Chapter 1

I like to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that as long as I go with my gut on all things, everything will play out as it should. That's how I've always lived, it's worked out so far, 18 years.

My mother lost to a sickness. I was the only one who was with her, helping her with everything around the house, moving and ordering things to "spice up the house." She loved refurbishing the house. I was young, so usually I ended up messing everything up, but was always punished with a tickle fight that would always end abruptly with spluttering gasps of pain. I was thirteen years old when she was declared gone. All I had left of her was a white vase with blue swirls going around it, and some unpacked furniture in the living room. No funeral, and no final goodbye to the body that used to be inhabited by my mother.

Losing my mother wasn't easy on my father, although he never was the most affectionate, I knew he at least loved her. He never left work after the fact, I don't blame him. It was depressing coming back to an empty house full of unwanted things. It took me three years of this thinking and treatment to finally realize that I was the most unwanted thing. I was the spitting image of my mother, and it probably killed him to look at me. Even on Christmas he wouldn't look me in the eye when handing me presents that he didn't wrap.

Like most rich kids who didn't go to ivy league private high schools, I was homeschooled mostly by Virgo, the only person in my world that would allow me to have dreams for my future, the youngest person I had contact with, a woman with a purple-ish pink hair color who seemed to be eternally young, she encouraged my writing and always gave me hope that one day I would succeed. She was the closest thing I had to family, always laughing while doing my classwork for the day, and playing dumb card games while thinking up plots and new characters for my book.

The day I got my GED was also the day I turned 18. The day I confided in Virgo that I was leaving and was never coming back. She only nodded with misty eyes, and helped me pack my bags. She always knew this day would come, and she was preparing not only me, but herself during our time together. She said she'd help my dad get through losing the last bit of family he had, and I of course argued that he wouldn't even notice until Christmas.

Then she handed me a folded letter.

"What is this?" I questioned warily, wondering if she wrote me a goodby letter.

She looked up at me with those icy blue eyes and said, "A letter from your mother, she wanted you to know once you turned eighteen. She knew you would leave, and she wanted you to read this beforehand," she chuckled, "I guess you really are your mother's girl, you set your mind and never even think about changing it," I hugged her, earning a small yelp.

"Thank you, Virgo, you've been nothing but kind to me," I muttered into my arm by her head.

"Yes, yes, now go and read the letter, you little gremlin," she smiled as she pried me away, "I'll finish packing and you can leave once you're ready,"

I went upstairs to the hallway outside my mother's workshop, and couldn't bear to open the door, so I leaned against it and read it. I just stared at it for a long time, soaking in her handwriting, not fully understanding her words until the third read. I felt like all the air had been kicked out of me. The world was pulled out from under me. Hot tears sprung to my eyes and a strangled cry came with them.

I guess depression does count as a sickness.

I no longer wanted to be near this room, this house, it all felt wrong. I needed to leave now.

After final goodbyes, and ignoring Virgo's 'sorry's,' with 'it's okay,' 'I'll be fine,' 'she's gone either way, it doesn't matter how,' I left to a town called Fiore, twelve hours away by plane, where I knew nobody would look for me, if they decided to, and nobody knew of the Heartfilia family. I thought I needed numbness, free from the outside world. Peace, where I could write without the weight of what seemed like hundreds of rooms watching me, unoccupied. This town, from what I'd heard, was completely isolated from the rest of the world.

Turns out that this was completely un-fucking true.

Okaaay, so I don't exactly know what I'm doing with this story, but I really want to keep this one going, because I really think this could be good.