Silent Words

Meet Augustine Rivers

Augustine Rivers' life started out normal all things considered. With her mother being a witch and father a shifter, it was all rather...human. Then one day she came home to a scene that years later, still haunts her.

Four in total, the wolves were vicious and out for nothing less then their deaths. Augustine had run forward to help rather than running away like her mother cried out for her to do. Her father had no chance to shift and was significantly outmatched as human, though that didn't stop him from standing between the wolves and his family. Her mother drew her power in an attempt to strike the wolves, even took one down, before they attacked as a group. Another went down, before the wolves struck down her parents, quick and mercilessly. Augustine was frozen. She wanted to help, had rushed forward to do so, but...what could she do? The dark wolves were efficient and ruthless. She watched as they tore at her parents, hazel eyes wide and unblinking, chest hurting and breath scarce. Then they turned to her. It was clear they expected her to be a quick death. As the midnight black wolf stalked towards her the dark brown wolf remaining turned its back to them, instead tending to his fallen brothers, as if to check if they still lived. Augustine quickly turned her tear filled gaze back to the black wolf when he growled viciously at her.

If you were to ask her what had happened beyond that point, she honestly couldn't tell you much. One moment her watched with crystal clear clarity as her parents were brutally killed, the next she was crouched beside their bodies, fingers brushing their eyes closed, with tears falling freely. She wasn't completely clueless, however. Even sitting there numb, she could feel the blood oozing from the wound, or rather wounds, on her back and the harsh pain in her throat.

It was where she was found not even a few moments later, eyes staring blankly, hands shaking, breath short, and blood covering her almost from head to toe. She didn't react to the officers at the scene, ignored their calls and calming claims...until one of them touched her. She found that when she started screaming she couldn't stop. The tears that had stopped at one point were now back and streaming like a waterfall. She was truly broken.

When she awoke, Augustine didn't know where she was, how she got there, and honestly didn't care. She was back to her silent blank staring. Doctors and friends had come and gone, her aunt and uncle had been called, but none could get her talking. It was later written off as shock and that she would eventually talk when she was ready but never did she speak a word. The four shoulder to hip cuts were not the only wounds she sustained, it was simply the only ones visible. Her voice, or there lack of, however was her payment. The cost of using her magic in such a brutal way that killed the remaining two wolves. The cuts were a physical reminder of that day, but her painful silence was so much more. A reminder of her parents, their deaths...her failure to save them.

They all claim she had nothing to blame herself for, claimed to know how she feels or felt, says she "was only a kid at 14, that there was nothing she could have done", but Augustine knew better. Knew just what she could have done. Her parents have taught her how to take care of herself afterall. Hell she had taken on the remaining wolves on her own...but she was too late. She had hesitated, had frozen up and her parents paid the price.

Despite the loss of her voice and death of her parents, though, life soon continued on as normal, to her utter dismay. She wished it not so, but soon she too moved on. Didn't forget, but moved on. She continued practicing her magic, and reading the many books that had been recovered from her father's library, but no longer was she haunted by nightmares. Not as often at least. Soon the quiet, stoic' girl graduated from high school.

She got accepted to her college of choice, Medical Harvard University, with a scholarship that made it actually possible to attend. Augustine even made a friend within her first month there, a much welcomed change to her past experience with people.

In Boston no one knew her name, her parents, or her past. They didn't care. To them she was but another face, another person that they passed everyday on campus. And sure there was always that one person that didn't like how she looked, or how she didn't speak a word to them, but with a new place came a new her. She refused to let people do and say what they like to her. The scared little girl was no more and this new her was here to stay.