Abigail Welker, Nineteen Years of Age as of eight days prior, slim but toned with long sandy-blond hair tied back in a loose ponytail. For all her life she had resided mainly on her mother’s farm, save for when she had attended Boarding School over two-hundred miles away during her school years.
Along with her parents, the only other residents had been a farmhand, and until recently her older (by four years) sister, Dianne, who now attended University, and only when her mother had finally relented a few months back. Something that was still not the case with Abigail.
In fact, outside of Boarding School her mother had gone to serious lengths to keep her on the Farm, something that frustrated Abigail to no end, especially in the last year or so. And every time she tried to get an answer out of her, she was met with some kind of non-answer like “You’ll understand when you’re older.” or “You’re not ready to know that.”
What she could not have known, given the lengths her mother went to, to hide it from her, was the Real Reason behind keeping her on the Farm, away from prying eyes. The reason why it had taken so long before Dianne was allowed to leave. Why she never knew her father.
That reason being a Curse on the Family Line - or so it was believed - that almost always manifested between the ages of Sixteen and Twenty-Two, especially if both parents were ‘carriers’, in fact, even if it were just the one, the odds were still quite high. The only true variables being how it would first manifest itself, and by what mechanism the first instance would occur.
And it was on this morning, that the first signs that Abigail Welker was afflicted made themselves known. Though she would not have knowledge of it until far later, when it progressed sufficiently, already she was beginning to become…