Emerald Scales

Chapter One - London Swarm

London is such a busy, flustered place. With its swarms of Londoners, all knowing the daily game plan of how busy it is, or the tourists that are only just getting their bearings, experiencing what England’s grand capitol is really like.     The railways and mothers desperately struggling to juggle their shopping from a day at the city centre, with five plastic logo branded bags in her straining left hand, and a whining, ungrateful toddler clinging on the other. His commotion echoing off of the walls, attracting the attention of on-looking young couples, threatening the chance of them signing up to the dreadful life of parenthood. Older couples remembering that time in their life when they too brought up their own little, glossy eyed, adventurous off-spring, or the sheer memory of the drastic consequences that would have happened if they even thought of acting like that in public with their parents when they were young.

    However, when you look closely; squint through the confusion of the land. Peel away the thriving businesses and the companies that are discussing the latest cutbacks on the profits and sales of their products and services. Filter the densely polluted air that consumes the roads, the red double Decker London busses dropping off businessmen and your regular London citizen. Shoo away the demanding population, simultaneously weaving through the mass of weather prepared bodies and you will reveal something that isn’t often mentioned when you speak of the United Kingdoms capitol.

The countryside.

Miles and miles of a thick emerald green carpet meets your feet as you step foot at the centuries old landscape, hills, rapid drops. Snaking, glistening water being gently churned by sharp rocks resisting the clear waters power and force, easing away at their grip on the streams moss, rock and plant encrusted bed.     The grand walls sectioning the green carpet made up of centuries old gray, brown, silver and black rocks, each misshaped, non of the two alike, carefully and skilfully placed together. On their own, they wouldn’t stand a chance of remaining upright, combined with their jiggered edges and their round, wind sculptured  surfaces. However, together , they coordinate with one another, constructing a strong barrier from the current field of grass, to the crops that steadily but naturally grow, being forced to lean in the opposite direction to the dominating hands of the all mighty gusts of British wind.

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The worn down, rubber soles of her boots made light, well controlled impact with the muddied, rain dampened rocks. Hands playing with the inside of her black jacket pockets that clutched her insulated body -protecting her from the British weather - as she casually strolled to her usual spot, alone.

Her jacket reflected the white light that was willingly escaping from the grey clouds that hung their sorry spirits up high in plain sight, as they blocked the pastel blue sky above her.

    Her hair, only catching a glimpse of the glow, blew behind her in long, twisting, jet-black strands.     She never really liked her hair tied up, but the wind insisted on humouring itself to see her struggle as her hair complied with the winds power as it suddenly whipped her in the face.

Black and white, two colours that are completely opposite to each other, clearly stated where they stand when you look at Seraphine Hughes.

    Dressed in all black, but her skin as pale as the moon, ghostly white. Inhuman, as her so called friends put it at her old school, she hadn’t been to a school since her last encounter with her parents.

Fourteen years of age, her parents abandoned her immediately when she was eight, she had been going it alone for six years, well not precisely, she had a pet anaconda, had it ever since it was hatched.      Seraphine grew to love him, although she could never come up with a name for the creature ; she always thought no name would go to good use when it came to her parents, she knew it would slip out, and they despised snakes.

    She opened the door of the creaking house, it was truly a sight that you wouldn’t plan living on seeing; smashed windows, broken floorboards, allowing the lower floor to be seen, one false move and you will plummet to the splintered ground below, the moss had overtaken the back wall, ivory gripped at the front of the old wooden porch; which its roof had cracked and with the water allowing it to rot away, it had collapsed in, hanging on thin strips of straining oak, infested with woodworm.    Seraphine didn’t care, to her this was home, it had to be.

She was on her own, she was free to do whatever she pleased, not a care in the world, no one to hold you back, no one demanding for you to follow the rules. But the only thing that made Seraphine uneasy was the  fact that she didn’t have one thing that most, if not all teenagers have to help them grow up, to help them survive in the scary world that she was brought into, to guide her to the rights, to show her the difference between that and wrongs.

Parents.