Tillic'ont Institute for Young Sorcerers: The Emissary's Blight (year 1)

Life goes on

          Just a little more than a year after the Dominion War, life had already undergone extreme changes. For one thing, everyone seemed much more optimistic and cheerful. It was the first time in a very long time that Molly could remember her father humming while looking through PADDS, totally carefree as he graded essays. Her mother spent all her time outside tending to the garden, growing all sorts of colorful plants that Molly couldn't even name. Mum often tried to get her to come help, but her green thumb seemed to have skipped over Molly, as the girl could never seem to get it right.
Yoshi had just turned three and was struggling with some minor developmental delays; nothing that particularly worried his parents. He really seemed to enjoy annoying now ten-year-old Molly to no end.
Molly herself was adjusting well to life on Earth, though she really missed the station. Aunt Nerys called sometimes, but she was undoubtedly one of the busiest women in the Quadrant so she could never talk long. Julian had visited twice already, and he and Dad let Molly go with them to see the Alamo. The way they built it up in her head on the shuttle ride to San Antonio, she was disappointed when they actually got there and didn't find it even remotely interesting.
The only particularly bad part of living on Earth, though, was the confirmation of a fear that she'd had for a while; the kids she thought were her best friends had no interest in staying in touch. Kayna Apora, Lorat Mako, Lorat Risi, and Sasho Mir were the only other children her age on the station. All were Bajoran, and all shared several of Molly's interests. On her last few months on the station, she began to suspect that they merely tolerated her; they never asked how she was doing, they never asked her if she wanted to come play, they were friendly of course, but it was clear they saw her as an outsider. Now that was confirmed.
But it was alright; Molly made friends fairly quickly. She had joined the football team and the art club at her school last year; turned out she wasn't quite the artist she had always thought she was. But she decided that she would stay in the club next year anyway. As for football, she was a fairly good goalie, but enjoyed being offense more; she liked running around and chasing. But still, the coach kept her as goalie.
           "Hey, maybe he'll put you in offensive more next year," Dad reassured her as the family began walking home after the final game of the season.
           "I hope so. If not, I might quit." Molly admitted, taking a swig of water from her thermos.
Dad looked at her, brows furrowed with concern.
"Because I don't want to be the goalie. It's no fun. Especially when we're playing against a really bad team like the Falcons!" She gestured weakly at her opposing team, who had lost 12-0 that day, yet were celebrating and cheering as they left the field with their families.
              "I can understand that, sweetheart. On the Enterprise, they kept me in the transporter room all day; pushing buttons and whatnot while everyone else went on adventures. I almost died of boredom," Dad chuckled, patting her on the back and pulling her closer to him, "but at the end of the day, running the transporters is a very important job."
Molly looked up at him and smiled. She knew he was just trying to make her feel better, though while it didn't really work, he was doing it out of love; he knew she loved to play. She was lucky to have a Dad like him.
              The O'Briens had decided, after much deliberation and three moves, to settle down in Ireland, in a smallish town near the southern coast. It was a nice town; good schools, low-risk, calm atmosphere.
             It seemed that even quaint suburban life couldn't spare the family from odd happenings. Though unlike on Deep Space Nine and the Enterprise, the odd happenings were benign and unexplainable. Nobody knew why objects in the O'Briens' home would move on their own, or why entire rooms would suddenly fill themselves with bubbles.
"Must be ghosts," Dad would say. He'd scanned the house several times over, but found nothing; no anomalies of any sort, no intruders or sabotage.
Nobody ever noticed that these occurrences only seemed to happen when Molly was nearby. Perhaps they should've, perhaps it crossed their minds, but what could a young girl have to do with any of this?

              At least, nobody noticed until one day when Molly got a bowl of ice cream from the replicator for dessert.
When she turned around, Yoshi jumped at her and exclaimed "boo!"
                With a yelp, she dropped the bowl and it shattered on the ground. But only the bowl; the ice cream was still hovering between her hands. It only stayed there for a moment, then splattered on the ground, but it stayed long enough to cause Molly to freak out. What was that? Some weird spatial anomaly or something? "Dad!" she called in a panic, slowly stepping away from the shattered mess on the floor and pulling her brother close to her, "Dad! Come here!"
It was only a moment before both of their parents rushed to the kitchen, Dad in the lead. "What is it? Are you alright?" He looked down at the shattered bowl with the ice cream splattered about a foot in every direction. "What happened here?"
"The i'e cweam fwoated!" Yoshi exclaimed.
Dad creased his forehead. "What?"
              "It was- I wasn't even touching it!" Molly said, gesturing frantically. "It was just... it was just hovering!"
"Are you sure?" Mum asked, reaching out to her daughter.
Tears streaming down her face, Molly nodded. "I-I don't know how it happened."
Mum wrapped her arms around Molly, gently stroking her hair, "it's alright, sweetie. It's alright. We'll figure it out."
Hearing the soft whirring of Dad's tricorder, they looked up. "There's no sign of any spatial or temporal anomalies." Dad shook his head and looked at Molly. "Are you absolutely sure it floated?"
"Yeah," Molly's voice was barely above a whisper. She'd stopped shaking at this point; the shock was still there, but it had faded to the background. Mum wiped the tears from her cheeks as Dad opened the first aid kit and picked up the at-home medical scanner.
                "This doesn't say there's anything medically wrong with you," he looked at Mum, "maybe we should call someone to come do some in-depth scans of the room."

                  Suddenly, Molly was terrified again. She hugged her Mum as tightly as she could. What if this was like the time Rumplestiltskin had come to life on the station? Or the time Mum got possessed by an evil Bajoran spirit? Or the time she fell through a time portal? Or worst of all- what if it was a new anomaly no one had ever heard of? Tears streamed down her cheeks as Mum stroked her hair.

                The hours after the incident were very uneasy; Dad had cleaned up the ice cream and shards of mint-green glass off the kitchen floor, carefully, as if there was a dangerous anomaly there. Several minutes later, a small anomaly crew of three people showed up at the house and did very thorough scans of the room, certain that there was one. Meanwhile Molly was curled up in the green wicker egg chair in her room by her bookcase. She was trying to read a book she'd recently gotten into, about an orphanage full of immortal Victorian children who could tell the future, but she kept having to read the same line over and over because of the weird feeling she had in her gut. She didn't feel sick, but it was a sort of... tug. Not necessarily in any direction. Just nerves, certainly, but she still wasn't getting any reading done so she took a deep breath before leaving her room and peeking over the railing, listening carefully.

                    "You're sure of that?" Mum's voice echoed from under Molly's feet. "Absolutely sure?"
                     "Yes ma'am. There's nothing there," said the anomaly crew's leader, "unless you want us to scan the girl, there's nothing else we can do here."
                      "I think that would be a good idea, Honey." Dad chimed in.
"As long as it won't hurt her." Mum replied.
Molly waited until they called her, and walked down the stairs as slowly as she could, several unpleasant thoughts plaguing her. What if she had some sort of virus? What if she was possessed? Her pulse surged in her ears and she was almost hyperventilating.
She stood in front of the anomaly crew, shifting her feet and fidgeting with her fingers.
"Don't worry, dear. It'll be over real quick," a woman with dreadlocks and a Jamaican accent assured her, smiling. Molly nodded.
The scan lasted about thirty seconds but felt like an eternity. Afterwards, the crew went to the computer to look at the data while Mum and Dad held Molly's hands.
"I'm not seeing anything," said a Bolian man after a few minutes. He turned to face the O'Briens, "there are no anomalous readings in or around her body."
"How can that be?" Mum stepped forward.
                      "I'm afraid I don't know, ma'am," the man shrugged. "We can't even find any evidence that what you said happened actually happened."
And that was that.