Lady of the Rose

Introductions

    Hello, my name is Brynna Redrius. I don't necessarily expect you to belive me, but my life sucks. My mother is engaged to one of the slimiest bastards in existence, but can't see anything but how well he seems to be taking care of her.

   I'm the only person under the age of forty in my neighborhood.

   I have no social group in school--I don't even fit in with the 'loner' crowd.

   I hate everyone around me.

   The girl stared at the words she'd written on her notepad before tearing the page out and crumpling it into a ball. She chucked the wad towards her wastebasket, watching it as it bounced off the wall and landed upon the floor beside the bin. She hated any writing assignment she was given, especially when it had to be something about her life.

   Her mother, Regina, gently knocked upon the door to her bedroom. "Brynna, dinner's almost ready. Dolus won't be dining with us tonight, unfortunately."

   "How utterly disappointing," the teenager murmured under her breath as she stood and pulled her auburn hair back into a ponytail, thinking about what a weird and stupid name Dolus was. "I'll be down in a few, mom."

   "Okay; I did invite our three new neighbors, just so you know."

   "Oh, joy..." Brynna muttered, glancing out the window at the darkening street. Several lamps lined the cracked sidewalk, but very few were lit anymore. Most of them had been burned out longer than she could remember, longer than the time her father had been dead.

   "Brynna, be a dear and go answer the door, will you? I'm sure it's our guests," Regina stated with a smile as she looked upon her adult daughter after a loud knock rang out upon the front door.

   Brynna sighed and gave a reluctant nod as she pushed herself away from the table and stood in a fluid motion. She went to the door and opened it slowly, her gaze down at her feet as she did. She wasn't in the mood to welcome another set of old people into the neighborhood. "Hello; you must be the neighbors my mother invited to dinner. Welcome to the neighborhood."

   "Mm, if she would've seen me first, I doubt that would've gone the same way, sweetheart."

   Brynna looked up in surprise as she quickly processed that the voice couldn't belong to some little old person. The voice was one that suggested that its owner was just coming out of a state of boredom, and had been layered with sarcasm. As she'd gathered, the voice's owner was a boy in his late teens to early twenties based on his appearance. He had hair that was either black or a very deep shade of brown. His gaze was a penetrating, icy blue that seemed to see right into her. As Brynna noted the snake bites and ear piercings the boy had, she had to agree with his statement.

   The two other boys standing in the doorway were much more likely to have been invited by her mother, though neither one of them filled the 'old person' category either.

   One had hair and eyes near-identical to the first, though his gaze wasn't nearly as penetrating. It was gentler, and seemed to be studying everything around him without moving even the slightest bit. Brynna assumed that the two were brothers, even with the fact that their bone structure seemed different to a greater extent than one would normally find in siblings.

   "Thankfully, our neighbors have all interacted with Ryder or me first," the third stated, causing Brynna's gaze to turn to him. He had mildly spiked-up hair which was a golden-brown color. His eyes were a deep and intelligent brown, which went nicely with his hair in Brynna's opinion.