Isobel's POV
She stuffed her hands into her pockets in the hopes of locating some warmth. Snuggling her face into the collar of her coat Isobel kept her head down, walking along with the other ton of people heading in the same direction as she was. Inside her head she began to hum a tune herself, a song she had jus heard inside the book shop she had just vacated. She kept her eyes down, watching her step as ice could be hiding anywhere ready to pull the ground from under your feet sending you plummeting on to your bum in front of a lot of people. She was heading for the large christmas tree in the town centre to meet up with an old friend of hers, Alex, who was invariably running late. The people surrounding her were the shoppers, it was early in the christmas season however everyone was buying presents early this year. She smiled to her coat collar as she reminded herself she had bought no christmas presents what so ever when something caught her eye. It was blue, emitting a slight glow. She watched it fall out of a mans green coat pocket as he pulled a tissue out. It was a small shard of something bigger, but looked like a crystal to her. She scooped the thing up with her gloved hand looking around for the man in a green coat, but he was gone. Disappeared into the crowd she suspected. For a second Isobel thought of wandering about looking for him, then decided it was probably a worthless little thing and slipped it into her pocket.
Quickly Isobel forgot about the crystal. Her mother bought her a new coat, leaving her old one on a small coat rack on the back of her door. Christmas came and went with its usual excitement and cheer leading on into the new year.
"Alright then" Her mother began, standing in front of the sofa. She was sat on the end of the sofa, reading a book given to her for christmas. Her younger twin sisters, now 9 were sat in identical outfits next to her, there big blue eyes and perfect blonde hair making them the pride of the family compared to her muddy ginger hair and green eyes that she thought was more interesting than blonde and blue. Then there was her younger brother, the baby of the family at 6 who was sat wiggling around in his usual fashion. At times Isobel wished her older brother who was 18 and away at university would come home to keep her sane. At 17 she was expected to look after siblings without any notice, leaving her without a hope of a social life as her mother made plans at the last minute. "Its January 1st. That means tidying fathers just finishing off the garage at the moment so that leaves you lot to sort." The three youngest all groaned loudly in protest. "And I mean proper tidying. Actually getting rid of things. You pair," She pointed at the twins dramatically "I expect to be able to see the floor in your room. Your fathers bought some boxes to store things, and we'll put labels on them so you know what goes where!" She was getting genuinely excited about tidying the room. "Little man, you need to organise your trucks, put things in the boxes you got last year." She hated his room as it didn't involve any princesses, she sighed, her mother had a slightly sexist nature. "And Isobel, get rid of some books, and sort through all the stuff in your room." Her mother clapped loudly. "Lets go!" Isobel took this as the moment to scoot off the sofa and up the back stairwell that had once been a servants service stair case that scaled all three floors of the house and into her room on the top floor.
She shut the door lightly, flopping down on her bed. She didn't want to get rid of any of her books, knowing she would regret it moments later. She could hear her mother a floor below talking loudly to the younger kids, Lisa and Kelsey being given instructions to move one princess item to another spot. He father re-entered the house, taking on the job of helping Phil. Within a few minutes her father and Phil were playing with trucks instead of tidying them and her mother was busy playing dress up instead of putting the dresses away. She smiled. This was how it always went. For a few minutes she listened before growing board of the 'vroom vroom's mixing with the announcements of 'princess Lisa and princess Kelsey and princess Mummy'. In one move she rolled off the bed, locating her Ipod to plug it in. She chose a play list she had created a few weeks before and got started to sort through her books.
She dropped the book she was examining. A song had just begun to play, the song she had been humming the day she met up with Alex, bringing back the memory of the shard thing. She got up off the floor, pausing the song she was listing to. The rooms below were now quiet as the 'tidying'had become a thing of the past after just an hour, her parents resorting to putting a film on the TV in the living room. Isobel had to drag the coat through a layer of jackets she had hanging up on the little coat rack on her door. She threw it across the bed, digging in one pocket and producing nothing before digging through the other pocket. She quickly located a tissue that she pulled out on to the bed before looking again. There was nothing there. For a second she was confused. Where had the crystal gone? It couldn't just grow legs and wander off. She sighed,
"it must have fallen out of my pocket like it did to the first guy that dropped it."She thought. She hung the coat up on her door, the excitement leaving her as quickly as it had appeared. She snatched the tissue off the bed throwing it in the bin with accuracy that surprised her. For a moment she stood in her room without an aim, staring at the point the tissue had just been. It took her a moment to realise the crystal had been inside the tissue and snatching it up like she did had caused the piece to dislodge.
She took a step towards her bed, reaching out for the shard. As her skin came into contact with the smooth surface she felt a shock, like a pulse of pure electricity shoot through her finger. She pulled her hand away instantly, looking down at the crystal for a moment.
"Must have some electrostatic energy...?" she wondered. For a moment she contemplated putting her gloves on in order to pick it up, but decided she was being silly. She grabbed the shard with her whole hand. For a split second she thought it was fine, and the first shock had been a one off. The shard began to glow a little brighter in her hand before it let out another excruciating burst of electricity like pain causing her to fall to the ground unconscious.
Isobel lay on the floor in her room. The sun was just setting leaving the room bathed in a golden glow. She sat up gingerly, catching sight of her self slightly in her full length mirror the other side of the bed. Her hair was standing upright like it does when you rub a balloon against your hair. She smoothed a small section of her hair down in a stunned silence. Isobel stood up slowly, picking up the nearest hairbrush. She wandered back and forward across her room brushing the static from her hair, wondering why she had been knocked unconscious by a little shard of crystal. She stopped in front of the mirror satisfied that her hair was now flat and not dancing around her head. She caught sight of her left hand in the mirror, the one she had picked up the shard with. She dropped the hairbrush as she examined her hand. There were patterns on her hand, like people get when they get struck by lightning. The pattern spread up her forearm and underneath the three quarter length shirt she was wearing, the lines arcing from one to another in flowery lightning bolts that waved along her arm. To her it seemed to pulsate slightly blue like the crystal had. She pulled her shirt up over her head to follow the trail along her shoulder. It forked of, one going over her shoulder and stopping, the other going over the front of her shoulder and forking again. One trailed up her neck just slightly, the other ending abruptly over her heart. She stared for a moment at the pattern on her skin. She rubbed her finger over it, feeling a slight indentation along the lines.
She began to search her room. She had no idea where, but that crystal thing had to be somewhere. She no longer wanted to call it a crystal because they were pretty and nice to touch and look at. The thing she had picked up was not that. It took her a few minutes scrabbling on the floor to locate it, sitting slightly in between two floorboards. She looked at it, deciding what to do. Gently she poked the thing pulling her hand back quickly. Nothing happened. Again she waited, thinking, before picking it up. It sat in the palm of her right hand. It looked dull and boring as it had now lost much of its colouring. She stared at it, having to turn the light on as natural light faded. She swapped hands placing it in the palm of her left hand, in the exact place the patterns started. She almost dropped it again as it began to glow blue like it had done before. She quickly removed it from her hand and the colour faded again.
"What is this thing?" She whispered.
Silently she began to walk down the servants service stair case. She had heard no noise from the rest of her family since waking up and hoped they hadn't gone and left her. She didn't have to look far. In the living room a fire had been started in the old fireplace, her mother and father sat sleeping on either side of the sofa, the three younger kids sleeping in between them. On the TV a Disney film was playing, the cheerful song being sung by the characters sticking in her mind. Softly she left the room venturing into the kitchen to find something to eat. She adjusted the hoodie she had put on to hide the marks on her arm and neck, however the marks on her hand were harder to hide. There was't much choice as dinner hadn't been cooked yet and the shopping hadn't been done in a few days. She decided on leaving the food, as she didn't know when her parents would be cooking. She looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was 6 o clock. She thought for a minute. Her Mum always had dinner cooked or was cooking the dinner by 5:30. There were only a few exceptions, and taking a nap wasn't one of them. She ran back to the living room sliding around the door in her socks on the hardwood flooring.
Her family were gone. The sofa was completely empty, but she could still feel the warmth from where they had just been sitting. The TV still played the film, but the fire had been put out in a manner that only someone who cared about the house would have. She turned the TV off, trying to think for a second but only finding more questions to ask her self. She paced the living room before darting back up the main stair case without warning. She flung open each of the bedroom doors, finding dress up clothes peeking untidily out from boxes and trucks still laying around the room. Her parents bedroom was empty, but as immaculate as always. She burst into her room snatching up the thing she had once thought of as being quite pretty. She found a chain from an old necklace she hated and found a hole in the shard large enough for the chain to be threaded through and strong enough to allow it to be worn. When she had it around her neck and it hung over her heart it glowed, just like it did on her hand. The thing puzzled her, just as much as the marks on her arm and the fact her family had just disappeared.
She took a deep breath. She had gone around the house all over again to find the same amount of nothing. She had taken the hoodie back off again and replaced the three quarter length shirt with a vest top, as she was running about the house and getting hotter than she expected. She had turned all the lights in the house on in one circuit and turned them all back off in the next. She tried calling both her parents numbers, only getting a message that the number was not available. Frustrated and angry she put the phone in her pocket, pulled on her converse and grabbed her hoodie, the crystal now being referred to in her mind as a pendant, bouncing off her chest and faintly glowing blue due to the close proximity between itself and her heart. She grabbed her key from next to the door, turning to look peer around in the gloomy hallway. She was about to reach for the light switch when she stopped, lifting the crystal off her chest and placing it directly over her heart. It emitted a blue glow immediately gradually getting brighter and brighter until the hall was bright enough to see everything in detail. She held it there realising the glow had seeped along the pattern on her arm lighting it up. For a moment she was transfixed before realising she was supposed to be looking for her family. She swung open the front door, using the pendants light illuminating the driveway.
The door slammed behind her as she realised she wasn't alone in the drive. Two men and a woman stood pointing guns at her, while another woman stood observing. There was another man and woman stood with some kind of Ipad like devices discussing in hushed and urgent tones something she simply couldn't hear. She dropped the pendant from her heart the light dying immediately. The eldest of the group turned his head slightly behind him.
"Turn on the lights."He said calmly for a man holding a gun that was pointed at a kid. From somewhere behind them a set of car lights switched on illuminating the front of the house in a pure light. For a second Isobel was stunned, shielding her eyes from the light with her left arm.
"Coulson. Her arm." One of the two holding the Ipad devices said loudly. Quickly Isobel dropped her arm, hiding her arm behind her back. She looked from face to face, waiting for an explanation. When none came she could see only one option. Run for it.