Tale of Adalira [Working Title]

Chapter 1: Once upon a time

Once upon a time, in a world both ethereal and earthly, there lived a fallen man and his weary wife. They went by the names of Oliver and Wendy. It is said that at one time, prior to The Great Incident, they bathed in pools of gold. You should know however, the details of that period, including the Incident itself, will not be discussed here—those belong to the pages of another story entirely, and if you're interested in that one, you'll have to close this one up and go find it. Now, should you have decided to keep your eyes on this page, you will shortly find you have read yourself into the home of a couple that has but a few pieces of gold to rub together. I urge you not to waste your energy feeling alarmed, nor piteous, for this is the least of their troubles, and, if you fritter away your energy now, you'll have rotten luck making it through when things truly get tough.

And so begins our tale, amidst the setting sun of a cool winter's evening, the first of which Oliver and Wendy had ever experienced as parents, the first of which Scarlet, the newborn baby herself, had ever experienced, period. Though she was nothing more than a warm, pink bundle at the time, it is her that we must devote our attention to now as we meet our characters. For it is with her that it all began.

"Uchht," Wendy grunted kicking off her torn shoes. Balancing Scarlet in one arm, she pulled up the thin, greying socks that had fallen past her ankles and bunched midway down her foot on the walk home. Turning around, she looked for Oliver, sighing when she spotted him.

He was only turning off the road and onto the long driveway now, taking his time as he was prone to doing. He was what one may call a "dilly-dallier." No pebble in his path went un-kicked, nor any weed un-plucked. It wasn't that he was particularly fascinated by nature and its remnants; it was more that he was apt to getting caught up in his own mind, which had the effect of making his legs move slower. He'd once tried to explain this to Wendy, tried to illustrate to her how the more colourful the narrative that played out in his head, the more engulfing and debilitating it was. But she hadn't understood. And after a few more tries that led to nothing more than variations of the response "snap out of it," he gave up trying to explain entirely.

If only Wendy had seen what her husband was seeing in this moment, perhaps she would've been more sympathetic. For what Oliver was seeing was none other than the fear all new parents felt. That is, Scarlet sitting in a shabby crib in a dark room, abandoned and alone, eyes drenched and dripping, utterly helpless. But because she wasn't capable of reading his mind, and she was too tired to ask, and because he was too in the thick of it to share, they lived in their own bubbles for these few minutes, none being of any help to the other.

It's much too bad Oliver didn't know shaking his head would do nothing for clearing his mind—it could have saved him the headache he would feel later on that night from all the rattling. Perhaps if he'd been paying closer attention, he could have realized this; he may have even been able to see that head-shaking really only accomplished one thing: aggravating his imagination, darkening it with each tremble. But that would've meant being self-aware, and indeed, this is the trouble with types like Oliver, and Scarlet as we will come to see: they are most often not. Instead, they are distracted by their own thoughts, so much so that it is not uncommon for them to allow themselves to fall down the darkest of rabbit holes, not noticing they've even taken a tumble until hitting the rocky bottom.

"Ahem," Wendy cleared her throat.

Oliver jumped. He hadn't seen her, nor Scarlet that was staring back at him wide-eyed from her arms. What happened next was not a kind reaction but a truthful one. His jaw slackened and fell apart while his eyes widened. He had been expecting to see the face of his wife in all her "post-pregnancy glow" glory, but Wendy looked awful.