Abigail's Adventures Chapter 1

Chapter One: The Riverbank Story Book

Abigail Thompson had always been a little different from all the other girls her age in school, and to her class mates, she came across quite odd and mysterious. She spoke very little to anyone else unless completely necessary so no one ever really bothered to try to befriend her. Her best friend was her fluffy white cat whom she had named Tabitha. And just like how Abbey came across as odd to her fellow peers, Tabitha was not your average cat. Tabitha had one green eye, a green so bright it was the colour of grass on a sunny day, and one blue eye, a dark shade of blue like the colour of the ocean when it became too deep to see the bottom. And Abbey herself had quite a unique defining attribute. That was, amongst her long wavy chestnut brown hair (that perfectly matched her dazzling and alluring yet mysterious hazel eyes) was a long bright white patch of hair on the left side of her parting near her face. She always wore a small white rrose hair pin which was tinted with pale yellow shadiing at the end of each intricately designed petal.

Abbey may have come across as slightly odd to her fellow peers and sometimes even to her parents, but there was no denying her natural beauty which was such that you could become lost staring into her beautiful hazel eyes with stunning long black eyelashes that flickered slowly as she blinked when catching a glimpse with her eye to eye while she turned her head, just for a moment, as she walked out of her classroom door with everyone else. This momentary glance seemed to literally slow down time and muffle out all background noise just before losing eye contact. Then the busy school day would continue for everyone like any other day.

It had been an average Monday like any other with nothing out of the ordinary. The clock struck 3.30pm and all the students from Heartfield High school, including Abbey, fled out of the school gates at the end of the school day. And as usual Abbey took the long route home so she could stop by the river. It was a particularly foggy day, so when Abbey reached the riverbank she could see no more than one metre in front of her at any given moment. This quite irritated Abbey as she would sit by the riverbank everyday after school to read one of her favourite books. Today she was intent on sitting by the riverbank for her usual hour or so before heading home, so she could read a few chapters of her book. The book she was currently reading was Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, one of her favourite books. But the fog was so thick it made it impossible for good reading light and the strength of the wind that seemed to follow the course of the river kept blowing at the edges of the pages of her book. Abbey had no choice but to give up on reading so she slammed her book shut and shoved it in her backpack which she zipped closed quickly in an irritated manner.

Abbey sat by the riverbank for a moment or two hoping that the weather would be better tomorrow which would allow her to continue reading Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (a book that she had read at least twenty times iby now) in peace, as was her usual literary routine. Alas, she got up from the grassy bank from where she had parched herself to begin reading when she had arrived at the riverbank, and as she stood up she put her backpack over her left shoulder. Abbey began to walk away from the river to go home, but something caught the corner of her eye as she was turning away from the river. That was a sudden fierce ripple in the water by the riverbank that resounded out from a centre point as if something had been dropped into the water.

By the time she got down on her knees to peer over the edge of the bank into the water, the ripples had furthered from their centre point and as all of this was occurring the thick fog seemed to becone so much thicker to the point that Abbey could barely see anything at all unless it was directly in front of her face. The only thing now that she was close enough to see was the centre of where the ripple had begun. She peered over the edge of the riverbank to see if she could see what had caused the ripple in the first place, but to her startled surprise, right in the centre of the ripple which seemed to be echoing out in slow motion, was her reflection . How could the water reflect anything in such an eerie dark figgy day? Abbey wondered.

But that was not the strangest thing about her reflection. The reflection was still and did not move as she did, as if it was a still painted portrait of her., with a determined wide-eyed expression that did not reflect Abbey's shocked expression that should have appeared in the water had it been a mirror reflection . And just as suddenly as the non-reflection had appeared, it disappeared, and strangely, it took the fog away with it. The fog seemed to drift away from abbey allowing the sun to come through, and the strong wind that disallowed abbey to read her book stopped so suddenly as if someone had stopped blowing out their birthday candles because the flames had been extinguished. There simply was just no wind.

Abbey, feeling quite out of character and a little confused, sat back down on the grassy bank in bright beautiful sunlight, unzipped her backpack and reached back in to take her book back out to start reading as the weather conditions had changed in her favour ever so suddenly. She pulled the book out of her backpack and sat it on her lap, but to her surprise, instead of finding Alice's Adventures In Wonderland upon her lap, she found Huckleberry Finn instead, the book she had been reading the previous Monday after school. She blinked several times quite startled to find the incorrect book upon her lap as she was so sure she had left this book back on the bookshelf in her bedroom the previous Friday evening after she had finished reading it. Abbey shook her head, expecting that she had accidently picked up Huckleberry Finn along with Alice's Adventures In Wonderland this morning before school putting both books into her backpack.

Abbey peered into her backpack to get out the book she had been intent on reading since she had arrived at the riverbank, but to her surprise it was undeniably not there as it had got the point were Abbey had tipped the entire contents of her schoolbag onto the grassy bank by the river. What lay in front of her were all of her usual Monday study books, but one thing caught her attention that was out of the ordinary. That was an admissions slip she had been given the previous Monday at school for her parents to sign for an upcoming field trip. The precurious thing was, that abbey being the prompt and punctual student that she was, had handed this admissions slip back to school the previous Tuesday after having her parents sign it the previous evening after dinner. The odd thing was that the admissions slip that abbey held in her hand was unsigned.

Startled and quite frightened, abbey scrunched up the admissions slip throwing it down upon the grassy bank and as quickly as she could, she untidily bundled all of her books back into her backpack (which was most unlike Abbey to be untidy or unorganised) and got up turning away from the river to rush home as fast as she could, literally running away from the river. As she was running she glanced back quickly at where she had been sitting, and to her surprise, out of the corner of her eye before turning forward again to continue running home, she witnessed the crumpled up piece of paper move across the grass into the water exactly at the point where the centre of the ripple had occured. The odd thing was there was no wind whatsoever anymore that could have had the gumption to blow the crumpledup piece of paper into the river.

Abbey ran the whole way home without even turning her head again even once, until she had ran in her front door, slamming it behind her. She immediately dropped her bag and sat with her back to the front door with her head in her hands, completely out of breath from her long run home.

To be continued...