Midnight After Midnight - Nanowrimo 2022

Chapter 1 - The Waltzing Woman

In the small British town called Ravenseye, there lived Adelaide Winchester. Throughout the years, she had become familiar with its people, whom she knew every single thing about, just as they did when it came to her, its mundane routine, and its bleak streets with decaying buildings that have been there for ages, filled chiefly with pine trees, where children liked to play old and well-known games in joy and peace, blissfully unaware of all the misery their environment contained.

Long, long ago, Adelaide had been the same as all of them. She had many friends, who didn't differ from her in any single way, and all day long, when their classes were over and when their parents didn't have to take care of them, they would play in the woods, returning only when they heard their parents calling them for dinner. It lasted for her entire childhood, but when she began to grow and mature, she saw a lot of change.

She was still a mirthful soul who loved nothing more than to play. The sole major change was the games she played. Instead of enjoying hide-and-seek, tag or hopscotch, she, avoiding playing those games, developed an interest in dancing, waltzes in particular. That interest was sparked by her mother, who was like her in almost everything, except for her looks, which she inherited from her father. 

Mother collected stacks upon stacks of vinyl for the family gramophone, which was located in the living room, dancing to Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich most of the time, sometimes with her daughter and other times with her husband. While Father was nowhere as interested in that as her, he still admired those times of the night very much, primarily because of her infectious enthusiasm. Naturally, seeing such happiness and delight had a huge influence on Adelaide, and her life became even better than it was when she was a child.

Thus, she wanted nothing more than to share her passion with the world, but the reactions she got in return were far from what she had expected. At the time when she began dancing in public, she and her friends had enrolled in high school, mostly in different classes, and their parents were rather different from hers. They preached focusing on serious things, primarily the career their offspring would choose out of fear of such poverty that often robbed families even of good bread.

One day, in an otherwise everyday class Mrs Parkinson, who taught Civics, held, there was a question relevant to all those things, which caused Adelaide to shift uncomfortably in her chair. It went like this:

"Alright, class, now that we have finished talking about the importance of a career and all the career paths that you can take, which one sounds most enticing to you and why? Everyone will get enough time to answer this question. Don't be afraid to speak your true opinion. This is a peaceful place, after all."

Over the course of several minutes, everyone stood up, in the order that started from the student closest to Mrs Parkinson's desk to the one farthest from it, their answers taking them a few seconds each. Adelaide listened to all of them carefully.

"I want to be a lawyer, to help preserve the justice system, to protect the innocent and condemn the guilty," the student whose desk was directly connected to the teacher's said, adjusting his taped glasses, his voice having an awkward inflexion, his forehead covered in pimples.

"A doctor, to cure the sick, obviously," said the boy with slicked hair right behind him uncaringly, clearly expecting his answer to not be proper enough, but just not caring much.

"I would like nothing more than to work in a bank, for I know the importance of capital, especially in these trying times, and people need someone reliable to take care of their money when they most need it," said the girl right behind that guy, her accent obnoxiously posh, her clothes all pink with a bow in her hair, her answer making Adelaide roll her eyes with its sheer pretension.