Loneliness is the human condition.

Part of Astrid felt a little bad about just holing up in her room with a small pile of books the day after new students had arrived, but it wasn't like she was a social butterfly even on the best of days, and there'd be plenty of time to get to know them in the weeks ahead. So a quiet afternoon of reading sounded just about right, especially since her last visit to the library lead to an interesting array of random books that it had decided to throw at her, and she figured that was a good enough selection process as any.

( Cut for waxing poetic on historical corpses and trying not to cry over spilled milk. )

Even though it was a library book (she wasn't sure anyone would even notice if it never even found its way back), Astrid looked up and reached for the scissors on her bedside table. She carefully cut out the picture of the Gettysburg battlefiled, and put it in an envelop with her mother's name and the address of the prison written carefully on it, and dropped in four loose cut-out words inside before sealing it shut and placing on a stamp:


WHO REALLY ARE YOU


[[ *gives canon a tiny nudge forward* taken from and slightly modified from Chapter 27 of White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Door and post are open! ]]