The Rogue World Of Dostira: E.D

A Cup of Tea

Audrey Calora Larson always thought she was a plain sort of girl, and almost everyone who knew her would agree. Not one thing about her porcelain face was in any way peculiar or memorable. The brown freckles on her cheeks were so faint that from a distance you could not see them at all. Her wavy brown hair was always kept at the same long length ever since she was a child and whenever the thought of doing something different with her appearance crossed her mind, she would talk herself out of it in less than a minute. She wore the same cream coloured sweater and blue jeans almost everywhere she went, and often felt that if she stood really still then she could perhaps blend into her surroundings and disappear entirely.

The one and only peculiar thing about her was her middle name. Her mother always gave a different answer as to what it meant and where it came from, so after a while she stopped asking and liked to pretend it was something more simple like 'Claire' or 'Carrie'. She would find it an insult for anyone to mention the name 'Calora' when addressing her, the wrinkled old women that would often pass her house on their slow morning walks being the only ones exempt from a glare for doing so. There wasn't much in her life that would dissuade her belief that she was completely insignificant. Her mundane routine and soulless surroundings became a comfortable cage, and one she had no intention of leaving anytime soon. However, while she often imagined a life more grand than the one she was currently living, reality often rained down and washed away all those silly daydreams whenever she took a step outside and into her hometown of Ferdon.

Now, how to describe Ferdon; a small spiritless town with an even smaller population, located in the North East of England in the County Durham. Audrey once called it "a miserable excuse for a home" while protesting how she preferred the coastal village of Seaham that was over an hour drive away. In Ferdon everything looked as if it was once painted in bright colours and then slowly allowed to fade into a dismal shade. It seemed that any vivid hue was just an echo, and one that poorly imitated the splendour of the outside world that was just out of reach.

Nevertheless, Ferdon was Audrey's home whether she liked it or not.

She had just turned sixteen and, like any other teenager, she despised how most of the hours in her days were spent attending Ferdon Comprehensive School. When she was only eleven, she begun declaring that the notion of making a person go somewhere they didn't want to was a form of abuse and therefore infringed on her human rights — her mother has since kept her father's old study locked and his old revolutionary texts hidden away. She would huff that such thoughts held in those books were "complete nonsense and irrelevant to the every day life of an ordinary eleven year old girl". This remark didn't refrain Audrey from her going ons, and her mother didn't have the time nor the patience to continue arguing with her. Therefore, Audrey was allowed to skip school twice every week. On Monday's, because she hated how the day started with well-being club and ending with algebra, and on Thursday's, because the days started with algebra and ended with an extra hour of well-being club. At first her mother would answer the frequent phone calls from the school's principle in a sincere apologetic manner, making excuses for her daughters absence, but after a few years she stopped answering and so they stopping calling. Ferdon Comprehensive being a school with meagre funding, filled with pupils whose dreams and aspirations would often die to make enough room for whatever dull career their families and the town required, was not too concerned with the scattered attendance of one typical girl.

It was a cloudy Monday morning and Audrey was lightly tapping her fingers on the wooden kitchen bench, staring at an old rusty toaster in front of her. With her stomach making an awful gurgling noise, her fingers drummed against the bench a little harder than before.

"Audrey please remember to look out for the post man today!" her mother called out from the other room.

Mrs Larson, or Lizzie Larson as she prefers, was just as short as her daughter. Her dark brown hair made her skin appear pale while her usual hairstyle of an untidy bob aged her. She had a thin nose that stretched out in a shape that was more alike to the snout of a greyhound rather than a human, and large brown eyes that were always covered by dirty glasses with a blue frame. It has always been just the two of them ever since Audrey's father passed away when she was too little to remember. Whenever anyone, even Audrey, asked about Mr Larson the response from Lizzie was always something along the lines of; "that man was strange and somewhat sublime, but no father at all".