"Go ahead." Icy prompted, allowing time for the girls to lie the bodies carefully on the ground.

Bloom was the first to take her shovel to the ground. She let the shovel slide into the soil and resurface. The ground was surprisingly soft and easy to maneuver.

"I could use a hand guys." Bloom requested.

The girls did nothing at all, they simply stared as she continued the laborious task.

"Alright, fine I'll do it myself." Bloom huffed between shovel fulls of dirt.

As the fairy shoveled away, Ibinu only seem to grow zaidi and zaidi restless. The air seemed to thicken with every time the shovel slipped into the soil. And the bigger the pile of discarded dirt grew the zaidi forcefully the leaves rustled--and without wind to provoke them.

"They're practically crying for help." Flora remarked at one point, when it seemed as if the forest itself was closing in on them.

It wasn't a huge exaggeration for Bloom to say she was suffocated kwa the density of the air around her. In fact the feeling actually had a profound effect on her shoveling.

Ibinu let out a particularly loud grunt. Bloom ignored it and continued to contact the shovel with the dirt.

Almost there. Bloom thought to herself, wondering if the others could hear the whispers. The cries of the Lost souls. And then Bloom wondered if she was digging to close to someone else's grave. Maybe that's why the whispers were so loud. I mean it was totally in character for Icy to let her do something like that and then laugh at her. She may be dead but she still enjoyed getting a kick in others' suspense.

"Did wewe learn nothing?" Icy asked.

"Excuse me?" Bloom replied.

"Don't. Let. Them. In." Icy warned very slowly, enunciating every word as clearly as possible.

Bloom sighed and got back to work. "How much deeper?" She asked after a while.

"Can wewe fit five bodies in a hole that shallow?" Icy asked. "Sure, that'll fit Simon...maybe...but not all of us."

So Bloom kept digging, a film of sweat forming at her brow and dripping down the side of her head. With a heavy pant she brushed it dry.

Her back hurt like a bitch, but the sooner she got this done, the sooner she could get inside.

And another growl and a snarl from Ibinu. This one sounded as if it were directed right in her ear.

"You should probably hurry up." Icy shrugged indifferently.

"Well if I had some help from the others..." Bloom glared up at them.

"The others?" Icy asked.

"Ya know, Musa, Tecna, Flora. Oh and Layla and Stella. The others." Bloom tossed the shovel to the ground. It was then that she realized that they weren't there at all. Nor were any of the bodies.

"You should really head back now." Icy whispered.

"You were the one who told me to come out here!" Bloom hollered, her voice unusually high. She then turned to where she found the whispering to be most audible. "Shut up! Stop talking!" She covered her ears, trying desperately to block them out.

"You're going to have to try harder than that." Icy rolled her eyes.

"What's going on!? Where are they? Where are my friends?" Bloom screamed.

"Your Marafiki were never here." Icy shrugged.

"No. No. No, no no, I saw wewe talking to them I saw wewe interacting with them." Bloom declared.

"Yes Bloom, wewe saw them." Icy started.

"Don't wewe dare tell me that wewe didn't see them." Bloom growled.

"Oh I saw them. I saw them because that's what wewe wanted me to see. Don't wewe understand Bloom? Everything I do, everything I've ever done was your own making." Icy declared.

"What are wewe talking about?" Bloom hissed.

"Don't wewe get it? I'm not real." Icy declared.

"That's a load of crap!" Bloom yelled. "You are real."

"Only as real as wewe make me." Icy muttered.

Ibinu appeared at the edge of the forest. Standing perfectly in between two of the tallest...darkest trees. His face almost a mask. A grotesque mask made of only the most vial of insects crawling around in the dirt. He opened his mouth to let out an ungodly sound (a snarl, a grunt, a pig squeal, a screech, all at once in unison) and as he did, from his mouth spattered a cluster of worms and beetles.

Bloom cringed. "NO! NO! Stay away." Her voice seemed to crack. She looked to Icy. "Help me!"

"You have to block him out Bloom. I can't do it for you." Icy alisema in response.

"I can't." Bloom edged back as the demon drew near. He let out another horrid bellow. Bloom jumped back...this time right into the hole she had just dug.

"This is you're fault!" Bloom stared up at Icy. "Why did wewe tell me to come out here?"

"Perhaps it's because a part of wewe wanted to break the curfew. Part of wewe wanted to see what was out here." Icy paused. "It's a shame wewe can't see it for what it really is."

Bloom felt a sharp sting in her arm and then nothing more.

************************************************************
She woke up in a white sheeted bed.
Woozy.
Disoriented.
Head pounding.

She gazed up at the padded ceiling. The room smelled of various sanitizers and chemicals.

"And wewe found her out in the forest doing what?" Came a muffled female voice.

"At first it looked like she was digging. And then she started screaming about something. Crying out for...'Ice' au was it 'Icy?' Something wintery." A man responded.

"Ah yes, Icy. She's mentioned her a few times. I've been trying to get her to tell me zaidi about that one. One dakika the girl is speaking fondly of her, the inayofuata she's murmuring about how she wishes Icy would just fade away." The female explained. "Recently she's taken to wandering around the institute requesting files of some sort. She has this very compelling and elaborate version of the Salem witch trials. Even mixes it in with ndoto worlds of her own accord."

"So, how long has she been talking to...Icy?" The male asked.

"Years now." The female replied. "But Ibinu is new. He's the one that's going to keep her up through the nights. Darkar did a good number on her. Took quite a while to break her of that delusion." The female explained.

"So how do wewe deal with it? The hallucinations I mean." The man asked.

"We just keep telling her she has to block them out. Sometimes she listens. Most of the time she lets them in." The woman paused. "Doesn't help that she's been refusing to take the pills." She added.

Bloom put her hands to her ears. Icy was real, Ibinu was real, they are all real! And Bloom knew it.

"Icy." She called out. "Icy!"

And the woman appeared before her.

"You can't keep doing this wewe know?" The witch pointed out. "You have to let me go au you'll never get out of here."

"They think you're a hallucination." Bloom spat.

"Am I not?" She replied.

"You can't just pretend like you're a hallucination!" Bloom shouted.

Icy looked the fairy dead in the eyes. "And wewe can't just keep pretending that I'm real."