Disclaimer: The only characters thus far that I own are Anne, her drunken mother, the hunter, and Kate Alcuin. The creature belongs to Mary Shelley with some touches to 'modernize' him by me.
Anne quickly settled into the routine of Kate's Bed and Breakfast. Each morning she awoke when the sun peered though her curtain causing bright light to dance across her face. She quickly rolled out of her bed and dressed in the cold morning air. In her small bathroom she washed her face and attempted to give her hair some semblance of order, which is always seemed to defy. Then she would begin her chores, eating breakfast an hour or two later.
The work was fairly easy. Currently the staff of the inn consisted only of the owner, Kate, Anne, a portly man called Ralph and his seventeen year old son, James, who lived a few blocks away. Anne and James took care of the mopping, dusting, laundry, dishes, and any other odd jobs that were needed. Ralph would cook the meals and Kate would attend to the needs of the customers and management of the inn. Overall it worked very well. Anne soon came to be very fond of Kate and Ralph, for they were both very kind, but she always avoided conversing with James. He would often try to attract her attention and would occasionally touch her flirtatiously, but Anne found that, handsome as he was, she did not welcome his advances.
Instead her thoughts were constantly turning to the figure she had left in the forest. As long as he was present in her memory Anne found she could not respond to James' advances, no matter how sweet he could be.
For the most part things passed very well. Anne learned more about the town, which was called Burmingtown after the man who had founded it. Old Gregory Burmingham had also founded the Hunting Lodge, which was the greatest attraction of the town. It was the business from the Lodge that kept Kate's Bed and Breakfast open and which supplied most of her guests. They made Anne nervous.
Other than that the town was very small and quiet. There was one bank, one hospital, five restaurants, two inns (the other was a chain), and one school that taught from preschool to graduation. James attended, but Anne did not. No one knew exactly how old she was, and she preferred to work anyway, so she was left alone about it. Sometimes James would bring back books for her from his school's library, which was the only part of his attentions that she welcomed. She would stay up late at night learning about things that her teachers had always seemed too disinterested to tell the students about. They skipped the incredible details about people's lives and instead insisted on giving a watered down account of events, which had never interested Anne. Once James had brought back a book about the area's wildlife which also included a section on the medicinal uses of the area's herbs. Anne longed to share the information with Mon Ami. She suspected he already knew most of it, but he would find it amusing none the less. Unlikely as it was that she would see him, she fastidiously copied down whole sections from the book to bring to him.
Anne lived in this way for two months. Although spring was approaching the weather had remained cold enough to keep the river frozen until then. Anne was sitting in her chair by the window after a long day's work reading over a biography of Empress Matilda when there was suddenly a great deal of noise in the street below her. She looked down in time to see an ambulance come screeching through the intersection on its way to the hospital. Ten minutes later Kate came running upstairs, urging her to come down.
Anne found a huge crowd in the dining room of the inn, all discussing the incredible news. Kirk Burmingham, the great grandson of Gregory Burmingham, had been found floating in the river with his neck broken.