Everyone thought there was something strange about her. She moved awkwardly and heavily, like a girl carrying a secret world on her shoulders. She had round, childish features and thin black air that wafted dreamily across her white, crescent-moon forehead. Undoubtedly an adorable child, her features now looked strange and out of place on a young teenager's grimace.

She'd never had a date. She'd never been kissed. She didn't have many friends, and what few she did were considered to be even stranger than her. She'd never even had any pets. She displayed a minor talent for mathematics and design & tech, but in science exams she would absentmindedly correct the questions and her handwriting was appalling in any case.

Every night (unbeknownst to anyone else- after all, she never had any girly sleepovers, or any forms or variant on sleepovers whatsoever), she waited patiently by her closet door until about midnight. Sometimes she'd wait all night fruitlessly and climb into sleep with a sigh, and dream fitfully of a city with a thousand technicolour phantoms haunting the curious streets. Some nights she'd fall asleep waiting, and never see the enormous apparition that appeared in the doorway- though she'd always wake up to find herself tucked tenderly between her bed sheets with her fine hair clinging to her forehead, as if a heavy paw had been stroking it. Sometimes her parents would come in and force her into bed with more and more reprimands.

But sometimes...