From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski [#𝟏]

𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 [ beginnings. ]

 Author's Notes: So, today I bring you several beginnings. The good and the bad. 

Song Recommendation ["Where Is My Mind? (cover)" - Safari Riot]

NOTE: For the full experience, I do personally suggest seeking out each song rec.

☽ † ☾

No one can fathom how strong you are.
Least of all, you.

☽ † ☾

May 2003

Madeline Hayes was a brilliant test taker, not that she was learning anything terribly difficult. It was, after all, only the second grade and she was only eight.

Still, she continuously impressed her teacher, Miss Hammond, with just how easily she picked up things - for instance, math. She loved math (because she was good at it, mostly). Numbers were always simple - concrete. Two never decided it suddenly equaled five because numbers can't decide anything. They couldn't change like characters in books and she never had to explain why like in Science class. Everyone already understood why, because it was just math.

Some of her more aggressive peers didn't seem to share her enthusiasm, especially Trista, the girl who pathologically cheated off of her tests. Maddie always let her, without even a hint of a fight; she knew better than that these days. In a way, she didn't mind it. After all, at least this way she wasn't going to get beat up and - even better - it was proof that she was good at it. Good at something. Her mother worried that she was too young to be having such sad thoughts but Maddie never did. What was wrong with wanting to be good at something?

Maybe she'd even be a Mathematician when she grew up (regardless of the fact that she didn't even know how to spell mathematician).

Or maybe a teacher. That would be nice.

Even as she scribbled crooked numbers onto the the blue paper as slowly as possible so that the black-haired girl to her right could successfully copy her work, she felt an odd sense of pride knowing just how good she was.

7 x 5 = _______

She smiled, knowing she didn't even have to count by fives on her hands anymore.

3...

Maddie was just about to write down the five when her hand stopped and her number two pencil fell from her grasp. The world began spinning quickly and she gripped her head with both hands. Whispers...she could hear whispers, so soft that she thought that she couldn't tell whether or not she was actually hearing them or making them up.

"Into every generation..."

"...make your choice..."

"We are alone."