It's a frosted, dreary night. The blank navy sky shone above the tinsel-ridden city of Caleis, the faint luminescence from the quarter-moon making all but the outskirts shimmer when a breeze would brush over. Brick walls continue round every corner and down every alleyway, seldom interrupted by a bright window or two. Shops and windows are closed down for the holiday and rarely anyone is seen on the snow and ice-covered streets.
It's Christmas Eve on tonight. Most in the city, one way or the other, are celebrating. Parents and adults are treating themselves to glasses of cheap wine. Children of all ages are trying their best to sleep so the beloved jolly bearded man in red would visit them and grant them the toys and trinkets they've begged for all year.
Time would be normally spent like this, come time for the holidays in this small area. It was almost like a schedule no one ever exactly deviated too far from each year. Pattern was good to these people.
However, for a certain poor, lonesome girl, everything is different. This girl is you. You're a meek one, only of age sixteen. You, a somewhat dainty yet shabby young woman, gaze out the dirtied window, admiring the town from what you can see. You push your recently brushed side-swept bangs behind your ear, beginning to tie back the dark locks into an effortless pony-tail. You pull the hair to the side of your neck - the feeling of it on the back of your neck irritated you.
You set your pale and thin hand on your jaw line, elbows on the desk near the windowsill, batting your dark eyelashes over cobalt optics, sighing with disappointment of yet another year of celebrating your own misfortune: having the pleasure of being an orphan.
You reach over to the side of your deck, correcting your slouch, to grab a thin and worn book with a maroon cover and gold-inked letters on the binding that were wearing away quickly with use. You run your thumb over a damaged corner, memories traveling back to when you had chucked it at your companion for picking at a hole in the wall.
You glance over at your broken wall clock with false hope that the hands would have finally inched from their usual pose at quarter of nine. You exhale in frustration, shaking your head over why for a second you thought you could alter anything just by mental request. There would be no point, you think. You push yourself up from your desk, ignoring the whine from the old and rustic floorboards.
"I swear," you murmur. "One of these days, all of this is going to come crashing down. The floors, the roofs, the clouds, the heavens - all of it."
You flatten the skirt of your nightgown down, patting off the dust that stuck from the wooden stool. You turn on your heal and head for what you call a bed, which is really just a beaten up mattress, a cotton sack filled with wool from your guardian's sheep out back, and few torn fabrics sewn into what appeared as some sort poor-man's quilt lazily draped over it.
You slump down onto your bed and lay down sideways, tilting your head backward to look at the upside-down makeshift name carved into it - Annabelle Warren. What a beautiful name, you think, for such an accursed life.
You brush the hair from your eyes to get a better view, reading the name over and over; out loud at one point. You cherish your name for how unique it was in the area. Many family titles in Caleis included many citizens of which shared them. There were Laroys, Reids, Bonnefoys, you name it. But, you are the only Warren.
However, despite being so extraordinary, the obvious diversity of the name bothers you. You want to be a part of something. Maybe a part of a family name, if not a family alone.
You scoff at the angle of which the name tag hangs. You sit up slowly and tiredly, scratching the back of your head before lifting your legs onto the bed with the rest of your body. You pull the ragged quilt over yourself, trying to wrap as much of it around you as you can, and you roll onto your side with one hand on your pillow and one beneath. You close your eyes slowly and then fall into a deep sleep, hoping to not be interrupted in the morning seeing as you have nothing to celebrate anyway.