'Til Death Do Us Reunite

Chapter Three

Sunlight pierced at her eyelids, forcing them open as the voices faded away. Rae blinked rapidly at the harsh light leaking through the gap between her curtains. The dark colours of her room enhanced the brightness even more and she groaned, looking up to her star-filled ceiling.

Since she was little Rae always had a fascination with the stars. She loves them for what they are and what they can be. Balls of gas doesn't sound very exciting but they're also shining lights in an ocean of darkness. They're loved ones that have passed on from this world that guide their family and friends in dark times. They're the stories told by constellations. Lupus, Draco, Hercules, Cassiopeia. Sadly, they can be drowned by the city lights, Rae never saw them in NYC. But, do you ever get that exhilarating feeling as you look up to the star filled sky, that someone, somewhere is gazing up at the very same stars? That maybe you know them, maybe you don't, and maybe just maybe you might do some day? Rae does, she thinks about it all the time with this giddy feeling in her stomach. Stars of ink instead of light are littered across the back of her neck, leading a trail to her right shoulder blade. It was the first piece of ink that she got, the other was a weathered and beaten compass face on her inner left wrist. If Rae hadn't been so eager to be an actress, she knows she would have became an astrologer.

And so, her love of stars had influenced her bedroom. All four of her walls were the darkest of greys, almost black, as was her carpet. The other fabrics in her room like her curtains, her bed sheets and her pillows was a dark silver and her wooden furniture were several shades of black. The ceiling however was purple, blue, pink and every colour a galaxy is with stars covering all of it. The best part of it for Rae was that the stars glowed in the dark, they were even glowing slightly now. During the day, some of the stars even glittered from the glitter that her dad had put in the paint.

Now that she was more awake than before, she slung the cover off of her and sat up. After they had gotten home last night Rae had said good night to her parents and taken her luggage straight to her room. Her brothers, her dad had told her, were both working late so she'd see them in the morning. Rae glanced at her clock on her bedside table and it read 11:48, but that didn't surprised her. Rae had always been a night owl and a late riser. Stretching as she got up, Rae stumbled towards her drawers and pulled out and changed into her clothes for the day. She settled on a pair of jogging bottoms and a large jumper as she wasn't planning on seeing any of her old friends today anyway. She pulled out her long hair out of her bobble and brushed it out before pulling it back up into a bun to keep it out of the way. Once she felt ready, Rae left her room and walked to the kitchen.

The house that she had grown up in was rather old, wooden oak beams ran across the ceilings and the window frames were literally a sheet of glass in between two wooden frames that made the house freezing during winter and to top it off, the roof was thatched. Rae loved old houses like her own, they just gave off this homey, cosy feeling. The kitchen was large but somewhat narrow. To the end on her left there was a cream range cooker and the marble counter started from the side of the oven and stops opposite the door where Rae now stands in. On the other side of the oven was a stable door leading to their back garden with pet bowls and a shoe rack beside it. Above that was a row of hooks mostly full with coats but one that normally had the dog leads on. To the right was a large oak table that sits eight people and behind the table was a large patchwork dog bed accompanied by a small matching cat bed.

In one of the end chairs sat her older brother and the middle child Ryan. At first glance you'd expect Ryan to be the eldest child with the slight beard he had going on with his sleek hair combed back by his fingers, he's also the tallest out of the three of them but he was only a year older than Rae and three years younger than their eldest brother Mason. Her brothers had seemingly inherited their mum's auburn hair and their dad's green eyes, making them look nothing like Rae. Now Ryan was sat crouched over a book with his fingers shoved into his hair and a pair of thin round glasses sat on the bridge of his nose. Like Rae, Ryan loved to read but unlike Rae, Ryan was a faster reader, getting through books like she gets through coffee, which is a lot. Compared to the rest of his siblings, Ryan is such a dork. And a geek. And a little bit of a nerd, now that she thinks of it. During their years at school Rae remembers him being the school's cutest – not hottest, cutest – often being called a sweetheart or, Rae's favourite, adorkable.