The First Day - Kidman

'Bright. Bright...' For the first few minutes, that was all the girl could perceive. Then the wind, the heat of the sun, the scratch of that within which she lay, and pain. She sat up. Squares of green sprawled out before her, endless to the horizon. She watched the grass move in waves with the wind. Her mind was empty of thought, save for the barest of basic. 'Hungry. Itchy...' The girl stood up weakly, fell, but succeeded in staying up the second time and surveyed the space around her. 'A field. This is a field. I am in a field. Those are bushes. That is grass.' She looked at her hands, then at her clothes. An old white t-shirt and blue and grey striped pajama pants. It did not feel familiar, but nothing did, and somehow did not seem to be cause for concern. A sense of urgency flitted at the edges but she could not grasp it. It was, as dreams tend to be, just how it was. It eventually occurred to her that standing in a field was not amounting to anything constructive and she slowly made her way across the moor towards a narrow dirt road, each step purposefully placed. ‘Roads go places.' This particular road was upon a particularly steep hill, and so the obvious direction to go was down. ‘Rocks make my feet hurt. Don't put feet on rocks.' Whether she walked for minutes or hours, she couldn't say. All there was was forward until such time that she arrived Somewhere. That first somewhere was a dilapidated shack. A man in old jeans and a checkered shirt reclined in a rocking chair in front of it; a beer in hand and a radio at foot. The girl stared at him. The man stared back. "The hell happened to you? You fall in a chipper? Wots with tha hair o' yor?" The girl cocked her head, but said nothing. Some of the words made sense to her, but she couldn't quite find their meanings. The man stood up to get a better look. "You speak English? Jeeze you're a right mess. Wotcher name, kid?" She sensed that a response was expected, and soon grew visibly frustrated with being unable to. The man sighed. This was one of those situations that called for the police, but that wasn't how things were done. Not around here. He pulled a transceiver out of his pocket. "Hey Yeller, I got a situation up front. Some beat up kid just wander' in, don't speak a lick." A fuzzy sound answered back and an argument commenced, but this was of no interest to the girl, and so she wandered past unnoticed to the path beyond. --- She wasn't found until nightfall, when she followed the smell of food into the cafeteria. "Hey, hey, who are you? You can't just come in here." The girl looked at the man in front of her blankly, then pointed at the pasta on another man's tray. "You don't talk?" The girl continued to point at the pasta and the man scratched his head. "Anyone know what the hell is going on here? Jesus, looks like she fell in a chipper- Wait, where are you going?" The girl was now trying to get behind the lunch counter. The man sighed. This was one of those situations that called for the police, but that wasn't how things were done. Not around here. "Somebody get this kid some medical and some food- Hey, you can't just take that!" Kidman's first, and perhaps only theft at VILE; a handful of pasta. ‘This kid' became Kid, with ‘Kidman' added later as a half-joke in reference to Nicole Kidman that stuck. Other than that, little was known, and really, little was asked. VILE wasn't the sort of organization to pry. At first she merely floated around, but curiosity led her to be drafted into small tasks, and from those she mastered larger ones. She did eventually learn to speak, or remembered how to speak, and when she did, she had a strange accent that couldn't be placed, but it soon wore down into the lilt of northern England. Kidman wasn't aware at first what VILE was, and by the time she did, she didn't care. Theft wasn't presented as a terrible thing when the stories of Carmen were told. It was a daring game against the world, a fantastical thing that only Carmen and her magical team could do. A team she was part of. Her naivety wore away with time, to a certain extent, and she became fairly on level with those around her, except she didn't look back. It didn't occur to her to. How would she know? How would one know they were missing their memory if they could not remember having one? No one asked, as it was considered bad taste to do so. Clearly the girl had escaped something terrible to have such scars. Clearly to everyone but Kidman. Lots of people on base had scars. Lots of people on base had grey hair. She had been told once that she looked like an ‘anime character' and was shown a picture of a young girl with silver hair. If it was in a magazine, it had to be normal. Unusual, but normal. She had her uniform, her little room above the garage, her teammates, her pasta. For nearly two years Kidman was normal, unusual but normal, and very, very happy.