The Diamond Dog Chronicles
Chapter 1 Jessica Part 1
~ By Serena ~
The thunder crashed, and the lightning exploded a
blaring white streak across the sky. Rain came pouring down out of the bluish
black sky, and Jessica the sweet Bohemian artist sat shivering, huddled
over a desk in her garret. For the fifteenth time, she tucked her soft blonde
hair behind her left ear. It kept on falling out and blocking the candlelight,
which was the only light she had to draw. When she was inspired by something,
even late at night, she needed to draw.
Her piercing amethyst eyes were wide open in concentration, as the
colors and images flew from her pencil. She tucked her hair behind her ear once
again.
“Oh, damn it all…”
She spoke in a soft, gentle voice. Even when she swore, it was tender.
She was a calm person overall, but when she felt inspired her passion took over.
Nothing could stop her from dreaming.
Finally, her sketch was finished. A swirl of blues, blacks and purples
splashed on the page, to form a distinct yet abstract, beautiful storm cloud.
Streaks of wind and cold whirled around it, to show the violent thunderstorm in
Jessica’s wonderful work of art. She leaned back in her chair and stretched her
tired arms behind her.
“Oh God, I need to sleep…”
This she did. She slept, but not for very long. This happened almost
every night for the past 5 years. It was the summer of 1906, and on one of these
nights, something changed. Jessica the sweet Bohemian was passionately drawing
the picture in her mind on another stormy night, when she heard an unusual noise
come from outside her apartment. She stopped drawing.
“What now?…”
But she soon became curious as to what the noise was, and she slowly
stood up and walked towards her door. A lightning bolt shone through the window,
lighting up the room. Jessica blinked a few times, and finally arrived at her
door. She creaked it open to an unusual site.
A boy, 8 years of age, sat huddled in a pathetic mess across the
hallway, shivering and wet.
“C-c-can you…t-tell me w-…where I am?” the boy somehow managed to get
out.
“Oh, dear…um, come on in, I’ll get you all dried off.”
“Th-th-thank you, m-miss…”
The way the boy stood up and slowly and unsurely toddled into her room,
Jessica had a split second flashback to a memory of long ago. For this brief
moment, she was 16 years old, and it was 6 years earlier. She was being offered
a place to stay on a similar cold stormy night. A kind, considerate man stood
where Jessica stood in her doorway, offering shelter to a cold little child…but
then the moment had passed.
“Would you like some…uh, coffee? No…no, I suppose you don’t drink
coffee. Um…I have some tea somewhere…”
Jessica shuffled around her kitchen, as the boy sat down in the other
room, still shivering, but wrapped in one of Jessica’s blankets.
“T-tea sounds fine…uh, thank you, miss.”
As Jessica brought the tea back into the other room, she almost dropped
it when she found the boy lifting up her unfinished painting, staring at it with
eyes as bright as the morning sun.
“DON’T…touch that…please.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry...It’s so p-pretty. I always liked things like this,
l-like art!”
“It’s…it’s alright. I’m just protective of my work…too protective
probably…”
The boy laughed a little, and they both felt the mood lighten. They
seemed to be from different backgrounds, and Jessica decided to ask his name.
“Uh, it’s Jonathan.”
Jonathan. Jessica had always liked that name.
“What’s your name…wait, let me guess. I love to guess things…” Jonathan
said with a goofy grin on his face.
Jessica sat down on her bed, and couldn’t help but smile at the thrill
Jonathan got from such a simple game.
“Ok…go ahead, Jonathan. Guess.”
“Ummm…heehee, Birdy?”
“Birdy, what a silly name! Where in the world did you come up with
that?” Jessica said while laughing, and tucking her hair behind her left ear
once again. But this time, she wasn’t paying as much attention to the bother of
her soft blonde hair.
“Well…you have yellow hair, l-like a bird! And…and your blanket is soft,
and…and so are birds! Heehee…”
The boy hid his head of brown fluffy hair under the blanket, for he
found what he had said quite embarrassing. Jessica played along.
“Oh Birdy boy…hmm, where’d he go?”
The boy popped his head out of the blanket, and burst into a fit of
giggles. Jessica began to laugh as well, and for the next few hours, she had
done something that she hadn’t done in a long time. She was having fun, with
this young, innocent, simple-minded boy, who seemed to be having just as much
fun as his new friend. After a while, Jonathan fell asleep on the couch, and
Jessica sat awake next to him. She wondered where he had come from, and who his
family was, but she had lost track of all those practical things when she was
playing with him.
While looking at the peaceful young boy, she remembered the flashback she had
when she first met Jonathan that night. She closed her eyes, and went back to
that place 6 years earlier, when she was 16 years old.
“Mister…m-m-mister, can I come in? I’m s-so cold, and I d-don’t know
where I am,” a young Jessica whimpered to a gruff, but kind man standing in his
garret doorway.
“Oh…oh, yes, come on in I suppose…” Christian told Jessica, and swung
open the door for her.
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