When her parents had their second child, Lila felt dead, tossed aside, unsurprised and disappointed in them for creating another life to ruin as callouslessly as they had done to her own.
She was left in a perpetual state of mourning over the person that she could have been, and all the things that she had done, all the thoughts, hopes and dreams that she had denied herself, and now she was being thrust into the position for mourning for another person.
Life wasn't fair.
The new baby was a strange new addition, over ten years younger than her, and usually a smiling, giggling, messy, vomit fountain, the child seemed to automatically burst into tears as soon as Lila entered her sight of vision.
After the first few times that she had done so in reaction to Lila's face, Lila vowed to simply exist around her new sister, never directly interracting, but just doing enough to avoid bein yelled at for her mother.
The cries of her sister never grated o
It was otherwise another innocuous day as Lila walked home from school, kicking along sticks on the path with her school shoes and feeling sick to her stomach as she kept on going.The sun was beginning to set under the horizon, shining out a bright, vivid gold, lighting up the both the trees behind Lila, and the shallow ditch that ran concurrently with the path, following it for a little while before abruptly disappearing, the sunken ground which made it rising for no apparent reason to become flat and level with the path.It was currently autumn, with various piles of rotting leaves filling up the hole in the Earth, and not particularly ideal to jump into and pretend that you were in a trench. That experience was reserved for only a few days in the summer - days that had decidedly passed a while ago.Lila was reminded, by the sight, of several assesments that she had due on the Monday, after the weekend, on History, French, and Computer Science to complete ove
Lila didn't see the strangers for several days, before abruptly catching their reflection in the muddy puddle of the School Maths Yard, appropriately named after all the maths classrooms that overlooked it.The library wouldn't open for several tens of minutes, and Lila, already finished her bought lunch of a pasta pot and a square flapjack which was mostly uncooked with large, inexcusable clumps of butter sitting throughout the whole structure, with only one particular corner of the dessert containing any sweetness, the rest of the supposed, alleged treat tasting worse than damp cardboard.She had pulled out her borrowed book, one of the 'How to Train your Dragon' series that she knew would end with a cliffhanger, just like the last one, by the sheer virtue of needing the series to keep selling and keep as many readers as possible to keep spending money.Honestly, she wasn't even angry at the publisher, or the author.She only really fe
"We saw you at the school."Lila pointedly did not turn around as she kept walking back home, only a few months after the strange week when she had sent the strangers to the town the long way and then had run from them at the school."Lila Pavington."She continued marching back on the path back home, keeping her umbrella over her head and angling it to cover most of her back and bag, trying to obscure as most of as her body as she could, regretting that she had decided to wear a skirt together, after seeing a cloudless sky in the morning sun and believing that summer had finally arrived."You can't ignore us."The trench to the side of Lila had filled up with water, the excess liquid bubbling over the sides and splashing out onto the path in thick, murky rivulets that were saturated in loose mud and soil, smelling as foul as it looked, while simultaneously holding at least some charm compared to the menace of a man that was currently following her
"Why are you following me?" Lila asked the stranger behind her, swivelling around on her heels, digging through the mud to face him, twirling around her umbrella as she did so.If necessary, she could use the item as a bat, and maybe one of the spines, that stuck out, could be used to poke an eye out, if she got lucky that is.Or maybe unlucky.The man paused on his walk suddenly, an expression of surpise and increduality obvious on his face, from the raised eye brows to the slightly slacked jaw that left his mouth hanging wide open and receptive to any wandering, curious flies.Quickly, almost as if he could read Lila's thoughts, he composed himself to look as professional as he possibly could.This time, the idiot was dressed in a waterproof coat and lacking the excessive winter wear from before, but had, decidedly unsensibly, gone for the choice of wearing shorts and trainers, the marks of the bad decision obvious as the mud from the roads, path
"Lila Pavington! When you were young, you met a time traveller under the name of Jasper Red. He materialised within the area surrounded by cliffs behind your home. You were the one to find him, and you were heavily involved with his care as he recovered in your timeline. Has all that I have so far stated been correct so far?"From where she cowered on the floor, Lila scrambled backwards, slipping further on the mud on her attempts to get away and establish some distance between her and the man that was much more to the liking of her already fraying sanity.Her became matted down with mud and rainwater, her entire blazer and shirt collar being dyed an ugly, messy brown from the path below her.Kicking forwards to propell herself backwards and only dredging up more mud to mess up her school uniform, she finally was able to adequately keep herself out of potential striking distance between her and the man.Her entire body shook and was rendered a wobbly and
The man jumped out of the way of the umbrella smoothly as if he were anticipating the motion all along, his legs springing outwards to propell his body away in a smooth arch that left little to be desired.Lila let her body pull back away, as soon as she had completed her attack with the umbrella, bending her knees and body slightly forwards while keeping her makeshift weapon parallel with her chest, hands re-wrapping themselves over the handle, waiting for another opportunity to strike."Nice swing," the man complemented Lila, giving out a small smirk.Suddenly, the feeling of something being extremely wrong about the situation washed over Lila.She scanned through her memories quickly, trying to run through all the information that she had learned from the man, from his clothing style to where she had seen him walk to what he had ever said to her.The realisation and the rememberance that the man had a friend came upon her and doused her like a b
"Well get inside! My house is already cold enough as it is! And by the way, somebody left a message for you, a few weeks ago!"Mrs Holmes, to Lila in that moment, was simultaneously a God send and a harbinger of evil.Her full head of silver hair shone in the light, her beige cardigan looking perfectly calibrated to let her ride out the temperature and the weather comfortably and her walking stick currently standing proud on a dry part of her kitchen floor, the back door wide open for Lila, as if she had been expecting Lila to arrive around now.Feeling slightly guilty for tracking muddy fooprints in the temperamental old lady's kitchen, Lila decided to at leas take off her shoes and socks to spare her saviour's carpet from any kind of irreparable and irreversable damage.She knew the layout of the house well from multiple stays with the old woman and her comparatively kind and laid back husband who was happy to let his wife rage at whatever minutia she w
The water of the warm shower, pouring down Lila's tired and aching body, was absolutely luxurious. It felt like an over indulgence that felt a lot more expensive than it actually was.Lila, after spending too many nights at the Holmes House, had her own separate little basket in the bathroom for her own toiletries and essentials.The bathroom itself was covered in a slate grey colour, tiles on the floor and on the walls, the ceiling left a bare white with one central light bulb, hanging down from the centre. The toilet, sink, and bath were mercifully left a white colour, to avoid blending in, a window sitting just over the mirror which looked down into the sink from the wall, with a little cabinet off to the side next to the complex which housed each of the baskets for everybody.The shower and bath were cordened off by a slate grey shower curtain which held the power of multiple squares gathered together in a grid travelling diagnolly.