Everywhere, Everything

Can you hear me calling
out your name?
You know that I'm falling
and I don't know what to say.

Tigerlily Anaís Creevey is your not-so-average weird girl living in a boringly average town. Now, let's not get it twisted, she loves her farm life; rising early every day to herd the sheep with her brother's dog, picking fresh eggs and baking with homemade jam and milk her father had just pasteurized the night before.

But no matter how hard she tries to make friends, bringing fresh cookies and pies every other day to class, the kids have always set her aside. She knows she's different, but she just can't put her finger down on why. She doesn't dwell on it too much, though, since her real friends are always with her at home.

Her brothers, Colin and Dennis, are her loyal companions, and the three of them spend hours herding sheep, baking, watering crops, and making jams and marmalades together. They even set up a small stand on the side of the road and sell what they work on every day, earning themselves some money.

Although, the real earnings, Tigerlily thinks, lie in all the time she gets to spend with her family doing something they all love.

It was a humble life, but they managed. Tigerlily's mother left them with plenty of money to make due for a while, and since they grew and produced most of their food they were saving a pretty coin. They refused to eat meat, though. It was strange, they thought, to go out and buy dead chickens and cows to eat for dinner and then get up the next morning and take care of their own chickens and cows.

However great of a distraction her mundane life could be, Tigerlily still dreaded school and would try to mind her business even when kids were mean to her. She sometimes got so angry and had to storm out of the classroom, her exit making the drawings on the walls collapse, pencils snap in half, and gusts of wind appear through blasted windows.

Of course, she didn't know she was behind that, and usually paid no mind to these strange occurrences. But that was until an owl perched itself on the fence that kept the sheep contained. Her brother's dog, Marcus, barked at it and ran around in circles, trying to figure out how to catch it. Tigerlily shooed him away and realized the owl had something attached to its talon.

"It's...a letter," she explained to her father at dinner time that day. "For me."

Receiving a letter through an owl seemed silly, and she wondered if it was another joke from her classmates, but upon further inspection, the letter came not from a group of bullies, but from a school of witchcraft and wizardry.

              And this is how it starts.