The Fate of Persephone (10/OC) (DISCONTINUED)

Chapter Two: Many Meetings

            Living on the London streets was a hard life, there's no sugar-coating it.  One often goes an entire day or two without food and many days without proper showers or shelter.  A life on the streets is reserved for those with no ambitions and the hopeless and the lost.  They are full of criminals and druggies and sleezy people.  No one WANTS to live on the streets.  No one WANTS to be misplaced and homeless.

Except Persephone.

               Persephone belonged in a category all her own.  As an attractive eighteen-year-old female with intelligent eyes and a mellow spirit, it baffled all who saw her that she was homeless.  And it was true, she knew, that she could easily enroll herself at some public school or get help from the government and kick-start her life back into gear, yet she didn't and chose to live as a stray, exploring the back alleys of London.

                  Of course, some part of Persephone's soul yearned for a home and a family and friends and she felt this nagging longing in her soul that she couldn't place.  But whenever the thought crossed her mind to introduce herself to the police or some other responsible adult to secure her future, her breath froze and her lungs refused to let air in or out until she dismissed the thought altogether.  Something about the very thought of having people look after her and care for her, the confinements of living as a proper adult citizen, and spending her life morphing to the demands of the world made her sick with fear and loathing.  So much so that she ran far, far away and established a life on the streets.

             Persephone never knew where she came from or who her parents were, and her past (when she chose to think about it) was always strangely hazy and hard to focus on.  What she did know, however, what that she was found as an eight-year-old with no memories and no family on the doorstep of a London orphanage.  Many parents looking to adopt a child were drawn to her intelligence and rare natural beauty but were always rejected by the child herself who, no matter how much she actually liked the couple, would always develop a fear of them coming near her when they intended to love and care for her permanently.  For this reason, two more years passed in the orphanage without her ever being adopted. And every time a couple would leave, she would feel her hearts (she had two of them) clench sorrowfully.

             At eleven years old, she was enrolled in the foster home system and spent two years bouncing from family to family, living in six homes in that short time, but always running away after only two months of care.

              Finally, at fourteen, she ran for good, packing a bag of supplies and provisions she had been storing up and running from her foster family.  None of the families had, in any way, abused her (in fact, they were all so kind and generous and really loved her), but there was just this nagging in her soul-- this phobia-- of becoming part of a family and being cared for that made her run away every time, no matter how much she hated it. 

And it was so sad because to love and be loved was all Persephone ever wanted.

              But now, at eighteen, Persephone was practically a grown woman.  She was by NO stretch of the imagination stupid or stunted (quite the opposite actually) but her maturity and ability to face her fears was non-existent in her.  Her instincts often overthrew logic.

          Living on the streets for four years had only reinforced her recluseness, encouraging her to keep to the shadows and back alleys and avoid establishing relationships with others.  She became a master of the streets of London, able to navigate effortlessly by alley, backstreet, or rooftop.  She was fluent in the art of avoiding people and she was filled with a wanderlust that forbade her to stay in one place more than a few nights (though she always stayed within London).  Nearly every night, she slept somewhere new, finding materials and building herself a bed or nest in some hidden nook or covered doorstep.  She sometimes would go to homeless shelters to shower and get meals, but she tried not to go to the same one more than once or twice to avoid unwanted questions and relationships.