The weight of the building above them is heavy with the past. Every floorboard creaks and groans beneath their feet, every step they take reminding it of its former inhabitants, now long gone. Loneliness flows through the air with the dust, catching in their airways and making them cough.

“Almost through,” one says, her voice tearing through the emptiness. She pauses to wait as the other stops, coughing away the dust.

And then they’re on their way again, dancing past collapsed sections of ceiling, scrambling through holes in the walls. Reminders of former adventures, lost voices, forgotten faces.

The way is all too familiar, the girls moving quickly onwards through the thick darkness as it tries to call them back.

They finally enter a room, their room. Even with one look in the darkness, nostalgia manages to claw its way into the girls’ chests.

The curtain they placed over a rather large hole in the wall where they could only assume two windows once were still hangs, desperately clinging onto the crumbling framework of the building. The fabric was old and faded from the sun’s burning glare of the days long-passed.

The floor wasn't in any better shape, the finish very much faded away. Each step brought an exhausted symphony of creaks, a signal of their old age. Dust, trash and clutter was pushed into the corners long ago, but some decided to try to reclaim what was once theirs. 

Everything was nearly the same as they left it. This place was theirs, long-untouched but never abandoned.