𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 - 𝑓. ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑠

PROLOGUE

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PROLOGUE! - ☂︎︎

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CHARLOTTE ELAINE BEAUMONT was born October 1st, 1989 and she hated it with a passion.

Her parents would argue that the circumstances of her birth made her special. She supposed that's what the world labeled it. After all, seven of those children were now famous, surrounded by wealth and played up heroics. Charlotte, on the other hand, would argue that if forty two other women gave birth on the exact day, hour and minute that her mother had it didn't make the terms so special.

Her parents would always scold her for that.

Gale and Alice Beaumont considered their daughter to be one of their own personal miracles. Infertility ran in Alice's family and upon meeting Gale had found no luck in having her own child. But the universe, she claimed, had blessed her with the odd birth that gifted her an incredibly beautiful daughter. The one thing she would argue was that it would've been more convenient if it didn't happen on her daily walk to the Parc de la Tete d'Or.

Charlotte, despite her arguing, was sincerely grateful for her parents. They told her that a rich man, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, had traveled all the way to Lyon, France to offer the Beaumonts a large sum of money for ownership of Charlotte. Her parents had refused and Charlotte would forever stand by their decision. Heroics did not interest her in the slightest.

She already had enough on her plate.

To some, reality manipulation might have been a gift. To Charlotte, it was rather the opposite. On one note, it caused a number of complications. As her parents had explained to her, when she was only three years old they had witnessed her teddy bear change into a house cat right before their eyes. The number of objects that changed at the blink of an eye only increased. Books turned to bubbles. Glass disintegrated like sand. When a young Charlotte was happy, the items changed in a peaceful order. Manageable and tidy for her parents to understand.

When she was angry... it was chaos.

The second half of her abilities lied within the folds of her mind. It was by far, her least favorite talent of hers and by far the hardest to control. Charlotte's grasp on reality was thin. It was as though her fingers were gripping a tree branch as a tornado tried to pull her into its clutches. When she slept her dreams were vivid, controllable, tangible. There had been more than one moment where her parents had trouble waking her and when her eyes finally slipped open it was to her mother crying and her father trying his best not to.

Navigating her powers was tricky and there were some days she wondered that maybe if that mean old man with his large sum of money had taken her then she would be able to control herself. But she loved her parents and they loved her unconditionally as a parent should. And when her mind began to slip away her father would take her in his arms and her mother would kneel before her with a sad smile on her face.

"It's okay, Charlotte. You're going to be fine, sweetheart."

She would cry, even at the age of ten. Her head pounding with the need to let go of that branch and fall into the storm. "But Mommy, I'm scared."

Her father would pull her closer and her fingers would intertwine with her mother's. "Can you tell me why you're scared, my love?"

Small sobs would escape her lips. "I'm scared that if I let go, I'll never come back to you. What if I get lost and I can't find you?"

She would watch as her mother's smile faltered and she would force it higher on her face whenever it did. A hand would press against her cheek and she'd look into her mother's eyes. "If you get lost, ma cheri... we'll find you."