From the time Never was born, everyone thought she was strange. Too strange to be seen in public with, despite the fact that no one in her poor, unnamed village had anything to lose. But it was universal to hate anything that was unordinary, or extraordinary, or anything in between that was not solidly, dependently, normal. As much as she tried, Never was not normal. There was no way she could be, for to be normal was to be born into normal circumstances, and having father who disappeared six months after being married to his wife and before she was apparently pregnant was not normal. One would think that after sixteen years, speculation and rumor would fade but she was still the strange child. The bolder members of the village, the ones who had earned whatever 'respect' was to be gained by being incrementally nasty, had asked Never's mother if that was why her husband had left, (for it had never crossed their minds to ask first if he had left). It was the answer to both these questions that gave Never her name, the creativity of which did not make her any more normal.
But the thing that made Never the least normal was something the village was completely blind to. If word ever got out, Never would be much more than strange.
Never had a silver heart. And no one knew what that meant.
When she was seven, Never had been beaten up by the kids of the woman who was supposed to take care of her while her mother made her delivery trip for the month. That day, Mrs. Fince had dumped Never into the street and had offered nothing but gratitude towards the events that left the child sobbing. The next month, Never went with her mother despite the danger present. She had helped her mother gather the bundles of herbs hung up to dry, and the measure of peridot they had mined from the cave upstream and placed them into the makeshift canvas sack that her mother secured over her back with a single neatly sewn strap before setting down the dirt road, the occasional horse-drawn carriage passing them.
When they reached the wizard's home, he immediately took notice of the small girl. "There's something odd about you."
Never dipped her head, he had heard the stories. "I know, that's what everyone tells me."
The wizard knelt, bringing Never to eyelevel. "You're special." He pressed his hand gently over her chest. "I've never seen anything like your heart." He looked over to her mother, who nodded. The wizard stuck his hand into her chest to pull out Never's silver heart. The wizard looked at it for a moment before placing it back in her chest. Never looked up at him, silently asking questions she'd been asking for years.
The wizard shook his head, "I don't know. I'll have to do some more research. What I do know, is that you are extremely special."
As she and her mother left the house with an empty sack and five gold coins, for the first time she could remember, Never looked back.
Special.
She liked that word.
Hey guys! Welcome to my new story Never's Land! Updates will be at least once a week, more likely every other day because I have so many chapters pre-written. Thanks a bunch for checking out my story, I hope you enjoy!
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