Credits:theobscuritywrites
The story of how I met Alma Lefay Peregine may seem to most like a fantastical and entirely untrue tale. I am sure many of you here today will roll your eyes and dismiss me as someone completely devoid of logic and any sense of reality once my story has concluded but that doesn't matter. What matters is that this is our story, and that it is true.
So I will attempt, to the best of my recollection to tell you how it all came to be. I would like to be asked for forgiveness for any lapses in judgement as time does take a toll on the memory and in the naïveté of my youth and eagerness I lacked the foresight to properly journal my experiences beyond the usual diary entries of an emotional and curious youth.
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I knew of Alma Peregrine long before I ever met her. She was the fantastical heroine of my youth existing in the bedtime stories told by my grandmother. My grandmother used to tell me stories of the peculiar, which at the time I considered a wonderful production of her imagination; she was after all a writer; and as much as I was a dreamer I was also convinced by the many friends and teachers I told her tales to that no such thing existed.
At the tender age of six I was already entirely enamored with the woman. I would beg my grandmother for more stories about her and when I had depleted her supply and she had no more to tell I would make her tell my favorite ones over and over until I had memorized every word of them. And by the age of ten I had decided that I would one day meet and marry her.
Of course as I matured, I realized that Alma Peregrine if she had ever even existed would; firstly, probably be at least 100 years old by now and; two, was likely nothing like the woman from my grandmothers stories because no woman could actually freeze time, much less turn into a bird.
By the time I was 14 I had left behind my grandmother's tales and had instead turned my mind to more practical things, such as surviving high school and outgrowing my reputation as a delusional dreamer, brought about by my claims of the figures from my childhood stories being real and some intangible difference between my peers and myself.
It wasn't until my 18th birthday that I understood why.
