Being a daughter or son of a wizard is never easy. Not that anyone said it would be, but you know, we figured that these days people would learn to be tolerant. Especially in the rural areas where wild magic is still alive and strong. But the people forgot. They forgot that it was my father and his kin who mixed their medicines, who the doctors and nurses learned from. It was my father who helped to save a whole community…in his way.

I am twenty-two on this day, 15th of Spring, and I am the daughter of a wizard. My mother was not one of us. The days I spent with her were –

The pen skittered across the floor after it had fallen from my hand. I was shaking. That always happened when I thought of mom though, this wasn't anything new. She'd always taught me that it was important to stay strong in the face of adversity and to always put my very best self forward. It was still hard to think of her. She'd died from a sickness she contracted while travelling. The local doctor had never encountered it before, and it came from a place of old magic, older than any of my clan's magic. My father never had a chance.

I don't think any of us were ever the same after that. Dad left home, and advised we do the same. I don't think he could stay there, after he'd failed to save Mom. It was probably the guilt that drove him away. Mattes, my older brother, and I used to visit him at his new home when we were younger. It was on some island, far away. We honestly had never thought much of it. You know, it was just…not a busy place. Not someplace either of us could imagine living. We had our apprenticeships to worry about. Mattes was studying to become a healer. After Mom, I think he really just never wanted to see someone go the same way. I can't blame him.

I was working to become a reader. You know, of signs, cards, stars, all of that jazz. Normally fortune-tellers were witches or wizards trying to con commonfolk into paying for our services without knowing. These days, we do so much more. Match making by reading auras and palms, horoscopes with cards, the list goes on for miles, really.

"Meryl, you up there?"

I started, and shook my head. How long had I been day-dreaming this time? Looking at the desk in front of me, I saw that I'd managed to knock over the inkwell, lose my quill and waste a stack of papers in the process. Not to mention to mess overall. Hoping to clean it up before I was caught, I started shoving things into my bag, not mindful of the wet, sticky ink. At least, not until my hands looked as if I'd pulled the night sky away with my palms.

"By the Gods Meryl, what've you done now?" My head whipped around to see Mattes standing at the top of the stairs. I quailed for a moment, afraid he'd yell at me. My brother had quite the temper once whipped into a rage. But no, he started laughing at me! As if I weren't already embarrassed enough, he had to go and laugh at me too.

I went back to what I was doing, abandoning all hope on my now ruined bag. The whole thing looked a downright mess anyway; it didn't matter at that point. Mattes laid a hand on my shoulder and shook his head.

"You're hopeless, you know that?" Very suddenly the whole mess was gone, excluding the giant ink stains on my clothes, bag and skin. I looked at Mattes for the first time, and made sure to as best a sarcastically thankful expression as I could. He only laughed, and said something about how I looked a tad constipated. He'd just learned how to fix it, and would I like his help?

I smacked him, hard, as I started down the stairs from my personal hidey hole in the Wizard's Keep. After we'd left home, this is where we came. Well, this is where Dad told us to go. So we did, seeing as we didn't exactly have a ton of options. Eventually we'd have had to come here, to start our training. You know, get our basic knowledge and such. I couldn't tell you where the Keep was if I wanted to. The damnable thing flies, it's submersible, it can even teleport. That's why we don't really leave. If we did, it might just strand us someplace.

Mattes caught up to me, not that there was a chance he wouldn't. He was always the bigger one, the faster one, the stronger one. He's the eldest though, and a man. I had assumed that was the norm for these sorts of things. I gave him a good sidelong glance, and yet again realized how similar we must have looked our whole lives.

Same piercing eyes that skirted a line between green and gold most days and hair so lightly blonde it was almost white. As children, it was actually a fine grey, much to our mother's dismay. It's just part of being a wizard and witch though. We have the same straight nose and bottom lip, though Mattes will argue that his lips are clearly more kissable than mine. It's never much of an argument, since I refuse to respond to that sort of thing.

Even though we look enough alike to be twins, barring the height difference, we're about as different as two people could be. Where Mattes is all loud noises and big movements, I was always more controlled. I was the one expected to keep him in line, not the other way around. I've never been one for talking excessively; it's not that I'm shy, I just don't feel like speaking half the time. The other half I have nothing important to contribute to the pre-existing conversation.

That whole time Mattes had been rambling about some trip, and suddenly he mentioned something about the Council ordering it. I threw out an arm to stop him so I could ask a question, but the idiot just walked into my arm instead. Nearly knocked the wind out of himself and broke my forearm in the process, I might add. After I'd knocked him upside the head for his stupidity and he'd gotten angry, gotten mopey and then gotten over it, I got his attention.

"What did you say? About the Council, what was that?" A strand of hair waved in front of my eyes and I blew at it, as my hands were full with my ruined satchel. Mattes gave me a Grade A glare before honoring me with a response.

"We have to take our Tour a few decades early. Something about an experiment with the new age culture, or something. I honestly wasn't paying that much attention. Anyway, we leave tomorrow morning at dawn. It's about dusk now, so I'd pack anything you'll want or need for the next ten years right now." Mattes continued on his merry way down the stairs while I, like any sane individual, stopped to contemplate that thought for a moment.

And then I threw a book at my brother's head.

"Hey! What'd you do tha-"

"Just who gave you the right to not tell me this?" I asked, quietly, because raising my voice will do me no good. At that point, I was already livid, and Mattes knew what would happen when I got into a rage of my own. While his were frequent, mine were very, very rare. The last time he kicked me into a frenzy I broke his leg. Accidentally, of course, but the memory lingered and served me well time and time again. That would be another one of those times.

Mattes stopped and stammered, not sure of what to say. Of course he didn't know what to say, there'd be nothing to say. You don't argue with a decision made by the Council. It was the Elder's Council, the single oldest and most respected wizard group there had even been. They were and are basically our governing body.

But still! How could he not tell me sooner? I knew he'd known for at least a week, because he started off his story by saying it was part of a joke his friend Gareth had made a week prior to that day, and Mattes doesn't get dates wrong, for all he botched astronomy. It just made me angry, to know that he'd had complete knowledge of this happening and he'd neglected to tell me…

"Meryl? Mer, c'mon, look at me…"

I looked up and instantly wished that I hadn't. Mattes was giving me the big eyes, the ones that make you melt and instantly make you feel like the scummiest person on the planet. I threw up a hand and looked away, but the damage was already done. I knew he hadn't meant anything by it, and he was sorry. Of course he was sorry, he didn't want to go either. But that's what we'd have to do, isn't it? It is. So that's it. We're going.

Sighing, I punched him in the arm and threw my hunk of wasted material into a robe bin. I wouldn't need it where we were going anyway.

I guess you could say Mattes and I were lucky. We had someplace to go, and beds to sleep in. Not every young witch or wizard gets that. You could say we were lucky because there was already a witch and a wizard in the community we were moving into. You could even say we were lucky because it was a beautiful environment far away from the witch hunting masses.

We however, would have disagreed.

That wizard on the island?

That's our Dad.

Who we haven't seen since our mother died.

Eight years ago in a week.

Hopefully you can see why we didn't feel so lucky.

We had to smuggle all of our equipment onto the island in the dead of night, which really started things off on a high note for me. Silencing charms from head to toe and I'm hauling chests and crates of supplies, books and instruments across the damnable landscape with my clumsy brother and my father who ran out on us. There were many, many times when I thought I would kill them both right then and there.

And after all of that, we had to sneak to the mainland and buy tickets to take a ferry back to the same island. Because normal people don't just turn up out of nowhere on a secluded island. Yes, you heard me. Normal people. That's the little experiment the Council wanted to try. To see if two young mages-in-training could keep it a secret in a small community. The next batches were going to cities if we went well. Huzzah.

So that is how I ended up standing next to my brother on the deck of some decrepit old fishing boat, trying not to get salt water in my eyes. Since it was the tail end of spring, I'd chosen to wear a long sleeve red flannel and roll the sleeves up. That, and some jean shorts and leather riding boots. Or something like that. The Council had supplied us with some normal people clothes so we wouldn't stand out so much. After all, it was our job to assimilate with the existing community and still continue our training.

I was already missing the Keep as we watching the island grow larger and larger on the horizon. Mattes rubbed my shoulder in comfort and went down to talk to the captain about getting our things off of the boat. As we steadily approached our new home, I couldn't help but worry about all the things that could go wrong. What if we didn't develop familiars? Every successful witch or wizard that ever was had a familiar. And supplies? What would we do if one of our scrying mirrors broke, or we ran out of a certain herb? How were we expected to fend four ourselves out here in this isolated prison?

Roughly, I scrubbed my face with my hands to try and dislodge those thoughts from my mind. It would do no one any good for me to dwell on those things when there was a chance they might not even happen. For the time at hand, I would have to be strong. After all, a very wise woman told that it wasn't always easy to be steady in the face of adversity, but to stare it it down was to accept the challenge head on. That woman, for all her lack of eloquence with words, was my mother.

Author's Note: Hi, I'm Kat. I'll be your author for this story. Just to warn you well in advance, there will be a fair amount of crossing over between different titles within the Harvest Moon franchise. At the moment, Animal Parade, Tree of Tranquility, and probably Magical Melody (though it might go a little AU for my purposes, so please, bear with me). To clear up any questions, I worked in a reverse order; Meryl is the daughter of Gale and the heroine from Animal Parade, and we've moved back to Waffle Island, post-game events. I hope you enjoyed the first chapter, the next two have already been written!

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