Something I wrote for English class with my universe “the secret four”
Enjoy!
The Secret Four: A Prologue, Stories from the Orphanage
The Enchanted, a group of people that are common, yet mysterious. People with the features of animals, or creatures not even known to exist.
Meet one of these people,Velo Hine, a dragon Enchanted. As soon as she was born to the Serak family,, she was seen as a devil child. Her father looked at her purple patterned skin, Swirling left pupil, sprouting horns and wing buds and spoke in a rage, “There is no way I could help create something- th- that horrid!” And he stomped off, never to return.
The Next six years of Velo’s life were… not great. She was not treated well by her mother, who saw it as Velo’s fault that her husband had left her. “Go away, demon child, I want you nowhere near me.” She would say.
Many times, both Velo herself and her mother would try to sever the child’s ‘vile traits.’ Her wings and horns quickly became covered in scars that still stand many years later.
Eventually, Velo’s mother stopped bothering with Velo all together, dropping her off at DrimTown Orphanage. She was immediately greeted with disgust. The patron of the orphanage told Velo, “I can see why you were unwanted. You’ll stay upstairs, good luck.” And violently tossed a key towards Velo, who caught it and quickly ran up the stairs as she was pursued with tossed papers and running kids. Little did she know of the three pairs of eyes watching from the ceiling.
Locked in her room, Velo vowed she would never exit. She can go a long time without food or water, she just had to sneak down once every other week or so to the kitchens for food, she could manage that. She held the hoodie she had managed to take with her close, covering her wings entirely. As soon as she started to calm down, she heard a click, then a creak, as the door to her safe space opened.
She started to panic again, a familiar feeling, and backed away, covering her head. “Calm down, I’m not gonna hurt ya’” At the words, Velo looked up to see who they belonged to.
A spider Enchanted was hanging on the wall. Three pairs of eyes and arms, a thread hanging from one of her wrists. “Y- you’re not?” Velo’s timid voice, hoarse due to lack of use, echoed through the room. “Nope. I’m an outcast too. Names Fiber! What's yours?” The spider- Fiber- reached out her middle right hand.
Velo took it cautiously and slowly stood up, “I’m Velo. Velo Serak.” “Well, you seem to be the nervous type, so I’m gonna help ya out in this crazy place. Nice to meet you, Velo Serak.”
“Uh- Nice to meet you.. Too.”
One of Fiber's pairs of eyes drifted up to the pair of horns on Velo’s head that had curled around her strange ears. She seemed to notice something. “Hey, what are all those scars about?”
Velo’s eyes grew wide. “Uh- those- they.. Ummm… let's just say people don't like my horns,” Her voice softened even further and FIber almost didn't hear her whisper, “O-or my wings.” Fiber looked at Velo’s back curiously. “What wings?”
“You promise not to damage them?” Fiber nods. Velo takes a deep breath, and slips the hoodie she was wearing over her head, revealing her wings, stuck out of matching holes in her shirt. Pink scars littered the black scales and purple skin in-between. The wings were small, stunted, damaged. They didn’t work, and Velo thought, never would.
“DOn’t worry,” Fiber’s voice rang after a long silence, “I won’t let this happen to you again.”
Over the next few weeks, Fiber protected Velo. The dragon was startled at Fiber’s aggressiveness at first, but got used to it. Fiber also tried to get Velo to eat more, oftentimes sneaking food into her room so she could eat it throughout the week, but she rarely touched it.
One day, a few weeks after Velo came to the orphanage, there was an.. Incident. Not with the other kids, but with herself.
Fiber came into the room one day to check on her friend, and saw a bit of blood on the floor. “Velo? You in here?” The spider heard a small whimpering coming from the bathroom, followed by a quiet and hesitant, “..No.”
Fiber went over to her, kneeling down and lifting her head up from where it had been tucked between her knees. “You’re bleeding, what happened?”
Velo shook her head, she didn’t want to talk about it. FIber understood anyway. “Did- did you do this?” Velo just nodded, very slightly.
“It’s okay, I understand, it isn’t easy to get over seeing your extra features as bad. But i Don’t want you doing this anymore.”
Velo quietly said, “...Okay.” She was lying, and Over the coming years, Velo gained many more scars.
While at the orphanage, Velo was schooled on a private-owned building about half a mile away. She was treated horribly by her ‘Teachers’, but at least she was learning. The patron decided she would’ve been too much of an embarrassment were she to go to public school.
One day, while she was walking home from her school with FIber, they ran into someone.
“Grr. I’m oh so lucky.” A sarcastic voice rang as the person who it belonged to tripped. The cat enchanted stood up, tail swinging grumpily and ears folded down. “Aren’t you two too young to be out alone?”
Fiber looked at him sassily, “Aren’t you too old to have that horrid of a fashion sense. Your suit is of horrible quality, it’s covered in holes.”
The cat frowned. “My fashion sense is just fine, I just have horrible luck, ironically. My name is LUcky, What about you two?”
“I’m Fiber, and this is Velo. I can make you a better suit if you want.”
“I don’t know how you would do that, but eh, why not.”
Fiber quickly took out her crochet needles and spun some silk from her wrist, working at seemingly impossible speeds and producing a black and gold suit in just a few seconds. Lucky nodded, “Impressive.”
“See ya’ round, Lucky.”
Then the pair walked back to the orphanage for the day, not realizing just how big a role he would play in their lives.
When Velo was ten, and Fiber was twelve, Fiber got adopted. A Family called the Terrants decided she was worth adopting, and picked her up from the orphanage.
Velo was alone now, and went back to her original plan of hiding in her room and only coming out once every few weeks at night to make sure she didn’t starve to death.
During this time, Velo grew. Her body grew, and she continued on to do all of her middle school years at DrimTown Orphanage. Her Wings never grew though.
When she was fourteen years old, June 7th, 2065, She was finally adopted herself. Her Parents, Fresco and Julia Hine, took her in and loved her despite her ‘Devilish’ Features.
They enrolled her in public high school for the following year, Ninth grade.
Over the coming months, her parents found that while she was educated at the same level she should be, she was lacking in social skills. oftentimes she would have nightmares, but she never told them. They were already taking care of her despite how much of a monster she was, she didn’t want to bother them.
The Hines picked up on it.
They saw her scars, physical and mental.
They saw her lack of self-worth, fear of people and general anxiety, and they knew.
They knew they had a lot of work to do.
Well, No better place to start than the beginning.
