Kelly's Story Bit 2(Echoes: Teen Angst)

Kelly's story continues past Echoes: Origins, and it picks back up when Kelly is about 14, and is getting ready to enter High School.  It's early into summer break, but we come into the story with Kelly standing in the rain, dressed for her mother's funeral as she stands before her grave.  A traffic accident on a stormy night leaves Kelly without family. Kelly's godparent happened to be a man who was a family friend for years, having known Kelly's grandmother, and he becomes her legal guardian.

This is a pretty rough time for Kelly, who paints and draws to express herself.  One night, while painting through an emotional breakdown, she swears she sees the paint move and almost come alive.  She dismisses it and tells herself to go to sleep.  She dreams about her time with Gus - something which several years of therapy would have her believe was an imaginary coping mechanism from the loss of her father.  She wakes after having a vague flash of a man who helped her and Marçai recover from injuries during that time.

Master Orey, the man who had helped her in the Spirit Plane was her godparent, someone who had known Kelly's grandmother as an Archon - like Kelly.  Kelly begins to realize that the chalk was not the true power behind what happened, more importantly Kelly channeled energy through the chalk as she imagined it to have power.

There are positive and negative energies and spirits, and Kelly begins to be able to see these things more and more.  Kelly's father had been a police officer, and had many long talks with Kelly about helping people, and not being afraid to stand up for what is right.  The importance of this to Kelly causes her to feel a need to do something about the malevolent and harmful spirits and energies she finds.

Kelly goes to school as well and tries to lead a normal life, working hard to make time for training, studying, and removing bad spirits.She makes a couple friends, Claire and Anne, who don't initially know that there is anything different about Kelly.  The pair end up being exposed to Kelly and her happenings though - 

Claire is a bit loud and overbearing at times, but she's a good person at heart and cares about her friends.  Anne is rather quiet and keeps to herself, but she looks out for Claire and tries to keep her out of trouble. While some might think Claire probably bosses Anne around due to their personalities, others can see Anne is just as much a caretaker as a sidekick.  Anne also appreciates that Claire helps her be a little less reserved and timid.

One day there's a new student in Kelly's class, a girl named who goes by Bec and generally wants nothing to do with anyone.  A little about how Bec came about - I was drafting character ideas and had a few concepts before I settled on who she is now(more or less).  I've always felt like water was a good thing to compare Kelly to, adaptable and flowing, yet at times deep and resolute.  Bec is in some ways a foil to Kelly, a fiery character driven by passion, fierce and unyielding.

Here's where I'm trying to figure out if there's a second half to Echoes: Teen Angst with Bec, or if the rest of the story would all be its own arc.  Either way, I'll cap this post here with one more pic