First RotG story :)

(This chapter got deleted for some reason, so I'm posting it up again)

Wednesday 21st June 1899 a baby girl was born into the world. Her heart stopped twice, and for hours her worried and sobbing parents didn't hear her cry, but eventually it gurgled from her throat, and as any baby would she cried out until she was placed in her mothers' arms, hushed and held, and loved. Eleanor was born into the world, on a hot summer day, and she grew under the protection of her parents, her elder siblings, and of course... the Guardians.

As Eleanor grew she blossomed, and would sit for hours listening to her older brother telling her about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, and the gifts they left on their holidays. She had the nasty habit of falling over and her teeth would fall out, and when she awoke the next morning she would be astounded to find a threepence under her pillow, and would race downstairs to show her already woken and somewhat groggy parents her reward for having good teeth, or would jump onto her brothers bed and hit him with a pillow until he tackled her to the mattress, trying playfully to take the money away until he blew raspberries onto her belly and made her laugh. She'd speak for ages on how the tooth fairy had been and how she was determined to see her, just once. Then she'd wait until her father left for work and go down and sneak the change into one of his pants pockets out on the washing line.

Her parents weren't the most well off, her mother having to stay home now to take care of her, her elder brother George and herself, as she fell pregnant again when Eleanor was five. Her father worked down in the mines outside London, and the pay wasn't fantastic.

On days like that, she'd have the sweetest dreams, where she and George were playing out in the fields and her parents were watching and nothing bad would happen to them. Ever.

She saw her little sister into the world in the winter of 1905, she was six years old, and her friends at school would mock her when she told them how she'd encourage her baby sister Mary to believe in Santa, and the other childhood figureheads. She was laughed at and shunned for her belief in them, but she would always remember the threepence coins she found, or the gifts of toy trains and ragdolls at Christmas, or the Easter egg hunts she would go on with George every year. Nothing they said would shift her belief in them, and somewhere within she felt a burst of energy every time she stood up to them, something bold and bright within her that urged her on.

Every year she would wait up on the sofa, staring into the fireplace to try and catch a glimpse of Father Christmas, but the warmth would always make her eyes droop... only for a second, but when she opened them again somehow it was morning, and the tree had a small heap of gifts beneath, the blanket that had been slipping off her in the night was tucked right up to her chin, and a ragdoll was folded into her arms.

Every Easter she and George would run out into the woods to find the eggs ahead of everyone else, and she always secretly hoped she'd spot the Easter Bunny hopping by, or hiding eggs. Every year she'd told George that, and at first he'd been just as enthusiastic, but now at fourteen he didn't seem so eager. He didn't believe any more, and it saddened her.

She vowed to sing her sister lullabies to help the Sandman lull her to a happy sleep, to tell her stories of Christmas and Easter and to be there when she put that first tooth beneath her pillow. It was a promise she made to herself, and to all her childhood heroes.