Discovery
Isabella Elizabeth Brandon, age 5, frowned as she scrutinized the out of line pencil mark on her otherwise perfect family portrait. Her father's dazzling smile, so contrasting to his dark russet skin, grinned up at her from the yellowed paper. His muscled arm, connected to an equally buff body, trailed down to another, much smaller one, hand.
A small smile graced her features as she stared at the small sized version of herself with her brunette hair down but it turned into a full-blown beam as she caught sight of her sister, holding onto her other hand. Her long hair, as straight as an iron board fell down her back like a waterfall and her eyes contained the very realistic twinkle they usually held, radiating life and joy. They all stood at the front of a bricked house, in the middle of a perfect field, only marred by the bold line running across the chimney.
Muttering huffily, she lifted her head to peruse the bookshelves that lined the far wall, across the room and a groan escaped her as her astute eyes spotted the eraser on the top-most shelf, lying there innocently in all its rubbery glory.
She slammed her head into the apple wood desk, bought by her step mother's easily earned money. Her father wasn't around that day, having had to attend to some matters at his work place, and Alice was at her Grandmother's home, having been forced by her mother and her husband to see her old relatives even though they knew she hated them. That meant that she was alone at home.
For once.
Sighing, she let her head fall onto the table with a thump again, feet feeling like lead all of a sudden. A groan escaped her slightly pursed lip and her brow furrowed. How was she supposed to get it now, all the way up there? First off, she was too short. Second, her father had absolutely forbidden her from attempting anything too dangerous. And third, she was plain lazy. Seconds passed with only the sound of her pencil scribbling nonsensical gibberish on a spare piece of paper breaking the silence and her feet swinging from the seat edge being the only motion but she kept glancing at the piece of stationary every so often. A frown started developing on her face. Gah! Where was her father? She wanted- no- needed to get that eraser. A feeling of something close to depression flipped in her stomach as she stared at the picture which, in her eyes, seemed incomplete and missing something, despite the colorful drawings and smiling figures.
If only I were taller! She thought feverously, looking down at her stubby feet which were nowhere near close to the height of the second shelf, let alone the topmost. She sighed under her breath, glaring up at the piece of stationary from the bottom of her bangs whilst her childish thoughts were centered mainly on the immediate problem at hand. Move, get down, fall, she pushed furiously in her mind.
And to her utter amazement, it gave a shuddering leap.
She felt her feet freeze mid-swing and her brown eyes grew wide with disbelief as she stared at the double-ended eraser with a growing sense of astonishment. Were her eyes deceiving to her?
She barely registered she was moving away from the table, towards the bookshelf, until she came to an abrupt stop a few seconds later, suddenly finding herself staring heavenward from the base of the shelf. Thoughts raced around her mind like an endless game of cat and dog.
"Did you just move?" she said to nobody in her particular and thankfully silence greeted her statement. Good, she wasn't totally crazy then.
Isabella looked around cautiously. Her father wasn't home yet, and no one seemed to be listening in…
Focusing on the eraser again, she forced her thoughts to return to the eraser and pictured the eraser floating off the surface of the shelf and gliding towards the ground, like a feather. She imagined the way its shadow slowly got smaller until it became indiscernible as it slowly lifted off from the surface and the way the air seemed to part as it was brought forward by an invisible source.
Truthfully, she hadn't expected it to work so it was truly shocking when the eraser gave another unsteady jump, away from the wall and a step closer toward the edge.
A small grin suddenly graced her young features as her thoughts became more and more creative at her new discovery and her eyes gained a spark of mishchief. Ooh the possibilities.
Of course, her naïve five year old brain found nothing wrong with this. It reasoned that since people in other stories had abilities like these, shouldn't she have one too? What she didn't know was normal people didn't have powers, nor were they able to control things with their mind. But there was nothing normal with little Isabella Brandon and her family, she just didn't know it.
Returning her gaze to the eraser, Isabella centered her thoughts again, only not as much as previously, watched in ecstasy as the eraser copied the actions she had visualized in her thoughts and practically jumped in joy when it floated into her hands without a hitch.
She suppressed a pleased giggle and rushed back to her seat and set to work perfecting her picture with new exuberance.
Unfortunately, that one action lay way to many other occurrences in the future which would change her life forever.
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