Part One: Bickslow

December, X784

I awake in the middle of the night with my heart pounding from a vivid nightmare, a nightmare that made me relive the terrible events that happened fifteen years ago in my small and now nonexistent hometown of Suirena. Of the storm that killed my parents, and the flood that took my little sister away.

Fifteen years ago, I hadn't known much about magic, but being born with the ability to see into a person's soul gave me some clue into the nature of the people around me. Suirena was a town with few mages, and so they all looked to mages such as myself with barely-concealed suspicion. While it was still standing, it had been at the edge of a treacherous swamp that all the village children, including me, had been warned never to venture into. A swamp that, according to rumours, was home to a wicked water spirit. I didn't believe it, though.

I'd never been particularly friendly with any of the other children in Suirena. It wasn't that I'd never tried to make friends: it was just that the others found it far too unnerving to deal with whenever I accidentally said something about souls. Which, believe me, when everyone's soul is superimposed over their own face, it's kind of hard not to say something about it once in awhile, especially when a soul turns a weird colour because of people's ugly thoughts. And thus, the seven-year-old me spent most of his time in solitude. Not that I cared much. I mean, I was a pretty quiet kid to begin with, always kept to myself, and stuck to my talents: woodcarving and acrobatics. Even though I was only seven, I was still almost as weird as I am today, and I spent a lot of my time a little closer than my parents probably wanted to the edge of the swamp, using my pocketknife to carve crazy-looking faces into the trees, as well as hanging upside-down from the mossy branches. I got pretty good at both of these, too, though I did earn my fair share of cuts, scrapes, and bruises from falling from the trees.

Anyway, besides being on my own a lot, I don't remember much about those days. The days before the hurricane, I mean. At least, not until my little sister was born.

I have a vague memory of my mother getting fatter and fatter until eventually she sat me down (on a rainy day, so I couldn't run outside and avoid her,) and explained to me that I was going to be a big brother.

"Am I gonna have a little brother?" I remember asking. I thought it was going to be cool, because hey, I was finally going to have someone who might actually hang around with me, if only because we were related.

My mother smiled. "Or a little sister. We don't know for sure, Bickslow."

And so I didn't pay any more attention to the possibility of having a younger sibling until suddenly one day I came home in the evening and found my mother and father waiting for me while fawning over something that was swaddled in a soft-looking green blanket.

"Bicklsow, come over here." my father ordered, so I did as I was told, hoping that they wouldn't notice all the swamp mud on my shoes.

"What's that?" I asked, looking at the bundle my mother was holding. She only smiled and shifted her arms slightly so that I could see the tiny pink face of my new little sister.

Only, I couldn't see her face. All I saw was her soul: a small but fiercely burning golden light that was so pure that I hardly knew what to think. Just looking at her, her innocence and... newness... was overwhelming. I was completely in awe of this freshly minted soul, though I think that my parents thought that my awe came from having a new sibling.

"Her name is Anju." my mother smiled, taking in my expression, which I like to believe wasn't too ridiculous.

All I could do was stare, fascinated, at Anju's golden soul. It was so unlike the souls of other people: the adults, whose souls were all dark to begin with, but grew darker whenever they looked at me and thought something nasty, or the other children my age, whose souls were lighter than the adults', but still, whenever a bad thought crossed their minds, they grew darker. No soul I had ever seen was nearly as pure and uncorrupted as Anju's perfect, shining soul.

"Son, come over here for a moment." My father led me into the next room, all but dragging me by my arm.

"What is it, father?" I asked, reluctant to leave Anju's perfect soul for even a moment.

"I know that your life hasn't been easy, Bickslow. I know how everyone in town treats you, and I know how hard it is for you." This caught my attention. Previously, neither of my parents had ever even acknowledged that I had any interaction with people other than them. "And I know that it's only because you have magic in you. Don't blame them: they just don't know how to act around mages, so they try to pretend like they don't exist."

"Why are you telling me this now, father?" I asked, confused. He hadn't ever bothered to explain the intricacies of Suirena society to me ever before, so why now?

"It's because there's a fair chance that Anju has magic within her, as well. Bickslow, you know what that could mean for her. You know that it could mean that she, like you, becomes shunned by her elders and her peers, just like you've been, much to your mother's and my dismay. We've tried to understand, but since neither of us has magic, we haven't been able to help you much, I'm afraid. And for that, I am very, very sorry, Bickslow. But you can understand, can't you, that we don't want Anju to go through what you did, don't you son? You understand that we need you to be there for her, be able to defend her and protect her when we can't, don't you?"

Talk about dropping a bombshell lacrima. What was my father even asking of me? My seven-year-old mind was whirling as fast as it possibly could to try and figure that one out. Protect golden-soulled Anju? What could I possibly do to protect her? And what would I be protecting her from? I distinctly remember thinking that if it was monsters, we'd both be screwed.

"Will you promise me that, Bickslow?" My father prompted. I looked at him, and looked at his soul. A tarnished coppery colour that, though worn-out looking from its fair share of personal demons, was, at that moment in time, completely in earnest.

"All right, I promise." I said.

And that was about it. My life returned to what passed for normal in Suirena, though I began to spend less time hanging out at the edge of the swamp and more time at home with my mother, helping to take care of golden-soulled Anju.

Until April, that is.

I'd heard worried adults talking amongst themselves for awhile about a huge storm that was supposedly headed our way, though, as usual, and being seven years old, I mostly ignored them. All I really knew or cared about was that it stopped them from sending nasty looks in my direction.

Beyond that, all I really remember from that time was waking up in the middle of the night, smelling smoke, and hearing my father just about shouting in my ear.

"Bickslow! Get up! Now! Go and get your sister, and get out of the house, quickly! Get to high ground as fast as you can!"

It was dark, and as I let my father drag me out of bed, I remember hearing some of the loudest thunder I'd ever heard in my life, as well as Anju wailing in the room next to mine.

"Quickly!" my father repeated, then left without waiting to see if I had come to my senses. As fast as I was able, I hurried to Anju's room, took her out of her cradle, wrapped her green blanket around her, and put her in the basket woven from reeds that my mother had made long ago to carry me around on her back. I hurried outside into the most violent tempest that I have ever had the misfortune to walk through. More than once, crashing waves that only came up to my shins knocked me flat on my face through sheer force, and I struggled to get to the top of the hill on the outskirts of Suirena with my little sister on my back.

As I looked back to our house, I saw that despite the wind and the rain and the ridiculous amounts of salt water blowing in from the sea, it was on fire, as were several other village houses farther away from us.

While I stopped to marvel at this strange sight, a huge wave up to my waist roared in from the sea and pulled me and Anju out into the bay, Anju screaming all the while. I barely knew how to swim, and, in the choppy water, I seemed to be inhaling more water than air as my sister and I were shoved around by the waves.

I struggled desperately to get back to shore, struggled desperately to hang on tight to Anju's basket, which had somehow been wrenched off of my back, but unfortunately, I was seven years old. I lacked the strength to deny the sea what it wanted, and after a particularly nasty wave of water smacked me in the face, the handles of the basket slipped from my fingers, and I was pounded back into the shore while the perfect, golden soul of my baby sister floated away on the stormy water in her basket.

My parents died in the fire that half-destroyed our house, along with many other villagers who died in their own fires or were dragged out to sea like poor Anju, and drowned. I stayed in Suirena for three more days after the storm ended, and saw more dead and empty faces than I care to remember, including those of my own parents, burned and disfigured by the fire before they died. My father's tarnished coppery soul was gone, and so was my mother's dull brass one. I cried for about fifteen hours straight after the other surviving villagers dug them out of the smoldering wreckage that was once our house. After that, I decided that it was time to leave Suirena. I couldn't cope any more with the horrible feeling of guilt that I had allowed my little sister to be cast off at sea, and lost for ever.

I don't quite know what it was that drew me to Fairy Tail after about a year of aimless wandering, but I knew that it had something to do with Laxus Dreyar. When I saw him in the Fantasia parade, his soul shone almost as brightly as Anju's had: uncorrupted with the world's evil, and overwhelmingly happy and pleased at his role in the parade. He was proud to be a mage, unlike me, who had been ashamed of my talents for almost all of my life. I looked up to Laxus mostly, I think, because he was a mage who was only a year older than I was, and he was overflowing with pride at who he was. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be proud of what I was. I wanted to become powerful enough that, maybe one day, in the slim chance that she hadn't died, I could find Anju again. And even if I didn't become powerful enough, I knew that Laxus certainly could. Though it would be years yet before I was sure enough of myself to join the guild, at that instant, Laxus became my hope.