Centre of the Storm

Chapter One: The Flickering Lights

A/N: I don't really know if there's any disclaimers tbh, or any trigger warnings. There will be some mild violence. Happy reading and don't forget to vote haha!

My feet pounded against the sidewalk as my long hair finally broke free from the loose ponytail and flew behind me, hitting my back as I hurtled along the pavement. The wind whooshed in my ears and my heart beat against my ribcage as I forced myself to run faster then I ever had before, as I left the sidewalk and took towards the wooded area ahead.

My lungs burned and my muscles ached, but I couldn't stop now, I had to go faster. But there was something pressing that I could no longer ignore.

My body wasn't going to be able to take it for long and I was soon going to begin to slow down. This time I wasn't going to be able to escape. I felt my vision blurring, and before I knew it I had stumbled over a root, or maybe it was a rock or a fallen branch, I didn't know.

What I did know was that I, unable to regain my footing, fell, and plummeted down a steep ravine.

There were sixty-eight holes in the ceiling of my room. Not bullet holes or anything like that, just those little dots that some ceilings have.

It depressed me that I had reached the point in my life of such extreme boredom that I had to subject myself to counting the holes in my ceiling.

But there wasn't really anything else I could do, as another violent storm raged outside. It was the second this month.

Rain pattered in an aggressive way against my small window. At least now I didn't have to clean it.

I wished i could go down to the pond, but I would probably drown in the rain or get blown away by the wind. It was a funny image, thinking about the wind just picking me up and carrying me away.

The pond was on the other side of the building, behind some of the dying trees. I went their all the time, sometimes to read, sometimes just to think. Sometimes I would put my hands in the cool water and feel for signs of marine life. It was pretty much my safe space.

I heaved a sigh and rolled over on my bed, wishing I had something to distract myself with. There wasn't really anything. My room was basically empty except for a nightstand with a half empty cup of water, and a few books lying around the room. A hand mirror lay on the ground almost under my bed. It was cracked so I barely used it.

I pulled it up and looked into it, checking to see if I looked good, I usually did. It sounded conceited, but I had never seen anything wrong with knowing I was pretty. It wasn't like I thought I was better than others because of it. I just knew that I was. But I did have the strange obsession with checking and making sure every few hours.

Maybe it was boredom. Maybe I took pride in how I looked. Maybe I just wanted to look good in case a handsome prince would come and sweep me away, like every other girl here wanted. Or in my case, a princess.

I looked into the mirror, and found that I looked fine, as I'd expected. Nothing out of the ordinary looked back at me. Just brown eyes, olive skin, which was clear to my relief, and long, thick dark hair framing my face. I sighed and put it back under my bed, so I wouldn't be confused as where to find it the next time I looked for it.

We were barely allowed any possessions, so I could add that to the list of reasons I wished I was at a different orphanage. Or that I wasn't at an orphanage at all. But that was a common dream around

Not a lot of countries in the world could be considered wealthy and safe, and a lot of people end up leaving their kids behind, either from the cost of raising them, or from an early death. I wasn't sure when the world had started looking so bleak. Before I was born, definitely.

It wasn't like there'd been a catastrophic event that had shattered our previous world and sent us spiralling. From what I knew, it had happened slowly, resources becoming harder to harvest and therefore becoming more expensive, every last cent of the government's money going to a desperate attempt to help the climate, which had fixed some things, and worsened others.

But I didn't know a lot of specifics. We weren't told a lot about what happened outside of the orphanage.

I was hungry, but we had already had dinner, so there probably wasn't any food left. I could sneak down to the cafeteria and try to steal some snacks, but the rumour was, hidden cameras had been put up to catch people if they did that.

It was probably the staff that started it, they could barely afford electricity so I doubted they could afford cameras.

On that note, the lights flickered. This was the fifteenth time in the last hour, a number which I'd also forced myself to count, if nothing but for my own sanity.

I groaned and rolled onto my back, once again staring at the stupid grey ceiling, with its stupid sixty-eight holes. Why did people do that? Did they think it looked good? It didn't! It looked horrible and trashy. For some reason, the design of my ceiling was really starting to piss me off.

The lights started flickering again, non-stop. I felt frustration build up inside me. "Stop!" I yelled, like I expected it to hear my demand and cater to it. I winced at the volume of my voice, hoping no one had heard. The flickering cut off so abruptly it seemed almost like it froze.

That was convenient. Some people might think it was weird, but the lights did that a lot. They could never decide if they wanted to be on or off, so they flickered. Then they decided they didn't want to flicker after all. I was used to it.

But that was when I noticed something I couldn't explain.

When I had yelled, the storm had stopped too. From what I could see out of my window, the raindrops had frozen in mid-air, the wind was no longer howling, and the trees stood still.