Abby Maitland had a fairly typical childhood, at least for one growing up in the less 'family-friendly' districts of London. The kind of neighbourhood where people added deadbolts to their doors, where windows more often than not had tarp and plywood instead of glass, where graffiti covered the walls of buildings so thick it was hard to tell what colour the original building was. Whenever she walked the last half-block from the bus stop to her home, her own beloved dæmon, Leofas, would turn to something big and growly to protect her, lumbering along in her footsteps in the form of a lion or a bear. It wasn't so bad when her father was alive. Abby wouldn't lie; when he was alive, she was definitely a daddy's girl. He would walk her to the park, play her imaginary games, and even his dæmon, a beautiful red Irish setter named Ania, would play with Leofas.
Yes, Michael Maitland was a good man, but he was no fool either. He taught his precious daughter one of the most important lessons in life: trust was not something to be given away like penny candy. It had to be earned, gradually, through time and trial. People, as a whole, weren't trustworthy. It was simply a fact, one that Michael knew well. He was a bartender at a fairly popular pub, but seeing as how the Maitlands didn't quite have the funds for a car, he walked to and from work every day, ten blocks each way. Abby remembered watching him get ready for work after she came home from school. He always carried with him a small bag that held his lunch, and when he walked home, he'd carry his tips for the night in it, rumpled pound notes folded up and held with a rubber band.
One night, Michael brought her to work with him, letting her sit on a stool behind the counter and watch him. And as they walked home, a man stopped them. He was a thin, unpleasant-looking fellow with a gnarled black rat dæmon curled on his shoulder. "What's in the bag, old man?" he'd hissed poisonously. Abby had been afraid of the man and his red-eyed rat dæmon, but her father had been calm. Unmovable. Whilst she and Leofas hid close to his side, Ania standing protectively in front of them, Michael opened his lunch bag to show the man it's contents: the half of a sandwich left over from lunch, the folded-up notes secured in their rubber band...and a loaded 9mm Beretta. The man with the rat dæmon had gone the colour of cottage cheese and let them by without another word.
He died the same year, three weeks before Abby's fifth birthday. Their entire world simply seemed to fall apart then, knowing she'd never walk to the park with Michael's big hand wrapped around hers, that Leofas would never again have another bout of playful romping or hide-and-seek with Ania. She'd screamed and sobbed, and Leofas had flitted from form to form in his grief, shrieking with her. After that, her mother had changed in the worst way. She started wearing clothes that were offensive even to Abby's five-year-old point of view, coming home at late hours. Before Abby turned six, her mother had remarried a man named David and was pregnant with her soon-to-be half-brother Jack.
Abby and Leofas disliked David from the start. He was a small, wiry man, nothing like the towering, well-built Michael, and his own dæmon, Rissa, was a bat, an ugly, flat-faced thing with too-big ears and long yellow-white teeth. Any time Rissa would come near them, Leofas would become a wildcat and hiss up at her ferociously. The only good thing in her life then was Jack and his wee little dæmon, Harriet. It became her mission to teach Jack the same way that Michael had taught her, even though she often couldn't stay focused, drawn into his playful antics. She would indulge him in as many games of hide-and-seek and peekaboo and knights-and-dragons as he wanted, with Leofas often playing the role as a fearful 'dragon,' willing to be tackled and vanquished by Harriet.
But she still never trusted David or Rissa. He'd never done anything to earn it from her.
Her mistrust of her stepfather was well-proven. When she was ten and Jack had just turn five, David hit her for the first but not the last time, a backhanded slap that made her head ring and her mouth taste of blood. Leofas had hissed and spat, flicking to the form of a wildcat, lean and harsh, over her protectively, but Rissa had showed her fangs. Soon after that, David and even her own mother were beating both Abby and Jack, especially once they got drunk together, their favourite activity. Harriet would whimper in fear and pain mixed, huddling against Leofas as Abby protected her little brother against the very worst of the abuse. Sometimes it would hurt to move if they both went at it, but she learnt to control it, to put all her hurt and anger behind a wall in her heart, to put on a mask because it only egged David on further when he saw how much it hurt her. Leofas hissed whenever Rissa came close, curling himself protectively close to Abby.
When she was twelve, he settled in the form of a handsome pine marten with dark brown fur on his back and sides and head, his throat and belly a creamy golden colour. He liked to curl himself around her neck like a living fur collar, curling his tail over her neck and tucking his head under her chin. It soon became a habit of hers to reach up and stroke his fur whenever deep in thought or worried, rubbing behind his rounded little ears comfortingly. She wondered what she ever would have done without her beloved Leo, her own dear soul. And one day, after her mother demanded she clean out the dining hall closet, Abby found a small box, tucked far in the back, covered in dust; it wasn't a big box, but it was wrapped in bright coloured wrapping paper with a little tag that read To Abby and Leo, from Dad and Ania. Happy birthday, jellybaby. Her throat had gotten tight seeing that, the pet name that Michael had always given her. Her fingers trembled as she tore open the wrapping and opened the box. Inside lay a flick knife, a bigger one than most people carried, with a polished white wooden handle; engraved in the handle were her initials: A. S. M.
"Our birthday present," whispered Leofas in her ear, peering over her shoulder, claws curled in her jacket to balance himself. "We never got it." The year that Michael Maitland died, Abby had never gotten her present from him.
She picked up the knife, curling her small, sure fingers around the polished wooden hilt, and when she hit the little switch, the blade sprang out with a lethal snick, the blade gleaming bright and silver in the dim light of the closet. And she'd folded it back up, slipped it in her pocket, and had slept with it every night afterwards and carried it with her wherever she walked. She was fourteen, and after Jack had gone to sleep and her mother had passed out cold on the bed, David had come staggering towards her, reeking of alcohol and something else worse. He'd been drunk enough to try and put his hand up her skirt, but only once. Only once, because the moment his hand touched her thigh, she'd pulled out her knife and held it against David's throat, Leofas crouched on her arm with teeth bared at Rissa furiously. He'd pulled back from her slowly, bloodshot eyes wide and fearful, and staggered off.
Trust had to be earned, and he had proven beyond a doubt that she was right distrusting him.
Not four months after that, Miranda, Abby's aunt and Michael's sister, arrived armed with a lawyer, a worker from Children's Services, and a police officer. Things moved quickly after that. Both David and her mother were arrested and charged with a list of things as long as her arm, Abby and Jack were signed over to Miranda's custody, and they moved to live with her. No more having to carry a knife on the walk to school. No more having to grow eyes out the back of her head. No more black eyes and split lips and bloody noses. But she still kept her father's advice. Nobody was to be trusted for no reason, not until they earned it from her.
Jack grew apart from her more and more as he got older, and Harriet settled in the form of a loud, raucous crow. Still, even though her brother separated himself from her, Abby worked, bound and determined to make herself something better than what her mother had been. She'd gotten her degree in herpetology and a job at Wellington Zoo looking after the reptiles she loved. But it wasn't until she met Ben, a young boy whose own dæmon still hadn't settled, and the bizarre, exotic-looking Rex, and ventured to the Forest of Dean that she became acquainted with the most bizarre people who somehow, miraculously, became the closest friends she'd ever had in her life, people that earned her trust faster than anyone else ever had. It was strange and more than a little scary, but she learnt to love it.
Connor Temple and his dæmon, a black wolf named Akela, somehow managed to be living on her couch, much to her and Leofas's frustration and irritation. The awkward, fumbling student making constant passes at her soon made her want to strangle the life out of him, even as he tried to endear himself to her with puppy dog eyes and awkward flirting, she kept reminding herself, over and over. Trust had to be earned, not given. And Connor had not earned it. Not yet.