Faith, Hope and Magic (Page 1)

As I am getting close to finishing pages 3 & 4 of my story and will be hopefully posting them up for my Patrons in the next few days (children allowing of course), I thought I would put the first page of my work out for everyone to see, as currently my only patrons are my husband, older sister and my mum, so not a very unbiased audience!

so here it is page 1 of “Faith, Hope and Magic”

Life was good on earth these days, even for an orphan. It hadn’t always been, crime, pollution, overcrowding and dwindling resources had all been huge problems in years gone by, that was, until magic had been discovered.

Faith had been 13 years old when her parents had died, her mother of a brain haemorrhage, so suddenly there had been no time to even think about going to sky central to a healer, her father stopped going to work and eating, he just sat in his chair in their pod and wasted away, he died not long after her mother’s death, leaving her all alone and unsure if she was sad or angry.

Faith spent a year in a group home with three other girls, Selina, Jodie and Jane and a custodian, Mrs Warren, a friendly but firm woman in her late forties, she could barely remember the other girls or their stories about how they ended up there, the shock of losing her parents had not really worn off until she was moving out at 14 and was allotted her own private pod, Faith had chosen light purple for her pod walls and a rose garden for her window view, she had no idea if roses really looked and smelled like that as it was an illusion made by the magicians, but she had loved it so much she had barely looked at the other options when she was choosing the settings on her pod, it was just the basic small single accommodation the people normally only chose if they wanted to save so they could afford to have a child when they got married in later life, but they were also used for orphans from 14 to 18 years old while they were in workforce training, the 1st year of workforce training was to see what you were best at out of the careers your parents could afford for you to train in or if you were bright enough to get a scholarship for the next class up to top up your parents payments.

Orphans could train in classes level 1 or 2, level 3 if they qualified for a scholarship. level 1 was basic manual labour positions, level 2 was more skilled but still menial jobs with long hours, level 3 was office based work, normally with computers, level 4 management and level 5 magician training. No one from workforce could afford to send their children to level 5 classes even with a scholarship.

The cost of workforce training was the main solution to overcrowding, most families could only afford one child, possibly