A/N: Sorry this isn't very good but I swear 'something will turn up'! (Any Micawber fans reading this can give themselves a cheer!)
So yeah, it's... mediocre and... stuff... but if someone gives me some ideas via a review I might come up with something better for the rest of the story?
Try to enjoy what little goodness there is in this - I HAVE made an effort, pinky swear!
With a desperate howl, Aislinn woke up.
She hadn't had the nightmare for a good long while – in fact, she hadn't even remembered she'd had it until a few months ago. She couldn't understand where she'd got it from or why it would suddenly come back after – she totted it up quickly – just over seven years? Granted, it had come back every full moon for the year so far, but still...
It couldn't be from a book or a film, her parents would never expose her to something like that; when the nightmare first came, she'd only been five years old. As she walked to the bathroom of the house, Aislinn reflected that although most people had only a vague sense at best of the first four years of their lives, she did not even have that. Right up until she was five years old and was calling her parents for the nightmare, any attempt at recollection drew an absolute blank – or worse, a near-fatal panic attack that no-one seemed able to explain to her. All she got was a deep-seated ache in her chest, almost as if she were mourning for her lost years.
She frowned. Thoughts such as these were no good to anyone and would hardly help her get through her exams in the morning. Although, she noted that the world had a faint golden tinge to it now, so it was too early to return to her bed, yet too late to revise. She hurriedly finished her drink and headed towards her parents' bedroom. They'd heard her howling, of that she was sure, but a few weeks ago they'd had a talk about her independence and had come to understand that if she needed them, she would not hesitate to come to them.
As she slipped under the covers, Aislinn could have sworn she heard her mother mutter something along the lines of 'Come in, littlie, the bad men won't take you away', but of course she had never disclosed the exact contents of her nightmare, so Mum couldn't possibly be referring to that.
Aislinn was bored.
It was summertime again, and she and her classmates were stuck inside a stuffy classroom with the most boring man alive droning on and on and on and on about... erm...something to do with Geography. Nobody was actually listening, for the simple reason that nobody actually cared. The exams were over and done with, all the topics had pretty much been covered, the sun was shining and the sky was blue.
So WHY did they have to stay indoors with a bunch of other hyperactive fifteen-year-olds listening to a forty-year-old man talk about the intricacies of cliff formations?! It was enough to make anyone go mad.
And unfortunately, Aislinn had a reputation for that.
This year, Aislinn's focus was on Art and nature studies. As it had been last year, and the year before that, and... you get the idea. Sadly, many of her associates absolutely did not get the idea, and in previous years had been liable to tease her about it and make fun of her. Once, someone had even tried to destroy a painting she'd done, a painting of a beautiful blue-black she-wolf that she'd spent months working on. This triggered the rather unfortunate response of having a blur of wavy black hair barrel into the culprit, nearly breaking his neck in the process. After that, some of his friends tried to get their revenge. When this obviously failed, everyone left the short dark girl well alone for fear of another outburst. This suited her just fine; no-one really understood her, so she could see no real downsides to losing the chance of their 'friendship'. What she didn't know was that over the years, this had attracted the attention of several groups of people for varying reasons. Some wished to have her 'treated' in a mental institution 'for the safety of others', whereas some wanted to have her watched for signs of talent that may indicate whether or not she could have a job with them in later life. One small government department suggested that she be moved to a safe house for no reason that they could disclose, but their wealth and influence had diminished astonishingly over the past twenty-something years, so they were almost immediately cried down.
It came as quite a shock to everyone then when a middle-aged man in a dark suit entered the room and asked if Aislinn Johnson could please pack up her things and come with him as there were some people who'd like to meet her.
