The wind blew the hair in her forehead. Waves danced around her as her eyes shone brightly without her being able to avoid it. Her parents didn't let their smiles out, knowing that she liked to keep it for herself, so they allowed her to seize the moment her way.
The least they could do was at least grant her those small pleasures. Sitting in the window, and having it wide open as she rested her forearms on the windowsill and her head in her arms.
That was the freest she had felt in a very long time, and her parents rejoiced with the sight.
Doctor Marsh was right, she needed the change of air, and, even if the trip was a little tiring, her mood was lighter and less gloomy that day.
Hours later, the carriage was expecting them on Exeter's station and would take them to the Villa.
For once, Annabelle rejoiced in feeling the warmth of the sunlight and even let a shy smile on her lips.
Nobody mentioned how good that smile suited her, they worried that the comment could take it away, so they peacefully enjoyed it while it lasted, as calmly and peacefully, as that same smile was.
The villa was big. The black tiles on the roof and the very light gray walls of stone extended on the hill.
The two-story edification had wooden floors, rounded classical windows, eight full guest rooms, and the two main rooms, one being Annabelle's parents' room, and the other one, Annabelle's.
Additionally, there are the common areas of the house, kitchen, terrace, dining room, living room, the downstairs library that was mostly her father's office when they were away from London, which mostly was filled with books about business.
The gardens were large, like everything else in the house, and full of trees and flowers, in a similar style than their London house, especially the roses.
The Abraham Darbys, fluffy and peach-colored adorned the surroundings of the house. Still, when they arrived in mid-October, they were able to rejoice in the view and smell of the beautiful rose bushes flowering.
The house had many windows, beautifully rounded and finished with Burr Walnut wood. The location and the way it was built allowed much more sunlight inside the house, a very marked difference regarding the place in which Abbie has lived for all her life.
In her criteria, though, the best place of the house was on the second floor almost at the end of the hall, and right beside the entrance of the tower.
Annabelle loved her room.
She had good reasons for it to be her favorite place, even though she could not go around and have long walks, and was better without much of people's interaction, yet she could watch the world through that room.
As easy as by peeking through the window, she could see the sea, the bay, and the ships full of merchandise and passengers that came to the coast, especially commercial vessels coming and going for the wool trade.
She could spend hours looking through that window, seeing how people moved around, and how the ships seemed to fade away in the distance.
She could almost feel the way they slid in the surface of the water, leaving a mark as if softly letting themselves slip over a piece of the best quality silk, in direction to where the sun dawned.
The door after hers, that actually was the last door of the hall, opened to the tower, and it was the space that held most of the memories of Annabelle's childhood in that house.
You could almost see her going through that door as if it was the gate to a different dimension or a parallel universe.
Her parents have adapted the space as a library for her when she was a kid, as they did with her playroom in the London Estate.
For them, it was the best way to keep their daughter safe and happy while she had no other option but to remain indoors.
Of course, most of the books were fantasy, and she had a window seat at the very top where she used to unwind herself on the view inside and outside of her head.
This, obviously, due to the possibility of her having a crisis at any minute, could be done only if she was being watched all the time by one of the trained helpers, who usually had an additional seat on the other side of the tower space.
Checked all the time, as much when she was a child, as when she was an adult.
The books were placed in circular shaped shelves that covered the walls, with the only exception of Annabelle's spacious and padded window seat. Besides that, there was an armchair and a sofa, both dark brown leather, high-backed, and very comfortable, made with oak wood, and served as the usual spot in which the helper in turn, spent as much time as Annabelle chose to stay there.
Sometimes a couple of hours, some other times ten minutes, depending on how thin was the young woman's patience that day on being watched.
The family, along with the helpers arrived at the house in the late hours of the afternoon, around five, and just in time for tea.
An exquisite tea set of the finest china was on the garden table.
The small feast was set with small cucumber sandwiches, scones, pastries, cookies, and, of course, Devonshire cream.
The helpers went and moved the many large chests that the family had packed for their stay in the Villa, while the Archer family went to the garden and sat for tea.
They were actually considerate people, compared to other aristocrats, which didn't care much if their helpers ate or slept enough.
They allowed them to have tea in the kitchen table, with the same kind of food they had, and the same applied for any other meal during the day.
It was not allowed either that any helper that worked for them was around the house, working, after eight at night.
They were fair, and their employees liked to work with them.
The last rays of sun glared on the young woman's eyes as she sat with her parents outside the large house to eat, and it had been many years since the last time she shared something like that with her family.
Things that she couldn't take for granted, especially when she knew that she had passed her expected survival age.
Happily, that day had been a gift.
After the tea, Annabelle went inside and two of the helpers were waiting for her, ready to unpack and arrange her room with her belongings.
Abbie went upstairs followed by the two ladies, and all the way up the stairs, she saw a little girl with very long, black hair in a half-ponytail, slowly going up, and when getting all the way up, panting to get air back in her lungs.
As cute as the image was, of the little girl, pale, with cheeks rosy for the effort, she also felt a slight pain for her, at a time that she still didn't know what she had, and wanted so much to hug her, to embrace herself as a little kid...
The girl continued walking towards that favorite place of hers, as Annabelle saw. She got to the magical door, slowly opened it, and she saw the bright, golden light of all the places and characters that lived passing that threshold.
So many stories that she rearranged and mixed up when she was a child.
The helpers behind Abbie stood there wondering what was she seeing, still standing at the top of the stairs, moving her head and slightly smiling at whatever she was seeing.
Those peculiar episodes that Abbie had since she was a kid, with her favorite characters, at that time, gave way to many legends among the helpers, stories that should not be heard by their employers, about how the girl, the little heir of the house, was seeing ghosts running through the halls to the library on the second floor.
How the girl that nobody explained how she still was alive, could see spirits, and how those spirits might be coming to take a soul with them.
How the very lonely girl had not yet died because she had made friends with the grim reaper itself.
And last, but not least, there were some that said how they, and others in the house, had heard, not only in the house at London, but after their arrival in Exeter, tired steps and running around the house, but mostly all of them, pointing to Abbie's library in Exeter.
The house was full of spirits, that was true, most of them, only Annabelle could see, all her friends and foes from her magical books, herself as a kid, but mostly so many memories of times in which life was much more simple, times in which she had no worries and her parents still expected for her to be the proud heir of all they had worked for, one day married and with her own children.
Days much simpler, much happier, where she was a normal girl, and not a porcelain doll that could break at any minute in the hands of a physician, one of her own parents, or even lonely, in the darkness of her own room.
Annabelle was surprised by a whisper from behind her."Miss Abbie... Miss... Are you okay, do you feel bad?"One of the helpers was talking to her in the lowest voice she could manage so she didn't get startled, calling her back to what normal people called reality."Yes, Anna. I just remembered something."The helpers looked at each other and wondered scared if she had seen something and didn't want to say it.The stories about her looking at the void had been around for a while already, but since nobody has seen actually anything, and the noises could be explained, they can't really say the house is haunted, or the girl, in any case.She knows that the helpers are still wondering what she was looking at, but she doesn't care what they think.The march to her room restarts and they spend a couple of hours to finish arranging everything in the right place, especially her medicine cabinet.After a very interest
A very happy trio came into a clothing store.A young, handsome man with very bright eyes and smile, lightly tanned skin and almost six feet tall, dressed in black from top hat to toe, except for his dark green coat, walked first into the store.Following in the middle, a disarrayed girl in gray sleepwear, and last, but never least, a very beautiful lady with pink hair and all-black clothing.Her curvaceous body was hugged by a stylish corset dress that ended up in a skirt a couple of inches over the knee in the front, and almost ankle length in the back.She was about five feet and three inches, with two additional inches that her black, over-the-ankle boots gave her.She was also wearing a very tiny top hat, holding from a bunch of her hair on the right side of her head.To end her image, the same way as her energetic and charismatic husband, she wore a big, genuine smile.The store was almost directly in front of
"Isn't it the cat got your tongue?" Raquel said innocently, as Myron moved his head sideways to his wife, so she didn't follow on her thought.When Raquel looked at the other two people in the room, she noticed.The air felt tense suddenly. Dominik's tone was obviously not well received by Annabelle, who now was no longer looking at the floor.How was this guy managing to touch the nerves of their just arrived new guest in so little more than a phrase?Why?Yes, he was good looking, but, oh what an attitude.Especially with Abbie, who hated to be always the "Rescued" one."Too much of a nerve for a stranger to say something in that tone. You know nothing. I didn't come to be rescued. I'm not helpless, and unlike you, I don't go defensive and attacking people when I first meet them.This is only my first visit to this place, and they are nice, decent people. Something I can see it's not known for you.Now, if
In front of Abbie, there were all kinds of armor, including knives, swords, guns, and also gun holsters, belts, whips, and a series of gadgets she couldn't make out by just looking at them.On her right, a full rack of trench coats, long, and not so long, hooded, in colors or black, with a slit and without.Annabelle wondered at what kind of place she had arrived, while she watched R looking intently at the wall, and then moving to the rack.Was she just picking her something so she was not cold, but it happened to be close to this little armor shop inside her store?Raquel stood in front of the rack as it drew its circles until one of the coats called her attention.It was brown, matching Annabelle's outfit perfectly.R took it from the rack and handed it over to Abbie."Please try it on, Belle Cat. I want to see if it fits you well."Annabelle went to try it and found herself in the mirror, surprised at the
They were just thrown out of the store, and pretty much forced to go to the city together.Dominik had said he could take her, but Annabelle was not happy with the idea.For her, the guy's changes were too much for her comfort, as one minute he was nice, and the next he was uncomfortable and defensive.Maybe people in that dream was a little crazy. From the start, she could say they were different, even from their clothing.She was not remotely close to London but she was very happy about that. What if they were different? They treated her like a normal human being, not a princess, or a porcelain doll.The guy looked shy now that he was alone with her, and looked almost desperately for something to say, anything, hoping that whatever it was, was not as bad as all the other things he had said before."So... We should start walking, I guess," Abbie said, and you could almost think they were in an awkwardness contest. He was glad sh
The city rose before their eyes.The cobbled paths were decorated with colored smaller and bigger pieces of what seemed to be semiprecious stones, in pink, green, brown, and blue, mixed with polished river stones, giving a beautiful effect, especially where the sun touched the streets.The palace was a huge stone structure with four towers and several thin golden chimneys that let out white steam.The streets beamed with happy, relaxed people that came and went from one store to the next one.The most usual theme was motion and the large gears that moved the machinery which allowed that transit.What surprised Annabelle the most was the toy store.It was the biggest window in downtown. Framed in golden with red thin lines, the glass allowed the passersby a peek of a fantasy world within the fantasy world.Trains in their tracks, toy monkeys, little horses, and small walking teddy bears, all made of tin, and moving around, in met
They were standing right in front of the exit of that weird and scary metallic box that took them downstairs. Annabelle looked around her as she listened to Dominik.There were big containers in front of her, almost floor to ceiling tin cylinders surrounded by thick metallic hoses."The cylinders on the right are water containers, the ones on the left are converted energy containers.They both go all the way following the wall to the end of the room, where the energy is distributed into other mechanisms, that power the city.Basically, the water transforms in steam, and move the machines that collect energy from Earth's dreamers, and visitors.Then that energy is moved and stored as needed to keep the City afloat and power it up. Everything, including the mirrors, is powered up from that energy.""Every time you mention those mirrors I get more curious.""There's no way to know what you could see there. The first time at least,
Annabelle and Dominik followed The King all the way from the steam room, where they had met the Monarch, to the hidden terrace of the Palace.Most of the walk was in silence, except when the things she saw were too interesting not to gasp for them. At some point, she was curious and had to ask Domi."I didn't believe much of what you said when you said you could bring me into the Palace. How did you meet The King!!!?""The story doesn't go that way exactly, he met me and invited me, I was still a teenager and used to work at the store, but was always walking around.I have to admit that this place never stops surprising me. So one day, I was standing in front of a portal.It wasn't my first time, but I had a difficult day, so I hesitated. He was walking around over there too and then saw me.He said, "That is not the right mood to get in, you know, right? Why don't you come with me now? It's tea time, and tea can't wait.Later y