<div class="floatright">(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p121/Mab_faerie/Elliquiy/b36a2cbe-7ec2-4a0f-83c1-80b5a9177b34_zps94ff6f9e.jpg)</div>While juggling a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand and a stack of papers in the other, Aislin McCarthy somehow managed to nudge the main door of her office building open with her shoulder and step inside. All done without spilling a single drop of the hot, steaming liquid.<br/>"Aislin! Good morning!" A familiar voice called out, one which Aislin immediately recognized as her boss' secretary, Madeline Cross.<br/>"Morning, Madeline. Any invoices for me today?" Aislin asked, eyeing the perky, large chested blonde that sat behind the main desk of the two story office building.<br/><br/>Madeline was, for the most part, hired because of her looks. She was sweet and strikingly pretty, but bless her heart, she was<em>dumb</em>.<br/>It usually took three or four tries of explaining something to her before she understood it. Still, Madeline was the closest thing Aislin had to a friend, so she did her best not to step on the girls toes too much by pointing out how slow she was to the draw.<br/><br/>"I left them in your office. Have you finished the Stevenson report?" She asked, tilting her head and allowing her tightly coiled golden ringlets to sway to the side just so. Aislin was willing to bet Madeline had practiced doing that, she was convinced that there was no possible way someone could be<em>that alluring</em>naturally.<br/>Then again, who was Aislin to say? She couldn't even make friends properly, let alone lure anybody with seduction.<br/><br/>"I invoiced it over last night, didn't Roy receive a copy?" Aislin asked, knowing the answer already. This was the third time this month that Aislin had faxed a copy to both her boss, Robert Lawson, as well as to her client, in this case the Stevensons, and ended up with Madeline losing the paperwork somewhere in between.<br/>"Uhm, Sorry Aislin, I don't see it anywhere!" The young blonde actually pouted for a moment, wrinkling her brow in obvious frustration as she shuffled through various documents on her desk.<br/>"Give me a minute to get settled in, I'll send you another copy to your work email." Aislin resisted the urge to roll her eyes and kept moving down the long, boring, cream coloured hallway towards the elevator, her long purple peacoat jostling about with her nearly frantic speed.<br/><br/>Nudging the second floor button with her elbow, she slipped past the opening doors of the elevator and took a sip of her coffee. With a sigh, she leaned against the wall, watching the doors close and listening to the ever familiar bell chime that signaled the elevator would begin its ascent.<br/>Absent-mindedly, she shifted her paperwork so it was snug and fit beneath her arm and allowed her now freed hand to toy with the camera that rested against her chest, dangling there via the thick, black leather cord strewn around her neck.<br/><br/>"Wish I was out on a shoot." She murmured dejectedly. The paperwork and the office grind had never been her seen. She much preferred the action portion of her job as a photo journalist. Sitting around in meetings that never seemed to end never was and never would be her cup of tea. Even calling herself a Photojournalist never seemed quite so accurate as she did a lot more than just take photos and write articles. Her company was affiliated with a home design company, a sister-site as it were. Not only that, but it provided information in the way of photos and data to many magazine companies and fashion establishments. Aislin never did just one specific thing, her photos were never just of houses, her drawings never just of clothes and her research never just of people. She was a photographic jack of all trades, master of... well, some.<br/><br/>As the elevator dinged once more, Aislin turned her attention away from the camera and out onto the hallway that had slowly begun to reveal itself as the elevator came to a still and the doors parted once more.<br/><br/>Tucking a strand of wispy, red hair neatly behind her left ear, Aislin stepped out of the elevator shaft and strode briskly down an equally boring cream coloured hallway, decorated with famous photographs and equally famous news clippings. Simple brown doors lined each side of the hall, leading out into simple little rooms with simple little people inside them. Aislins own simple room was on the left, the third door down from the elevator.<br/><br/>The room itself was scarcely decorated and looked abandoned at best. In the center of the room sat a neat and tidy brown oak desk with a black swivel chair behind it. The wall overlooking the desk held three long, floor length french windows that poured bright light into the room. Set slightly off to the side of the office was a coffee table set between two dark blue cushioned chairs that hardly ever saw much use.  The opposite corner was home to a silver filing cabinet that Madeline probably wouldn't know how to work even if Aislin showed her.<br/>Atop the desk rested two black Sending and Receiving trays, both of which were currently empty.  Beside the tray was a tall glass lamp that hardly ever saw any use since the windows provided so much light on their own and Aislin didn't normally stay late enough for it to become dark.<br/>Waiting in the center of the desk, just as she'd left it the day before was Aislins work laptop, full of all her past and current projects, as well as that invoice copy she needed to re-send to Madeline.<br/><br/>Dropping her paperwork onto the desk with an unceremonious crash, and tossing her purple peacoat onto the couch, Aislin settled into her seat, placed her coffee cup down and set to work.<br/>With her luck, Madeline would probably mess up the invoice file so badly that she'd need to redo it from scratch.<br/><hr/>Before she knew it, her day that had begun at 5am had stretched on well into the afternoon, nearing two. The loud and slightly embarrassing grumbling in her stomach reminded her that she hadn't eaten since breakfast and the now cold, half emptied coffee cup was doing her no favours.<br/>With a stretch and a groan, she rose to her feet, bending her knees a bit to get the feeling back into her legs from sitting so long.<br/>Shrugging her peacoat back on and adjusting the thin, black turtleneck beneath it, Aislin felt brave enough to face the weather.<br/>Outside was cold, even for her standards. Not the normal, chilly, might-need-two-shirts cold, but the kind of bitter chill that crept into your bones and stayed there until spring arrived to thaw you out again. It was a hollow type of cold, one that Aislin rarely, if ever, enjoyed.<br/><br/>With a wave to Madeline on her way out and a quick message about taking a lunch break, Aislin was off.<br/>With no particular craving in mind, Aislin stopped at a nearby cafe and grabbed a half-stale muffin, likely leftover from the mornings rush. With another coffee in hand, she took her muffin and headed out to the park adjacent to her office building.<br/>Even in the biting chill of the icy air around her, Aislin took some small pleasure in the quiet serene atmosphere the park supplied.<br/>Finding a vacant bench, Aislin took a seat and started on her muffin and coffee. After finishing her muffin and around halfway through her coffee, Aislin spotted something dark purple and square lodged between the seat and the back of the bench opposite hers.<br/><br/>Normally, Aislin knew best to leave well enough alone, but the striking contrast of dark purple against the brown wood was so eyecatching that she couldn't seem to ignore it.<br/>When at last her curiosity had gotten the best of her, she stood, crossing the few spaces between the two benches and kneeling down to examined the lodged object.<br/>It appeared to be a diary, or journal. Perhaps some kind of book? Hesitantly, she reached out and tugged it free of its makeshift hiding place.<br/>Upon closer inspection it  appeared to be a purple journal, with the colors turning out to be two varying shades of purple, a lighter and darker color, done in stripes across the cover. Upon opening the book she found that the pages were a light grey with swirling flower-like patterns along the edges, neatly lined for writing, but entirely blank. Apparently someone had purchased a journal, new by the look of the unbent spine and clean pages, and promptly forgotten it on the bench.<br/>Too bad too, it was a really nice journal.<br/>With a shrug, Aislin tucked the journal beneath her arm and began heading back to her office, no use leaving it out to be rained or snowed on.<br/><hr/>Back in the office, Aislin tossed the journal towards Madeline.<br/>"I found this in the park. Place it in the lost and found, would you? I doubt anybody will come here looking for it, but you never know. If it was important enough, I'd go to a few nearby shops or buildings and ask for it."<br/>"Placing it in the L and F! Done!" Madeline chirped happily as she slid the journal into the small basket beneath her desk where all the other lost and unclaimed items lived.<br/><br/>That finished, Aislin headed back up to her office to spend another few hours on pointless busy work her boss deemed fit to assign her.<br/><hr/>A few hours later Aislin slid her coat back on and gathered her reluctantly constructed files and paperwork, heading out for the day with about an hour of daylight still left in it.<br/>As she neared the exit on the first floor, Madelines panicked voice called out.<br/>"Aislin wait!"<br/>With an internal groan, she turned, smiling at the blonde and asking what she needed.<br/>"You forgot your journal!" She said, offering the now familiar purple diary to her.<br/>"That's not mine, Madeline. I told you to toss it in the lost and found, remember?"<br/>"I know but... I was looking through it, since it's such a nice shade of pink and all-"<br/>"That's purple, Madeline." Aislin cut in, amazed by Madelines ditziness, yet again.<br/>"That's definitely pink."<br/>"Madeline, that's way too dark to be pink. It's clearly purple."<br/>"Whatever! What I was trying to say is that, I was looking through it and saw that your name is in it. Are you sure it doesn't belong to you?"<br/>Aislin scoffed. There was no way her name could be in that journal. She'd looked through it herself already, it was empty!<br/>"Let me see that." She said, accepting the journal and opening to the inside cover page. Sure enough, there was her name, written in a dark purple ink, similar to the darker shade of the cover. As if that wasn't eerie enough, it appeared to be identical to her own handwriting, familiar loops, dips, curves and all.<br/>"I... I didn't write that." Aislin said, visibly shaken.<br/>"Oh come on! It matches your handwriting to a T! It's obviously yours. You've been working too hard, Aislin. You probably just forgot you wrote it in. Go get some rest."<br/>"But Madeline-"<br/>"Go! And take your pink journal with you!"<br/>"It's<em>purple</em>."<br/>"Goodnight, Aislin!"<br/>With that, Madeline shooed her out the door and into the street, with the journal clutched tightly in her now stark white hands.<br/>Puzzled and confused, Aislin made her way home, looking at the inside cover of the journal over and over again as she did, staring at the perfect replica of her name, written in an ink she didn't own in a journal that had never been hers.<br/>Her name. How had it gotten her name in it?