Mute stray, God Fiona wished that had been true. The strange little girl, her daughter had dragged home, might not be talkative, but she sure was loud. She acted as if she had never been inside a house before. She would stand for hours in the hallway yelling, trying out the acoustics and listening to the faint echo, before Fiona had Spalding or Delphine chase her away. Delphine often did this without needing orders. She didn't seem as taken with the child as Fiona's daughter.

There was a weird connection between the kid and her daughter, Fiona slowly realized. She rarely saw one without the other; the little swamp rat followed Cordelia around all day, staring but never talking. And Cordelia didn't seem to mind at all.

Fiona couldn't fathom what had possessed her to let the murky little thing stay at her house. It had been two days since her daughter and maid dragged her in and for some reason Fiona hadn't thrown her out yet. Maybe it was her daughter's constant pleas. Maybe somewhere deep down Fiona just didn't have the heart to throw her back out in the wilderness. If child protective services ever found that out, she would never hear the end of it.

Child protective services did seem like a sensible place to dispose of the child. She would have, if it wasn't for Cordelia's begging to let her stay here. Cordelia had developed an aversion to such public services, it seemed, after spending a year in a similar institution, while Fiona directed the move of her entire office from Boston and here to New Orleans.

Fiona did think she could have done worse things. Downright abandoning your kid in the woods? At least drop it off on the doorstep somewhere, for heaven's sake. Fiona had had Delphine ask around the shelters, if someone knew of this nameless child, but no one did. Fiona wasn't surprised. Given the girl's state, she wasn't left there only a month ago. She had been molded by nature, had adapted to it. She often walked around the house on all four like some deformed monkey. She hadn't said a single word since her arrival, but she made herself understood just fine even so. She hissed at everyone who displeased her, she hopped onto the kitchen table, whenever she was hungry, driving Delphine insane in the process. Fiona would be mad too, if it wasn't so entertaining to watch the corpulent maid fling her arms around, trying to catch the child. Fiona didn't lift a finger. When the madness reached its high point, she would just call for Cordelia. She must have some soothing trick effect on the child, because it stopped immediately, whenever she said something to it. She could call the girl to her like the most obedient pet. It was a strange sight.

It didn't help the noise though, because the girl screamed and shouted when she was happy too. Even more so perhaps.

"Cordelia, will you make her shut up! I am trying to concentrate!"

It wasn't as if Fiona didn't have things to do. She was running a law firm, the entire New Orleans department, after all. So far none of her employees knew of the wild creature living in her house and she planned to keep it that way. After only two days, however, she was beginning to make peace with not achieving this goal. With the amount of commotion the child produced, the whole neighborhood would know within a week.

The nights were even worse. Electricity seemed to be a new concept to the child as well and the sudden change did not sit well with her to say the least. Fiona had offered her a guest bedroom opposite Cordelia's, but she didn't seem to spent one minute in there. If she did, she slept underneath the bed, but mostly she crawled across the hall and snuck into Cordelia's room. She was never caught doing this, rather she evaporated from one room to the other. The little rat sure knew how to stop making noise, when she wanted to. Fiona decided to put her foot down one night and locked the girl in, which only resulted in nightlong screaming until Fiona finally caved. The child even seemed to prefer the garden over a soft bed. Fiona imagined the surroundings looked more familiar. Maybe she was more of a dog than an actual human being. Fiona thought perhaps, she should have Delphine train her with dog biscuits.

Either way, training the child would not be her problem. Keeping track of cases and lawyers were.

And tonight, none of it would be her problem. She needed a break to soothe the headache.

"Delphine!"

The maid came around the door. Her face hung with displeasure as always. Fiona was beginning to think it was the only expression she knew of.

"I'm going out. Make sure Cordelia is in bed by ten. And keep the other one out of her room this time, will you? Lock her out of the house, if you have to."

O0O

Cordelia jumped out of the car as soon as it parked in front of their enormous house. Spalding, their butler, said nothing – he couldn't of course, as he was born a mute – but drove the car around to the lot, while Cordelia ran up the isle to the front door. She didn't like Spalding one bit. He never addressed her in any way, but he looked at her with his searing gaze and it always made her uncomfortable. He never did anything, but she still thought it was inappropriate. His stare didn't possess the same kind curiosity that the little girl's did, it didn't seem to possess anything. He behaved as if he was carved in stone. The silent, servile expression never wavered and it was impossible to guess what he was thinking. Compared to him, the little girl was an open book to Cordelia.

The girl greeted her as soon as she entered the house. She was on all four. She mostly walked on two now, when they were among others anyway. Cordelia asked her to, because the rest of the house seemed to find it annoying that she walked like a wild animal. The rest being her mom and Delphine, as Spalding was only a shadow, which never appeared unless Fiona called for him. When she did, he was present only seconds later, and Cordelia had no idea how. It never failed. It was as if he crept around her heels, waiting for her to need him. Cordelia had no clue either what he thought of the child and she didn't want to ask.

"Hey you", Cordelia said. The girl opened her mouth as if to say something, but closed it again and settled for a smile. She had done this a couple of times now, and Cordelia wondered what it meant. Did she try to speak?

"I'm just gonna get my homework done and then we can play, sound good?"

The girl nodded eagerly and moved, so Cordelia could pass by her. As she did her homework, the girl curled up into a ball on the floor nearby. She sat there, picking at the carpet, but made no noise before Cordelia was done.

Cordelia liked school. Same, however, couldn't be said about her classmates. She always felt on the outside of it all, and having recently moved here from Boston did not help. If it wasn't the fact that her eyes were different colors, one blue and one brown – which was Madison's favorite thing to pick on – it was that she sounded different from all of them with her Boston accent. She was the shy girl even in her old school, which only made the struggle worse. She felt forever locked in her shell, and even her shell was a different color and a different shape from the rest. Even from the other shy kids at school. At least they blended in, and they all had each other, but no one ever talked to Cordelia.

It was one of the reasons why she was so taken to this strange little girl. She might not talk, but she seemed genuinely interested in Cordelia. She wanted her company. Cordelia didn't need the words, if she just knew that there was a friend in this feral little creature.

She had asked her mom, if she could be homeschooled on several occasions, but Fiona always denied her request. Said it would be good for her to feel the world around her, something she herself never did. When she was out in the world it was often under the influence of something. She thought Cordelia didn't notice, but she did. She didn't dare comment.

The only thing she had really ever fought her mom on was whether or not to bring the little girl to child protective services. Cordelia remembered her year trapped in an institution with a bunch of other kids who felt equally abandoned. They didn't talk much to her either, but at least they didn't talk to anyone. Cordelia had begged her mom not to put the girl there. Truth be told, it wasn't the only reason she pleaded to keep the girl. She knew she was being selfish, but she didn't want to lose the only friend she had.

"It's good to grow up around siblings, I've looked it up", she argued with as much authority as her young, high-pitched voice could muster. "Like you and Myrtle." In truth, the little girl felt nothing like a sister, but for argument's sake, she chose those words.

Fiona scoffed. "Like me and Myrtle."

She never threw the girl out though. She didn't let her eat at the table, she left the responsibility of bathing her and dressing her to Cordelia and Delphine, but she let her stay.

At night on the fourth day of the girl's entry in her life, Cordelia lay awake. She often found it difficult to sleep on days were she was teased in school. She didn't tell her mom much of this, because she brushed it off as weakness.

"You have to toughen up darling, or the whole world will step on you as it pleases", she would say. "Don't be weak like your father." Cordelia could barely remember her father. He was nothing but a fading face in the back of her mind. She couldn't remember him speaking to her. And from what Fiona said, he wasn't much of a father; left them both because he couldn't handle the pressure.

That night she heard ruffling underneath her bed and flew up. Her nightlight shimmered lazily from her nightstand and in its light, she saw a shadow moving at the edge of her bed.

"Hey, is it you?" She whispered. "How did you get in here?"

Cordelia climbed off her bed and sat down on the floor. The little girl had curled up underneath her bed and stared from Cordelia to the nightlight with frightened eyes.

"Don't you like the light? I can turn it off, if you want?"

She nodded. Cordelia reached up and turned it off. The darkness settled upon the room. It was summer, so the dark wasn't as thick as could be, but enough to make Cordelia uneasy.

"I'm not so good with the dark, you see", she told the girl. "But if you're here I guess it's okay."

Slowly, her eyes got used to the darkness and she could see the girl, as she crawled out from under the bed and sat down, cross-legged in front of Cordelia.

"You're very sneaky. I didn't even hear you come in."

The girl flashed her a teasing smile.

"Well, come on then. It's no good sleeping on the floor." Cordelia climbed into her bed again and gestured for the girl to follow her. She hesitated for a few moments, as if checking if Cordelia really meant it, and then hopped on.

"But you have to be out really quickly tomorrow morning, so Mommy doesn't see, okay?"

The girl nodded.

Cordelia smiled at her and started crawling underneath the covers again.

"Misty."

Cordelia stopped dead and turned her head back to the little girl.

"Did you say something?"

The girl pointed a finger at herself. "Me. Misty." Her voice sounded so different. Closer to that of Cordelia's classmates, but still not the same. A little rougher – of course it would be, God only knew how long it had been since she last used her vocal cord – and perhaps a little deeper than Cordelia would have expected.

She couldn't help but smile from ear to ear, when she realized that this little girl, Misty, was really talking to her.

"That's your name?"

She nodded.

Cordelia's smile grew wider. "Well, hello Misty."