I'm sorry I took so long, trying to tie up a few loose ends and hopefully destroy the Mary-Sue in Pearl. The title is a repeated line in one of my favorite songs when I was an innocent child. And speaking of innocent children...

I started writing this series because my half-sister (let's call her "Rebecca") was a huge fan of crime shows. She was also bulimic and had a host of other health problems, physical and mental. I cast her as the main hero (and me as the childishly innocent, cheerfully optimistic friend) because that's what we wanted to be. But eventually, I grew up and she died from cardiac arrest. But I could keep her alive in these stories, even though Pearl has become who I currently am and Varda more who I see my past self as. So, if you don't mind me idealizing the parts of Pearl that belong to Becca and base her personality off myself, we should get along fine. Sorry for rambling so much.

Without further self-pity, CSI: Miami, anyone?


Prologue: Miracles Happen

"How long does it take to get to Miami?" Pearl asked only minutes after the jet took off from Silver Springs and the Mimosa Mansion where she lived.

"About three and a half hours, I think. I wish we decided to leave on a different day. I'm gonna miss 'Grey's Anatomy,'" Varda said, adding a wistful note at the end.

"Don't worry. They'll show reruns during the summer, and you can always read the recaps," Pearl said, patting Varda's back.

"It's not the same," Varda said mournfully. Pearl glared at Callia before she could make a disdainful sound. But Callia actually looked sympathetic.

Pearl turned away, upset that her no-longer-dead adoptive sister-turned adoptive mother favored the girl whose own parents hadn't even noticed their daughter was not from India, but China, over her.

"So, who hired you?" Varda asked Callia, because she cared and she could.

"The Crime Scene Unit. I am now joining the likes of John Walden," Callia smiled at Pearl, expecting at least a nostalgic one in return.

But Pearl was too lost in her own memories to really think about Callia's. John Walden was a name she hadn't thought about since the day he arrested her parents for abusing her. Before that, he had been badly injured in New York and was sent to the same hospital that treated Pearl for shock after she heard that both her parents had been killed in the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. He had called her disowned sister Calanthe and convinced her to take Pearl back. He had care of her until Callie could take her back to Indiana. He had been a very good father, but Pearl didn't appreciate it in her grief. He had been the one who had told her Callie had died in a violent car crash.

But he had not been the one to tell her that her sister hadn't died. Nor, for that matter, had her schizophrenic mother. But few people would have been able to tell her, seeing as they would have to be a little bit…beyond human in order to know. And sometimes Pearl didn't want to think about how miraculous her life had become.

Callia's sniff brought her back into the real world. Well, as real as it could get when two Elementals were in the house. Well, this wasn't a house either.

Pearl clutched her head and screamed. Ever since she had sucked the universe out of Varda's head by accident, the two girls had been mentally linked so closely that hardly a day goes

By the end of the hour, Varda and Callia were asleep. Pearl, unfortunately, was too high on sugar to do much than hop around the plane, taking in the sights of and the sounds of the plane and ground her. So it's not much of a surprise that Pearl noticed when her black gloves where sucked right off her hands. It was dark, so she couldn't see much, but she was sure she wasn't supposed to hear a sound so loud that it was no longer sound, but a part of her. Then the shaking woke the others.

"We're gonna die!" Varda shrieked.

"No, we're not," Pearl looked at Varda like she was insane. "Are you crazy?"

"Are you?" Varda couldn't help but shoot back. Then the shaking got so intense that her vision started to blur. The plane grew increasingly erratic. In the middle of the chaos, nobody noticed Varda simply Starlel away. But everyone was very aware of the ground coming toward them far too fast for anyone's liking. Pearl's black gloves were sucked right off her hand. And then, darkness and silence came at the end of the cave she only just realized she was falling through.


"Hello, I'm Varda Swan. I was due here for a job interview in Animal Cops Miami," Varda strolled in as calm as anything. She glanced at the local paper. The jet crash was all over the front cover. Her palm flew to her face, smacking her, before she even realized she had poked herself in the eye instead of covering her mouth. "Oh my goodness! OW!"

"What?" the receptionist, luckily, hadn't seen the graceful dance, or most likely she would've turned Varda down then and there. Instead, the woman followed Varda's eyes to the paper. "Oh, yes, I heard about that. Terrible thing, but three people lived."

Varda already read through the list of the dead. She breathed a sigh of relief that she didn't recognize any of them. "I almost took this flight," she said.

"Really?" now the receptionist was looking at her interestedly.

Varda sighed and put the paper down. "Miss, about my job-"

"How much experience do you have with animals?"

"Plenty. I know much more than the average dog-and-cat owner."

"Good, you're hired. We've been so short on people lately," the receptionist filled out a form, picked up her phone, and dialed a number. "Wolfe, I've found you a partner. Yes, I'll see you soon," the woman hung up and leaned toward Varda with a smile. "I'm Kendall Novak." Varda was about to take the offered hand when Kendall shrieked, "There's a lizard on my desk!"

"Ms. Novak, have you considered that, with your hate of the entire animal kingdom, being an animal cop isn't your true vocation?" a man drawled from the doorway.

"What would you suggest I do?" Kendall stood so that she looked like she was offering her breasts to potential clients.

"Well, you're always on top of things, so I would say that you should join the CSI team. I hear they need new people up in New York. I know you hate the heat," the man leaned closer during the last sentence as if sharing a private joke.

Kendall laughed. "Ryan, you're so funny!"

Varda looked between the two of them and walked to the waiting room. This would take a while.


While Varda was feeling the pinch of the worsening economy, Eric Delko and Horatio Caine were zipping across swampy marshland at approximately three thousand miles an hour. At the very least, that's how fast their hearts were going.

"Flight 906, outbound Miami to D.C., dropped off the radar at 0-8-20," said Eric. "Crashed right after takeoff."

"How many were onboard?" Horatio asked.

Eric repeated the question into his cell phone, which meant a few more seconds waiting for the people on the other end to give him the answer. "NTSB confirms two pilots, six passengers, all from Indiana."

Horatio did a double-take at the word "Indiana," but he shook it off his initial shock quickly and simply said, "Eight souls unaccounted for, okay." He moved forward when the boat stopped before the still-flaming pile of twisted metal. Evidently, he hadn't shaken off his shock as well as he had believed.

Eric tried to stop him. "Look, they're advising we wait for fire—"

Horatio held up his hand and, without a single glance at him, spoke with uncharacteristic sharpness. "Look, we were four miles away when we took the call. First responders provide aid, no questions asked!"

Feeling miffed but nonetheless not willing to appear insubordinate, Eric repeated Horatio's message into the phone. "We're taking this." Well, sort of. Regardless of how well he did or didn't relay Horatio's intention through the phone line, Eric was surprised at the tenderness with which his boss carried a girl out of the water. Looking at her too-pale body, impaled through the waist and neck by a piece of metal, he couldn't help but say, "H, she's too pale. She's dead." But then he could make out the rise and fall of her chest. It was fast, panicky, and irregular. And her eyes were open. She was still conscious.

"Hel—" her voice was husky, most likely due to all the salt water she had swallowed.

Suddenly, a body was flung atop the crash, landing directly on the blonde girl's body. Her mouth opened to a fountain of foaming blood and water. Horatio almost flipped the dead man's body off, but seeing a willowy woman climb up and reach for the brunette gave him pause. The redhead stared at the woman until Eric said, "H, it's the woman we hired."

"I know," Horatio said tonelessly. "How did you survive unscathed when everyone else died?" he asked her.


Dear Pearl's Diary,

I 'm on my way to Miami now, where Callia just got a job because Judge Ratner put in a good word for us. I'll have to remember to thank him later.

Well, takeoff, as you can imagine, was rather nerve-wracking. Pearl might be able to handle a plane takeoff easily, but I'm absolutely terrified of heights. Even if I'm only as high as a bridge, if there's a crevice anywhere, I imagine that I'm very, very small, and I fall through. I don't know why I torture myself like that. I just do. Luckily, it helps me to put my thoughts down on paper. I must thank Pearl for letting me use her diary. What did she call you, Magenta? Well, then I must also call you "Magenta," mustn't I?

Pearl wants you back now. I hope she's worked on her handwriting, because I simply cannot read anything she's written!

Dear Magenta,

What does Varda know about good handwriting? Her handwriting is more atrocious than mine! And I'm writing very carefully, so she can read my insults to her. I'll stop now. Anyway, Varda and I have both just gotten jobs as Animal Cops in Miami. I 'm not afraid of any animals, so it's gonna be a good job for me. I'll wrestle an alligator to the ground if I have to!

The only thing that strikes me as wrong about this whole trip is the feeling that I've been here before! Also, I keep calling Walden, but he won't ever call back. I wonder why.

Horatio put the diary back in the evidence bag and put his head in his hands. "You have been here before, everything you said would come true has come true, and the reason John Walden won't answer your calls is because he's only an alias I used!"


There won't be a lot on the case; I rarely write about crimes that don't involve children. To answer some questions you may have, yes, Pearl has seen Horatio before. I jumped on his "John Walden" background. Pearl was abused as a child, and he was the one she called for help. They met in New York after her parents "died" in September 11th. And if you think I'm being insensitive to the thousands of innocent lives lost on that day, well, the tragedy claimed someone I was extremely close to. I'm not going to apologize for taking my pain out on my characters.

Okay, enough sadness for one day. Here's a funny quote from the first chapter:

Pearl hated wearing her hospital gown on the beach. She supposed she should be grateful that she was strong enough to go out again. But there was a part of her body left very vulnerable to the sea breeze. Just flap, flap, flapping in the breeze—the hospital gown, not the body part.

I don't take the quote from Ellen Degeneres out of anything other than reverance, since she's the most amazing (and funny) person I know.

I'm going to shut up before somebody slaps my mouth.