In which we begin to meet Aine Kepa, but do not finish meeting her because work was three hours longer than expected today, and I fell into the black hole of awesomeness that is "Scrubs"

Pascal Spronk was in love. As passionate a love as a boy of his age could be in, anyhow. Five houses down and two over there lived a girl named Aine Kepa. She was not lord and emperor of her land the way Pascal was of his. As a matter of fact, Aine did not know that she ruled over anything. In the morning she would sit at a plain wooden table and eat cornflakes. During this time she would stare with great concentration at the back of the cereal box. Her parents thought that she was very intelligent because she was able to sit quietly and concentrate for long periods of time, her little legs swinging a bit because they couldn’t reach the tile floor beneath her. When Aine finished her cereal she would slip to the ground and pad softly across the kitchen floor, her blue socks a buffer against the cold tiles for her tiny feet.  She would place her bowl into the sink where it would make a wet clinking noise she always appreciated. Her mother would ask what she had been thinking of, and Aine would look up at her, her wide, wise eyes expressing surprise, and reply that she didn’t know.

“It’s because she’s so smart,” Aine’s parents told the pediatrician. “She thinks so much she can’t remember everything that goes through her head.”

The pediatrician did not have a reply to this comment that would allow him to keep the Kepas’ business. Besides, he liked Aine and was interested in her as a personality. She was polite and she was quiet and solemn when she was required to receive injections. She would sit still, her legs swinging from the table, and watch the nurse’s preparations and follow-through with interest. She never cried. She seemed mostly intrigued and mildly perplexed by the fuss the adults made, hoping to stave off hysterics. The trouble they went through was unnecessary. Aine would take the proffered stickers in basic colours featuring ducks and giraffes in happy harmony. She would accept the lollipop graciously, thank the nurse, and pad quietly out of the office, gripping her mother’s hand.