Physical Attributes:

I, AngelFyre Afton McCubbin, have often been told that I am a child of exceptional beauty, blessed with extraordinary facial symmetry. It somewhat saddens me that for most people, that is the sum total of what is noticed about me. I have long, shiny, golden tresses which I prefer to cascade naturally over my shoulders but which my mother prefers to be presented to the world in more refined, coiffed updos. She likes to present me more often than not as her little princess. If I had my way, I would present myself more as a wild child of nature.

My father also prefers my hair down. He says it perfectly frames the piercing, liquid pools of my blue eyes that can either calm his soul as a placid lake on a sunny day or chill him to the bone as crashing waves on a desolate, rocky seashore. He tells me they are my most striking feature and his favorite physical feature of mine.

My cheeks are rosy and my skin has warm undertones with no blemishes, at least none that are easily seen. I have one very small, but jagged scar on the bridge of my nose which seems to grow fainter with each passing year. That jagged little scar is my favorite feature.

In all other respects, I am not exceptional in my looks, at least not that I have heard. I am a healthy, normal weight and height for my age. It has never been said aloud to me, but it is my feeling that I have a slightly longer than normal torso and possibly shorter than average legs. Still, it is a subtle difference and possibly not very noticeable at all to the casual observer.

Mental/ Personality Traits:

At my core, I value justice, fairness, truthfulness, loyalty, and honor. I am a precocious introvert who likes people, but generally prefers my own company, or that of animals. I struggle with aspirational perfectionism, which has never been debilitating, but is often exhausting because I am also extremely detail oriented, logical, and analytical.

I have a very high IQ and EQ, and though I can present myself as a confident, gregarious individual in purely social situations, it is a supreme act of will to do so. I simply do not like a spotlight. I am quiet by nature. Very quiet. But not doormat or wallflower quiet. I am a listener and a keen observer of the people and situations around me. I do have more than a fair share of steel in my backbone, and if pushed too far, I am far from timid or indecisive. Whatever confidence I may lack in my social butterfly skills I find does not extend to the bedrock confidence I have in who I am as a person or what I can accomplish when necessary. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so, apparently, do I. I am comfortable stepping up if a need arises and I am just as comfortable stepping back.

People often misunderstand that one crucial personality trait about me the most, and as a consequence, most peers take an almost automatic dislike to me. I have been told on more than one occasion that due to my intelligence, "perceived confidence", silence, beauty, or any combination thereof, that I am too full of myself. Nothing could be further from the truth! Sometimes those same people, after getting to know me better, have told me how wrong their first impressions were of me. I just listen more than I speak, but I do understand the barrier it presents in getting to know the real me. My Grandma Ruth always says we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason and that I have proved the value of that again and again. Maybe too well.

Still, I do grow weary of trying to convince people of who I really am. As a result, I have few friends and that is actually fine because popularity contests do not interest me. The friends I do have know me and love me as I am and they understand me. They are as close to my heart as my family. We help each other when and where we can, and have sworn blood oaths to be there for each other all the days of our lives.

I do laugh easily and often, but I have been known to grow teary-eyed at the sound of beautiful music, and music to me can range from bird songs to Mozart. I can also burn with white hot, righteous anger at the purposeful infliction of physical or emotional pain on anyone or any living thing. I can, and do, forgive, but I do not forget.

Biography:

I am muggle-born, proudly so, through and through. My father, Iain Alexander McCubbin, was born in Dundee, Scotland, but my mother, Annene Gale McCubbin, was born in the state of Texas in the U.S.A. They met as my father traveled the world for his job at DHL, giving motivational speeches to corporate heads. My mother was once a corporate head in one of his New York City audiences and things just progressed from there. They married, moved her to Scotland, and a year and a half after their blessed union, a wee, bonny bairn was born to them in Edinburgh. They named me AngelFyre because they hoped there would be a large measure of goodness in me, tempered with a balance of passionate heat to catalyze that goodness into action. It is my soul-deep wish to honor them, and the good name they bestowed upon me, always.

Much to my father's chagrin though, I sound more like an American than I do a Scot. My mother took up photography as her vocation upon moving to Scotland, but she also desired to be a hands on mom to me. She wanted me with her on location shoots but quickly learned she needed help. A lot of help. Soon thereafter her mother, my Grandma Ruth, came to live with us, mainly to take care of me while we tagged along with Mom as she worked. Because my father travels a lot for his own work, it was natural that the two people I heard and spoke to most often had American accents and that I would naturally emulate their syntaxes and pronunciations. I have tried to mimic my father's lyrical brogue, but I honestly do not have the ear for it.

We now live on a beautiful "farm" in Stenton village, about 45 minutes outside of Edinburgh. We have lived there since I turned five. My parents decided to make the move from Edinburgh because they wanted me to grow up with grass under my feet and the perceived safety and freedom to knockabout the countryside unmolested. My father, most especially, wanted me to be able to just run out our backdoor and into whatever adventures awaited me provided my chair at the table was filled for family meals, my daily chores were always completed, and my marks at school remained high.

They never wanted me to be alone, and tried two other times (that I know of) to give me a brother or sister, but it was not in the cards. I am destined to be their only child and I am actually fine with that. They are loving and pragmatic, but not doting. They married somewhat late in their lives and have always treated me more as a short adult rather than as a normal child, so I have long been advanced in my temperament and studies compared to most of my peers. Their “seemingly” lackadaisical parenting style has afforded me more freedom than most others I know, but I, in turn, have always earned that trust. However, to their great dismay, it would seem I am also advanced in one other area – my biology. I have never considered my parents to be overprotective types, but as I have more and more begun to draw the attention of boys, I have been saddened and disappointed to feel the iron vice grip of their concerns constrict around me.

Case in point. I was uprooted from my idyllic life on our farm and my beloved Belhaven Hill School in Dunbar over a minor incident. I emphasize minor. As a result of said minor incident, I was accused, tried (sort of), and sentenced to attend St. George's School for Girls where I have been the past year. I would laugh if it were not so personally heartbreaking and confusing to me. My crime was that my Belhaven instructor, Mr. Linden, caught me kissing Geoffrey Bates, a boy two years my senior, after a rugby match. To be fair, Geoffrey was the one who kissed me, catching me completely by surprise, but that salient fact could not dissuade my father from pursuing the course of action he thought wise.

“AngelFyre, plead your case no further,” he said sternly. I stood opposite him at his desk, my eyes filling with hot tears, not as much from sadness as from frustration at my inability to make him understand.

Suddenly his manner softened and he swiveled his chair to the side, patting his leg as an invitation to climb onto his lap. I stood stubbornly still, my feet firmly planted. He smiled a sad, little smile, patting his leg once again and I felt my resolve melt as I moved to accept the invitation. As his strong arms wrapped around me, pulling me to him, I could feel him trembling which surprised me as it was warm in his study. A deep exhalation escaped before he spoke again.

“This is not a punishment, sweetheart. I know it must feel that way, but it is not. We do believe this is for your own good otherwise we would not be doing it.” I tried to squirm away upon hearing the it is for your own good argument for the millionth time, but he held tight and lovingly tilted my face to gaze directly into my eyes.

“Your mother and I know you did nothing wrong. Of course there is nothing inherently wrong with kissing a boy. It is a natural thing to do, but you are so young, AngelFyre, far too young to be dealing with such complications right now.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he slowly shook his head to silence me.

“Perhaps we have unintentionally done a disservice to you. I think we sometimes forget how very young you really are. You will be, and maybe are already, changing in ways that will be both thrilling and confusing to you in the next few years. These changes will sometimes feel like they are entirely out of your control. And they will be. They are for everyone. Dealing with those changes, for you and for us as you go through them, will not simply boil down to the matter of the faith and trust we have in you, or a perceived lack of it either, for that matter. Sometimes action will be required. It is our primary job to love and to watch over you and to do our best for you. So as hard as this may be for you to understand right now, your mother and I are resolved that the best course of action is to place you in a school where boys will not be a distraction. You need an environment that will allow you to navigate these changes with more focus. Though you may not be interested in boys right now, you soon will be, and they are most certainly interested in you already. We know you are upset, but it is our fervent hope that you will trust us to do what we feel is right, and to forgive us if you just cannot see it our way right now.” And just like that it was game, set, and match to Iain and Annene McCubbin. Well played, Mom and Dad.

So here I have been at St. George’s for almost the past year. I would be lying if I said I loved it, but I would be telling the truth if I said I did not hate it either. It has been hard being away from my first life as I have come to think of it, but it has also strengthened my sense of independence which I did not believe possible. I do look forward to holidays and term breaks at home where I spend most of my free time tending to our animals, riding my bicycle, and building tree houses and forts with my two best human friends, Ainsley Grandin and Kendric McLeary. My mother is even able to coax me sometimes into posing as a model for her fantastical photo shoots. But whenever possible, I most love romping and exploring the countryside with Ainsley, Kendric, and my beloved Irish wolfhound, Hillary. If I am not exploring the real world around me on foot or on bicycle, then I am most assuredly doing so with my nose in a book.

First Instance of Magic:

The first unintended instance of magic I can recall took place in the Belhaven schoolyard when I was almost nine years old. My friend Kendric is small for his age, and was then as well. He had been bullied for a while by a troglodytic specimen of maleness in our class by the name of Dougal Larabee, but heated words, as is often the case in such situations, inevitably escalated to blows.

On the afternoon in question, things had ratcheted up so feverishly quick that Kendric had already taken a couple of hard gut punches and was collapsing to his knees by the time I was able to push my way into the fray. I was standing on the sidelines and nowhere close enough to touch either combatant, but I instinctively moved my right hand to block a blow about to land on Kendric's upturned face. To my utter shock, and to the bewilderment of the crazed student mob surrounding them, Dougal was simultaneously thrust back off his feet a good 3 meters. He landed on his ample derriere with a loud and most satisfying THUD.

Understandably, Dougal was breathless and confused as to how Kendric managed to ward him off. I was as surprised as everyone, but unlike the others who had been too focused on encouraging the fight to see my hand gesture, I seemed to be the only one who suspected it was I who was responsible for Dougal's brief, but glorious free flight into confusion and humiliation. I would not be able to swear to it, but I am almost certain there was a warm, rapid-fire series of electrical contractions in my forearm when I lifted it in that moment. I do know my forearm tingled for hours afterward.

The incident both thrilled and unnerved me, but I never tried to repeat it for fear of getting into trouble, nor did I ever mention it to anyone. Not to Kendric and especially not to my family. Still, I do lie awake some nights and wonder where that power came from and what it means and when, or even if, it will take me to places and people and adventures even farther from home.