Outline
1st ark

Initial meeting, injured, alone, fleeing through suburbs. Ages pro 15/16 Molly 8-10 Second meeting, 11-12 molly, pro 16-17 this time simply observing – possibly protecting

Third meeting, stage of plot, Molly 13 runs away? pro meets and protects, 18-20 thus begins relationship ish. one sided initially.

fourth meet – prior to this molly is apprenticed dresden. Coffee shop/ other public venue, meet, subtle. molly , protag 19/20. At this time inducted by dresden, judged white council, found innocent, no black magic, apprenticed Dresden? Support Merlin, possible issue? Meet Molly Family, possibly before this. At that time meet Dresden?
2nd ark

Growing, fighting, learning, A N G S T, fairy shit. Destiny, antagonist, possibly inherited coin, possibly meddling arch angels, idk. Further development of relationship, wrong at first, obviously gets better. Small favor, big fight? Split – Dresden not liking council, pro favoring merlin. Perhaps split up. Separated master apprentices during changes, shows up to help, finally, big reunion, Dresden killed later. Cold days, possible fairy meddling protag, possible molly.
Final Ark

Split up, Dresden dead fight for survival. Cold days, Dresden resurrected, winter night, council finds out through protag, split, etc. idk.
Story
Act 1, Scene 1.

I’ve never gotten along with people. There’s always about ten miles of personal space issues along with a slough of other things. Not to turn into a sob story mind you, I like it well enough – gives me time to think. People are generally friendly, but I think down deep they recognize that something is off – hell, I recognize it too, and I’m me after all.

All this ties into when I was homeless after a day and a half on the run, I’d gotten shot in a freak accident at one in the morning. The details now are irrelevant, I just need to set the scene. Now, normally someone with friends would call for a ride, a lift, hell, an ambulance. Well I had no phone, and the only person I knew was a barista who smiled at me more often than not. So I was shit out of luck in the worst of ways.

I’d been stumbling for about a block and a half – I had little idea where I was, some place in the suburbs but that was it. My hands were starting to go cold, and my stomach was now steadily bleeding with an intensity that, frankly scared me. On some instinctual level I knew I didn’t have long, so I somehow made it into some kid’s tree house before collapsing. Now, I regained consciousness only a couple minutes later – spluttering my way through blood and black tendrils of whatever makes up our dreams to find a little girl looking at me.

Now I wasn’t really that old myself – I’d skipped out of high school early, but I wasn’t yet 16. This girl couldn’t have been 10, although she had those early signs that predicted an early maturity. I may have said something, but frankly I was so out of it at the time that all I remember was when she left if possible the moonlight got every brighter. I remember .. words, definitely; with who? I couldn’t say, even now the only thing I’m sure of is they definitely weren’t Human. When I awoke the kid was back, and a first aid kit of all things was what she had brought.

Despite the ridiculousness of the situation, she did apparently know first aid, and my wound was looking immensely better by the time she’d wrapped it. I have no idea how, but it was apparent I could now walk, and said as much to the bright haired, little moppet. By that time, I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t dreaming, yet I thanked her and moved to climb down the ladder. Looking back, I realized there was not a drop of blood anywhere on the wooden flooring, nor, even on her hands where she’d bandaged me. She didn’t seem to notice, and, feeling a little light-headed I climbed down from the ladder. Clearly something supernatural was happening tonight, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

The night was cold after that – a biting chill that cut to the quick of you in an instant, gnawing at your very bones. Entirely out of place for the middle of October, but I let it embrace me nonetheless: I had miles to go before I could finally rest for the night. That was my first encounter with Molly Carpenter, and it proved not to be the last.
Act 2

Magic was something I discovered around the next year, and what a year it was. Suddenly, money wasn’t a problem, and I could move at ease through a society that denied I existed. I reveled in my new power, but, for whatever reason, be it paranoia or the grace of the God I avoided breaking any of what I now know as the laws of Magic. I finished my GED somewhere in there, because I’ll be damned if I’m not prideful to a fault. I was still neurotically solitary, and I spent many a summer night just roaming before returning home to the apartment I rented. You can’t imagine the freedom being young, and powerful can grant. The temptations were many, but I’m glad to say I committed few things that keep me up at night. I was almost a creature of the wild for much of that year; sleepless, moving unconscious throughout the vastness of Chicago, only waking for brief periods of lucidity. I remember very little, and even now I still get flashes that I’ve never seen before, some unexplored depths of my mind surfacing, albeit briefly from the tumultuous insanity I’ve created.
Molly’s POV

The air was thrumming with that undercurrent that hits late September. Leaves were scattering themselves across every square inch of ground, and the chill in the air bit at you even through sweaters. Fall was here, and Molly Carpenter bounced around the house despite the cyclical arrival of the ever-dreaded school. It was the day before Halloween, the lights were going up around the neighborhood; pumpkins were being carved, and, as was the ritual the Carpenter children were fighting over who got the best costumes. Michael was out with the tall, ominous-looking guy that sometimes came around, so Molly’s mom was mediating the conflict. _”Daniel! Stop hitting your brother, Molly!” here she paused, and was immediately pulled back into the fray; “don’t.. get into trouble.” Her mother sighed wearily, before picking up her sibling and marching off to the kitchen, a veritable parade of children following her in her wake.

Molly detested being seen as a child – she was thirteen now, and basically an adult. Sometimes this corresponded to more leeway from her parents, and she delighted in being taken seriously. Her mood now practically bouncing, she stepped from her house, and into the front yard; intending fetch her backpack from the mini van. The night was still young, and the moon just over the horizon, the sun having set early this time of year. The air was cold, but not intolerable, and she rubbed her arms distractedly. Against the light of the neighbor’s porch a tree not entirely barren of it’s leaves swayed in a stiff wind; the solitary street light on their block burned a dull orange, it’s false candlelight illuminating the surrounding carpet of leaves in surreal clarity. She made her way along the cobbled path, approaching the mini van still parked before the shallow blackness of the garage. It was then she heard a shrill, ringing cry – long, and harrowing it echoed among the accompanying houses, some unholy testimony to the night. She immediately froze, her spine rigid with not-quite terror, and her eyes – still not adapted to the darkness roamed everywhere, darting from empty, dark porches, to other trees shadowing moonlit yards. Another cry, this one definitely closer and lasting for longer. She couldn’t hear anything save for the swaying gasp of the wind in the trees, and the faint wind-chimes a few doors down. A beat of her heart passed, thudding against the stillness, a ringing endorsement of her terror. Then something moved across the street. Some creature swathed in tendrils of shadow, like some ill-formed creature from a storybook. Somehow in that split second she realized two things: that whatever it is was not Human; and she needed to run. Now.

Captured lightning thrummed in her veins, and she was off: heading not for the garage, but the front door at a sprint. She felt it chasing her, felt whatever it was pursuing her, some hound of the very depths of Tartarus after her soul. She felt a kind of clairvoyance, a warm, humming energy take her, and it felt like she flew towards the front porch. Great, leaping bounds as if the very Angels, themselves carried her aloft. Then she felt something grip her ankle, and she fell heavily upon the stones of the walkway. Turning, she looked into the face of her attacker, and sensed the malign intelligence of a predator of sorts, no simple animal, but something gifted with reason turning it’s gift upon others. She cried out then, shamefacedly in blind panic, and thrashed and kicked, her new shoes catching the beast but to little apparent effect.

She felt it nearing her, but before she thought to scream there was a terrific flash, a shout of fury, and white flame rippled across the avenue crashing into the beasts back, and setting whatever cloaked it alight in silvery-white flame. A crack of thunder crossed cloudless autumnal sky, and something flashed again, pale iridescence illuminating a figure, arms outstretched a nimbus of swirling energies the color of the moon. The creature gave a bark, and leaped skywards, trying to catch the figure off guard, to some effect. There was a brief instant of contact, they both rolled, and again Magnesium flare against her corneas as light once again smote the creature, driving it several feet backwards. It sputtered, growled and hissed but did not move forwards; almost seeming to hesitate before her and the cloaked person. Suddenly it seemed to opt for cowardice, and fled backwards, down the street and out of the moonlight. Her apparent rescuer, sagging slightly and holding his (for it the boy she had rescued before, she knew that now!) side, seemed to look back at her, briefly; a familiar voice, young but gliding like so much silk thread wove through the crisp air: “_A dept repaid then Molly, for that was the name you gave me. It shall not return tonight, and even now I pursue!”_ A gleeful cadence entered the boy/man’s voice with that last syllable and he bounded like a dear in the direction the creature had fled. She thought she heard a mad laugh echo down the suburban street cloaked in velvet darkness; it’s streetlights little stars among the black.

She stood there in the loaded darkness of the Carpenter family front yard, mind buzzing, and a curious tingle in the tips of her fingers. She raised her hand before her face – idly watching the ember glow of sparks dancing across the cuticles of her fingernails and beyond. She should probably be worried, but exhilaration was her only companion. They trailed each other; back and forth, back and forth; each dancing some timeless waltz around the confines of her pale flesh, rendered alabaster in the moonlight. In an offhand manner she wondered if she’d get to skip school because of this. A pregnant pause, and she started giggling madly, almost doubled up upon her self, magic sparks apparently breaking the circuit and fizzling out.

It was then that her father swept into view, that curiously tall man right behind him, holding of all things a long, walking stick. Her father seemed to be carrying a sword – but that wasn’t right, Michael was, appropriately, a master Carpenter, a wielder of timber not bladed weapons that seemed to glow from some inner wellspring of moonlight. She looked oddly at him, before proclaiming “Daddy!” flinging herself upon the bearded man and forcing him to move his sword to avoid skewering her. The tall man, later she would know him to be Harry Dresden looked at her quizzically, a thoughtful expression upon his long, shadowed face. Oddly, he broke eye contact and looked away towards the front door, where only now was Charity emerging, a kitchen knife of some sort held by her side. She took in the scene, a look of tainted relief evident upon the sharp planes of her face. This was apparently a night for secrets revealed, and warm cocoa before the fire. Before bedtime, Molly would be ingratiated into the world of magic and secrets by her father, and Harry Dresden; the former almost falling out of his chair when she conjured sparks from the fingers of her right hand. By the end of the night, Dresden promised to return the next day – his statement that this kind of power was White Council level meant nothing to her, but both of Molly’s parents went a little gray.
Act 3.

There was a lesson here, somewhere.