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˚∙.·∘ S T A T I C *.·∘ NANCY WHEELER.
—DOROTEA Gray had never been a normal child. When she was ten years old, the Gray family had adopted her and taken her to live with them in Wildwood Heights. She had no recollection of her life before: her mother told her that sometimes children chose to forget their pasts if they had experienced trauma, and Tea thought she must have experienced a lot of terrible things to remember nothing.
—SHE didn't like to speak too much: she was scared of small, enclosed spaces; dark spaces; large, open spaces; scares and loud voices and when the television came on too abruptly, or when she couldn't get the bathroom door to unlock, or imagined things in the mirror. She was scared when she slept, and when she woke too. Something deep within her just made her frightened.
—BUT something about her loved the woods which surrounded their town and the back of their home. Perhaps it was the soft gentleness of it: the dampness of moss and leaves, the smell of earth and rain in the air, or the creatures which skittered or pranced through the undergrowth, each more majestic as the rest. She loved to wander the woods in the silence and study plants, writing notes upon notes and illustration upon illustration about the species of mushrooms or flowers. She found it all so fascinating, so calming.
