Emily stood on the edge of the pavement, pretending it was a rooftop she was perched precariously over, and dangled one mud cover shoe over the edge, where she could see its reflection in the grimy puddle beneath it. She sniffed, then drew the foot back. She searched for the rush of excitement that would usually grip her young pre-teen mind, but found nothing, and rubbed her nose with the sleeve of her jump balled up in her hand. She looked around, watching everyone walk through the streets with their precious shopping and their adoring smiles, and shuffled her feet as she made her way through Allahday street, to search for some new thrill. She began to look down every side street, every alley, looking for a new danger for her to explore, but like the missing surge of adrenaline from her pretend scare, there was nothing to be found. She drew her arms from our of her sleeves back into her jumper, and hugged herself under the red and green striped sweater, burying her face in the protruding cotton Rudolph face that had been roughly sown onto her chest to make the apparel more suited for the season, which had been several months ago, but she enjoyed the sweater. It still smelled of her, and it reminded Emily of her happy family, with her cheery mother, her loving father, and her annoying, but irreplaceable brother, Harvey. Which was the reason why she wore it today. When she had been given the stained, crude jumper, her mother had laughed as Emily struggled to pull it over her head in an attempt to please her. The memory of her mother's happy face as they stood in the kitchen, strewn wrapping paper beginning to curl up slowly as it landed on her little bare feet, tickling her, always delighted her, and made the act of wearing such a horrible jumper much better

VIII Joan picked up the silver orb, the source of the eery light that had emanated from the chest she now knelt before, in the lawyer's office. He had left only a few minutes ago, a mysterious and inquisitive look on his face as she held a key that had been hanging above her breasts on a thin grey chain - a memento from her father, as the chest from her now deceased grandfather was. She stroked the orb with the pad of her thumb carefully, and could find no grain or cracks to come across. It was a perfectly spherical object, so she could not understand where the light came from. It was clearly a secret held between her father and her grandfather, though she could not understand the relation, as they did not even share blood. Their only connection had been her mother, currently waiting for her in another room, flabbergasted as to why only Joan should be held privy to secrets within the old antique chest. Joan turned the orb sideways, inspecting it with some reluctance. Whatever it was, it had an odd calming effect on her. She didn't even feel alarmed at the strange sight resting in her cupped hands. She only felt confusion, emphasised by the fact that there was no note attached. 'Well obviously with such an odd and rare item they wouldn't want its secrets to be written on a note.' she mused, looking inside the chest for further confirmation that there was no note, which there wasn't. She began to feel around the inside of the chest, but found nothing. The inside had been what appeared to be worn away, so there were no corners, and rose to a gradual slope. She placed the orb gingerly on her jacket on the table, giving it one last glance, before she stuck both hands into the chest to feel it properly. Pushing her fingers forcefully into the back of the chest, she felt the inside of it shift. She gasped with sudden realisation, and carefully spread her fingers out to touch all four walls, and using the pressure to her advantage, she lifted the inside of the box out. Now it looked like a regular chest, with an extra piece it seemed. She looked inside eagerly, but still found nothing. She began to spin the box around, a idea beginning I form in her head. What if the chest was like her father's Chinese puzzle box? You merely had to slide out the correct pieces to find hidden compartments, or like the one her father had crafted, could be rearranged into something completely different. It was differcult to see what could be taken apart an reassembled, especially as she had no guidance, and she was definitely sure that who carved the magnificent chest must have created it solely for the Orb, and would have no qualms of making it difficult. Joan glanced over at the door, and decided that now was not the time to start deconstructing it. She would have to take it home where she could focus on it fully. Joan grinned, stroking the chest excitedly. She hadn't had a good puzzle in years. She was glad to see the her grandfather could still challenge her even after his death.

VII Dean was a man of many stories. You could never be certain of the role he played until the very end, constantly surrounding himself with pretty lies and prettier women. They called him the man of diamonds, due to the hundreds of small, glistening scars that were scattered across his body. Every woman seemed hypnotised by them, drawing their manicured nails across them in revelation, cooing over him as though they had the right to. He shunned them all, telling them all different stories about how he achieved such 'heroic' looking scars, as one woman had told him. "It looks like you were hit by fragments of a grenade." she sighed, looking up at him dreamily, no doubt wondering if she could be his Florence Nightingale. He sneered at the memory of her every so often. That was all they ever saw him as. A broken toy for them to mend, and god only knows how a woman enjoys changing a man. Which was why when Dean met Summer, a young college student with enough of her own troubles, he had been struck dumbfounded by her denial of his scars. "Diamonds? They don't look like diamonds." she had retorted, once he had told her his nickname and the reason for it. They had been sitting at the bar, in some club that he could never the remember the name of, but he would always remember her. Plum coloured hair, silver eyes to boot and the cockiest smile he'd ever seen on a girl so naive. "Well, what do they look like?" he had asked, smiling nonchalantly as she scooted over to get a better look at his forearms, where the more prominent scars were hiding beneath his hair. He was expecting her to take one look and change her mind, or perhaps say they didn't look like anything but scars, but when she dug her fingers into his forearm hair and actually felt the scars, he felt a shiver run up his spine, and he stared at her wondrously, as she seriously considered the small silver specks. "Tears." She said, pursing her lips as he withdrew her fingers and returning to holding her drink. "they look like tears, which I would much rather have than diamonds." She mulled over this last statement carefully, looking down at her own arms as though she had the choice of either. Her eyes lifted to meet with his own, and she laughed. "I'm sorry, that came off really odd. I'm forever saying dopey thing like that. What I meant was that while diamonds are all very poetic and all, which you could say the same about tears, I suppose," -she added quickly after an eyebrow raise from Dean, "I'd rather see these as tears rather than diamonds. Tears are so much more precious than diamonds. Diamonds can be bought at any jewellery store these days, but years are reserved for only the most important of occasions, good or bad. Men throw away diamonds on women to console them and please them. But tears are never given lightly." She took a sip of her drink, eyes still attached to him instead of his scars, and blushed. "That won't make sense, I know, sometimes I just blather on-" "-No, I get it. I totally get it." And he did. Usually he would let the women talk and passion ally chime he when he felt the conversation lag, but Summer was interested in him, and he wanted to reciprocate by asking her questions too, but after years of just letting the women come to him, he found it was much harder to keep a woman interested when he didn't know how to begin. So she began for him, sensing his willingness and his hesitancy, and asked him more questions. "So where did you get those cuts?" she asked, avoiding the word scar. He remembered tasting blood in that moment, he had inadvertently bitten his lip as he almost told her the truth, something he had never done before. It seemed as though it was a night of many firsts, as Summer grabbed a napkin from nearby and handed it to him, allowing him to care for himself. "It's okay, you don't have to tell me. It wouldn't change my opinion of you. " she said, shrugging as he pawed at his bottom lip, staring at her in disbelief as she ordered two whiskeys to a guy behind the counter. "Besides, I like not knowing." she admitted, grinning. "it means I have a story to look forward to."

Vi Cherry was a short, blonde, excitable chick who would frequently get into trouble with the law, though not in any serious way. Some folk would say that there's a lot more to a person than can be summed up in one short sentence, but it wouldn't be true to myself or to Cherry if I wrote her like a epic novel. She spoke in short bursts of energy, which was perfect for her job as a waitress in some dying 50's cafe on the highway, with a smile that melted most men's hearts, and eyes that would turn them cold again. You could never tell what she was thinking, and quite often made you forget that you ever wondered, as she poured you coffee as she told you a recent fact she had learned. It would be a strange fact about the Mesopotamians and their rituals one day, the next it would be about spiders living in the desert that would literally cartwheel away from their enemies, and she would ramble one about how the wheel was an inevitable and evolutionary fate for the creatures of earth. She'd win you over with passionate babbles over nothing, and she would leave you in a swirl of gingham fabric and the clumsy spill of coffee. She would laugh it off, pouting cheekily at Peckham the chef, as he warned her it would be the last time he let her coax him into keeping her, though it was obvious that he would never let her go. As if she would leave anyhow, she was drawn to that job. She would show up early and sing loudly as she set the tables and cleaned the countertop. She'd be the last to leave, jotting notes on the fridge to remind her to order more napkins, or putting the batteries in the various clocks around the joint. No one knew where she lived, not that anyone asked. She never spoke about herself, but was always interested to hear about other people. If she found a good enough story, she'd sit with them and listen to their carefully constructed lies, and sympathise with them, eager to be a part of their story, hoping to be included the next time the traveller told their story. She was not naive, but she didn't need much persuading when it came to adventures. Plenty of times she had gotten onto the back of a motorcycle, or into the passage her seat of a car and just left without warning. She'd be back a few days later, with a story and a song about the lovely old Indian couple who were going to some nondescript beach to visit their parents, or the odd little family with too much time on their hands who were on a tour of All states. You would believe it by looking at her, but Cherry was a good who loved adventure, and if had not been for Peckham's soft spot, she would have perished working in a dead end, meaningless job. Peckham had asked her once, why she left without warning, when he would gladly give her a holiday if she asked for it. "I can't describe it," she began, grinning as she waved goodbye to the various bikers that had given her a lift back. "I see these people everyday, I've heard their stories before, but sometimes, I see someone who is living their #life better than me, and I get itchy feet. I want their story. I want their sense of freedom, and I can't help myself. I'm not looking for anything when I leave, but I always find something when I return." And she would leave it at that, tying her apron around her hips and begins new day of working. TBC

v I am a stranger in a familiar land. I smile at friends, wave to my neighbours, greet my family with love and wonder why I am alone.