still {open}

[quincy]

Spring, or at least the faint notions of it, was in the air. A few brave birds were chirping in the last dregs of winter, and while the sky was bleak and dreary with heavy overcast that threatened rain at any moment, Quincy could almost feel the sun. It was nice to have a reprieve from winter, if only for today, as she knew how unpredictable March could be. But as for now, the weather was as close to pleasant as it had been in a long while. The mud, however, Quincy could do without. All the moisture from the melting snow and heavy rains of early spring had rendered the ground spongy, water and dirt muddling together in disgusting puddles.

Though honestly, Quincy wasn't sure if she could stand to spend another minute indoors. Some sort of bug was going around the school, and it seemed the nurse couldn't keep up with the droves of cases of sniffling, sneezing, and hacking coughs. Quincy hated it, feeling as if she were being bathed in microbes, polluting her clean oxygen. Sure, outside was dirty, but she liked to think that she wasn't inhaling a steady stream of other people's germs out by the lake. And perhaps, just maybe, the fresh air would be good for her. Quincy wasn't really sure. She just knew it was nice to be away from the diseased masses.

She looked down at the rubbers she had hastily pulled on over her nice school shoes, crinkling her nose in disgust as she noticed the caked-on mud now coated in a fine layer of sand from walking down by the lake. These shoes were supposed to get dirty, but that didn't mean that Quincy had to like it. Unable to focus on her walk knowing how much grime was on her feet, she whipped out her wand and cleaned the offending material from her boots. Only once every last speck of mud was cleared from her feet did she allow her expression of pure disgust to fade.

Quincy had never used to be bothered by a little dirt, but now she couldn't stand it. She already had had trouble enough with bloodstains on her hands that nobody else could see, she didn't need any actual messes. Quincy shuddered at the memory- washing her hands time and time again, her mother trying frantically to pull her away from the sink, and how angry she had gotten at the woman. Couldn't she see the red still on her daughter's hands? The blood of her brother, the evidence of her failure and no matter how long she scrubbed, it still could not be washed away? Quincy bit her lip. That was in the past, or at least she hoped it was.