Prologue

Prologue

 

            All her life Vye had always believed that she was here on Earth for a special purpose. She had always believed it, because it was what she had always been told. Long before she could remember, when she was just a small child, her parents saw great things for her future. She was quick to learn, being able to speak over a hundred words before she turned a year old. She learned how to read by the time she was four years old, a passion for which she was to never stop. Maybe reading actually was her downfall. She could never be sure. It could have been her destiny, if she ever really believed in that sort of thing, but reading is what brought her to this point in her life.

            Her parents always told her the grand plans they had for her future, how she was going to be some successful doctor, or lawyer. She would make something of her life, far more than they ever felt they could. She grew up with their dreams always on her mind. She was satisfied with those dreams, until one day, when she was eight years old she looked in the mirror and saw herself. It was like an awakening. She didn’t see the scrawny blue eyed, brown haired girl that everyone else saw. The smart, know-it-all that hid in her room and read books or daydreamed, she saw only one thing; that she wasn’t going to be what they all expected her to be. She was going to be a failure in their eyes, for her dreams were bigger than theirs, and money wasn’t her aim. She should have realized then with that sudden epiphany, that she should stop reading books. She was so drawn in to the fantasy worlds that she surrounded herself with that she thought that she could actually be like that. Her vain hope was that she was special, like her parents had always told her, so special that there was something that she could do which no one else could. It took her the next seventeen years to realize that she could never be the ‘special’ that she always wanted to be. She could never aspire to the dreams that she saw, the vivid realities that she created in her mind were not realities at all, but escapes, and she was trapped in them while her body lived back in reality, a place her mind refused to accept. Suddenly, she felt alone, trapped, and disillusioned. Instead of having a lucrative career, or having used her mind to its full potential, she had squandered away the years thinking that what she was looking for was just around the corner. She had failed to let go of the fantasies created in childhood. She had forgotten to grow up. At twenty five years old, it suddenly seemed right to forget everything she thought she had and focus on becoming an active participant in the real world, of becoming an adult. She would never have expected the act of letting go of her search to be the beginning of what she had always been searching for.

            It began with a letter; another rejection in a long string of them. There, sitting in her car, holding that small bit of paper that had the power to keep shattering her dreams, was where it began. It was so silent, only road noise muffled by the closed door could be heard. It was just her and the paper.

           

Dear Vye Lavallee;

           

            Thank you for your submission to (insert name of company here). Unfortunately after careful review, blah, blah, blah.

 

            It fell from her hand and landed silently beside her. She wondered then if anyone ever read all the way to the end of a rejection letter. Isn’t that just kicking yourself while you’re down? She looked up and stared through the window. She tried to remind herself that she was in a public place and, therefore, couldn’t cry. Her car was parked beside a park. She distracted herself watching parents playing with their children, pushing them on the swing with delicacy while their children called out to be pushed higher and higher. When she averted her eyes away from the happy families, she caught a glimpse of another observer, a chestnut brown haired man, her age. He was gazing at the families as well with the same expression she was sure she had on her face; puzzlement, confusion, longing. He must have felt her gaze on him because soon he cast a glance in her direction. She felt a sudden chill at being caught and looked away, back down to the paper beside her, then glanced up again. He was gone; nowhere in sight. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and then crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it into her back seat where numerous other such papers littered the floor. She checked the clock and turned the ignition. Unfortunately for her, time did not take pity on her sad plight and she was about to be late for work. She wiped at her eyes as she checked over her shoulder for traffic trying to remember how to smile when inside her heart was slowly suffocating.