When Avia's parents received the container that held their daughters charm, they looked at it together. It was a small cube, all silver with a golden ribbon around it. It looked just like a small gift. They undid the bow on top slowly, trying not to break the wrapping. They wanted to remember this moment forever, the moment their firstborn child received their charm. They opened it up, but something was different about this charm. It was shaped like a paw, unlike the traditional circle. Also, instead of the normal solid color, it was striped. In fact, it was more than striped, it was tiger print. Lastly, there was no symbol in the middle of the charm. The new parents were shocked at what as before their eyes.
"I have never seen anything like this," the nurse declared.
"What are we to do? Nobody has ever seen a charm quite this peculiar. Now, I have seen ones that are slightly misshapen, but those children always turn out normal. This, this could be a sign," Avia's mother suggested.
"A sign of what?" asked her father.
"A sign that we aren't ready to have a child.
Avia's parents agreed that they should give her up for adoption. Although it broke their hearts to leave her in an orphanage, they believed that it was the right thing to do. At the age of two years old she was put into the foster system, sadly never staying in one place for more than a year, sometimes less. By the age of 5 she had lived in at least four different homes, nobody wanting to adopt her. They always saw something to fear in her, something that nobody could ever explain. Once they saw that in her, she never stayed much longer. It was on her 5th birthday that the family she had been with the longest, at least up until then, gave her up.
"Avia, aren't you excited for your birthday today?" asked Maria, Avia's foster mom. Avia was really shy, and liked to stay in the shadows, writing in her journal for most of the day.
"Ya," she replied, and went on to writing.
"Oh, Phil, will you go get the balloons. We want the first birthday we have had with her as special as it can possibly be," Maria half asked, half ordered her husband, Phil. Neither of them said it outloud, but they both wanted a divorce. They agreed not to talk about it until either Avia was older, or she left them, whichever came first.
The two of them went along decorating, acting like a happy couple, but Avia could tell there was something wrong with this picture. She glanced down at the necklace she had made from a charm she had found in a silver box. it was tigerprint, and shaped like a paw. She had always found it interesting, and always wanted it to be around her. It was one of the few thing she brought with her, no matter what house she was living in. When she looked down, she noticed that something smelled a little fishy, and it wasn't the seafood her older sister was preparing. The pendant on her necklace had a faint glow around it, like it never had before. All of a sudden the ribbon around her neck broke, being dragged to the center of the room, knocking down a lamp and a few other house decorations along the way. The rest of the family rushed in to see what all of the commotion was all about, and they saw Avia's necklace hovering in thin air. The ribbon around the charm fell to the ground, and the charm burst into light. from it, a small tiger, about the size of a can of soda emerged, floating. It flew strait to Avia, and rested in the very center of her right shoulder. The scared silly look on those parents faces were the last she ever saw of them, and her necklace.