Raven & The Angel

Chapter 12 - Angelina

Angelina was the daughter of Ralph and Eve Goodness.  Ralph was a pioneering scientist and Eve a herbal remedist.  For many years after they first married they had tried and failed to conceive a child.  Eventually, Professor Goodness began to look to science to answer their desperate prayers for a baby.

After several years of experimenting with his and Eve's DNA, Ralph finally hit upon a formula that did indeed produce a healthy embryo - and this being decades before such advances in science were officially documented. As his experiments were 'unofficial' there was no way for him to implant the embryo in Eve for a natural gestation and birth.  So, their precious baby was painstakingly developed in test tubes and several custom designed synthetic wombs until it was ready to spring into life on Earth.

And so was born a beautiful baby girl that Eve immediately christened Angelina - Angelina Goodness.

Angelina Goodness - really? Angelina, from a very early, age took an instant dislike to her name.  How could her parents inflict such a burden on her. From her first day in school she became the target of ridicule. From her first day in school Angelina vowed not to live up to her name.  She got into constant arguments and fights.  The school headmistress had given Angelina her own chair in her office on the basis that she 'visited' so often.

"Angelina, come in, again..." sighed Miss Nuttall. "What have you been up to this time?"
"It isn't me Miss - it's them. They just won't leave me alone. They call me names and pick fights.  Well, I'm sick of them and if I have to fight them all to shut 'em up I will!" scowled Angelina with her arms folded across her chest.

Miss Nuttall had a real soft spot for this very clever little urchin.  Angelina did have a lot to contend with having the name she did, but that wasn't all.  Her parents were known in town for being rather... excentric.  Her father had been a renowned scientist, but was criticised for his unconventional experiments and uncontrolled pushing of boundaries.  He was commonly referred to as the mad professor.  Her mother, Eve, was a lovely lady but what one would describe as a little 'dizzy'.  She loved nature and the remedies it could provide, always studying long forgotten ancient cures and medicines.  This whole combination spelled an unintentional childhood of misery for little Angelina.

Something her parents hadn't bargained for were one or two "...slight irregularities..."  with Angelina's abilities, as Ralph put it.  For starters Angelina was incredibly intelligent - not surprising you might think, with a brilliant scientist as a father and an exceptionally talented herbalist as a mother.  But Angelina defied belief. She could recite the periodic table from the age of six - having just sat watching her father's work in his lab - he hadn't taught her as such, she just picked it up. Her ability to understand what experiments her father was working on was incredible. Add to that her grasp of ingredients for medicines and cures using all natural elements, was phenomenal by the time she reached seven years old. Of course, her parents were delighted, seemingly completely oblivious to that fact that Angelina's intelligence was not normal for a child of her age.  They fed Angelina's huge appetite for knowledge, realising she was a natural genius and conveniently forgetting the 'slight irregularities' compared to other children of her age and indeed much older.

One of the many downsides of having a scientist for a father and a devoted (but rather dizzy) remedist for a mother was that Angelina would often spend days at a time alone.  Her parents, lost in one great experiment or another, lost track of time and wouldn't be seen for days.  Angelina soon learned to fend for herself and not to disturb them - just in case she interrupted one of them at a breakthrough moment, as she knew how devastated they would be and how sad she would be for them if yet another experiment failed.

Throughout her childhood, Angelina's only true friend and companion was her pet goat Penfold and even he was out of the ordinary.  Yet another of her father's experiments, Penfold was supposed to be a miniature pony that he wanted to 'create' for his daughter's fifth birthday.  Somehow, he ended up as a Pygmy goat, who also had one or two slight 'irregularities'.  For one, Penfold didn't age.  He was created as a young adult and has remained so ever since. There was also absolutely no sign at all that he would ever die. But the most incredible 'irregularity' was Penfold's human-like brain. With a perfect understanding of the English language, as well as several others including Russian and Arabic, his brain power surpassed any human capacity to absorb knowledge.  The only thing he never learned to do was talk and Ralph suspected this was more Penfold's own choice rather than any physical or intellectual limitation.

There were a few more skills that Angelina had too, that she instinctively kept to herself.  For one, she had perfect night vision and would often sneak out at night to chase rabbits and follow deer in the nearby woods, just outside town.  There was also the gift of premonition.  If something epic was about to happen then Angelina would be drawn to it.  Unfortunately she had no idea what it might turn out to be, but that was part of the excitement for her.  The downside to the premonitions were the excruciatingly painful headaches.  At first she hadn't realised the connection, but as she got older Angelina knew that they signified something big.  If she ignored the headaches, then she would either hear reports about something soon after, or the event would come knocking on her parents door in the guise of a distraught neighbour who had had some terrible news, or an official looking person requesting the specialist help of one of her parents.

And so it was, when Angelina was 19 years old, that she had the worst headache she had ever remembered.  Something big was about to happen...