Emily Song had always been a sad little girl, but considering her parents that was more or less a given. Her mother was a slightly unhinged woman, as crazy as she was beautiful. And she was very beautiful.
Her father was a quiet, shy man, sometimes you forgot he existed, but maybe that's how he liked it. That's certainly how his wife liked it.
Emily was the exact opposite of her mother. She practically never spoke, and wore those heartbroken eyes of hers like a crown. Her parents had dark hair and sun kissed skin, she had ash brown hair and pale skin.
Though of course, like most twelve year old girls her age, Emily had a secret. She could do magic.
Well, it wasn't exactly magic. She'd discovered that she could control the snow, and occasionally, when she found them, she could speak to the beetles. She didn't know exactly what they were, she could them Ice Bugs.
The Ice Bugs were little bugs, light blue and white, and strangely cold to the touch. She didn't find them often, but when she did they always had the best stories to tell her. Of fairway places, full of magic and monsters. And people like her, wizards. At least, that's what they called her.
Winter came, the season of her birthday. A few weeks before she turned thirteen, she had gathered up the courage to go to her parents, and tell them her secret. When she did, her mother completely lost her senses, and grew hysterical, screaming at her blue-eyed daughter with all the might she possessed. Telling her that magic didn't exist, that she was a fool for believing in it.
Trying to proof her mother wrong, Emily had summoned the snow, breaking the windows as she called it into the family room. It only seemed to make her mother worse. The woman had seized her daughter and shook her, shrieking about how she would never leave the house again, and she'd make her normal if it killed her.
Who it would kill, Emily had no idea. And she didn't want to find out.
Without bothering to get rid of the snow, the girl fled to her room, slamming the door behind her and throwing herself into her closet, her place of sanctuary.
She shook horribly, her hands clamping over her ears to block out the sound of her mother's continued screams, as if she didn't even realize her daughter wasn't there.
Emily didn't cry, she wasn't sure she could. Instead she merely remained there, curled up in her corner, where she'd hidden her books. Wonderful, wonderful books about places like her Ice Bugs had told her about.
Eventually, just before the moon reached its peak, she drifted off, to dream about a certain wizard, and his owl.