-We have to start teaching ourselves not to be afraid (William Faulkner)

-When I hear somebody sign, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?." (Sydney J. Harris)

- When you have a dream about fish, someone you know is pregnant.

Disclaimer- I do not own Fairy Tail.

Chapter 1

It was a replenishing time. My heart beat felt renewed. My head wasn't heavy. My body didn't drag any more. Best of all was that I didn't feel the pain any more. I could do anything I wanted for the first time in ages.

The first thing I did was get out of that damned bed and dance around the room. I had no rhythm, no talent, and I looked like an idiot. I didn't matter. I was a new person.

"It's like you died and were reborn as a totally different person." Marsha whispered underneath my random shouts of glee. Marsha probably believed that I hadn't heard her, but I did. It was a small reminder of the unnatural process I had just undergone.

Still, I couldn't keep a grin from my face. Laughter bubbled up inside of me. Cries of joy echoed inside my head, just waiting to burst out from my lips. It didn't matter what had just happened to me. I felt new!

"Lucy, you have to sit." Marsha cautioned. She was twisting a piece of thick auburn hair around her finger and biting her voluminous pink lips, "What if a doctor from the village walks by and sees you up and about like this? They will ask questions. They won't believe our answers."

Marsha always has been and always will be the voice of caution and reason. I didn't want it to ruin my fresh and joyful mood.

"Come on, Marsha, you gotta be at least a little happier. This is a good thing! Why are you treating it like it's going to be our end?" I danced around the room a little more. "I have always been careful. My whole life was about being careful. I'm sick of careful. We are in the middle of no where! No one will see or find or hear us. Why should I waste this miraculous gift by sitting around and being even more careful?"

"Because if we aren't careful, we will die!" Marsha slammed a delicate fist onto the wall. I jumped back a little bit. I wasn't used to Marsha slamming into anything, especially on purpose.

"Don't you get sick of it? Being so cautious." My mood had turned sober. "It's like living in a cage that you created yourself."

"I'd rather be cautious than dead." Annoyance was clear in her voice. It's such a pain. Didn't she realize how good this was for me? How much she is ruining this? I thought I would never recover from my disease. Marsha had starting thinking I would never recover. All the doctors we had seen had given up hope. The last thing we could think of was the Lost Art of Healing Magic. That ended up being a dead end too. I remember feeling so desperate that it seemed to consume my entire body. Every fiber inside of me had seemed to scream that I had no hope and everything I ate had seemed to have the sour tang of despair.

"You say you'd rather be cautious than dead? You would rather hide our true selves from the world? Living in constant fear. That is what it is! What you are calling caution is actually fear." My voice rose with every word until I was practically shouting.

Marsha sucked in a quick breath. I thought I had hit a nerve, but Marsha's response was solid and unbroken.

"We took risks every time we took you to a doctor. Every time we went to a clinic or even a guild. It's weird enough that two 13 year olds are going around alone. It's even weirder that one of them has a disease that has never been catalogued in a book before. Each time one of those doctors inspected you we ran the risk of them figuring out that the disease wasn't human or even mage related. We ran the risk of exposing our kind."

The unspoken words –just to save you- hung in the air. I felt guilty. I had never realized the extent of what we were doing to save me. I had never even thought about what it would do to the people around me. I didn't back down from the argument. Marsha had just imprinted into my mind, forever, that I had put my whole race at risk just so I could live. I wasn't going to forgive her for causing me to have that deep scar eternally etched into my mind.

"You could have just let me die."

"No, Lucy, I couldn't." Marsha's voice was hard. Like steel, "I told your mom that I would keep you safe and help you become more familiar with our kind. She regretted not teaching you about your real heritage and lying to you for a great period of your life. Her wish, her very last one, was for me to stay by you and teach you. Well, that, and to give you that fancy key ring." My eyes immediately went to the silver key ring on my waist. There were four keys attached to it; three of the keys were gold and one was silver. They didn't open anything. On countless occasions I had tried them on doors, boxes, and even cages. They did zilch. I kept them just because they were my mother's.

"Marsha-"

"No. Listen, Lucy. Your mom taught you all about mages because that is what she wanted to be. Your mother, Layla Heartfilia, wanted to run away from being a Phoenix. She wanted to run away from her heritage. She still-"

"Marsha!"

"Lucy! Your mom wanted you to follow your own path. You chose the path of the Phoenix. There is no turning back. You can't run away. Being cured of that sickness proves that your destiny is to walk the path of the Phoenix. You are part of the Phoenix guard! You can't fulfill your role if you go revealing our secrets to everyone." Marsha's eyes widened and she quickly brought a hand to her mouth. I didn't understand what Marsha had said. None of it made any sense to me but I could conclude that she had just revealed a secret to me. A secret I was never supposed to hear in my lifetime.

I was practically trembling. It was too much to take in. My legs were barely holding me up now, and all the previous energy I had had melted away.

I had just been cured but now my head was overwhelmed to the point of making me sick. What destiny was she talking about? What is a Phoenix guard? How did being cured of my sickness prove anything? When I sat and thought about it, even more questions came to mind. Why was I cured? I had been so caught up in being healthy that I hadn't thought about the why.

"Marsha, you have to explain this to me! Why-"

The ground had started to shake. The small hut that the two of us were in was vibrating. Smoke entered my nostrils. I coughed at the smell as it passed through my lungs and cut my sentence short. Instincts had started to kick in and I had begun to frantically look around the room for the fastest way out. The ground was still vibrating; after every passing second it seemed like the ground was shaking even more violently and the concrete hut was making creaking sounds that were not reassuring.

The closest way out was the window, but the smoke piling into the room was coming from outside of the window. That meant that the window wasn't an escape option. I had begun a scramble towards the door. Marsha was already ahead of me, opening the wooden doorway that lead to the hall. She sent me a confused glance. I didn't understand. Why was she confused?

It took a second, and I was already halfway into the crumbling hallway when I struck my epiphany. The two of us were Phoenix people. This smoke shouldn't bother us. We should be able to breathe it like normal air. We also should have been attracted to the fire in and around the hut, not feel the impulse to run away from it. That meant only one thing.

This fire was magic set by a dark mage.

I coughed into my hand and continued to make my way through the hallway. Rage built up inside of me with every step. Whoever did this would pay. This hut might not be much but it was my home. For the past five years I had lived here. I wasn't going to let anyone tear it down without facing the consequences.

Ahead of me, Marsha had reached the front door and was about to swing it open. The ground suddenly shook with a might that was nothing like what we had been experiencing the past few seconds. This tremor sent both me and Marsha to the ground and sliding across the floor.

A sharp pain shot through my leg and caused me to gasp. My arm automatically shot to my leg and was instantly covered with sticky warm blood. I didn't have time to inspect the wound because the disaster that was happening wasn't waiting for me to catch up with it. I tried to force myself up and make my way towards Marsha, but my leg hurt so badly. My cheeks began to feel warm and I felt like I was overheating. It was so unnatural. Phoenix's aren't even supposed to get hot, let alone overheat.

I had to stop getting distracted by physical issues. I had to get out of this house, but before that I had to get to Marsha who was still lying on the floor. I summoned all the willpower I could and tried to force myself up. It was hard- almost impossible with the smoke entering my lungs- but I was determined. I lifted one knee up so that I could try and get some of my balance together. It was slow progress but I thought that if I just kept at a steady pace, I would make it out alive and with Marsha by my side.

It seemed like the world was against me.

There was another extremely rough shake.

It felt like the world was ending.

The roof collapsed in.

On top of Marsha.

She didn't make a sound when the roof collapsed and I didn't hear any pleas for help as she lay squished underneath the concrete. I could just sit there staring. I was too frozen in shock to move. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't happen to Marsha.

My frozen state broke and all physical injuries were forgotten as I stood up and dashed to Marsha. I frantically began to try and dig through the rubble. The smoke was becoming almost too much to bare but I needed to get Marsha out. Alive.

I couldn't lift too much of the concrete. It was too heavy. I was too weak. And tired. There was no sign of Marsha under that rubble but I kept up that frantic digging.

"Marsha. Marsha, please. Please be alive." I sobbed out. Desperation had snuck back into my emotions –again- but it didn't matter anymore. All I needed was Marsha back. "Marsha, you need to get up. Help me get you out. Come on Marsha." My words slowly started to become unrecognizable as I inhaled even more smoke. My eyes were blurry from tears. I could barely make out the rubble from the floor.

But I couldn't leave Marsha.

It became a bit of a mantra.

Don't leave Marsha. Save Marsha. Get out alive. Get Marsha out alive. Don't leave Marsha. Save Marsha. Get out Alive. Get Marsha out alive. Don't leave Marsha! Over and over again those words were repeated as I dug blindly through the rubble. My arms and hands were scratched and bruised from jamming into sharp pieces of concrete and the sheer clumsiness that came from my desperation and blurry vision.

It was becoming hopeless. The smoke was becoming too much. My tears were over whelming. The pain of my leg and arms was catching up with me. There was no sign of Marsha. I let out a sob. It was almost impossible with my minuscule amount of air but I needed to let out some of that sadness.

My vision started to be clouded with black spots. They danced in the edges of my blurry vision and through my hazy thoughts I could tell that I had to get out of this hut somehow. I couldn't do it though. My body was too tired and weak and in pain. It was like I was never healed from my disease.

My eyes began to flutter. My eyelids were dropping closed. I could feel my body shutting down. The last thing I felt was a pair of strong arms wrap around me and begin to pull me to who knows where. Maybe a place without pain, if I was lucky.

"Ah! Who the hell are you? Are you some crazy rapist? Drug lord? Escaped convict? Gang banger? Illegal alien? Answer my questions!" My voice was loud and hysterical as I waved my arms around wildly. A boy stood at the foot of the bed with a chunk of ice in his hand and a smirk on his face. That smirk riled me up even more. "What? Do you think this is funny? 'cause it's not. Kidnapping is illegal! And don't you even think about using that chunk of ice against me! I am well trained in the art of karate. Kinda. I know how to knee you in the balls, that's pretty much it, but that is all I will need."

The boy began cracking up. His laugh was loud and sweet and it made my temper soar to levels that it has never reached before.

"Don't you know how to treat a lady? You treat her with respect! You don't laugh at her when she is in distress and you introduce yourself properly." I snorted. "When I woke up, you were standing over my head with that chunk of ice and no shirt on! You still don't have a shirt on, by the way." The boy looked down in surprise but made no move to go get his shirt. "Then, you sit here and laugh at me – a complete stranger who is clearly injured- as if I knew you. I know for a fact that I don't know you. So, now, I have to know you so I know who I am yelling at."

"That's a lot of thing's you need to know." The boy remarked with a smile dancing at the edges of his lips.

"Please put on a shirt."

The boy once again looked surprised that he didn't have that article of clothing on, but this time he began to search for it. There were no witty remarks from the boy as he searched the room for his shirt so I took this time to evaluate his looks. He had a particularly well muscled mid-section with a mysterious blue tattoo. That is two points in his favor: one for the abs and one for the mysterious aura. He also had black hair that was ruffled in every direction but it worked in his favor and balanced out the mysterious aura with a fun and playful feeling. Another point in his favor. Eyes? Dark blue. Not a point in his favor because the boy's eyes seemed to be laughing at my anger. No facial disfigurements. No extra body parts. Not trying to kill me at the moment. Plus. Plus. And plus. No shirt? Minus a point.

All in all, the boy had more positive features than negative.

Finally, the boy had put on a shirt.

"Now that I have all my clothes, will you stop yelling?" The boy asked with a hint of playfulness.

I nodded.

"Okay. Well, than, before you get your panties in a bunch again, I'll tell you my name. Gray Fullbuster. Nice to meetcha." The boy held out his hand for me to shake.

"Lucy Heartfilia." I grabbed his hand, albeit a little reluctantly. "You swear you aren't a rapist or anything? I mean, I'm grateful that you are helping me and all but if you are just going to rape me than I take my gratefulness back."

"No promises." I gave him a disbelieving look but Gray just smiled and shook my hand. This guy is so weird. How did I end up in here with him?

Than, everything came rushing back to me with such force that my head had started to hurt. The secret I wasn't supposed to hear and didn't understand. The burning hut and the collapsing roof. Marsha. Marsha! Did Gray find Marsha?

"Hey, are you okay? You look a little sick, Lucy." Gray moved to the side of the bed and stuck the ice block to my head. I quickly shoved away the ice block and it shattered into pieces on the floor as I tried standing up. That was a bad idea because I had immediately begun to feel dizzy, my leg began to burn like hell, and my stomach felt weak. I quickly collapsed back into the bed and, with the help of Gray, got back underneath the cotton covers.

"What are you doing?" Gray looked at me like I was crazy for trying to stand up. I probably was.

"Marsha! Did you find Marsha?" I felt a little hysterical again.

"Who? You were the only one I saw inside the building."

My heart shattered. Marsha was gone. Dead. Buried along with our house and all of my sentimental crap that I hadn't realized I would miss until it was already gone. My eyes welled up with tears and I pulled the cotton bed sheets closer to my face to try and hide my tears. My shoulders shook and my breaths were hard and ragged.

Marsha would never come back. I would have to go back to the Phoenix Plane if I wanted to know anything else about being a Phoenix. I thought I would never have to set foot in that place. I had no one to explain to me how I was a Phoenix guard. I had no more home. No one to return to.

"Why are you crying? Did I do something? Damn it, you aren't supposed to start crying out of nowhere." Poor Gray, he sounded so confused. I could try and tell him that he hadn't done anything but it was hard enough to keep my body working at the moment.

"I'm all alone now." I choked out. It was true. There would be no one to ever take care of me again. No one to teach me how to act or walk or talk or fight or live. Marsha may have been my age but she was the motherly one that always knew what to do and where to go. Now, I had no clue about what to do or where to go and I had no one to tell me any of those things.

I had no one to teach me how to be a Phoenix anymore. No one to tell me when my alae* would come in or when I would start to develop other Phoenix traits. No one to teach me how to control my ignis*. The only option left was to return to the Phoenix court, but Marsha had always said to avoid it.

I guess it didn't matter what Marsha said. Marsha is dead.

"What do you mean you are all alone?" Gray looked thoughtful.

Maybe Gray has somewhere I could go? "It's what I said." A small hiccup escaped my mouth. "There is no where for me to go."

"No one left for you?"

I barely managed a helpless nod. Gray's face wore an expression that looked like he had found the answer to all of my problems. I highly doubted that that was true but I guess anything is possible with this guy.

"Fairy Tail." Those two words came out of Gray's mouth and, to him, it seemed like they were his brilliant answer to everything. It all made no sense to me.

"What?" I managed through my tears. My eyes were slowly starting to run out of water and I was being reduced down to pathetic little hiccups and panting breaths.

"Fairy Tail!"

I was still confused and started to get a little pissed. Gray's vague answering of my questions was making me go from sad to angry. "What is the Fairy Tail?"

Gray let out a small laugh. "Fairy Tail is a place! A guild for mages! It is my home and we accept anybody." Gray's voice dropped to a whisper. "I really mean anybody. We have some real weirdo's at Fairy Tail."

I cracked a small grin. A mage guild! My mother had wanted to be a mage so badly and ended up getting her wish. Maybe I could figure out why she found it so appealing? I thought about how nice it would be to join a place like this 'Fairy Tail'. How I could belong somewhere and not have to worry about being the weird one in a place full of mages that could do anything. It would be nice, but there are so many flaws to the plan. One of them being that Gray could be a rapist. I still haven't ruled out that possibility. If Gray is part of a mage guild than he is actually a mage himself, and who knows what type of rapist mage's he knows.

"I can't."

It was Gray's turn to be confused. "Why not? It's a place for you to go. A place where you will always have people waiting for you to come back."

"First of all, I never told you if I was a mage or not." I can't help but wonder where Gray had come to the conclusion that I was a mage. I hadn't preformed any magic. Phoenix's couldn't perform mage magic, according to Marsha. That was what made my mama so special, apparently.

At least, I think that was what Marsha had said. I was a little busy eating lunch when she explained these things.

"Well, you have those celestial mage key things." Gray motioned to the silver key ring my mother had given me. It hung around my waist and barely peeked out from underneath the bed sheets. This Gray was quite the perceptive kid to have noticed them, but I didn't know what 'celestial mage key things' were. It sounded familiar though.

I unhooked the key ring from my belt and held it in front of my face. On the hilt of each key there was a different symbol, but I didn't know what any of them had stood for. Tentatively, I reached out and touched one of the gold keys. I moved it around in the palm of my hand and felt the cool metal against my skin.

I did not know what a Celestial mage did or was supposed to do, but I went with it anyways. Pretending and lying was what Marsha and I had been doing for the last five years of our lives.

"What type of mage are you?" I asked Gray. The question came out of no where and had nothing to do with the many thoughts and questions about celestial mages running through my head.

There was no hesitation in Gray's voice when he answered my out of the blue question. "An Ice-make mage and a god damned good one too. Ask anyone at the guild!"

"Prove it." He didn't really need to. I had seen the block of ice he had before. I guess he had created it himself.

"Fine! Although there is nothing to prove, everyone within a fifty mile radius knows how frickin' awesome I am."

I snorted. I doubted that he was that good.

Gray rolled back his shoulders in preparation before placing his right hand out. His right hand was open and his palm was facing the ceiling while his left hand formed a fist and was set on top of his right hand.

"Ice-make lance." Gray called out. His voice was stronger than before and had a certain edge to it.

In no time at all, Gray was holding a large ice lance. I could only stare on in awe. I had never seen anything like it before. The ice lance had come from no where and Gray was holding it like it was nothing special. I thought Gray would have just made something simple like a block of ice again. Are there really people that do things like this all the time? Create things like this and maybe even more extravagant?

I wouldn't know. Lots of my life had been spent in forests and outskirts of villages with only minimal amounts of contact with large cities. This included visiting doctors and getting supplies when it was desperately needed. Marsha had always feared being to close to big crowds of people for too long. It seemed like she thought that if we hung around anyone too long, they would read our thoughts and learn our secret.

My heart ached at the thought of Marsha again. I missed her so much. I also still felt kind of guilty about the fight we had right before the house burned down.

I didn't get to apologize to her.

"So, Lucy, have you changed your mind about coming to Fairy Tail? It's not that far away in the village of Magnolia." Gray was trying to persuade me to come with him to his guild still.

Even though I had just met Gray and didn't fully trust him, I had to at least think about the offer. It was the least I could do for the guy that saved me.

I wanted to. I really did want a place to live at and belong to but I saw so many things wrong with it. I didn't know mage magic, contrary to what Gray thinks. I had also just met Gray, so how could I really trust him? What about all my Phoenix questions? No one in a mage guild will be able to answer them.

But I really wanted to join.

"No." I had to force the word out of my mouth. My heart wanted me to go to Fairy Tail but my head advised against it. I listened to my head. That's something that Marsha had always told me to do. Before Gray could have another chance to try and convince me to join Fairy Tail, I decided to strike up a deal. "But, do you know today's date, Gray?"

"Uhm," The black haired boy glanced around the room for a second, thinking about it. "Yea. It's May 17. Why are you asking?"

The deal I wanted to propose was for the sake of Gray. At least, that was what I was telling myself. I was going to propose this deal because Gray had saved me from the burning house and because he really wanted me to join his guild (but I can't) so the least I can do is make a small fallback for him.

"I can't join Fairy Tail but I can still visit. How about, every year from now, I visit Fairy Tail on this day, exactly?" I thought it was a pretty good deal. I could see the person that saved my life once a year and never forget what happened this day which means that I will never forget Marsha's memory. This lightened my spirit a little bit. I also didn't have to know mage magic; I just had to fake being a celestial mage once a year.

"Looking forward to it. I'm sure everyone else in the guild will be too, once I tell them." Gray decided with a grin and thumbs up. His cheerful mood quickly turned serious, "Now, you have to go back to sleep."

I rolled my eyes. "What are you, a mother hen?"

I listened to Gray's orders anyway and tried to get to sleep.

I was about to surrender to the darkness of sleep when a question popped into my mind. It spiked my curiosity and I wouldn't be able to sleep until I asked it. Gray, who had just begun to leave the room, turned around and gave me a questioning look as I sat up in the bed.

I decided to ask my question before I collapsed from the exhaustion that was haunting my limbs. "Why were you in the forest when my hut set on fire?"

Gray gave me a sheepish smile and it caused those stupid dark blue eyes of his to light up. "I was practicing my Ice-make. I still have a long way to go. But-"

"Well, I am sorry I disrupted your training, Mr. Gosh Damned Good Mage." I was making fun of what he said in our previous conversation about being one of the best mages around. "G'night." I murmured before falling into dreamless sleep.

My leg ended up healing quickly and before I knew it, it was time for me to part ways with Gray. Our goodbyes were short and sweet, mostly because we knew that we would see each other again. Before Gray let me walk away, he hammered the name Fairy Tail and the city it was located in, Magnolia, into my head so that I wouldn't forget it when the time came.

I swore to my new friend that I would never forget to visit him.

I like those words.

New friend.

Growing up, I only really had Marsha or my mom in my life.

Now I had my new friend, even though he was a weirdo with a weird stripping fetish.

At least he wasn't really a rapist.

End of Chapter 1

-PointYourFeetAndCAPSLetters