Arrivals

The girl in charge speaks up. She's a black nineteen-year-old wearing a small school blazer, jodhpurs, and riding boots. She wears her hair in long braids decorated with beads, small bells (they look a bit like Thanksmas ornaments) and similar trinkets. She's clearly the head girl because she's wearing a little enamel badge with the words 'Head Girl' on it. "Um, hi. Five years ago, a flash in the sky knocked everyone- so far as we know- out, and when we woke up again, everyone over the age of eighteen was dead. We think. None of us were older than fourteen when that happened, and the Head Girl with us was eighteen, and she died. Anyway. Yesterday, there was another flash, we all went to sleep and woke up later. The terrain around us had changed, and we sent scouts out to find out what had happened. They found someone, who said we were in the Nexus now. Whilst the scouts were out, we got attacked by flying head things, and some of us got kissed." Vargouilles, whose kiss carries a curse that will transform the victims into more of the vicious things. And they could probably all do with a general health check anyway, given that they were eleven to fourteen years old when all the adults died and they found themselves looking after themselves in a crude campsite around the school buses that had been taking them to a sports competition.