At first Ethel thought she was hallucinating, but later on the woman introduced herself as Miss Bunting.
She was something called an ymbryne, a sort of bird-lady that could manipulate time.
Ethel believed her. Other people may have thought her crazy that she believed a woman that claimed to be supernatural and that she has just met in the depth of a dark forest, but other people would also think turning into a cat was crazy. Therefore for Ethel it seemed somewhat logical, right even, that there were other people that could do something... abnormal.
Later on Ethel would describe the moment she met Miss Bunting as life changing.
Miss Bunting ran a school, an academy as she explained, of ymbrynes in training, along with a fellow ymbryne Miss Avocet. But since there weren't that many ymbrynes the academy also accepted other sorts of peculiars. That's what they all were. Peculiar people.
And as Miss Bunting offered Ethel a place at the academy, she accepted. Ethel was ready to try and let go of her old live. Little did she know she indeed left everything of her old world behind.
It was raining again, Ethel noticed as she looked outside the carriage she and Miss Bunting were sitting in. They had travelled for a few days already and it was raining a lot lately, truly not the best weather for moving. Currently they were on their way to Derbyshire, where the academy was located.
"Very well, that's our stop", Miss Bunting suddenly said. Ethel looked at her. They were standing on a field in the middle of nowhere. And it was raining. Ethel hated rain. That couldn't be their destination and surely Derbyshire wasn't that far away?
"Don't look at me like that", Miss Bunting said as she catched Ethel staring at her like she had gone crazy, "we're right, trust me".
And that was how they landed soaked from head to toe in the middle of a forest. Again. It was terrible enough that it was raining, but was it really necessary to go into a deep, wet forest? Apparently.
"And here we are. Not the best loop entrance there is, but it's doing the job just fine."
"Umm, Miss Bunting? That is a tree. Like all of the other thousand trees here. And if you allow the question, but what is a loop entrance?" Ethel was confused. Just as she thought she was catching up with everything, there was another corner of events.
"It's an entrance to time loops of course. Haven't I told you about it? I thought I mentioned it. Well, we ymbrynes are able to manipulate time in form of time loops. They contain the last 24 hours of a day and after that the day repeats all over again. You will never get any older and you are save from the outside world. As for the loop entrance. It must be hidden or normal, non-peculiar people would find it and would get suspicious. And we don't want that, do we?"
Ethel kept silent, processing the new information. It made sense. Now that she thought about it, the tree didn't seem so normal as she had thought at first. It was big and old and most important: there were actually two trees, grown together and in the middle, where they met, there was a hole barely big enough that an adult could fit through it. There was something magical about it. No, not magical, Ethel thought. Something peculiar.
Happy new year!!! 🎉
Sorry for letting you wait so long, I'm feeling guilty 😬
Anyway, I hope you liked the chapter. Feel free to leave some constructive feedback (that would really be nice).
Have a wonderful morning/day/night!
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Travel Through Time // a MPHFPC fanfiction
FanfictionEthel never was normal. She was what her parents would call an individual. She was what other people would call a freak. You could say she was very cat-like. Or you could just say she was truly peculiar. A prequel to Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculi...
