REPOSTED DUE TO AUTHOR BEING A TOOL WHEN IT CAME TO NAMES...

(It's better if you don't know: trust me)

Here's the first proper chapter. Heavily Edited to try and make it as perfect as possible for your reading pleasure... but I may have missed something (no matter how many times I proof read this), so If you spot something: tell me: ) I hope you like it, this gets everything started basically and explains some of the prolouge (if only a little). So here you go! Do tell me what you think: I worked quite hard so I want feedback, even if it's only a tiny responce... so here you go. Enjoy!

Thank you to Jynxer120 for reviewing (although you'd already read it LoL) it was lovely! YaY!!!

"Why do anything when you can forget everything"

Manic Street Preachers, from the song 'This is yesterday' released in 1994 on the album 'The Holy Bible'

(Lyrics possibly written by Richey James Edwards)

-Remebering Forgetting-

.:Lyla:.

The view was ever-changing due to constant motion. Blurred and merging so you couldn’t make out what exactly you were looking at, but you could still tell it was beautiful. I watched absent-mindedly, though transfixed by the morphing scenery, I was thinking of other things. Thinking of all we left behind, grateful to be free of it. Of all the schools I had been in (just counting the past five years) that had to be the worst. I never wanted to see those girls again; I wanted to forget what had happened like I had forgotten so many things. I was fifteen, adopted for the fifth time in eight years. This had been the longest I had ever lived with one family, though I had in fact lived in a boarding school for three years before ever ending up in an orphanage...

Anyway, I was going back. Back to the Wilde Islands. Back to the one place I’d always wanted to return. I was seriously nervous though. I had left when I was ten; three years after I had turned up on a beach with no recollection of how I got there or who I was. Most people’s first memories are vague, mine were quite distinct.

My first memory was vivid. I remember waking up in an unfamiliar bed, looking at an unfamiliar ceiling, in an unfamiliar place. In fact everything was unfamiliar, including me.

xXxXx

-Five years ago-

The sheets rustled as I shifted my weight. My eyes were still closed, though I knew I was awakening. I was trying to trap a dream fresh-dreamt to keep as my reality. A futile pursuit. I felt the sleep-fuelled adventure softly drift away, as though it had never been, leaving nothing behind. Its quick erosion blanking my mind in full: not a memory existed for me but those of the last few seconds.

‘Who am I?’

The thought hit me like a speeding bullet; it was hard and painful. I tried to remember, desperately searching my mind for a scrap of recollection. But nothing was there but a name; Lyla. Was it my name? It must have been. All of this didn’t make any sense to me. I could remember how to speak, spell, and read, and how to add and subtract. I could do all of that kind of stuff…but how I knew it all was a mystery. I was completely lost. I started to cry out, gasping for my breath, letting my tear ducts have their fun as everything seemed to crumble in my mind. I couldn’t help it.

And then I heard him as a half smothered cough breached the sound barrier of his politely-placed hand. Tears continued to slide down my panic-flushed face, but I remember feeling a surge of hope at the thought that whoever was with me might know who I was. My gasps slowed; diming down in volume. I braced myself for what was to come as best I could. So after a moment’s pause, I rolled around towards the source of the sound with slight resistance from my body: I felt weak, as though I hadn’t moved for days. Sliding upwards and propping myself against a convenient mountain of pillows: I first saw a boy about my size with deep sky blue eyes and the spikiest tangle of hair I’d ever seen (at least, I could ever remember seeing). I stared at him, totally attentive through the thick heavy silence as my breathing became more regulated. Our eye contact was absolute. He was sitting in a bedside chair. His short legs were dangling in the in-between he couldn’t quite stretch; his childish limbs not long enough to reach the ground. Shifting under my gaze (somewhat self-consciously) he smiled a timid sort of smile, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to do, or how I would react to him being there. I wondered if I knew him. Did he know me? Were we friends?

Then he asked the question that made me cry twice as hard as I had been already.

“Um…Hi…I-I’m Dorian, who are you?”

I swallowed, trying to make my voice steady. A veil of sadness cast itself around me; the kind produced through a loss of all hope. A loss of self.

“Hi,” I sniffled weakly, my voice cast into whisper “I-I think my name’s Lyla.”

He began to look confused, but I knew it was nothing close to the confusion that pulsed through me one hundred times per thought.

“You think…Don’t you know?” His brow furrowed by pure incomprehension at my words.

I shook my head to his question: not risking my voice for a moment, gulping down the rock-like lump in my throat again, trying to regain some form of control over chaos.

“I- I can’t remember anything but-but that name…It must be my name…right?”

As I voiced it, my panic grew, as though talking about it made all of this more real. It was frightening to be in this situation. Fresh tears plummeted down my face. My vision blurred and I couldn’t see anything clearly anymore. The world had turned into a mass of wet, colourful blobs. As I sobbed another piece of my heart out with every tremor of my body, the bed raised as something pushed onto it. I felt a hand the size of mine grasp me so that my fingers were laced with its own. It was surprisingly comforting; it made me feel like I was somehow less alone in the world.

“It’s okay Lyla,” As he said the name I smiled a small smile, though I was still crying heavily. It felt like he was giving me an identity (though whether it was in anyway similar to my old one, I had no idea). “You’re safe. Don’t cry.”

And as he spoke the words I did feel a tiny bit safer. It was all a little ridiculous. He was a little kid like me. He couldn’t keep me any safer then I could keep myself. And although I let his words of reassurance calm me, I heard an edge of uncertainty and worry creep into his voice. An edge that kept me just that bit frantic.

“But I don’t know where I am or where I came from! I d-” I began, my voice shaking: but I was quickly cut off.

“You’re on one of the Wilde Islands, in the spare room of my house. And I know where you came from! Me and my friend Milo found you on the beach, by the small dock and my secret alcove. We got my dad to come for help. He carried you here. He’s really strong. And don’t worry! My mom’s real smart so we’ll find your home real quick and you can go back and get better. Maybe we could meet up sometime; I did find you after all. Oh, and Milo helped too, I guess... but it was mainly me. ”

His voice made it clear that this was his idea of a good explanation to my desperate questions. It was also clear that this was what he thought of as a heroic deed. But as I said before: we were little kids. Finding a half dead amnesiac washed up on the beach is way cool when you’re seven and three quarters. They probably never even thought of the possibility that I was dangerously close to dying. If they hadn’t called Dorian’s Father, I would have.

“But I don’t know if I even wanna go home or not ‘cause I don’t know where home is or what it’s like! I don’t remember what my family’s like, or my friends, or –or even me!”

I was scared. It all rushed out. I was having hysterics, and Dorian was slowly catching on. He was starting to look a little freaked-out. I was too young for this... though I highly doubt any one in such a position would have been able to keep a calm facade.

Dorian didn’t say anything, he just held my hand and let me cry and sob on his shoulder. We sat like that for an indefinite amount of time, a long time. He rubbed slow circles on the back of my hand and let this strange crazy girl that neither of us knew have a melt-down because he was as clueless as to what he could possibly do to help me as I was . But eventually his mom came and found us. She quickly rushed over to the bed and hugged me, making Dorian release my hand (which somehow left it feeling naked, unprotected...cold).

“Shh, honey. Everything’s okay. You’re safe now. No one’s going to hurt you.” Why she thought that I had gotten the impression that someone was going to hurt me, I couldn’t work out.

“Dorian!” She bellowed (somehow softly so) at the boy with the chocolate hair which seemingly mocked the concept of gravity and its laws. “I told you to stay out of this room and let this poor girl rest. She’s probably been through a lot, I mean she’s been down for the count for seven whole days and nights and you can’t even bring yourself to give her an ounce of privacy, or some time to recover in peace! I come in here and find you’ve not only woken her up, but you’ve got her in hysterics!”

“I didn’t get her in hysterics, she got herself in them. I didn’t do nothing to make her catch them or wake-up.”

“It’s I didn’t do anything, and don’t you blame her for her predicament!”

“Her names Lyla, and what’s a preditement?”

She was about to answer, when I started convulsing with laughter. She stopped rocking me and looked down. From what I could see of Dorian, he seemed to think I was insane, though I wasn’t surprised in the least. My laughter sounded unstable and gave the impression that my mental health was likewise. But I couldn’t stop. I started shaking from the sheer force of it.

“Oh my God, she’s going into shock!” Dorian’s mom exclaimed. “Dorian: don’t do anything, I’m going to get a glass of cold water, hopefully that’ll help… but this may take a while for her to shake off.

It took an hour and a half, and the water she fetched didn’t help in the slightest.

I eventually managed (in between howls of my oh-so-manic laughter) to ask which way to the bathroom, ignoring my tortured stomach muscles I ran the way they pointed, went straight for the toilet, threw-up, staggered back to the bed, and fell asleep.

When I woke up again it was nice to be able to remember something.

Dorian had told his mom about my inability to remember anything but my name; at first, it seemed, she didn’t believe him. Apparently he had a tendency to over-exaggerate the truth, or simply re-shape it into something he preferred: so it wasn’t until I woke up that she believed my story when I myself confirmed it (I wondered exactly how much of a role Dorian actually had played in my discovery... maybe this Milo guy should have had more credit than he had actually gotten). She rang the authorities straight away, but there weren’t any missing persons fitting my description that they knew of. It became apparent that I was to be sent to an orphanage. Three months had passed when this conclusion was finally reached. I had become really good friends with Milo and Dorian (best friends), and they helped me hide in “Dorian’s” alcove by the beach for two days to try and stop me from being sent away. Eventually I was caught sneaking out to go to the toilet in a local café only a minute away from the seashore. However, after realising how terrified I was of being sent away from the few places and people I knew, Dorian’s parents got back onto the childcare officials and social workers, and it was finally arranged that I could live in the tiny private boarding school that was reasonably close to where Dorian and Milo lived. I had a curfew, and was allowed out until five o’clock as long as I finished my homework first. At weekends I was sometimes even allowed out until six.

It was soon decided I was about seven and a half, only a few months younger then Dorian. And each birthday my curfew was extended a little latter, there was a half hour added on every year on the first of July (This was my assumed ‘birthday’). When I reached ten, the boarding school closed down. There was nowhere to go. Dorian, Milo and I fought bitterly to get their parents to let me stay in their houses until it was revealed that they could only live comfortably on their current budget with three mouths to feed. Not four. Or in Milo’s case two, not three.

The day I left was the worst day of my memorable life. I left at half six, so good-byes were made at six o’clock as to assure an on-time departure. I hugged Milo and then Dorian, holding onto the latter until they made me let go. At the last moment I worked up the courage to whisper in his ear.

“I love you Dorian, please promise to always remember me.”

“I love you too Lyla, try not to forget me…I know you have memory problems but I am in your first memory so at least hold on to that one, if not for my sake, then for your’s. I’m good for the soul.”

“Yeah right.” I muttered. I kicked him on the shin and then kissed him on the cheek. Someone was calling me. I was crying and I knew Dorian had my freshly cried teardrops dampening the back of his shirt, but for some reason I didn’t want him to actually see me cry, so I turned and ran.

“Lyla, please… could you write to me or something?”

I didn’t know if I’d be able to where I was going, and I never made a promise I couldn’t keep back then, so I didn’t answer…I kept running and I never looked back.

It was only once I had hurled myself into the car, and lent into the seat that I realise my back was wet from Dorian’s tears.

xXxXx

Now I was finally going back. I had only managed to contact Dorian once in the past five years. I didn’t know what I was going to do, or how I was going to act. ‘He wouldn’t recognise me now’ I told myself. I had grown-up, and I knew I looked different. But what if I wouldn’t be able to recognise him? That would definitely make me freak. It would mean I was unable to identify the first person I ever remembered identifying.

Oh God. This was nerve-wrecking. I began to think about it. Really think about it. Dorian was always my bestbest friend in my mind. When someone asked me who my best friend was, for whatever reason (it was surprising how many people asked orphaned child amnesiacs this), I would always answer them with him. I had made other friends in the orphanage and in the schools I had attended, and the areas in which I had lived. But Dorian was always my best friend though I had basically lost contact all with him.

I had tried to contact him almost every day at first, writing letters that were probably never sent. I asked to make a call, but the orphanage didn’t permit it since none of the kids really had anyone so they never set up a system for such a thing (“We are our own family community here at the centre” they told me “Everything you need is right here, no why would you need to make a phone call to someone half way across the country?”...Our own family community, yeah, sure. They just weren’t bothered). Then there were the various foster families, the first only lasted a few months, and they only allowed me one long-distance call when my birthday came around. So I immediately jumped at the chance to talk to Dorian. We talked for two hours, but then my ‘mom’ got pissy and started yelling at me.

Up until then I had gotten on pretty well with this couple, but once she disconnected the phone, I started to act out. The kids at the orphanage had tricks for ‘dropping’ fosters (as they called it). So I started to use the ones they’d taught me and what do you know, revenge and an easy out. So whenever I didn’t like a family I’d just put the tricks to use and bingo: I was back at the Centre.

After a few months I began getting nervous about catching up with Dorian...what would I say to explain why I’d supposedly hung up so abruptly? Would he be mad? Could I keep up with him? Then a year passed. And then another. Slowly I started to realise that Sora had his own life now and I wasn’t in it. In fact there was a possibility I’d never be in his life again. But even after I stopped thinking about trying to get in contact, I still thought of him as the friend I had found when I was absolutely alone in the world all those years ago. I still considered him an important part of my memorable history, an important part of my traceable life. He was the little boy who had held my hand in his chubby fingers and made my name my own as I cried on his shoulder.

I never thought I would get the chance to go back to the place that had so long been my home: I gave up any hopes I had preserved… I started dropping fosters when I got bored of them until I got adopted by Lee and Maia. They were what I was looking for in a family, although I didn’t know it until I met them.

But then the war started in school they’d placed me in and everything there started to fall apart, as if I was unable to have both family and social happiness at the same time. But Lee and Maia found out (quite accidentally) what was happening and pulled me out of that educational hell hole. They immediately then began preparations to move to the one and only place both of them could get reassigned to in work. I nearly had a panic attack when I found out. I was so unsure whether I wanted to go, unsure whether they’d want me there. My dream of return had always been just that: a dream. A vague desire I’d fulfil sometime in the vague future. But I thought about it. I thought about everything Lee and Maia had done for me, and everything they were still doing.

So I decided to take the plunge and hope I made it okay. Once I made my decision, we left almost the very next day. And here we were.

Driving back to the Wilde Islands.

So there you go: explanations, background, and setting. I hope you like it, please give me some of you feedback:D

Thanks for reading!

xoX-IHeartSureal-Xox