Odd colors swarmed Jane's field of vision. She felt sick, light headed and weak. She had seen the dawn, and heard the first footsteps of life from the dorms above.

She had been checked in periodically by Mr. Brocklehurst, so she couldn't very well get down. She began to sway a bit...

"I have you dear," said a voice. Jane knew that voice. It belonged to one of the only nice people at Lowood, Miss Temple.

"Come on, Jane. I'll help you upstairs...at least it's Saturday."

Miss Temple brought Jane to her dorm, took her shoes off, and laid her down. Darcy was there, awake, and looking scared. "Is she...ok?"

"She's exhausted, Darcy. But I think after she rests and has some water, she will be fine."

Darcy nodded, and Jane fell asleep, but before she surrendered to her fatigue, she heard Darcy say, "You're something, Jane Foster. But I'm glad you're my friend."

Summer and fall had come and gone without much ceremony. Jane was now 14, and she was exhibiting the bloom of young adulthood. She was an exceptional student, so for that reason, Mr. Brocklehurst was unable to bother her the way in which he bothered the other students. Jane often wondered how the school remained operational. The conditions, though not utterly deplorable, were surely not up to standards. She thought, in a few years when she left Lowood, she would report the place.

The winter was cold, bitter, and angry. A few of the students had been taken quite ill with pneumonia, and classes had been suspended due to the staff being over worked with taking care of the ill. One of the girls was even taken to the hospital, and she didn't come back. This worried Jane, because it was a mystery what happened to her, and Jane couldn't bear the thought of one of the girls dying because of the abhorrent environment which they were subjected to.

It was January. The night's cold pressed in around her, and neither the blanket nor her paltry nightgown could ease the tear of the cold.

Jane opened her eyes, it was strangely silent in the dorm.

Darcy wasn't there.

She shot up. "Darcy?" she whispered.

Nothing.

Jane got up, pulled on some socks and a sweater, and left the room. She crept down the hall, not knowing where she could have gone, the bathrooms were empty.

She heard someone coughing. It was a terrible sound...

Jane made her way toward the source of the cough, and went inside the room where they had been putting the girls with pneumonia to spend the nights.

Darcy was there, it was her cough.

"Darcy! What...? You're sick?"

"It came one fast, Jane. I had that cold, and boom! Retching up nasty stuff."

Jane went over to her. "Dammit, Darcy. You're going to be in here now for days," and Jane laughed. She held Darcy's hand. "I'll stay with you, alright?"

Darcy nodded.

Jane watched her as the night wore on. The coughing spells were getting worse. Finally, unable to withstand the neglect of the staff, Jane called an ambulance. Darcy needed medical attention.

The paramedics came, and the headmaster was in a state...furious and confused.

"I can't understand who called, if Miss Lewis needed a hospital, I would've called!"

They were taking Darcy away, and Jane stood there, arms crossed around her chest. "I called them," she said, and the paramedic staying behind looked at the small young woman, eyebrows raised.

"You called them, Miss Foster?"

"That's right. No one was checking on her, she was getting worse, and she needed a hospital," she finished and looked at the medic. "Do me a favor, will you? When you get back, report this man for neglect of his students and the sad state of this building. I've been living here for over two years, and I know this is not the way a school should be run." Jane turned on her heel and went back to her room.

The next morning Jane expected to see Darcy back. Instead, she found Mr. Brocklehurst gone. He had been taken away with the medic and brought to the hospital for and interrogation regarding the many students who had pneumonia, and hadn't returned.

Jane found out all of this from Miss Temple, whom she cared for. "Are either of them coming back, Miss Temple?"

"I'm not sure, Jane...hopefully Darcy will soon."

But Darcy didn't. She was brought to a different school in another part of the state, for she complained that she didn't want to go back to Lowood, and the child protective services people decided she could leave it.

But she had left Jane in the process, and though they communicated, Jane felt abandoned.

No new headmaster was named, and there were people coming and going from Lowood all the time. The place got cleaned up, painted, and Jane hardly recognized it; new windows and a new furnace were installed that summer.

Her studies always engrossed her, and Jane excelled in them exponentially...so Miss Temple, the kind teacher, took to Jane and her enthusiasm. She cultivated Jane's insatiable need to understand, and she massaged her interests.

And so it was, Jane Foster was once more on her own, save the kindness of Miss Temple. She didn't mind so much. She cared little for the idle chatter of her fellows, and Jane became aloof in her solitude.

"Jane," Miss Temple said to her one spring day. Term was nearly over, and Jane had completed everything she needed, and then some, to graduate. She had applied to college, though she was but sixteen years old. "What would you say to spending one year here as a teacher? An assistant, if you like, before you go to MIT?"

Jane smirked. "Not interested in letting me go, Miss Temple?"

"Well, sixteen is rather young for college..."

"I'll be seventeen in September."

"Yes...but...I think you'd make a fine teacher, Jane. And I believe you'd enjoy it."

Jane's look revealed a shadow of doubt. "I'll think about it," and she left.

Her reverie took her outside, and she sat in the grass near the chapel never used. She looked at the small stone structure. How strange it was! Jane was given to thoughts of many things, but never god. Was there a god? Gods? Did they hear our prayers? Or were these faceless gods too absorbed in their own greatness to bother with mortals and their finite minds?

She laid back on the grass to observe the sky she loved so dear. It was bright, the blue a ceiling above her in the world...a world she wished to more intimately know...and if she could...the heavens. They were what occupied her most. They held the secrets Jane longed to answer. Her parents, perhaps, were there with god, or with the gods, and she longed to know how to find them.

They were particle matter, her reason told her. She mustn't let her whimsy threaten her rational mind.

Should she stay for the year?

She decided that she would contact MIT, find out if she could reapply with less fuss next year. If she could, then she'd stay. If not, she'd go.

Jane went inside to her dorm. She had longed to escape Lowood School, but, she thought, it might be a good experience...teaching...and she was young, MIT was a daunting thought, indeed.

As it was, Jane was in demand at MIT, so they accommodated her request, and she told Miss Temple that she'd be staying to assist the maths and science teachers the following school year.

It is here, and the few subsequent years at MIT, dear reader, where we must admit that Jane Foster's life was rather uneventful. She taught and enjoyed it, much more than she had believed that she would. She went to MIT and obtained a BS, a Master of Physics, and defended her dissertation leading to her doctorate with relative ease. She went on to work on independent projects at NASA, all before her thirtieth birthday.

She had a couple of boyfriends, neither of which were terribly interesting to her mind. Both were from MIT, and she soon discovered that she was more attracted to those with whom she shared a love of knowledge, but not necessarily a love of astrophysics. She was so immersed in it, that she enjoyed listening to wildly intelligent people talk about something other than the cosmos. Jane read about it, researched, experimented, and in her leisure, she desired other diversions of the intellectual kind. She would read literature and poetry, biographies of presidents, and occasionally, she would write herself. She kept a journal of her musings, but they were her own, and though she was proud, she guarded that tendency with intensity.

Her studies took her to New Mexico. She disliked the climate, but knew that this was where she could most easily study the stars.

She was also not so silly to believe that anyone in her field took her seriously, and that her wild theories landed her in isolation in the brown desert abandonment of Puente Antiguo. She didn't mind, really. She set up shop, and with some grants from NASA and a nod to loyalty and connections, MIT agreed to supplement the research.

She owned a pick up truck, some equipment, a few computers, a trailer and a notebook. She rented a lab, and that was the extent that Jane Foster could afford.

None of her life heretofore could have predicted what this sojourn to the desert would have afforded her. None of it could have made her believe that her life would hold in it something as bizarre and unthinkable as what would happen on the eve of her thirtieth birthday.

She had noticed an anomaly in the math. Something was in the atmosphere...and her heart whispered a worm hole. An Einstein-Rosen Bridge...that thing which she had blindly chased for many years now. What it could mean, she didn't rightly know, she only thought, get out...follow the radar, it could be that thing...

She clambered into the pickup, and sped away, desperately watching the blips on the little handheld device. She sped into the night, chilled and clean, and followed the radar...

She sped...not paying attention...her device began to flip out, making strange noises and such.

Bang.

She had hit something,

Jane got out, and found a man laying in front of her truck.

"Oh my god oh my god..." she breathed.

The man was oddly dressed, blonde, large. He slowly began to get up.

"I'm so...so sorry..."

He stood and rubbed his head. "Is this Midgard?"

"Is this what?"

"Midgard. I am tasked with finding a teacher on Midgard. Is this that realm?"

Jane sniggered. She must've hit him very hard. "This is New Mexico, dude. Do you need a doctor?" she paused. "I should get you to a doctor..."

"Are you a human mortal?" asked the very impressive and attractive man.

"Well...yeah."

"Good. I need you to come to Asgard, via the Bifrost. We require a teacher for our young Aesir whilst we travel to subdue the many uprisings unfortunately occurring in the Nine."

"What."

The man smiled. "I am Thor Odinson, god of thunder. Will you come with me to the highest realm...? What is your name?"

"Jane Foster," she breathed.

"Jane Foster," Thor repeated.

"Are you insane?"

"I am Thor..." he began once more.

"I know...but...are you gonna kill me or something?" Stupid question. If this freak was actually going to kill her, he wouldn't admit to it.

"No...but we require a teacher. Will you come?"

She hesitated. "Get in the truck."

They made it back to the trailer and Jane brought the massive man inside. She gave him some water.

"You want me to teach?" It had been some time since she taught, but she had experience, and she could do this.

And there HAD been that strange reading...one that could only, she surmised, a wormhole.

"Yes. If you are agreeable."

"How did you get here?"

"The Bifrost."

"And that is?"

"Transport between realms."

Jane nodded. "Lemme get my stuff." What was she thinking? This guy…this Thor person was going to kill her.

Jane was never one to turn down an adventure. And if she died at the hands of the lunatic, then maybe...just maybe...she'd learn where her parents were. It wasn't like she had anyone anymore. In her irrational state of loneliness, of sorrow, of indifference toward her own safety, Jane agreed.

But she took a handgun, just to be safe.