Prologue: A Beginning
A small boy with shaggy black hair and slate grey eyes ambled along the sidewalk, taking deep breaths of the fresh outdoor air as he smiled happily. He hated being cooped up by his father in that house, never able to get out into the wide open spaces of the great outdoors, wishing for what was not the first time that he had a mum to break the monotony of life alone with his dad.
He didn't really miss his mother—after all, it's hard to miss something you never had in the first place—but he often longed for a mother in general. It would be lovely to have someone to sing him to sleep; to hold him when he cried and tell him that everything would be okay; to actually pay attention to him… It was obvious that, while he didn't miss his mother, his father certainly did. Maybe that was why the man never had any time for his son, and preferred to spend it with his whiskey and his memories. The older man had grown up with just a mother, but the boy thought he'd gladly exchange his single father for a mother.
Whatever his reasons for plastering himself, the boy's father had ended up passed out on the floor as per usual. But this time the boy had decided to take advantage of his father's lack of consciousness by sneaking out of the confines of his dusty old home, which he assumed hadn't been subject to a decent cleaning since before the eight-year-old was born.
He had found in the time since he'd escaped the old prison that he liked the outside world very much indeed; he decided that he really had to start coming out here more often. At the moment, he was off to the park, a place to which he'd asked a kind old woman for directions that she had gladly provided. He felt so free as he made his way to an unfamiliar place that was sure to be filled with fun, excitement and adventure.
A little girl sat on her heels in the sandbox, her silky black hair swept behind her ears in order to prevent it from hanging in her face and blocking her vision as she concentrated on the sand castle she was currently constructing with careful precision. Her eyebrows were furrowed as her clear blue eyes focused solely on the structure before her, not picking up on the child standing at her side, looking curiously down at her as she worked.
She only looked up as a voice spoke from beside her; the girl started slightly as her concentration was broken. "That's good." She looked up to see a boy with shaggy black hair standing next to her, pointing at her castle in indication of what he was referring to as "good." She cocked her head slightly to the side, studying him for a moment, before muttering a quiet, "thank you," and returning to the task at hand.
"So… do you come here often," the boy questioned, not knowing how else to attempt conversation when his first tactics had obviously failed.
She returned her gaze to his face, her expression indeterminable but her eyes calculating, before giving an answer in the same quiet voice as before. "Not often really, no." She lifted a thin shoulder slightly before letting in drop in a small half-shrug. She didn't elaborate further or return his question with one of her own, but he grinned down at her just the same, realizing that he'd found something about them that they shared, however impersonal and uninteresting as it was.
"Well, I don't come here often, either. Actually, this is my first time." The girl simply nodded her head, not even deigning to look up at him this time as she continued to meticulously sculpt the mount of dirt before her.
The boy was becoming slightly frustrated at her lack of response, but he pushed the emotion down as he dropped to his haunches beside her, pulling his legs toward himself and criss-crossing them. He was determined to get this girl to speak with him; she was the first person he'd ever met who was his own age, after all, and he didn't want to distance her and lose his only chance at friendship by snapping.
Her reserved demeanor intrigued him, and he wanted to see if he would be able to coax her out of her shell. She hardly seemed to register his sudden movement, other than scooting slightly so that she increased the distance between them by a hairs breadth. Perhaps he shouldn't initiate conversation, and rather just wait for her to talk to him; after all, he didn't want to continue making vain attempts at starting a discussion and risk annoying her.
After a while of sitting silently and patiently waiting for the girl to speak with him, the boy's face dropped in disappointment as she stood up and brushed her hands off against her shorts before turning and walking away, leaving her castle standing in the sandbox in her wake. The boy vowed that he would continue coming to the park until the girl decided to finally open up to him, and a resolute determination settled itself within him. When an older boy walked over and made to stomp on the sand structure, the black haired boy glared at him until he reluctantly lowered his foot and walked away.
It was several days until the girl returned to the park, the boy making his way to the aforementioned place every day in anticipation of her finally coming back. When she did, she simply glanced at him for a moment with her calculating blue eyes before returning to the sand box to rebuild the castle that had since been returned to the nondescript pile of sand it once was. She rectified the structure and, when she was finished, she walked off again without having said one word to the boy.
Again she was absent for several days before returning once more and rebuilding the structure for a third time. This soon became recognizable to the boy as a pattern that she followed, every time coming to the sand box and recreated the structure, improving upon it every time she returned.
One day after this had been going on for a while, she had come back to resurrect the structure for the umpteenth time when the older boy who had tried to ruin her castle on the first day came up to them and sneered, raising his foot in the air with the obvious intention of crushing the structure that the girl had worked so hard to build. The steely-eyed boy with the shaggy black hair jumped up from his place on the ground and stood between the bigger boy and the castle, barring his way. The older boy scowled and walked away in a huff.
"Thank you," the girl whispered, the appreciation and relief clearly evident in her tone and her eyes. The boy just smiled down at her in reply, doing an internal victory dance at having finally received verbal recognition after all those days of silence. She continued to work on her castle then, saying nothing more for the remainder of their time at the park.
When she stood to leave, however, she graced him with a small smile, and as she walked away, she turned back and raised a hand hesitantly before wiggling her fingers. He waved jovially back, watching her as she turned again and continued on her way, a feeling of satisfaction filling him.
To the boy's surprise and delight, she returned the very next day. Since that first day, something had changed for the boy; she was no longer just an interesting potential friend who he wanted to talk to because she presented a challenge. He now genuinely cared for her, and sincerely wanted to get her to open up to him, or at least in some way show him that his feelings of camaraderie were mutual.
As she set about rebuilding the castle, he smiled over at her, watching her motions as she focused all of her attention on the structure before her. He noticed when a shadow passed over her and her castle, glancing up to see that the same boy was back, only this time he'd brought two others along with him. The younger boy stood in front of the girl but the bigger kids used their combined strength to push him over, and he fell onto the girl's castle, crushing it under his weight. The other boys snickered maliciously before striding away in triumph.
The small boy looked up at the girl from his position with his back against the ground, the concern and fear showing on his features. He pushed himself quickly into a sitting position and scooted off her ruined castle. "I'm sorry," he whispered, hanging his head in shame. She would hate him now; he was sure of it. All of his progress would have been for naught, and they would likely never regain the ground he'd just lost them.
He was caught completely off-guard when she leaned forward and wordlessly wrapped her arms around him in an embrace. Shocked speechless, the boy had returned her soft smile with a much larger, more giddy one of his own before she got to her feet and bid him farewell by raising her hand in a solute. He returned it and she spun around, walking away, leaving the boy grinning madly at the events that had just transpired.
The next day they sat together in the sand pit as usual, the girl working and the boy looking on in interest, when the girl spoke suddenly, breaking the customary silence that had engulfed them up until that point. "That was brave, what you did back there," she announced softly, glancing quickly over at him before returning her gaze to the sand castle. The boy thanked her, and she noticed him blushing at the compliment; he did not say anything more, allowing the silence to once again wash over them. The quiet only lasted for a moment, however, as the girl continued to talk.
"My mother doesn't know I come here," she informed him quietly, casting him a sidelong glance to gauge his reaction. She watched as a grin spread slowly over his face as he responded. "My father doesn't ever know I'm here, either," he informed her. She nodded slowly, taking in this new information. It would seem that this was something they had in common, and she was secretly pleased with this fact, although her carefully blank expression did not show it. She was always guarded, never showing others what she was thinking or feeling lest they use her own emotions against her. This had come in handy whenever those boys came over to tease her.
The black haired boy's first encounter with the older boys had not been the first time she'd met them; in fact, they'd been working for a while to make her life miserable. She never rose to their taunts, deciding to just ignore them instead. But then the grey eyed boy had stood up to them, and she was very impressed and rather pleased; if he would go up against those gits just to help her out, he really was a good friend.
Friend; the term was quite foreign to her. She'd never had a friend before, seeing as she didn't go out often before the boy showed up and when she did nobody bothered to befriend the quiet little girl sitting alone in the sandbox. This boy was different, though; he was kind and brave, eager yet patient. And he had seen her sitting all by herself and felt that she deserved a friend, so he'd decided to do everything he could to become one. And she really did appreciate it.
She'd never thought she would find a friend, seeing as her parents were lathe to let her out of the house lest someone find out who they were. For some reason, her mum and dad were convinced that they would be viewed as imposters and receive much unwanted attention. She had no clue as to why this was, however; what was so special about her family?
At any rate, she was happy to finally have someone she could call a friend. They continued the tentative conversation, and she slowly opened up more and more as the discussion progressed, even sometimes giving him a soft smile or showing on her face some other glimpse into her mind and emotions. By the end she knew that bright red was his favorite color, he liked eating everything imaginable in copious amounts, that he was deathly afraid of spiders and that he was eight years old, just like her, among other things. She told him that she liked pale mint green, shepherd's pie and was scared of clowns.
"What would you say if… if I told you that I was a… a wizard?" he questioned hesitantly, looking her in the eyes to see the thoughts that passed through her mind as she processed his statement. A slow smile graced her features as she replied quietly, "I'd tell you that I'm a witch." She looked up at him with knowing eyes that sparkled with delight at finding that her newfound friend was magical like her. His face broke out in a wide grin.
"You know, you're the first friend I've ever had," she said quietly, smiling softly at him. He returned the gentle smile before speaking in the same soft voice, "And you're my first friend too." They returned to their normal activities, the girl building her castle as the boy looked on, but something was different now; something between them had changed. Both of them were ecstatic at finally having found a friend, and they knew that things would only get better from here as they grew closer. And they both knew that they would never again have to feel alone.
