Chapter Text
Annabelle Cane was born to a family already at capacity. She was the youngest of many, all vying for the attention of an overworked father and overwhelmed mother. It was up to the other children to take care of each other, which only a few did.
Annabelle saw that the only way to find anything greater would be to find the right paths through the family politics.
This wasn't the only thing she saw. She saw the openings others left for her to push others through, the paths they must walk to find her dreams. Push her siblings to fight, push the eldest to sympathy by opening a cut, lying to everyone around her. She wasn't very effective, but much more so than most others her age.
But no matter how much she dreamed of what she could do nothing brought her happiness. Not with her family.
Annabelle tried to open another door to possibility by running away. In her mind, her disappearance would collapse the family, show her importance and let her rise.
She decided to stay in an abandoned chip shop next to a patch of sand everyone seemed to avoid, even when the beach was full to the brim, only populated by a few people resolutely ignoring the way the clouds would part overhead, the way old injuries would throb.
The shop was there all Annabelle's life, derelict and open to the world, though no one dared cross its threshold.
No one except her.
It started to rain and, forgetting an umbrella, she ran towards the abandoned shop. As she entered, she threw the door closed, though it opened behind her. It was warm and dry, despite the weather, and totally empty of life, though certainly not of dust. Fearing discovery by her family even though they reasonably couldn't know where she was, she fell asleep to the tapping of rain overhead.
But she woke up to the sound of tapping through a door in the back that she didn't notice before, leaking light. The walls seemed to creak around it and she, curious, opened the door, an action she was pleasingly baffled by, much later on.
Annabelle Cane saw a young woman at an old fashioned loom, hands and arms arcing over and through, small pinpricks or red across her skin.
She also noticed the seven great wounds going through her skin like the strings she wove, leaking blood and light. Her sunken eyes met Annabelle's, before meeting the ceiling. Hers followed, five seconds before fleeing for home.
She would never describe what she saw in that wound in the world, nor would she be able to, for how would you describe light to one who has not seen?