Wanderer's Refuge

Wanderer's Refuge, chapter 1: Departure

This is a story about a family, not a bloodline, not a union officiated by the state, but just a group of people sharing their lives and experiences in such a way that their presence and company gave each other a powerful sense of safety and belonging.

The story may start at the door to a building called "St. Evans' house for wayward children", with a white haired, pale blue-eyed baby in a basket, on the basket was a note, "her name is Agatha Clarke, the doctor said she would never be able to walk, I am so sorry."

The girl was taken in, and the orphanage took care of her, in a way that she wouldn't have described as either good or bad, but certainly lonely and highly regulated. When a subtly glowing mark appeared on Agatha's left temple, changing from time to time, the nuns told her everyone had those somewhere on their body, but it was "rude" and "uncouth" to have it showing, so she was instructed to keep her hair long to keep it discrete.

Agatha Clarke had a quiet and still childhood, she was carried everyday from the girls' shared bedroom to the classroom. But during recess, unable to play with the other children who wanted to run around, she preferred to stay in the classroom, which also functioned as a library, both due to her interest in storybooks and wanting to cause as little trouble to her caretakers as possible.

The only break in that quiet was the regular noise and rattle from the adjacent train station, while most other youths in the dorm found it loud and annoying, seeing the trains from her window enraptured the young Agatha, she would often daydream about taking one of those and going anywhere she wished, or even places she could barely imagine from her dimly lit room, a fascination with the inner workings of those wonderful machines joined her love of fairytales and stories like that of Rapunzel and before she was 10, Agatha could draw a detailed diagram of a boiler room on her own.

On sundays, Agatha was left for a few minutes outside to "take in some sun rays", one fateful day when she was thirteen, she met a person from the outside for the first time, someone her age, even.

"H-hi..." a stranger put her hand out towards Agatha, "I-I'm a girl!" she had an intense expression on her face, not aggressive, just very focused.

"Hello, erm... so am I." answered the girl, a little confused about the greeting, did everyone outside the orphanage introduce themselves by stating their gender? Nevertheless, she was still excited by the prospect of meeting someone new, "my name's Agatha Clarke, what's yours?"

"Ursa Martin" the girl with wild black hair said, some tension leaving her body as she casually sat next to Agatha on the bench, still, she did stutter a bit when she said"I like your hair."

The girls talked on the bench for as long as Agatha could stay. First, Agatha asked the outsider about her life, what she did for fun, what the world was like, Ursa thought the world was an angry place, where bad people would always try to hurt you and you had to be ready, but that just made finding people you could trust even more important, she said she liked exploring the town, going around alleys and rooftops and finding the most hidden places she could keep to herself. Next, it was the white-haired girl's turn to speak about herself, but she mostly kept to what she knew about machinery and fantasy. Though Ursa left in a hurry when she saw the nun coming to pick her new friend up, she promised they'd meet again.

They met up again next week, and the week after that, it became a tradition of sorts, every Sunday they would sit down and talk about their lives, their tastes, their fears, Agatha found joy in the bravery and the wild stories of her new friend, and Ursa admired the gentle kindness and wonder in Agatha's eyes. In about a month Agatha told her friend about having already read every book in the library that interested her, and the next week Ursa just "happened" to find a few books to bring to her as a gift, something she would do often in the years thereafter. In one of them, a book of legends, supposedly from centuries in the past, the white-haired girl found drawings similar to the mark on her temple, the stories talked about those markings being a reflection of the person's soul, and they would change during childhood but become more fixed as development advanced.