In the Dead of the Night || Winter Soldier

One: Winter is Coming

NOW – Outskirts of Stowe, Vermont, North America – January 18th, 2015

Time: 10:43pm

"T'Challa, you – wait, what are you even doing up so early? It's like, only six forty in the morning over there right now."

"Early riser, you know that Tori. I wanted to catch you before you went to bed anyway. It is harder talking to you these days with the times zones between us." Always such a serious tone about him, which I suppose is a granted for a prince, but that thick Wakandan-African accent is always a welcome sound to my ears. Reminds me of my home.

Neither of my parents are Wakandan born; my mother being from Northern Ireland and my father from America, but Olivia Murphy-Kingsley – my sixty four year old mother – moved to Birnin Zana at such an early age, that she's an official citizen of the country. The fact that she ended up growing up with the man who would be and currently is the king of the country, seemed to only solidify that further.

The man himself, T'Chaka, is undeniably my second father. He and my biological father, Matthew, also happen to get along like two peas in a pod, which mom was rather thankful for after T'Chaka originally threatened him – oh wait, sorry, informed him with various political and anatomical promises that ranged from deporting him to disembowelling him with scary vibranium claws upon their first meeting, should he ever break my mother's heart.

Ahh mom; achieving friendships goals with the King of Wakanda since 1955.

So as you may imagine, it was inevitable that T'Challa and Shuri – T'Challa more so than Shuri due to her frankly intimidating headstrong, rash and impulsive personality – T'Chaka's son and daughter, would grow up as my number one best friends in the entirety of my little, insignificant existence.

Though, considering the fact that my quantity of friends outside of T'Challa and Shuri is limited to two, only having met said other two friends in the past five years, there really isn't much tough competition in that department.

Social anxiety has always been a thing for me, which is probably why I am lacking in too many friends. It's not like it rules my life or is even that severe, I'm just... a naturally awkward person. I babble a lot for starters, make horrible jokes at the best and most inopportune of times, don't really know how to appropriately interact with people, and don't really go out of my way to go out into the big world and socialise with people like... at all.

So yes, I am basically the lovechild of every character off the Big Bang theory, Felicity Smoak and every character ever played by Steve Carrel.

Be prepared for a whole book of awkward moments.

The point of all this is – wow, I really do babble – that I myself do have a dual citizenship, for despite being born in Ireland where my mother is from, and spending the first year of my life in the country, she and my father returned to Wakanda not long after. So essentially, I'm a pasty af white girl with big glasses that were made especially for me so I would stop seeing dead people wherever I go, but I was born in Ireland and raised in the capital city of Wakanda, Birnin Zana, alongside the prince of Wakanda himself. He's a pretty cool dude too, doesn't even mind me naming my Bombay cat after him.

Placing my phone down on the sleek, austere, timber kitchen counter, I put it on speaker as I manoeuvre around the country house kitchen, removing my kitty cat T'Challa from where he's half submerged into my Lucky Charms cereal and shooing him towards Everest and Lady, my Bernese Mountain dog and English Springer Spaniel. "I know, I know. I want to come home, but you know why I can't T-Cat. My main cat. My main feline. My Tabby Cat King. My Sylvester—"