Raven ran across her room, looking extensively for her favourite bandaid. She was mostly known for these mornings, disturbing the neighbors with her constant noise.
"I can't believe it pulled itself off!", she groaned, aggressively shoveling into her pack of newly purchased bandaids.
Her skin was extremely sensitive, especially after the incident she had that left her mentally scarred, so she couldn't let blood rush atop her nose like a river. Sighing, she crossed her eyes, trying to look at her scar from which blood was gushing out of. The vision from both of her eyes collided, producing a rough blur, but even through her temporary blindness, she could tell the wound didn't get any better.
She shook her head rapidly side to side like a sneezing puppy, her strands of hair cluttered and twirled around eachother, making a colorful neon-purple-black mess. Every individual streak was standing on the tip of her middle-parted hair, all fluffy and curly, the usual appearance when her bad hair days arrive.
She rolled her eyes at the sight of her once tidy room molded into a chaotic disarray. She knew she had to clean it all up again. She was rather lazy albeit, but she could never really stand her mom going on about how she doesn't care about having a sparkling clean room. Picking up some pieces of her casual clothing, she tossed them onto her bed, planning to deal with them later on in the afternoon.
She glanced at the clock. It was 08:30 AM. She had flight classes that week, and they were known to start at 9:00.
She swiftly dashed through the furniture in her room, luckily guessing correctly where her wardrobe was. She flung the door open and jumped into her pile of everyday wear, trying her best to find and construct the best outfit that her abilities allowed her to. She randomly assembled a open shoulder top and a scarf made out of artificial, although soft silk. She somehow stuffed all of her belongings in her small lightweight duffel bag and rushed out of the door, leaving it wide open. Her neighbors oddly didn't seem to mind the commotion and scene she had caused.
On the way to the school, she tried to think of anything she might have forgotten on the fast way out of her cloudy house, and then, she got it. Her ID.
She didn't sleep much that night, so she didn't expect much when she saw a stack of thin papers in the teacher's exposed and vulnerable drawer. The school bell rang.. atleast, Raven thought it did. What she heard was just throbbing in her rather numb ears. Her upper eyelids sloped off the weight of her eyes, her lower ones wrinkling and emitting a appearance of grapes, except the surface of her skin was sore. Her bones felt like hard concrete, and her muscles were senseless. So, when she received her test, she couldn't say she wasn't scared.
Needless to say, when she got her test, she almost fainted.
The page was full of small letters in a peculiar font, printed with half the ink needed and generally disorganized. She sighed, knewing she'd had to take it anyway, since the last time she filed a public complaint to the head stallion of the school, he dismissed it as blackmail and she got suspended for a week.
She yawned loudly, sending goosebumps to the other graduating flight students in the classroom, and receive them they did. Her head slouched down onto her table, pulling and crumpling some of her test paper. Her teacher slammed a hoof on her desk, making Raven jump up from her seat, as if an earthquake had hit and ended in mere seconds.
"You, young mare, aren't you focusing on doing your test rather than dragging yourself around on your table?", Spectre Strike exclaimed, looking down at the fatigued young mare underneath her.
"I, Raven Nebula, pinky promise to never ever.. sleep la.....", she said, almost falling asleep on the last vowel spoken.
Spectre Strike has had enough.
She grabbed Raven by the jaw, lifting her till she was about the same height as herself. She clenched the upper half of her neck tightly, blocking a portion of Raven's windpipe.
"Listen here. I. Am. Your. Teacher. If I can lead you to your success, then I can CERTAINLY lead you to your eternal DOWNFALL!", Spectre Strike yelled.
She sternly threw Raven down, her thigh hitting the floor in a awkward position and hurting her muscle. Raven yelped in pain, locating and clutching the area of the fresh pain inflicted on her by a mentor she looked upon dearly.
She knew that Spectre Strike, her teacher, does not fool around.
She can be very sensible, which means she can overreact and act aggressive alot, and that is what she did in that exact moment.
The corners of Raven's eyes started to flood, and her body began to shake and her hooves tremble. But Spectre Strike, of course, wanted to go over the limit. She wanted to go too far. She didn't care at this point if it meant losing her job or not, she just wanted to teach this disrespectful, disobedient filly a lesson for once and for all. Quickly grabbing a blunt object, she turned around as a grin stretched on her menacing face. She retracted back and stood on her hind legs, spine straight and weapon in tact. She flew the object around, trying to get a good angle and time to strike the little mare at.
Just as she thought she had found them, the school bell rang loudly, forcing Spectre to unwillingly throw the object out of her hoove and roughly cover her ears. She crouched down, unable to stand on her hind legs anymore. Raven took this as the perfect moment to escape, and escape she did. She grabbed her bag and her belongings, quickly thrusting them into her bag once again as she flew out of the class room. Plan accomplished.
Suffice to say, she didn't really see or talk to Spectre Strike again. She heard from others that the poor old mare retired!
The only thing that mattered to Raven really, was the fact that she bandaged up her leg and that her last external evaluation was coming in a few weeks, giving her bruises time to heal and giving her more time to study and practice than on the previous test, which she repeated afterwards.
On the way back home, some friends accompanied her. She was grateful for having them with her. After all, they were the only things she had left that were dear to her heart.
A tired Raven layed on the mattress of her bed, completely exhausted and out of breath. Her home wasn't so close to the school, and she had to fly and walk roughly a few kilometers just to get there on time. Her leg still didn't heal properly, so any physical motion she'd make would produce a lot of pain. Her notes were scattered up on the wall in front of her, once being a journal or planner that she wanted to make, but now a draft of a healthy idea Raven had once thought of in forever. Her computer sat on the edge of her bed, threatened to fall at any second, but it's current position still looked somewhat promising, since a tired Raven needed space, of course.
She relaxed, crossing her legs as she stretched her fore ones. She was irritable and tired, so everything annoyed her. Even the offer of lunch from her mom made her roll her eyes. She glanced outside at the clear azure sky, wishing she'd have the energy and strength to get up and go do something that her body would benefit from.
Slowly but surely, she sinked into the realm of dreams.. atleast she thought she did, until a soft spoken, although suspicious voice arose from somewhere in the depths of her brightly lit spring room.
"Hello, Raven. I see you are failing your classes. Could I possibly help with that?", the ominous voice said, chuckling with every few words spoken. Raven jerked, straightening her bed-crammed spine up to search in awe for the unknown entity. Her hooves trembled, but she stayed calm, since you couldn't beat the butt of a monster if you're a coward. Struggling to hold onto some of the courage she had left somewhere in her, she yelled out into nothing.
"Who's there?"
"Why," the voice continued, "I thought you already had a clear idea of who I'm supposed to be.
But if you don't, here's a hint.
You cannot see me."
"Then.. you're my little brother?", Raven held her composure, trying to not get the person or whatever was talking to her get to her head.
The voice chuckled, breaking out into a hysterical laugh, rather than being cold and merciless at the moment Raven calmly but unsurely kept the conversation going.
"I'm the devil, you foolish sack of feathers", the voice exclaimed, it's tone leaning to a more serious nature than the few sentences it had said before.
"If you want, I'd give you good grades and knowledge, and possibly dispose of your teacher and your other insecurities... if you give me your soul."
Raven froze in shock and her body went on lockdown exactly when the voice said that one sentence. Her jaw was hanging open, and somehow clinging onto the last portion of self-control she had in her, she shut it closed and began to answer the voice which presented itself as satan.
"Look, if this is some sort of prank, I'm not having it. I'm not a dark humor type of person", Raven snapped, going lighter and softer on her last words than the first.
"If you think this is funny, you're disgusting."
"Oh, but what a stubborn mare you are! You seem to be one of the few nonbelievers. Well, let me tell you.. if I swung open your room's doorframe, would you finally get some sense knocked into you, or is that not enough for a feeble-minded pony like you?", the devil said, more aggressively than before.
In the few seconds of silence, her doorframe slowly started to swing lightly, like a mother rocking her baby in a rocking chair and the wind, including the birds, participating in producing the melody in the soothing song the mother sang.. until the door roughly shut close, almost tipping over some of Raven's dear furniture. Guess that little lullaby turned into the ending note of a hard metal band. "Scared yet?", the devil taunted her, and even though she couldn't ever lay a glance on his appearance and generally his facial features, she knew he had a menacing grin stretched across his face.
The following sentence she'd say would go on to mentally scar her not temporarily, but permanently.
"Fine. I'll give you my soul.", Raven said in defeat, letting her desires to finally succeed in her life past.
She presumed that the devil grinned, since he was rather eager in his next choice of words. "When? What do you want for it?", he asked curiously, probably clenching his hands in excitement.
After planning a outrageous offer, Raven shook hands with the air, where she thought the devil was standing.
"Now, stand there. This will only take a moment", he said, a snap of sharp fingers being heard as Raven fell down and sank into unconsciousness. The ringing of bells in her mind and soon-to-be-gone soul was a part of making her feel horrible in the depths of nowhere, but she reassured herself that this will be over soon. Or would it?
When she woke up, the early dusk sky greeted her as she wiped the dirty follicles off the corners of her eyes. Yawning blissfully, she tried to remember yesterday. As hard as she tried, her brain could only pick up faint moments which it also couldn't correctly recall. She waved her hind legs about as she stood up from her bed, checking if her self-control was effected by the things that supposedly happened while she was unconscious.
Her legs still reeked numbness, her muscles felt like the veins connecting them coursed through with a whiff of lost sensation which made her head spin. Needless to say, she didn't think she'd make it to the first entrance of the school without frequently passing out. Her eyes rapidly dotted from place to place, as she felt her heart rate increase.
The room felt like it was plummeting down, spinning into the unknown depths beneath her carpet floor. Though, when it'd supposedly fall down, it seemed to regenerate out of nowhere, as if everything was still in place, which it of course was.Raven knew there must be something going wrong, cause when a mere streak of sunlight would fill the room, her skin would burn and her nose would sense a gasoline, or some substance of chemical origin that made the air foul with the smell. She didn't know what was happening, but she tried to console herself that it was all part of the process that took place of the.. deal that she made with the devil.
She finally remembered what she had done and started to panic in just the pure thought of shaking hands with a being of utter darkness and suffering.
Then again, she tried to stay silent and diminish the need to regurgitate dinner from the other day. Her eyelids quickly overflew with steamy tears as she started slowly hyperventilating. At the moment she was ready to give up and scream her lungs out of her chest, her mother opened the door to ask her what she'd pack Raven for lunch. She saw her clutched up on the edge of her mattress, staring at nothing and nobody, as if she was heavily spacing out and had no idea that her mother was present.
Crow Cluster, her worried mom, waved her hoof about in front of her daughter's sight, with no response. A drop of sweat ran down Raven's face, as she continued to space out, totally disoriented.
She sighed, deciding to stay with Raven as long as she could to figure out what was wrong.
Author's Note
I hope you can bear with my writing style, although I can go overboard with the comma's... 
Raven is supposed to be an OC of mine. If anyone would like, I'd leave her reference sheet I drew somewhere.
Also, student ID's are supposed to be carried everywhere inside of the school building. Pegasi have made them since alot of non-pegasus creatures decide to go to flight school to possibly harvest aerial magic, and cause it's to identify and protect the student in some situations.
Hope you liked this-
