As the familiar sound of disruptive, pausing, but determined running foot steps echoed through house, the servants eyed ever object most subjection to vibrations. Molly they knew would fall to no blame with her innocent self, but they had valuables to preserve for their on pay to her two brother's clumsiness. They smiled as she streaked across the rooms with the most elegant, swift, and figure promising a strong addition to the house. She was only betrayed by her shadow as she ran silently down the memorized halls of her family's lodging, dodging and rolling under any obstacle that came across her path to allude her older brothers team up on 'catch the youngest'. Her eldest siblings twisted version on hide and seek! As her lungs and muscles started to burn, signifying a soon refusal to continue to work and for the necessity to rest, she quickly darted into the library. She quickly closed the doors with a silent click and ran to slide under the a desk, and clamped her hands over her mouth at a failed attempt to silent her breathing. Trying to calm her loudly gasping breaths, her captors once again passed the room and left her to collapse on the floor in battered breaths.
At a earlier age during the game she tempted the same tactic to give her body a much needed break, and with luck some time advantage. Within days of trying the same tactical advantage and multiple games they refused any attempt to search the library. With resumed testing they only speed up their pace to further distance themselves from the doors without even an attempt to test the area. As her breaths calmed and she once gained her calm breathing, slept took her like a calmed babe after a rocking. When Molly awoke she began to wonder around the room as a further attempt to evade her siblings antics but books called to her ever touch.
To her parents she was to young to close herself off to book fantasies and called her presence to every political meeting to show her off as the next standing female to be claimed. As she looked around the room to every laughing precasting aristocratically youth she felt repulsed by them, yet bowed to her parents every whim. When they approached her and forced her from the library she claimed it was catching up on political claiming and standards.
When Molly was younger she always enjoyed the lectures her father gave to his family about the branched system of the spirit claim. The laws that were in place to keep marriage within their own clans unless of course financial gain, or to qual any disagreements between clan leaders. She acknowledged at the time she was to young to worry over such matters, nor was she of age to be chosen into a clan. So the branched system of today's world weighed very little on her mind.
As she slowly woke from under her long hiding spot after a day of hiding, she stretched her arms and legs and froze when a muffled moan of pain came to her attention. As she slowly pulled herself off the floor she recognized three things at once; the way they kissed reaped passion no art work could compare, the way they swayed as one against each other as one rhythm, and when she destroyed it by knocking a book off the table.
They approached her as a threat but slowed as she collected herself into a fetal position, with eyes burning with tears and a promise she would never speak a word of what she knew to be love. When she found that no harm was placed on her, the cries stilled and the sniffles seized, only then did silence welcome her. Molly opened her sorrowful eyes to pled with her brother but only three feathers awaited her long awaiting gaze. She snatched them to her chest wanting to apologize and promise him recompense, but he had ran pronouncing the clan. Their parents where rat spirits that crawled up the ladders of the system using theirs intelligence and ability to find loopholes. Although not highly revered, they where admired for their cunning and resourceful nature. Admirable hawk prey and yet she wore three feathers everyday under her shirt to prove to herself it was not prey he fell to but love.
Like most families they assumed she would follow suit, and be claimed as a rat spirit to join or start her own family as part of their clan. As such her siblings and herself were brought up to learn their clans way of life and social survival. She witnessed how her parents behaved in public and mimicked them with perfect poise. She had to choke on a snap of rebuff whenever her brother was brought up in any conversation, but politely bow her head slightly in recognition of his 'fault'.
The polite bowes to the higher animal clans, or the slight nod of the head to suggest a higher status to a lower clan. The reluctant acknowledgement of clans with no status and the sneers directed to the unfortunate few with no claim to any clan. The ones that had not a stitch of ink to display their animal spirit could not be claimed and so they were the outcast. All practiced to catch a glimpse at the one person she failed.
At the age of 12 she was the youngest in her class to graduate by 5 years which resulted in her being without friends, and to her fathers displeasure mark less. Spirits were often passed on from generation to generation, therefor, Molly would most likely be a rat. However rare it might be, certain individuals could be marked with a different spirit animal when their true nature set in.
One day in her animal spirit studies she was required to learn the critical key points of how human nature was engraved in a child, and how this could affect their claiming. He stormed into her classroom with a total prepared speech. She discovered in his heated speech on human nature that the children that were raised in their clans environment, instilled their beliefs and this helped carve a persons true nature. He lectured how some scientist were at odds with each other over the subject of Nature vs. Nurture and how this influenced our claiming. General they leaned into the belief of nurturing since spirit animals generally where passed on. Others argued that it was programmed into our genes and was proven by individuals that changed clans. Others just agreed on both because they had no time with trivial matters. She agreed right then that would have not kicked her brother from the clan but would have accept him.
As she grew older and left for college and then to medical school, she obtained a few friends along the way but lost most of them when they learned she was not claimed. To many party's or sleep overs to pass the word. How could a crow or another rat clan member associate with a claim less? They couldn't! She had been accepted at a young age but others lacked motive or knowledge to approve her now.
So the phone calls ceased , the offers to hang out stopped, and eventually even the passing greetings became avoided eye contact . It was common knowledge that if you were not inked with your spirit animal by the age of 18 the possibilities of being marked was numerically low, and she was turning 21. So Molly learned to become invisible in any room she was in, to become that person that others didn't see unless they needed to dodge her and sometimes they didn't even manage that. Again she was the youngest to graduate from her class and to avoid public reticule on graduation day, conveniently flunked her mid-term final to drop from her number one spot she found herself in. It would not be good to gain anymore attention for her grades beyond her teachers. So she graduated below the top percent of her class and avoided the stage to fade once more into the mass of her graduating class.
Finishing her internship and obtaining a job at St Bartholomew's Hospital without gaining attention was a little more difficult than she had anticipated. She was not overly attractive but she did turn a few heads and gained the attention of a few alphas in the hospital. One was a doctor on the third floor that often snuck around with nurses and sometimes even other doctors. When she found out he was a alpha of a snake clan she was not to overly surprised. Another was a ophthalmologist and to her amusement the eldest son of the alpha of a hawk clan. On another note, she also found it amusing that if she had been marked as a rat that both the animals they had been marked as, loved to eat rats. Even is she had been marked she could not be claimed by either one of their clans if she was indeed a rat. She would have not had a high enough social status nor could they financially benefit from her to get a sign off from the government to allow such a union. So desperate times called for desperate measures on her part. She began to wear baggy clothes and flower printed apparel, wore her hair up in chaotic ponytails and buns. Removed all feminine aspects of herself such as makeup and jewelry. She became the youngest spinster of St Barts and was happily surrounded by people that could not mock or disparage her. The dead was a blessing to her however morbid in her head as it sounded, until one day a overly attractive and equally dangerous man sauntered into her haven and refused to leave.