Life as it was by Elizaveta Groza

Beatrice was raised up
in the affectionate Hickens family, loving and being loved. Peter and Mary treated her as their own daughter. The new child helped them keep their minds off their tragedy. Thomas didn`t remember much about it. He took Bea as a sister. Beatrice in turn got a family, an elder brother, a warm home and her first friends at the same time. She remembered her life at the orphanage less and less, although there was little chance she would forget it forever, likewise the Hickens would forever forget Jenny`s death. However, the Universe, or whatever it was, wanted these people`s paths to cross. For better or worse, they had each other now.
Time pasted. Beatrice welcomed her 18th birthday as a well-mannered, caring and nice-looking girl. After a loud celebration of her majority in a pub with some common school friends, Thomas and Bea came back home at around 1:00 am. Late drunk talks ended up with a discreet falling asleep in Beatrice`s bedroom. Thomas and Bea liked talking at nights. They had saved this habit through the years since their childhood, when they hid under the blanket with a flashlight and sometimes could laugh so loud that woke Mary up and she had to calm both down. Mary didn`t mind Beatrice slept in Thomas`s bedroom, she was rather happy they quickly became friends. Children had grown up, but their habit had left, so they sometimes could still talk till the late evenings.
And here they were, lying on Beatrice`s bed in the siren darkness of her room, tired, drunk, but happy. Tequila made their bodies warm and heavy, and the bed gravitation was being felt with unbelievable force. Thomas`s eyes lit up, but his fatigue and laziness didn`t let him go to his own bedroom. They were lying in the complete silence for a while, breathing deep and measured. They didn`t talk much that night. The dull moonlight shined on them through the window. The world was sleeping outside. Beatrice heard the remote barking from somewhere in the end of the street.
Thomas proposed to listen to the music. He said he found a new cool song yesterday. They shared his headphones and a rhythmic sweet guitar melody started playing inside of their heads. Beatrice smiled and closed her eyes. Thomas always liked indie folk. It was light and pure. Listening to this music made it simple for Beatrice to think. She liked those brassy and consonance sounds, even despite the fact that her play-list was mostly filled up with more dancing kind of music.
Thoughts were intruding upon girl`s consciousness one by one, likewise the new chords were appearing in the song. Beatrice was thinking about her life. She would call it a typical life: with typical school days, typical family dinners, typical evening movies and sleepovers with friends. Her life was calm, likewise the singer`s voice in her headphone. And she was lucky to have it.
However, some strange things had been following Beatrice since her childhood. They, probably, had bothered her more in the orphanage than now, because they usually became the reasons for her bullying. But having grown up, Bea started noticing them more distinctly, on the more conscious level. Her nightmares became more colorful. Beatrice was followed by the same dream more and more often. She saw it ever since she could remember herself: the bright fire all around. More often the girl saw the dream, more sharply she felt the heat and fire`s intimidating intention to harm.
Once Beatrice noticed her eyes had an unusual blue color. She would even suppose they were glowing white and blue, but she immediately explained this occasion with the weird incidence of the light and try to forget what she`d seen. But those things started happening more and more often. Beatrice`s unusual appearance always raised lots of questions in her head. Many times she heard the admiring comments from the Hickens` relatives or her classmates about the amazing color of her red hair. Bea started liking it and her freckles too. She didn`t think they were abusive anymore. But her appearance was still strange for her. More often the girl looked at herself in the mirror and thought about it, more often she thought about her biological parents, especially her mother. What was she like? What was her father like? Beatrice didn`t remember. In the orphanage she was told they died in fire, when she was two months.
Beatrice didn`t notice the melody had stopped. She was listening to the silence, which enveloped her all over around like with a soft blanket. The barking vanished outside and the night was calm and quite. Thomas was already sleeping nearby. His equal breathing made his chest rise and fall. Beatrice stuck the headphones out and put them on a nightstand. She couldn`t resist the fatigue in her body and fell asleep at once.