Annette yawned loudly as she stretched on her bed. She looked at the bedside clock and saw that it was three in the afternoon. She raised her eyebrows in surprise as she kicked off her duvet. Wow, she must have been more tired than usual as she normally woke up by twelve or one at the very latest. She squinted at the faint sunlight that tried its hardest to squeeze out from the grey clouds. It was November so winter had happily settled in the capital city of England. She did not mind at all as winter was her best season of the year. She stretched once more and scratched her head, digging through her afro as she walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She stared at herself in the mirror, grimacing a little at her large silver eyes. Back in the orphanage, most of the other children had been so scared of those eyes staring out of skin as dark as hers that as soon as she turned thirteen she started wearing non-descript brown contact lenses. She smiled wistfully to herself as she remembered her early days in the convent in France. She had stayed with a group of nuns till she was seven then something terrible had happened which caused her to be shipped hurriedly to an orphanage in England. She quickly blocked what had happened in France from her mind. She had lived in the orphanage and gone to a nearby comprehensive school till she was sixteen. Then she had taken her GCSE's and had the highest mark that the school, or any other school in the county had ever seen. This had caused one of her teachers, one of the few nice ones, she remembered bitterly, to put her name forward for a scholarship in the prestigious public school, St Pauls School for girls. She had gotten said scholarship and gone on to score the highest A level scores there as well. This got her a full scholarship to Bristol, and as they say, they rest was history.
No one onwards from St Pauls knew about her silver eyes. She did not want to draw unnecessary attention to herself. This had continued whilst she was in university, and although the contacts did not detract from her beauty, she tried her hardest to downplay any interest with the addition of plain clothes. Oh she was no virgin; she had done away with that seeing it as something one had to do as a university student, however she had never been in a relationship. She never let anyone come that close. In fact, the only person she trusted enough to tell her secrets was Olivia and this had not been by choice. One evening in second year, it had been Olivia's turn to make dinner. In those days, Olivia had not been the amazing cook she was now and had been trying to make pasta with pesto sauce. The water had been boiled and Olivia, in her sporadic bursts of clumsiness, had missed the pot that was near the sink and poured the boiling water straight from the kettle unto Annette's hands as she had been washing a mug in the sink. Annette had not realised anything was amiss until she saw Olivia staring at her arm in horror with a very white face. Annette had hurriedly looked down and realised that her arm was shrivelling from the burn and, just as rapidly, healing. She groaned inwardly and looked back up at Olivia.
'Err, weird hunh?' She had quipped weakly.
It had taken her only about ten or fifteen minutes to explain what she was to Olivia and to her delighted surprise, Olivia had taken the news calmly. The truth was Annette did not know what she was. All she knew were three things: one, she healed fast – immediately in fact. She had been stabbed, burned, even shot at and yet she had healed all injuries instantly.
Secondly, she felt no pain; physical that is. At first, she had thought she had an abnormally high threshold of pain until she realised that she never even noticed when she got hurt except if she was alerted to it. This had caused her countless worries when she first realised this and she had become extremely careful so as to notice little acts that caused the average person to bleed or even bruise however slight. She must have been extremely relaxed with Olivia to have let her guard down as she did that evening and she told her this. Olivia had blushed a little, pleased that Annette considered her that true a friend.
Thirdly, she was incredibly strong. Like, inhumanly strong. She had realised this when she was about the age of six back in the convent. One of the nuns had been trapped under a fallen pillar during an earthquake and Annette had been so frantic with worry and terror that she had grabbed the pillar without realising what she was doing, and thrown it so far across the rubble that was the former church that it shattered on impact. The nun had been unconscious so she had not been aware of what had occurred, but Annette in her innocence had told her favourite Nun, Sister Esther, about it. Sister Esther had shushed her hurriedly and told her never to repeat what had happened to anybody else and she had asked why. Sister had replied that very bad people would take her away if they knew what she could do, so it was for the best that she kept it their little secret. Of course, keeping it their little secret had not stopped what happened a year later....
