It was a warm summer night, quiet, with hardly a breeze stirring the heavy air. The only thing that moved was a small man in a black cloak. His appearance was at odds with the peaceful atmosphere; his light brown hair and shoulders were damp, though there was not a cloud in sight. His wide, frightened eyes darted around nervously as he walked and his posture was stiff and tense, quite unlike the calmly slumbering inhabitants of the neighborhood. The man halted abruptly, seeming to make a split-second decision. He turned towards the front gate of a very large and very old orphanage. The gate was locked, but he drew a thin stick of wood from inside his sleeve and tapped the rusted metal. The gate opened silently and he walked swiftly up the path. He stopped at the door, seeming frozen with indecision. His musings were broken suddenly by a small noise across the street. He threw a sharp glace over his shoulder, then withdrew a small bundle from inside his robes. Kneeling, the man placed the bundle carefully on the front step. The baby inside murmured and he did what he had avoided doing that whole evening: he looked down at her. Half of her face was hidden in the folds of the fabric. A single tear fell onto her pink cheek, but the man quickly wiped it away. What he could see of her face was angelic, slumbering away with her eyelid covering a perfect lavender eye and a small smile curving her shell-pink lips. She was tiny, barely larger than a loaf of bread. He couldn't leave her, she was too small. The tears started to flow from his eyes more quickly. If he didn't leave her, he was sure that she would die. Better to live in an orphanage than die outside of it. His face hardened. He had made his decision, and he was going to stick with it. He bent down and kissed her quickly of the forehead, slipping a small piece of paper into her blankets. Then he turned and walked away, closing the gate behind him. Inside the baby's blankets, the piece of paper bore the only identity she would have for the next eleven years. In narrow, curly writing, the paper bore two words.
Ella Wolfe.