Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Chapter one. Curiosity Killed the Cat
˗ˏˋ ───── God knows what had cursed Wren Bellamy to become the curious girl she was. It would get her in serious trouble one day, she knows this. Yet, it seemed to do little in helping the girl from sticking her nose where it didn't belong. Wren had always been a creature of habit, so what was the harm in a little curiosity here and there? Lots of harm. Very much indeed; a stupid habit it truly was. Perhaps the stupidest of the decade- no, century even! It was impressive to think of how such a girl had even lived to see her eighteenth birthday- but she did, nonetheless.
It started in the very last few days of December and that damn heater Vanity Thatcher, her flatmate, insisted on keeping for its 'sentimental value'. For the most part, said heater worked perfectly fine. With its few dents and layers of dust covering the surface, it was going strong surprisingly; running purely off of luck. That was, of course, until it stopped. Out of all days, the stupid machine had decidedly refused to continue on another day. And so, having an average temperature of five degrees celsius that week, living without any source of heat just wasn't going to work for Wren.
Leaving her without any other choice, she forced herself out of her small flat in the dead of night, in absolute freezing temperatures and snow, in prayers to find even a single shop open on christmas day. And somehow, by some miracle, there was. A little shop that sold a small variety of goods, laid on the outskirts of town. Fortunately, it only took a small walk to reach. While Wren would've liked to tell of how she reluctantly payed a great deal more than she should've for a crappy new heater that likely would only last her a month or two and then quickly returned to her flat, she couldn't. At least, not while mentioning the odd little details that followed.
The thing about Wren Bellamy is there are many things that attracted her attention, and then those that just didn't. Unfortunately, it was due to her stupidity that led her to following some random cat at two-thirty in the morning all the way down to the shore line. If Wren even tried explaining the train of thought she had in those few moments, it was sure as shite she'd be shoved into a ward for the mentally unwell. So no, there was no explanation for why she had chosen to follow that cat, she just wanted to for whatever reason occurred to her at the time.
And damn that stupid cat for keeping her out in the cold longer than Wren ought to have been in the first place. Even through the thick layered on clothes, the chill crept in causing Wren to shiver all the same. All feeling in her fingertips had long ago been lost while the prickly sensation of needles bit at her cheeks to numb the skin. It wouldn't have been long before hypothermia set in or the likelihood of freezing to death if she continued to stay out any further.
Wren had been much too ready to turn around out of pure desperation, but the moment she turned her head back for one last look-a shape barely visible through the darkness caught her eye. At first, it looked like a fallen tree trunk as it certainly had the appearance and shape, probably washed ashore by the waves, but once put into perspective, it morphed into something quite a bit more unsettling than a simple log. And standing there, alone in freezing temperatures, a pang of dread shot through her.
