The Solstice Daughters

chapter 1

TRIAL 1

        day zero

USUALLY, 

when a teenage girl goes to bed at four a.m on a Friday night she expects to wake up with unruly hair, a pounding temple, and the strap of her pajama top halfway over her shoulder. She expects to have sticky drool running over her chin onto her silk pillows or her duvet tangled at her feet.

Willa woke up on the sand.

Her cheek was pressed against the lump of grains, leaving little circular marks on her pale cheeks. Sand was tangled in her long strands of dirty blonde hair and stuck to the skin of her scalp. Sand was in her eyes, which were excruciatingly dehydrated and itchy from the previous day's makeup. Sand was in her bra and her ears and her mouth.

More importantly, she had no clue where she was.

Willa felt the glacial waves fall inwards and run smoothly over the edge of her toes. She lay stiffly on her sore back, eyes pointed upwards. The sky was melancholically grey, consisting of dark and looming clouds bunched together, threatening to pour. The overbearing sound of the waves crashing washed over the girl's senses.

Her hands scratched at her parched throat in response to the ragged cough that she wheezed out. She whimpered, rolling over onto her stomach for better support, and blinked rapidly to bring moisture to her eyes. Her sight unblurred slightly but not by much.

Willa's hair and clothes flapped erratically against the untamed winds, making it uncharacteristically more difficult for her to lift her aching bones from the dense sand. Not able to hold up her weak body, she tumbled and crashed on all fours, sending sand splashing off the ground and into her face from the impact.

Trepidation squeeze around her heart suffocatingly. In the distance, beyond the rocks and sand floating with the wind, sat vast land containing mammoth trees which stalked beyond the clouds. The gaps between the bulky trunks exhibited only arcane darkness.

Hacking ensued from the sand collecting in the girl's airways. "Help." She croaked, wrapping her hand around her throat. The howling of the wind accompanied Willa's howl of anguish at being alone and helpless. Tears failed to leak from her dry eyes as she crawled impotently towards the waves crashing at the shore behind her.

Her reflection coughed a tearless sob back at her as her back sloped over the water. The black nirvana t-shirt and grey sweatshirt she wore attached themselves to her figures, outlining her unflattering features. Her hair exemplified a bird's nest now as it had once been damp, meaning the ocean salt had dried it out.

Willa slumped back onto the mount of sand, pressing her fingers to her temples in order to pacify the glaring headache that had made its way to the left side of her head. She clenched her fists as she glanced around with the hope that she might receive some indication of how she had wind up on this beach.

It was useless. She had no recollection of any traumatic event nor of who she was- besides the fact that her name was Willa, she was from Eugene in Oregon, and that she had collapsed in her bed at four a.m the night before.

"You alright, miss?"

A tremor enveloped Willa's body at the sudden sound of a voice other than her own. It was a male's voice but she couldn't identify where it was coming from. Instinctively, she rushed to her feet and placed her shaky hands out defensively. "Who's there? Who are you?"

"The name's Jerome, miss."

The girl's head whipped left and right, frightened and on high alert. She was unruly and her immediate instinct was to run but she had no intention of alarming any enemies who could potentially harm her.