The world was quieter than usual that morning or maybe it just felt like that to her.
Delphini sat at her desk in the classroom as her fingers lightly touched the corner of her notebook. Her eyes weren't on the blackboard. She could hear the teacher's voice sounding muffled and distant as if it was coming from behind a glass wall.
Though, her stream of thoughts was occupied by something else.
A strange fog had been submerging her mind for as long as she could remember.
Sometimes it felt thin like a veil that could be removed if she just tried enough but every time she tried to remember more than what she knew, the pain would come back.
A dull, sharp ache right in the middle of her forehead.
She had learned not to push too far.
But lately, visions had started slipping through the cracks.
Some moments and glimpses of some scenes that she didn't remember ever witnessing herself.
Like scattered pieces of dreams from a night she didn't remember falling asleep in.
A flash in a dark room.
People are shouting at other people.
A wild-eyed woman with tangled hair and a shrill voice screaming at her.
"You can't be mine! You're not my daughter!"
Delphini's fingers curled slightly against the desk as she remembered another voice.
Cold.
Raspy.
"Someday… you'll understand what you were born for."
Her head throbbed as she remembered that sort of vision.
She looked down at her notebook as the faint words got muddled before her eyes.
She closed her eyes gently and breathed out.
It had always started the same way. There was a strange sense of weightlessness. Like something inside her was floating just out of reach. As if her own life wasn't fully hers.
But when she opened her eyes, there was only the present.
The orphanage.
It was a small, grey building on the edge of a hill. It had cold floorboards. The matron with too many keys jingling from her belt. The other children were being loud and rough.
She didn't feel like she belonged there.
She had never been able to think that.
They had told her she'd been there ever since she was a toddler found on the doorstep on one rainy night while being wrapped in nothing but a grey blanket with a note stating her name was 'Delphini Riddle'.
In her childhood, she liked to think that her parents loved her enough to provide her name but as years passed, that love turned into apathy. Now, it didn't mean anything to her.
The first matron had tried to get her involved with other children, to make her feel better. So had the others.
They had tried to include her in group crafts, in play time, and weekly storytelling sessions. But Delphini had always felt that she didn't like that stuff.
It didn't suit her.
Like she was tuned to another frequency.
The other children didn't understand her. She didn't speak unless spoken to. She read more than she played. She stared out the windows longer than most could sit still.
And sometimes, she just knew things before they happened like when the lightbulb in the hallway was about to blow or when someone was about to knock over a glass of juice.
They called her strange for not talking to them.
They called her a witch because she seemed creepy to them
And then, one day that happened.
She remembered it clearly. As clearly as the day she woke up and knew that she wasn't going to be there much longer.
There were three boys who were older than her. They had cornered her near the porch of the orphanage. They teased her for her strange hair or her unusual silence.
For the way she wouldn't talk to them.
One of them had called her a curse.
She didn't scream or shout at them to try and deny what they said. She didn't fight or tell on them to the matrons.
But something inside her had snapped.
She thought, 'I want them to stop.'
There was a lamp hanging from the porch. It was old, rusted with some screws that were barely holding onto the roof.
It groaned loudly and fell near those boys.
It shattered against the ground. Its metal frame swung wildly as its glass pieces scattered like starlight.
Two of those boys got scratched while one had to be bandaged for days.
After that, everything changed around her.
The matrons stopped smiling as much and stopped any of their efforts to try to get her integrated with other children.
One of them started avoiding eye contact entirely.
Delphini didn't get scolded at all since all of them knew that there was no way that she could have had any hand in them getting hurt. However, they felt quite uneasy around since that incident but couldn't accept that. Thus, she was moved to a different orphanage within the week.
There were no questions.
No explanations.
Just that she would be "a better fit." over there.
The new orphanage was the same. Those same children who didn't understand that. Those cold walls painted with bright colours, not allowing her to feel any kind of warmth from them.
Delphini didn't try to talk.
She didn't try to belong.
She just waited and read quietly alone, accepting internally that she couldn't feel the warmth felt by people that she had read about in those stories.
She had been admitted to a nearby school.
It was a standard, normal school.
She had expected the same as she felt.
A local school for her age.
She felt like it would be like the one she went to before.
She remembered walking through the gates that first day. Her shoes are too new and her bag is too empty.
She didn't expect much.
But then, Adrian happened.
She didn't know how or why he noticed her. She had watched him from a distance and heard the others talk about him.
The smart one.
The kind one.
The one who seemed to be good at everything without trying.
She had expected him to be like the rest but he wasn't.
He kept speaking to her. Always kept trying to start a conversation with her.
She ignored him thinking he would stop like everyone else.
He didn't stop.
Even when others whispered about her. Muttered unkind words about her.
Even when people laughed behind her back.
He sat beside her during breaks sometimes talking into silence like it didn't bother him at all.
She'd been annoyed at first, then confused and intrigued.
And then… something else.
When those boys led her into the PE storeroom, she wondered why the teacher would call her to that place. She had known something wasn't right but she went anyway, not thinking much.
Though, when the door shut behind her.
She tried her best to stay calm. She tried to keep her face still and her voice even.
Continue that facade she had always kept her whole life.
But her hands had curled into fists.
Her legs felt like they wanted to run.
She had felt fear.
Real fear.
She didn't know what would happen.
And then, he entered the room.
Adrian.
He walked into that room like it didn't matter that he was outnumbered. Standing in front of her like she mattered to him.
And when the fighting started, she hadn't had the opportunity to tap into her power.
She hadn't had to.
He moved like someone who knew what he was doing.
She didn't understand it. That why would a popular guy like him help her.
But she couldn't look away.
And when the three of them slumped to the floor, unconscious but breathing, she thought it was over and then she watched something happen that stopped her breath.
Adrian, the boy with the kind eyes and sweet smile had raised his hand and did magic.
Real magic with a higher degree of control than she could have ever thought of having.
She had always thought, what she possessed would forever remain untamed.
However, what he did was not just luck.
"Obliviate."
He was doing something she didn't understand but she knew he was someone like her.
Who had a unique power and when he collapsed, she didn't hesitate at all.
She caught him.
Because in that moment, something connected between them.
Something real and when she dragged him to the nurse's office, she steadied him with every step.
She knew he had changed something in her.
It was not because they had to but because they had chosen to.
He had looked at her like she was a person.
Not cursed
Not a witch.
Just someone he had helped.
Now as she was sitting in the class as the teacher taught the class. Delphini stared out the window at the grey clouds forming overhead. A small thunder rumbled far in the distance.
Her hands were folded on the table.
There were still gaps in her memory. Some fragments of memory that cut like glass. That cold and raspy voice. That screaming woman.
But now there was something else in her life that covered those memories of her.
Someone else.
Adrian White.
She sneaked a glance at him as he was sitting in the last row, joking with his friend beside him.
She didn't smile often.
But looking at him at that moment.
She smiled.
And for the first time since she could remember, it didn't feel wrong.
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