Fifteen years today. Fifteen years since she had been abandoned by her adoptive mother on some random street in the middle of London. Fifteen years since she had been discovered by a lovely elderly lady, a mere ten year old wandering the darkened streets and mumbling almost inaudibly to herself. Precisely fifteen years since she had once again been abandoned at the front gate of a mental institution because that same elderly lady thought of her as insane. Insane? If that's what a child with a vivid imagination is taken for, God bless the coming generations.
She had always been a peculiar child, right from the start. There was no record of her ever being born, no information about her, not even a blood type. She had simply been found on the front steps of an orphanage, barely six months old. Of course the owners of the place took her in, raising her as their own, even giving her a name. Luna. No surname of course; they knew right from the start that they were never going to adopt her permanently. They only raised her for a while out of the kindness of their hearts, which was more than enough for them. The young girl gave them an eerie feeling, whenever they looked into her innocent baby blue eyes.
When she was two, they put her up for adoption, not having to wait for a willing soul for very long. Three days later someone came forward, a single thirty-seven year old woman with a warm smile, a kind heart and a giving soul, wanting only the best for at least one poor orphan in the world. She went by the name Janet Frost and agreeably, was a brilliant woman, a Lawyer with a good reputation for 'getting the job done'.
The owners of the orphanage seemed increasingly eager to be rid of her; they sorted out all the paperwork as quickly as they could and, before she knew it, she was the adopted child of this kind lady. Of course she was only a toddler for now, but a few years passed and she started to go to her first school. Luna was an astonishingly quick learner, top of her class and a lot more. She quite disliked that place though, the students were treated like...like childrenand she hated it. But Luna was a mere five year old and no one ever took her seriously, not the teachers, her mother, not anybody!
She seemed to get into an awful lot of trouble however, didn't seem to know her own strength at all. She was a very calm child, rarely lost her temper and was a mystery to most people. She didn't intend on hurting people, but she did. Like that time when she was excited to go to the playground and dislocated her friend's arm, or when she tried to break up a scuffle between two girls and gave them a black eye each. Each time she was firmly told off and told not to do it again and again, but there was one final incident that drove her adoptive mother over the line. A boy in class stole her pencil and he had refused to give it back. That was the very first time in Luna's life that she lost her temper. In one swift movement, she stood up, grabbed his arm and snapped it over her knee. Well, it worked. He dropped the pencil and she calmly picked it up and continued writing the Math equations, whilst the rest of the room was complete chaos. That event pushed Janet over the line and she dragged Luna right back to the orphanage and took off, without so much as a 'goodbye'.
Over the next five years she was adopted several times, each adoption ending more quickly than the last. She just didn't know her own strength and how could she? Luna was just a child, an extraordinary child. Every time she was taken back to the orphanage, the people she had spent the past few weeks or months with just left her there, with no farewell. Luna wondered why everyone seemed afraid of her. Was it her emotional responses, or rather, lack of? Was it the fact that she had hurt so many people without even flinching? Or was it all in her head? Either way, she had to deal with it.
When she was seven, Luna was adopted by a recently engaged young couple, who wanted a child but didn't want to go through the troubles of having a baby; the woman didn't want to spoil her figure. They seemed like a relatively nice pair, but Luna severely disliked the man. Something just seemed...off about him. Her suspicions were confirmed when he came home late one night when the woman was out and burst into her room yelling at Luna in a drunken rage. He clumsily attempted to punch her in the face when she didn't reply and she grabbed his wrist to stop him, purposely breaking it before slamming his head into the metal frame of her bed and knocking him unconscious.
After that startling occurrence, she had packed her bags with the few items she possessed, taken the money she required from his wallet and caught the bus back to the orphanage. It was the only place she could go after all, the other children didn't bother her and she usually wasn't in the place long enough to get involved in anything anyway.
The dreams started when she was eight. She dreamed of vanishing statues, metal men, the future, the past and world domination. Luna never told anyone about these dreams, for fear they'd believe her to be insane. She did mention that she had be having nightmares, but people just patted her on the head and attempted to comfort her with hollow words. They sounded hollow to her, so forced and raw, like they were living things that had been forcefully crawling up their throat for a breath of fresh air before dying.
The final time she was adopted, was when she was ten, by a forty-something year old lady called Joanne Summers, with four young children besides her. After a while, Luna began to feel a certain affection toward this woman and she attempted to speak to her about the recurring dreams, they were getting worse and she hated that. But the woman just stared at her, before plastering a large fake smile onto her face and reassured her it was just her imagination. But she was so tired of hearing that phrase...she just snapped and punched a hole through the stone wall, screaming and yelling that it was real.
That was the final time she ever saw Joanne Summers. When she was about to go to bed, she was offered a glass of milk, which Luna accepted without any suspicion. But that person must have drugged her because when she woke up in the middle of the night, she was in an unfamiliar part of London in her pajamas. Luna wandered about the streets, barefoot and talking to herself in an irritated tone of voice about the dreams; she was the only one who would listen after all; when she was approached by an old lady who asked her if she was alright. Luna simply nodded and continued on her way, but she was once again stopped by this persistent elderly woman. She seemed concerned and asked if Luna wanted to go to her house for some cake and tea and Luna obliged; she was starving.
The woman's house was quite old fashioned, with faded green and white striped wallpaper, floral curtains and a beige carpet. The ten year old devoured the cake she was given and quickly drank the tea, her throat felt like sandpaper. After a while she began to feel increasingly drowsy, until her eyes closed and she fell into a dreamless sleep. Of course, Luna should not have trusted that old lady because the next time she woke up, she was in a completely unfamiliar room, surrounded by completely unfamiliar people in white coats and that was just the beginning of a very long sentence.
Fifteen years.
Author's Note - I'm sorry about the lack of detail in this chapter, I haven't wrote for a very long time and I'm just getting back into the swing of things. I can't think of a name for the story though, any ideas?