The early morning fog loomed as far as she could see. The haze was almost tangible, shrouding everything in a thick white veil-the light barely managed to penetrate the haze. The usual sounds of birds and laughing crickets were gone, most likely scared away by the brutal cold surrounding them.
Adelyn pulled her brown winter jacket closer to her body, hoping to gain some sense of warmth that morning. It was to no avail. The fog seemed to be leaching the heat from the girl's bones, pulling it to become stronger. With every single second that passed, she seemed to get colder and colder. It was July, but it felt like the middle of winter.
The laughing wind crept up, following as she walked, hissing at the warmth of her body. The cold readied to strike with its venom. Her heart pumped against the frost as she trudged along the pavement at a sedate pace. Only a little longer, You're almost there. Keep walking.
Finally, she arrived at her school. Archery, at the time, seemed like a safe and fun option. Your average student at Bridgeway Academy took one look at the 5 am practices and joined tennis instead. Adelyn, on the other hand, was inept at sports. If all students didn't need to be in a club, she probably wouldn't have been in one. So, archery it was.
The coach, an awkward and wiry man of thirty-five, claimed that they needed to learn archery for survival. It was as if they lived in the middle ages and depended on a sturdy bow to provide their next meal. But Adelyn soon found that she didn't mind it. The constant discipline gave her mind much-needed time to think.
The teacher himself seemed to have fallen right out of a lord of the rings novel. He refused to use technology and relied heavily on doing things by hand - not that anything was wrong with that. He crossed the country fighting in different sword tournaments. No one could determine why the man had settled in their small Michigan town instead of traveling the world for competitions. He settled to teach high schoolers the art of learning to fence and shoot a bow.
The class was a welcome distraction despite how strange he was. Adelyn didn't have much time to think these days. Her mother and father's upcoming divorce filled her house with screams at every moment of the day. She could never get a single moment of peace.
She had just gotten to the school and was heading around the corner of the building when she slammed into someone. She looked up to see whoever had the misfortune to run into her. Roselyn, her best friend forever, stood there smiling at her with a wide grin.
"Addie! Good morning!" She said, screaming. It was ridiculous how someone could have that much energy so early in the morning.
"Rose…They can hear you all the way in Texas."
"Sorry," His friend said. Adelyn knew she was by no means sorry.
She raised an eyebrow. "I always forget your not a morning person."
"Yeah, well…I hate mornings," Adelyn told her. Rose laughed, grabbing her arm. She led her to the archery range behind the school, where a small group of classmates had already huddled together- like penguins in the Arctic.
Her other friends Scott, Katie, and Eddie stood in a small circle in the Dojo, conversing, their voices penetrating through the chipper of birds. Scott was flapping his arms in every which way, up then down, while screaming something about some new video game he couldn't wait to get his hands on.
"You don't understand! The game is a flipping masterpiece…!" He was sputtering now, not making sense to a girl who had never played video games in her life. His face was bright red, matching the color of his hair." –It's beautiful."
"We get it, Scott," Katie said, sounding almost bored and slurred. "It's the best game you've ever played. This is the fifth time you have told us that in the past ten minutes."
"You just don't understand, Katie." He emphasized Katie as if it was some insult. His face was now bright red, and the veins in his neck were bulging.
She couldn't take listening to it any longer. She adored Scott, but sometimes she had no idea what he would go on about.
" Hey, guys," Adelyn said, stepping into the little circle. "You ready?" Rose and Katie grinned from ear to ear.
Eddie frowned, "But we can't start until Mr. Moyer comes. You know that."
Adelyn shrugged. Nothing would change even if they started five minutes before the teacher arrived. It wasn't like the world was going to end.
She made my way toward the shelf of bows. In the corner was a cabinet that smelled like a recently carved rocking chair someone might buy at Cracker Barrel or Home Depot. They were made of wood, plastic, metal, and materials she couldn't even name. Arrows with feathers cut in flawless uniform lines sat in metal buckets on the ground. She chose a bow; it was a sturdy wooden longbow; she strung it and slung a matching quiver filled to the brim over her shoulder.
Walking a few feet toward the range, she stood before the target and never let her eyes leave it. She reached back to grab an arrow from the quiver, taking note of everything that could interfere with the release of it; The wind and so forth. As she nocked the sharp item, its flight path was already forming in her head: between the branches of trees in the way and right into the center of the target. Adelyn pulled the string back, all the way past her ear, letting the tension build before it flew. She raised the arrow to meet its flight path and released it. The string snapped forward with a force of twenty punches. It hit dead center.
Easy.
She did the same thing again, breathing out as she released the string. It hit the target to the right of the one she had already hit. She did the same with my next arrow to the mark on her left.
She aimed her next shot at a target Moyer hid in a tree behind the range. She released it. It flew through the air, breaking branches in a loud crack before hitting the target above.
The following two arrows she notched at the same time. She wanted to try something new. If she was honest, she wanted to feel like robin hood. She held the bow even, a perfect, undaunted horizon, always leveled with the nose, just as she had been taught. They made their mark: perfect and even.
"Damn-" Eddie said from behind. A chorus of agreement rang out from my other friends.
"You've gotten better, Adelyn," Another voice said. It was Mr. Moyer. He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed in front of him.
"I guess practice makes perfect?" She sighed. Mr. Moyer never seemed to be in a good mood. She was surprised he hadn't yelled at her for starting without him.
She felt uncomfortable under the sudden stares of her teacher and friends. If she could, she would hide away forever, where they would never be able to find her.
"Yeah?" Mr. Moyer asked, a smile creeping upon his face. "And why do you feel the need to be perfect?"
"Exactly, How long have you been practicing?' Katie cut in; her eyebrow raised incredulously.
"Umm…not that much…maybe a couple of hours…a day."
"Well, that clears things up," Rose muttered next to Katie loud enough so that she could hear.
"That was amazing! "Scott screamed, again flailing his arms around over his head. That kid, she had decided then, had some serious issues. There was no way someone could be that energetic at five in the morning.
Everyone laughed, suddenly broken from the stupor they had found themselves in. They picked up their bows and began practicing. As Adelyn picked up another arrow and knocked it, she could sense Mr. Moyer behind, watching everything she did.
For the next few hours, they made turns shooting in succession until it was finally time for school to start. She hung up her bow and wiped the sweat off her face with a baby wipe she always carried in her bag. Her muscles screamed at her for rest, but Adelyn ignored it, forcing herself to walk to class.
She was about to leave the range when Mr. Moyer approached her. She groaned, realizing she had forgotten to do her homework because she fell asleep while reading…Again. She hated to admit that it was something that she did on quite a regular basis.
"Addie," he said, pulling her aside. "Do you mind if I talk to you before your classes start?"
"Not at all,"
"I've heard from some of your teachers that your grades have dramatically dropped for the past few weeks. Can you tell me why that is, Adelyn? You've never been someone to not due to their work in the past. Can you help me understand?" His voice was almost pleading.
Adelyn sighed and brushed her hands through her sweaty hair. She had a feeling that this conversation was coming. It was no secret that in the past, she had a 4.0-grade average, but lately, her A's slowly began to slip into B's than C's.
"My parents, they're getting a divorce." She frowned, looking down at the earth below. "It's been tough. I know it's not an excuse, but I'll pull myself together; I can promise you that."
"I know you can do it, Adelyn." He smiled at her uncharacteristically. He was never one to smile before. "Something tells me your gonna have a great year."
"What makes you think that, Mr. Moyer?" She asked, her brow raising. Her hands have begun to pick at her nail beds.
"Oh, just I know." He took off the mended glasses that he had perched on his head. "It's going to be hard, but don't take any second of it for granted."
"Take what for granted?" She asked.
"You'll see. All I can say is good luck."
"Mr. Moyer, I don't mean to be rude, but what the hell are you talking about?" She asked him
"No, you wouldn't understand, would you?" He stopped, looking up into the distance. "Not yet, anyway…Just promise me something." His dark eyes blazed with something she couldn't describe. It was like someone had taken her former teacher and replaced him with a clone.
The man had always been weird. He would tell strange stories about floating cities in the skies and mysterious worlds filled only with shadows. Those fanciful stories always filled her classmates with wonder. But, for some reason, she couldn't yet explain - it filled her with a melancholy sadness.
"Promise me not to forget."
"I guess I'll try not to, sir," She said, frowning again. Noting he was saying he made any sense. Maybe he had a rough night last night and was paying for his exploits this morning. The strange conversation seemed to come from nowhere. The man had always been quirky and aloof. His weird comments always made students confused for hours.
But there always seemed to be a pearl of secret wisdom behind his words people refused to take for granted.
"Don't try Adelyn. I need you to promise."
"Right," She said, emphasizing right. "I gotta go."
"Of course..." He started to turn around but faced her again. "Oh…Adelyn?"
"What, Mr. Moyer?" She asked.
He smiled. "One more thing. Be careful of the fog. We can't go and lose you too... Also, don't forget I expect you to have your homework done and on my desk by the time the class starts tomorrow. Oh…next time, wait for me to start practice." He winked at her and walked away.
"I won't forget, Mr. Moyer." That was a conversation she wasn't likely to forget anytime soon. She turned around and headed back to school.
Inside, the school was lively. The halls crowded with people weaving through them to get to their next classes. A couple was making out on the left side of the aisle, and about ten feet further down, a group of girls was huddled in front of an open locker doing their makeup in a small mirror. Opposite them was a group of Axe-smelling boys, and between them, a parade of kids dressed up like they were going to Comic Con.
The bell went off, and she went down the tiled hallway to her first-period class, Pre-Calc. She took a seat next to Katie. She was lucky she had a class with at least one of her friends. Others she knew weren't so lucky. Scott had the misfortune of hating every single person in one of his classes. But, in retrospect, Scott didn't like many people outside of their friend group.
Finally, the teacher, Mrs. Minnier, walked in. An air of hawkishness surrounded her. She had eyes of dark brown that fixed you in ice should you dare disagree or talk out of turn. She was willow-wand thin, so stick-like that it was hard to imagine her eating much, at least not without wiping her narrow lips after every bite. Her hair wasn't so much blonde as a washed-out brown, like it just couldn't be bothered to be anything at all. Like many women her age, she had it cut short to hide its lack of volume. A century ago, she would have been brutal with the cane.
The teacher looked as if he had woken up one spring morning to realize that her youth had passed without any fun. She gazed at the class as if their faces had become a sea, a moving mass of nothing she could focus on or care about. The lesson poured out from her in the same emotionless pattern it had for the past fifteen years; she breathed in the same places. The intelligent suits she had diligently worn as a new graduate and given way to elastic waist-banded pants and long flowing tops. Her face knew how to perform all the right gestures, but the passion behind them had long since abandoned her. She still handed out homework but didn't care if the kids did it or not. More coming back to her meant more marking, which meant less time she would be able to spend with her motorcycle boyfriend, who was in desperate need of a haircut and deodorant.
It was this teacher who made her think that classrooms were a place that she should fear. She seemed, for unknown reasons, to detest Adelyn with every fiber of her being. She would always give the girl detentions for stupid things, like forgetting a pencil or wearing the color of a shirt she didn't like.
She prayed that today would be a good day. But, It seemed some unknown power that hated her had other ideas. The teacher was the monster under her bed and the nightmare that would wake her up screaming in a fit of terror. She smiled wickedly and marched towards Adelyn's desk as if she were her prey. For all Adelyn knew, she was some evil monster who wanted nothing but to eat young children for lunch. What big teeth you have, grandma.
When the teacher finally stopped in front of her desk, Adelyn began picking at her nail beds until they were raw and bleeding." How can I help, Mrs. Minnier?"
"I was very displeased to see you didn't attend detention last night. Very upset. …Very. I think a week of detention should make up for that. Don't you think?"
Shit… She had forgotten about that. But, In her defense, the detention was because she was chewing on a pencil while she was giving a lecture. She was a menace to pencils everywhere.
She made her way back to the front of the classroom, her head held high, gloating, smirking with her thin mouth. She started talking about current events, which she was pretty sure had nothing to do with Pre-Calc, but she guessed she could do what she wanted as long as she didn't test them on it. At the least, she was getting out of the boring mathematics lecture she never paid attention to.
A perky girl in the front row who was always a kiss-up in platform heels - she thought her name was Taylor - raised her hand.
"Yes?" The teacher purred, rolling her eyes.
"Can you tell us anything about the fog, and like If we can stop it by saving the planet…or something?"
Adelyn hated to admit she was suddenly very interested. Likewise, the rest of her class sat up at full attention, their eyes wide and their ears wide open.
The teacher sighed and put the glasses on her head on her uniform desk. "There is not much I can tell, Besides what you already know. Michigan has recorded record-breaking weather over the past week. This time of year, a colder day, has never been recorded in history. Already, the weather has taken lives."
Her eyes moved to the empty desk in the middle of the room.
The desk once belonged to Diamond Richards. She was a girl with so much energy you couldn't help but smile. She had a little brother only a few years younger than herself and had become a mother, too, since her parents were deadbeats. She froze to death last week. Her brother cried, and her parents only asked about the money.
Death wasn't kind. Adelyn knew that. It snatched where it could, taking people who were far too young, far too good. It didn't pretend to care; it didn't pretend to distinguish. It didn't hesitate to take even the most special and innocent people.
Silence overcame the classroom. It was the kind of voidness that gnawed at her twisted insides. It hung in the air like the suspended moment before a falling glass shattered on the ground. It was quiet, like a gaping void needing to be filled with sounds, words, anything. It was poisonous in its sheer nothingness, cruelly underscoring how vapid their conversation had become. The silence was eerily unnatural, like dawn devoid of birdsong and a classroom with an empty desk.
"As for saving the planet," The teacher continued. "Perhaps you should stop drinking five cups of Starbucks a day. It's a wonder what those cups can do to sea turtles."
The class continued in silence. No one made a sound as if too afraid to wake the dead.
Her next class was Humanities, a class that she loved. It was taught by an energetic, wispy woman who was eight months pregnant and looked like the baby might pop out at any moment. She was a kind woman who never liked too her raise her voice. Although this never made her a pushover, she was scared when angry. She would have the class do giant art projects like making an aqueduct or a Canopic jar out of paper maché.
The cafeteria at lunch was a cacophony of loud chatter. The food was secondary to the information that they exchanged there. Over the over-salted fries, alliances formed, and gossip traded like silly bans. The cafeteria was the school gym. She opened a door connecting it to the kitchen, and the smell of chips and baked beans wafted in. The students lined up across the back wall with brown Formica trays in their hands, kicking the wall with their toes or leaning on it as they shuffled along the line, unenthusiastic about the food. Today's special: mush…Yay.
She sat next to Scott, Katie, Eddie, and another girl named Carmen. Scott was again enthusiastic, talking about some new video game, The Legend of Zelda or whatever. Katie was desperately trying to tune him out with her I-pod. Eddie, you may ask? He was content with throwing fries at unsuspecting first-year students who didn't dare to stand up to him. Sometimes, she couldn't believe she was friends with them.
Eddie decided to take a break from pelting kids and started talking seriously; his eyes drooped downward to where his hands were fidgeting mercilessly. "They say if the weather keeps dropping, Michigan might be as cold as Antarctica... and the fog gets thicker every day." None of them could help but look at the empty table in the corner where Diamond and her friend group used to sit. Her friends had since moved to different tables, not wanting to look at the vacant chair that constantly reminded her of her death.
The whole table suddenly got extremely quiet until Eddie broke the silence. "… It's probably global warming." He whispered. The entire table couldn't help but snicker.
The laughter died down, and the table was left with hushed melancholy. They ate the rest of their lunches quietly. Every once in a while, someone, usually Eddie or Scott, tried to break the silence with a lame joke. They would pat themselves on their back and eat their lunches in the quiet.
She was so thankful when the bell rang, and she could go home. The home wasn't peaceful, but at least there, she wouldn't have to worry about the death of her classmates and the possible end of the world from global warming.
She walked home and pulled her coat even close to her body. It didn't seem possible, but it felt like it had dropped ten degrees since the morning. Maybe tomorrow, she could convince one of her parents to drive her to school instead of forcing her to trudge through the cold and fog.
When she got home, her mother and father were busy ignoring each other. It was something they were both quite good at. They adopted Adelyn when she was three in an attempt to "Heal" their marriage. But it never worked. Instead, Adelyn was usually left abandoned to fend for herself. The only thing her parents ever really did for her was buy her things.
"Adelyn," Her mother said when she walked through the door, "I got a call from the school today. I need you to tell me the truth."
Well…Shit
"Yeah?" She asked.
She knew exactly what the phone call was about, but she played dumb.
"What the hell is going on with your grades?"
"Well, it's hard to concentrate at home with all the screaming." She said.
She knew that was a low blow, but she asked her to tell the truth. Adelyn never did like to lie. It felt dirty somehow to lie to family or the people you cared about. She may not lie but she could damn well keep a secret if no one bothered to ask her any questions.
Her mother had the decency to look guilty. "I know this is a hard time, but that's not an excuse to let your grades slip."
"I'm sorry," She said. And she was. As much as she sometimes disliked her parents, she didn't like to disappoint them.
"It's okay," Her mother said, "Dinners in the kitchen."
Adelyn nodded and walked calmly to her kitchen. They had ordered pizza…again—three times in a row. They had ordered it hours ago, and it was already cold.
Her hands began to play with a small pendant around her neck that had been left to her by her birth parents as she sat silently around the table with her parents.
In the background, a news broadcast was playing. She ignored the newscaster's plea to stay warm and inside. "Keep out of the cold," they whispered. "Keep inside.". Instead, she munched on her pizza, hoping things would improve soon. She doubted they would. Things never seemed to go right in her life; she wasn't sure why anything would change now.
Hello Everyone! This is the re-edited version of the mist of beginnings. In this new version, we get to see Adelyn interact with her parents more. I didn't send her to Hyrule right away so we could see her interact with her family. I hope there aren't any typos. If there are, feel free to let me know; sometimes, I miss things. Please feel free to review! I absolutely love hearing people's theories.
Happy reading! It's so good to be back!