'Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind'
-William Shakespeare-
She was nine when she discovered she could do things that weren't considered normal. Especially for little girls.
"Charlotte," her mother's soft, temperate murmur washed over her like a stream at its source-trickling over the harsh edges of jagged rocks, young and ignorant in its journey to greater triumphs.
But she felt it. In her brilliant mind. She felt a tumultuous waterfall, palpitating in its course, skilful in its experience and destruction. It hailed down on her brain, digging into its uneven ridges. It quivered up her spine, through her cerebellum, bursting through her cortex until its very force burst her skull apart. A balloon was expanding in her mind, growing, growing, until all that was left was the image of broken glass replacing chalky white fragments of cranium bone, the pungent scent of premium brown whisky superseding metallic wafts of scarlet red blood.
Charlotte felt it. Foreign emotions cleansing her, the water scalding hot, boiling her dry. Weeping tears leaving raw pink flesh, vulnerable to the sharp knife of metal and words and secrets; hidden so deeply even the proprietor knew not of their existence.
She knew pain, disappointment, fear. She was different. An oddity.
Well, she knew that was true. A fact.
In more ways than one.