𝐖𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 ━ five hargreeves

1│MY NAME IS LOLA GIMBEL

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❛ ᴡᴀsᴛᴇʟᴀɴᴅs ᴏғ ᴛɪᴍᴇ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐎𝐍𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴍʏ ɴᴀᴍᴇ ɪs
ʟᴏʟᴀ ɢɪᴍʙᴇʟ ꒱


❝ DO YOU GUYS WANT
TO SEE A MAGIC TRICK? ❞

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Lola Gimbel was a very peculiar child and it wasn't because she was one of the forty-three children born on that fateful day in 1989. Instead, she was strange because at the ripe young age of fifteen, she had already started her autobiography. It wasn't that she was famous and needed her life written down or that she was planning on dying anytime soon; on the contrary, she planned to live a long and fruitful life.

(One must be careful with what they wish for.)

Instead, her inspiration came from an eleven-year-old girl who'd lived over seventy years ago in a fictional work called The Book Thief. Lola admired Liesel's perseverance and survival skills during war-torn times and the romantic part of her wanted someone like Rudy to stay by her side. This created the urge to pen down her own life story, first by asking her family members about the early years beyond memory until she could rely on her own.

Then, she spent many, many nights hidden in her basement writing by the aid of flickering candlelight. Of course she didn't need to use such old-fashioned ways but the atmosphere helped set the mood and was a replica of how her book-hero wrote. Unfortunately, Lola didn't think she had anything interesting to write even in the two and a half notebooks and counting. So far, she had:

My name is Lola Gimbel and I was born August 1st, 2004. My family consists of my mother, Diana Gimbel, my father, Edmund Gimbel and my uncle, Edward Gimbel. I go to the local public high school in downtown Toronto, Canada. My father and uncle own a department store downtown called Gimbel's Brothers. (An original name, I know. Don't tell them I said that!) This is where I spend most of my free time after school. My mother works long hours as a nurse and apparently, I can't be trusted enough to stay home alone after burning eggs one morning.

I'm getting ahead of myself; I was born in Toronto General Hospital at 9:15 a.m.. According to my birth certificate, I weighed five pounds, five ounces. Tiny, I know! My mother was in labor for almost nine hours and when I finally arrived, she named me Dolores. I hate my name because it sounds so old fashioned and it means sadness. I'd like to think I was a gift to my parents and I know they love me, so instead of telling them that, I call myself Lola which is better. It's still a derivative of Dolores, after all. 

The writing continued on for pages and pages, detailing everything she could— and couldn't—remember from her life. There was one thing that she did not include, however, as it would give her parents a heart attack: the mansion the next block over, home of the long-forgotten Umbrella Academy, housed the biggest library she'd ever seen and she stole books from it.

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[Three years ago]

It had really been a coincidence that she'd taken any interest in the building at all. While it was the biggest thing in the city practically, the old man who lived there was an eccentric recluse who never left the house. And, despite its past grandeur, the gilded entrance had faded with time and memory. Even those who'd grown up in the golden years of The Umbrella Academy had let their passions for the group of crime-fighting children go by the wayside as they got older, leaving the large house to sit without audience for years on end.

Still, that didn't stop some interested passers-by from peering in occasionally and Lola was among them. One night, she'd been on her way home from a evening walk and had travelled by the house. She'd passed by it hundreds of times before but that night she'd seen something. Or, rather, someone. A slightly stooped figure had lingered in the window until they'd sensed they were being watched and had disappeared.