edna simply buried her face in her hands and began to sob.

Edna didn't really believe in providence. Not that she was actually religious in the first place. But she couldn't help but feel like she had been punished.

The next week or so was a long, gruling recovery that she barely remembered. The entire ordeal weighed on her so much that it made her crash every now and then into a blubbering mess. She hardly ate, something that Mother Superior often scolded her for, but Edna was so lost in her own world that eventually the old woman gave up and exchanged the plates without so much as a word.

Time passed. Even as Edna's wounds healed, she didn't seem to get any better. She seemed to have lost all will to keep going.

But sometimes when she was sleeping, she thought she could hear a faint voice calling her from afar.

Continue.

It was one simple word, but something about it stirred in her mind. It reached out to her, almost like it was holding out a hand to help her up. Though she didn't understand it, Edna grasped it. It was small, but it was there.

Her will restored, Edna was soon back on her feet. There wasn't much of a celebration; Mother Superior simply assigned her dorm room, tossed her a set of used clothes, and told her to ask Birgit for an explanation of the convent rules.

She stared at herself in a mirror, now adorned in the convent uniform. Other than the white undershirt and thick wool socks, it was mostly black. Thankfully, as she dreaded the idea of her skirt being pink.

Her sweater seemed a bit large, or at least the hole for the head was wide enough to reach her shoulders. One sock was larger than the other, and her shoes were big and clunky. Not too shabby for a cloister school, she admitted.

Walking the convent grounds, she came to discover that they were nestled snugly against the side of a cliff, miles away from the town. She could only barely make it out in the distance, though it was easier at night with all the lights on. The mountaintop was a thick woodland area with only a single path down, making the area pretty seculded from the rest of the world. Edna could see now how nobody could have found her all this time.

It was during these days that she met the rest of her fellow schoolmates. Freeman and Birgit seemed to have practically forgotton her at this point, but Capu would smile and ask how she was feeling. Edna would reply with a friendly "doin' great!", though it was only a half-truth.

Frank was the oldest male studant, roughly around Edna's age. That said, she didn't associate with him much. He had an annoying fixation on the Templars, and rambled endlessly about his conspiricies. Often Mother Superior would catch him snooping in the most random of places and had him punished accordingly.

Suka and Shy were the other girls in the school, and Edna's feelings for them were on a similar vein as Frank. They spent most of their time obsessing over some manga Edna didn't care much for. Capu explained that they were currently in a 'weeb' phase, whatever that was.

Then there was Shawney. He had a habit of calling Edna 'creepy girl', and 'accidentally' tripping her in the hallway. She tended to make herself scarce when he was around.

Finally, there was Memphis. He was a wormy little coward who, when not in class or the Sunday service, spent most of his time hiding from everything. It didn't surprise Edna that any other moment he had was also alongside Shawney. It did surprise her that Capu liked to hang out with them, but he seemed to act as the voice of reason among the three.

She never bothered asking Birgit about the rules, because she wasn't going to follow them anyway. Edna went to class when she felt like it, barely paying attention to the lessons when she did, but usually she just wandered off to do her own thing. Sometimes she'd be caught by Mother Superior (there actually weren't many other nuns, which was odd) or Doris, the questionably stable lunch lady.

After ignoring the accompanying lecture on how she should be more like a self-controlled puma, or whatever nonesense the old woman spouted each time, Edna would usually be given a punishment or some sort of chore. Suffice to say, she ignored both.

It became a routine: The convent would be Edna's playground, where she'd explore or play with the termites or something. Mother Superior would lose her voice, not to mention sanity, shouting and scolding the girl, while the students grew more and more distant from her due to her odd behavior.

It was starting to numb her.

At nights, Edna would wait until everyone was asleep, and Mother Superior was shut in her office to handle the day's paperwork. Then, she would sneak from her bunk and outside to the old swing tree that drooped precariously over the cliffside.

She'd stand, or sit there for at least an hour, looking out at her old life just a few miles away. Her house. The church. The little ice cream shop her father took her (and Alfred) on Fridays.

Opposite the mountain they were on, across the cape, she could see the asylum. Sometimes Edna would stare for a long time and imagine another her staring back, like a huge mirror. The old Edna, still wearing her hospital gown, clutching Harvey tight.

It was all so close, Edna felt. So close that there was always one moment where maybe, just maybe, if she just took one step...

But the voice would come back. It whispered to her: Not yet.

So she would return to her bed and begin a new day. But each night, as the same thing happened over and over, the urge would grow stronger and stronger. The voice was still there, but it's hold had lessened.

Until one night, when Edna found someone else sitting there.

It was a girl several years younger than Edna. A little blonde in pigtails, with a big pink bow on her head. She sat near the swing tree, staring at the ocean in the distance.

Edna was surprised. She had never seen this student before, so she must have been new. Edna had spent the day in the celler, feeding Mother Superior's cat's food to the crickets, so she must have missed her arrival.

She approached the girl's side, leaning forward slightly with her hands behind her back. "Hi there." She said.

The girl squeaked in fright, nearly dropping a photograph in her hands. She turned to look at Edna, apparently just as surprised to find someone else there as she was.

"U-Um..." She stammered, still startled.

"Hey, take it easy." Edna said. "I'm not a crazed killer or anything." She paused, dropping her voice a little. "Or maybe I am." She cackled, which then turned into laughter at the look of terror on the girl's face. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding!"

She took a seat beside the child. "You're new here?" She asked.

The little girl looked at her hesitantly, before giving a light "Uh huh..."

"Thought so." The older girl rested her chin in her hand. "So what's your story? Rich parents too lazy to take care of you, got sent for lack of dicipline, or secretly a snake person in disguise come to study us and report back to our reptillian overlords?"

A look of sadness had come over the girl's face in the middle of Edna's sentence, her eyes cast downwards at the photo in her hands. Peering over, the moonlight revieled and image of a lovely blonde-haired woman holding a baby in her arms.

"You're mom?" Edna asked, starting to put the pieces together.

She nodded.

Edna bit her lip. "She's...?"

The little one clenched her eyes shut, as if fighting back tears that had been shed enough already. Edna's heart sank. This one was different.

"I'm sorry." She said, unsure of what else to say. Trying to think of something else, she asked "What about your dad?"

The girl lifted an arm to point towards the sea. Edna didn't understand at first, but it dawned on her how often she used to read about a boat gone missing nearly every month back in the day. The realization hit her hard.

Edna hugged her knees to her chest, looking at the child empathetically. For a long time she sat with her, watching as the girl gazed into the distance misty-eyed.

Something in the younger girl's face reached Edna. It went beyond empathy or mere understanding. Edna could see her own thoughts reflecting back at her. The same thoughts that had plagued her night after night.

Continue.

A spark lit up inside her.

Edna suddenly stood up, bouncing with excitment. "Hey," She said. "The moon is full! Don't you know what that means?"

The girl, caught off guard, stared up at her in bewilderment.

"This is the perfect chance to hunt for ghosts!" Edna explained. "They can hide, but I've caught on to their little game. They're using the chapel as a personal rec room! If we go now, we might be able to catch them in the act." She held out her hand for the blonde girl to take. "Whaddya say?"

The smaller one looked at her with a raised brow, unsure of what to do. Slowly, a smile crept up on her face, and she gently clasped her own hand in Edna's.

The two girls began walking back towards the convent. "By the way," Edna added. "My name's Edna. Edna Konrad."

The little girl looked up, grinning warmly. "Lilli."

The two girls walked on, hand in hand, back to their new home. Behind them, the town lights began to turn off for the day. One by one, each light blinked out, until everything was blanketed in darkness.

And Edna didn't look back.