Prologue

Rain pelted down harshly like little bullets falling from the sky. The sky was dark and dull and showed no sign of the rain ending. A day people would look at from their windows, sipping warm tea and saying; "What a day..." and children would also look out their windows, crossing their fingers and hoping for it to end so they could go out and play. Working class people would also think of it as depressing. As if things weren't depressing enough at the small office on the mainland, where two detectives were drumming their fingers on the desk, waiting for their boss to come back with a picture. One suddenly tipped the other, and both sat up straight. Their boss had returned, with a small photo in his hand. He placed it on the table, and both men looked into the picture.

"This is the name of a girl called Chelsea..." said their boss. "Aged eighteen. Picture is said to be taken before she arrived at her new home in Sunny Island, according to the date and what the old man said back at the island."

The two men studied the picture carefully. One with a serious look on his face, the other wide-eyed. She was very young, didn't even look eighteen. More like a small school girl. She had shimmery blue eyes and chestnut hair that shined brightly in the sunlight that bathed over the yellow sands of the beach near the harbor. Her smile made even the boss' mouth twitch by the corners. She was slim, but not too thin. She wore a red bandanna, an orange jacket, a long sleeved yellow top, denim shorts and red rain boots. An unusual combination, but she seemed to have been able to make it all go well together. She was very pale, and wore no make-up. She didn't really need it, even though she seemed pretty plain and looked like may other girls in the world. One man looked at the other, to see the other staring down at the girl's chest in the picture. He hit the other man's head at the back, and the man quickly adverted his gaze to somewhere else.

"Is she familiar to any of you?" asked the boss. The two detectives looked at each other for a few seconds, then shook their heads.

"No, sir," they both replied. The boss grunted.

"The poor girl... she was found dead in her animal barn, covered by a bail of hay. All of her livestock was gone, but her house and everywhere else remained untouched by the incident." said the boss. The taller detective looked at him, shocked.

"Any evidence left behind that was able to be brought to the office?" said the taller detective.

"Hardly any," said the boss, shaking his head. "We first considered it to be suicide, but there was no sign of blood left to be cleaned and no stab wounds and nothing was ruined and livestock doesn't just disappear overnight..."

Both detectives hung their heads low. The poor girl in the photo looked so innocent and happy, as if she was ready to take on the world, unsure of what was going to happen in the future, but had decided to go with the flow... not suspecting her death to come so soon after arriving at the island... she was too young... way too young... all of the inhabitants of the island must've been terrified, knowing that on such a small island, there are murderers and criminals. Already.

"However," said the boss, "We found some burns on the body. Not fire burns, but as if the skin had gone red by rubbing off something. That's all we could pick up, since our investigation only started about... two days ago?" Each detective nodded at what he was saying, listening carefully.

"Also," the boss continued, "We have two people here from the island here going to tell us all they know about Sunny Island and Chelsea Harmon." He walked out of the room again, and brought in two women. One was small, with short, curly, blonde hair, wearing a blue dress with a red top underneath. It wasn't her they were paying the most attention to. It was the younger girl beside her, with her blonde hair scraped into a ponytail, a low cut top with a lose blue cardigan around it tied at the chest, wearing hot pants and white boots that went just below her knee, which showed off her tanned legs. She had glistening, icy-blue eyes. Her blue manicured nail played with a piece of her hair which fell on her face. She looked at the men with no interest whatsoever, which disappointed them as she walked on.

The two men offered their seats, and the two women sat in front of the boss, waiting to be questioned, holding hands in worry. The boss tilted his head at both of them.

"Hey, I don't bite," he said softly. Both men snorted in disbelief and the boss glared at them both. He then took out a small recorder and turned it on.

"Now please, take your time..." he said. "And when you're ready, tell me everything you know about Chelsea Harmon." the boss said.

Both women looked at each other. "Julia..." said the older woman. Julia looked at the man.

"Chelsea Harmon... she was on the island before me and my mother. She always wanted to start a whole new life. She said that she didn't really expect it to wind up with her becoming a farmer, but that she was happy about it anyway. Me and my mother we're impressed by her interest of starting a farm, and we thought it'd be a great way for getting away from city life and possibly starting new life somewhere quiet and where we'd get business. We had heard about the island from a friend who moved there named Chen, who runs the shop close by to ours, only his is a general store.
"Chelsea made everyone's lives easier. She grew crops and then bought some livestock we brought over with us when we were just opening. She would sell whatever she found and eventually got the barn to get these things. She was also very charismatic. She loved talking to people and she never stopped smiling. Even on the dullest of days. She'd come over every day just to buy something and chat with us, even when she didn't really need what she bought. She was just such a pleasure.
"We we're all set for taking off with our shop... we got my cousin Vaughn to come over on the 17th to drop off some livestock. We had Gannon make all sorts of special tools for us, and we had made the island our home. Chelsea came into us that day, and she said; "I'll come by first thing tomorrow to see what other livestock you have! See you!" and she ran off. That morning, Vaughn came in the door, and we waited for Chelsea to arrive for hours. At four, I asked Elliot, a resident of the island, to go and check on Chelsea, because she hadn't been out all day. When he went to the house, the door remained unlocked, and Chelsea wasn't there. Just her dog, howling and barking like mad. He asked the dog what was wrong, and the dog led him to the barn at the top of Chelsea's farm and started sniffing a bail of hay. Elliot looked under the hay and-"

Soft sobs were made by Julia, and her mother put her arm around her. Her mother asked if she'd like to sit outside and wait while she finished the story, but her own mother's eyes were getting misty. Julia nodded, and she walked out of the room, kindly rejecting the two detectives offers to sit with her.

"Chelsea's body was under the hay," Julia's mother continued. "He quickly called for help, even though he knew she was already dead. He liked Chelsea, a lot. He was close to tears himself. Vaughn payed no notice, and kept quiet the whole day. Quieter than usual for Vaughn. Since everyone was so caught up about the mystery of the dead Chelsea Harmon, it took them awhile to notice her cow and two chickens had vanished, quite completely. Everything else remained untouched."

"Thank you for your time, Mirabelle, and thank your daughter when you leave," said the boss. "Anything you want to say before we stop the recording?"

"I don't need to say anything more but that Chelsea will be missed..." said Mirabelle, "And Sunny Island will fall apart... without her..."

Finished my prologue~!
How did you like it? It's really late where I'm living now, so I couldn't really concentrate, and it's slightly short, but it's only the prologue anyway! Reviews are welcome, and thank you for taking the time to read this!
Chelsea's last name Harmon: I mashed up the words Harvest Moon and came up with the word Harmon, which is also my friend's last name. XD

Bye :)

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