It used to be Simple | ft.Cole Sprouse

Chapter 001

Simple life

Anna knows a lot of things. She knows her favourite colour is blue, she knows her favourite dog breed is a St. Bernard, she knows she hates mineral water, and she knows she's not very fond of cats. But there are things Anna does not know.

She doesn't know anything about geography, she has no idea nor interest in politics, she doesn't know she will soon fall in love with reading, and she doesn't know her life is about to change.

On a sunny, regular Tuesday she is sat in a café she knows very well, almost like the back of her hand, holding her cup of burning coffee in one hand and tracing patterns on paper with the other, gazing out the window to the people walking and rushing below. She knows she loves watching the people below her, imagining their own little problems and lives they have to take over, their friends and family and their goals that very day.

She watches the crowd of people slowly shift from shop to shop, emerging with even more bags when finished, with a little less in their bank accounts. She watches the stray dogs wander around and eat the food the strangers throw at them or leave behind, their tails wagging in pure joy despite being without a home.

She watches the skies flow into a different colour ever few minutes as the sky sets into the horizon that is hidden behind buildings of her town, the clouds transforming into different shapes as she tries to picture what they could be.

'Gazing out the window as always, Anna?' teased the gentle voice that she was so familiar with.

'Yeah.' She breathes out, tucking her shiny blonde hair behind her ear at the waitress she has grown familiar with. 'Just watching the world go by.'

'Why don't you ever go out and be a part of that world going by then?' Asked Penelope, the slightly older friend than Anna herself, who has worked in that very café for five years, and saw Anna from a young age and watched her grow.

The thing with Penelope was, she was incredibly smart. She always had an answer to a question that was freshly proposed for the first time in her life. And that answer was a smart one, a rational one which could never be seen as silly or stupid. Anna adored Penelope, always wondered how the hell could she know everything despite being younger than Anna's mother. She treated Penelope as her much older sister who has strong advice, but could understand jokes, too.

'I don't know, I like to admire the world every now and then.' Anna shrugged, trying to be as close to the truth as possible. She never had a solid, bold and clear answer to anything, but she tried to remain alike Penelope.

'You want another coffee to admire that stinky town?' scoffed Penelope playfully, eyeing the huge rubbish bags that seemed to never move from that place outside, dragging the near neighbourhood cats to wander and break them in hope of finding more food than their owners had to offer.

'It's not stinky, Penny.' Anna argued back lightly, defending her little world. 'Not when you see it as I do.'

'I've got eyes too, sunflower.' She remarked gently, picking up the nearby leftover mugs and cups onto her nearly full tray. Anna always wondered how she could balance such weight while still moving and talking carelessly. 

'I don't like being called sunflower.' Anna sipped from her white mug and eyed Penelope whilst she was completing yet another impossible task.

'I know, I know. You haven't liked it since you were a kid.' Mumbled Penelope as she rolled her eyes and nearly dropped a cup, but caught it with her free hand and pretended it was nothing.

She looked at the setting sky that Anna had been staring at for so long and wondered how on earth Anna could never get bored of a sight so simple, so frequent, so boring and so unnoticeable. But she smiled to herself nonetheless, because she treated Anna as her much younger sister.

'Too bad, sunflower, its staying.' She mentioned towards the nickname and disappeared behind a corner to continue her job as Anna found a dog and followed its path across the whole of town, wondering what on earth was going on in its head.

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Hey, I'm sorry this is a little boring and short but this is a quick introduction to how Anna's life used to be so simple and easy, which is a big part in the story. Please read on, like, comment and suggest what could happen in the story and I might write it.

I also take requests for stories if anyone wishes for me to write something for them.

Thanks for reading