By the shores of the sea
When Ellie Barrett is born, she's perfectly normal. Her parents are so intensely relieved about this that they weep together as the unimpressed nurse writes with a squeaky marker on the newborn's records, Human. Less than thirty minutes later the same nurse hears another mother's sobs as her child is labelled otherwise, and the swaddled little boy is forcibly taken away from her.
It's the stuff of nightmares for any waiting parent: to be anything other than perfectly normal means being taken and never seen again.
Perfectly normal or not, Ellie is a strange child. She cries only rarely, and her wide eyes track the movements of her family no matter where they go. She's bright and bubbly even as a toddler, but she's observant: she picks up on the nuances of living very quickly.
Mum and Dad worry. Not so much about Ellie, no, because she's perfectly normal and always will be. But children grow and develop as they age, and with that sometimes comes developments that blindside them all, and Lucy is one of them. Much of their parents' time is spent drilling into Lucy that she must not under any circumstances allow anyone to know what she sees.
What she senses.
Mum and Dad debate about it in hushed voices, late at night when Ellie sits at the top of the stairs listening in—they wonder if maybe a strain of recessive fairy blood or perhaps the remnants of a witch's influence lingers and manifests itself in their eldest daughter. And Ellie hears her dad break down and weep at the idea of Lucy being branded and taken away, which is frightening enough before her mum coldly decides to fool everyone into believing Lucy is normal.
Mum and Dad love them both so, so much, but their parents' relationship with Lucy is strained forever afterwards. Lucy understands why they did what they did but being unable to acknowledge to anyone what it is she lives with every day breaks her in irreparable ways.
"What do you see, Lu?" a six-year-old Ellie asks her in a whisper late one night. It's the only time they ever speak of it, but it's one of the most important conversations she has in her entire life.
Lucy is so quiet for so long that at first Ellie thinks she just refuses to answer, but then a small, strained whisper escapes, breathing a confession that will only be spoken aloud once. "The dead."
Lucy starts to drink when she's thirteen. Drugs follow soon after, despite Mum's and Dad's best efforts to stop her self-destructive habits, but all of them understand why she dulls her world with alcohol and alters it with drugs.
Unconscious with drink she can't hear the ghosts speak. High as a kite she can't see them flitter in the corner of her eye.
It falls to Ellie to be the normal one. Because she is. And there is a secret she hoards that she tells no one, not her parents, not even her sister. Being anything remotely tied to the magical or supernatural—strenuous or no—gets you taken away and hoarded by Her Majesty's special forces to be used for their gain or, worse, done away with. Ellie recognizes this from a young age and she grows to understand it as time goes on.
So she's normal.
Except when she's not.
Ellie Barrett is not the descendant of witches. She is no fairy, nor can she bend the magic still residing within England's soil to her will. For all intents and purposes she is a perfectly normal human being, and therefore everyone misses the fact that Broadchurch is her best friend.
Literally.
Not all England's towns and cities have an Incarnate body, and even when they do find people who can recognize them for what they are, they're a rarity. It's more than seeing the Incarnate body. Ellie can feel the timelessness of Broadchurch, can feel Her presence in her mind and throbbing along her sinews when she's drifting off to sleep. She can stand atop the highest cliffs and know how many people are walking on the main street through the town; she feels the rumbling of cars in her bones sometimes in quiet moments; and when she's ten, a woman with black hair and eyes comes and sits beside her.
"Hello, Ellie."
She looks up at her suspiciously. She feels no fright being in this woman's presence—rather, she feels strangely relieved. Like when she's playing hide and seek with her friends and she finds them one by one and she's not alone. "I didn't tell you what my name was."
The woman's laugh is deeper than she's expecting, but it's a pleasing sound nonetheless. "So sharp already! It will be very fascinating to see you grow into your potential, I think. I'm very many people, Ellie, and I'm in a lot of places in Broadchurch, but I'm very rarely seen by anyone. Except you. I know you very well, Ellie Barrett, just as I know every person in the boundaries of the town, and every blade of grass within. I can tell you that high tide will come two minutes later than yesterday, and the sun will set at exactly 6:36 this evening." The woman smiles wide and bright, reflective of Ellie's own delighted expression, and it's like a loved one coming home after a long time away. "But what I don't know yet, but I hope to soon, is whether or not you would want to be a friend to Broadchurch."
She does.
Ellie Barrett is perfectly normal in every sense, except one. Her sister sees ghosts. She herself is the friend to the town they both call home.
In her opinion, friendship is not so strange a thing, Incarnate town or not. Therefore, she has absolutely nothing to fear.
She's perfectly normal.