Thannie Franklyn

Nobody knows where Thannie came from.

She was found as an infant, bundled in dusty old wool blankets inside a rural fire station that had been abandoned for nearly thirty years. There was no sign of whoever had left her there, no matching birth record, and no obvious way anyone had even gotten into the locked building.

There was also the small matter that the baby was a skeleton.

Not the remains of a baby. Thannie was very much alive. She cried when she was hungry, slept when she was tired, grabbed fingers with tiny skeletal hands, and protested diaper changes with all the enthusiasm expected of any other baby. Doctors eventually concluded that, impossible anatomy aside, she appeared perfectly healthy.

The child welfare system had no particular procedure for this.

After several foster placements and considerably more paperwork than usually accompanies the discovery of either a skeleton or an infant, Thannie was adopted by a loving family and raised in a small town in Atlantic Canada. She grew normally, went to school, made friends, developed opinions about music and clothes, and eventually became the four-foot-tall young woman she is today.

Now 24, Thannie works as an assistant at a local public library, where she shelves books, handles circulation, helps patrons find what they're looking for, and wages an endless war against the public printer. New visitors occasionally stare. The regulars stopped noticing years ago.

Outside work, Thannie is far less interested in solving the mystery of her existence than everyone else seems to be. She likes enormous sweaters, cute hats, shopping trips, cozy autumn weather, reading on the sofa, and pastel sneakers with obnoxiously bright LED soles. Her wardrobe also conveniently ensures that questions about precisely what exists between her skull and skeletal fingertips remain unanswered.

There are theories, of course.

Thannie doesn't worry about them.

Whatever she was before someone wrapped her in a blanket and left her to be found, she's Thannie now.