Hello! This is my first FanFiction story ever, in at least five years (the last two I ever made were from one anime called Pretear, the other was a parody for Harry Potter, though they were really poems...). I've always adored writing of course, but I'm still entirely a novice you could say when it comes to FanFiction. Anyway, this is a story idea that just popped into my head while I was reading the manga and watching the anime (and the Musicals! Yuuya Matsushita's voice is just amazing xD) of Kuroshitsuji. I ended up discovering (or re-discovering) many various inspiring film and literary works that had blind characters in them, such as "A Patch of Blue" - an extraordinary classic film, about a blind white teenage girl with an abusive mother falling in love with a kind black man (who is played by the same actor in "A Raisin in the Sun", Sidney Poitier) during the 1960s; the moral epitome of "love is blind"... Another romantic movie about a young blind person I discovered was "Butterflies Are Free" set in Greenwich Village. As well as the movie "Scent of a Woman" starring Al Pacino about a blind colonel and a university student; and a masterpiece of a horror-drama Hong Kong film named "The Eye/Gin Gwai" which was about a blind violinist who receives a corneal transplant in a hospital from a mysterious donor, and with her new eyesight begins to see spirits and troubling visions of the future and past. . . Other notable blind fictional characters are: Toph Beifong, the 12-year-old Earthbender from the show "Avatar: The Last Airbender"; Yin/Kirsi from the anime "Darker than Black"; Hinoto the deaf-blind-mute priestess from Clamp's "x/1999"; Nunnally Lamperouge from "Code Geass"; Kaname Tosen from "Bleach"; Linus Wynter, the blind American spy and composer from Eoin Colfer's novel "Airman"; Phillip, the 11-year-old white boy who is blinded in a shipwreck and learns to survive on a tropical uncharted island with the elderly black man Timothy in the classic novel "The Cay"; Mei, the exotic blind dancer from the Chinese film "House of Flying Daggers" starring Zhang Ziyi; Iggy from the "Maximum Ride" book series; and Garrett, a blind hermit from the animated movie "Quest for Camelot". . . . . And inspiring famous blind people in real-life are Ray Charles, Andrea Bocelli, Stevie Wonder, Homer, Aesop, Saint Cecilia, Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller, Louis Braille, Harriett Tubman, Mary Ingalls (the sister of Laura Ingalls Wilder), et cetera. . . . . . I was also somewhat inspired by (and this story may at times loosely parallel) Victor Hugo's lovely Gothic novel "Notre Dame de Paris", more famously known as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (which I just recently finished reading and highly recommend! It's interesting that while the novel is very tragic and dark and heartbreaking compared to the more candy-coated movie versions, the infamous Claude Frollo is portrayed as more human and sympathetic and pathetic-and his conversations with his younger brother Jehan and the poet Pierre Gringoire are very amusing, indeed.) Also inspiring for me were the few anime or manga gypsy characters I came across, such as Noa from the movie "Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa" and the unnamed Roma woman whom Earl Cain met in the chapter "Zigeunerweisen" from Kaori Yuki's "Godchild". And Romani gypsies portrayed in fictional media I found aside from anime or manga, are Alexander Lloyd's children's novel "Gypsy Rizka", the novel "The Musician's Daughter", and the films "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows", "The Wolfman", "Carmen", "Chocolat", "Time of the Gypsies", "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Red Violin". . . . . . . . . . Anyway, as a child I was always the daydreamer (and still am!) and one of the things I used to pretend was that I was a gypsy girl and running away on an adventure in a caravan! lol xDD Since I couldn't of course regrettably do that in real life, I'd do it in stories...=D My best friend actually believes that the manga of Kuroshitsuji is far better (especially when compared to, according to her, the second season) since they changed the plot too much in the anime. It's true that the stories and characters introduced are completely different at certain points, but I still love both equally! Randomly speaking, I would like to point out that I find it funny how some facts in Kuroshitsuji don't entirely add up; For instance, how the time setting of the story is year 1888-1889, and Ciel's birthday is December 14, 1875 (and coincidentally December 14 is the day Prince Albert died 14 years earlier)-yet Alois' birthday is stated to be on November 5, also 1875, even though it should be 1874 since he's supposed to be a year older at fourteen... And how Elizabeth Midford's height is stated in the Wiki to be 154cm-so I cannot fathom why she would be so self-conscious about being taller than her fiancé Ciel and wearing only low-heeled shoes. She's only 2 centimeters taller than him, not even 5'1"-in real life that's barely a visible difference! It would make more sense if she were 5'2" or something... Or especially how Sieglinde Sullivan is a German girl with a not-so-German surname: Sullivan has Irish etymological origins (like the real-life Anne Sullivan, whom I mentioned earlier). So either Sieglinde has an Irish father, or Yana Toboso made a mistake. Oh well! technicalities, technicalities! . . . . Anyhow, there will be quite a lot of OC characters that I'll be introducing, central to this plot. And I have even been considering a small surprise crossover or two-well, we'll wait and see. And there will be dark themes of violence and angst, just like in the original canon series. I intend to have this story be a novella, with many chapters, though I'll see how it goes. Also, I would like to apologize to anyone who is blind or Romani if my writing on the subject is inadequate; I've done my research and hope to represent my characters in the best way possible. I also fully appreciate constructive criticism and insightful input! =D

Lastly, I of course do NOT in any way own the manga or the anime or the Musicals of Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler, that belongs to the genius of Yana Toboso and their producers/directors, etc. - HOWEVER, I DO OWN AND BY LAW © COPYRIGHT MY STORY'S PLOT IDEAS/SUMMARY/"OC" CHARACTERS; SO PLAGIARISM IS NOT ALLOWED OR I WILL SUE YOU! lol, thank you =D

Prologue: "A Will-o'-the-Wisp Memory"

Setting:

Six Years Prior, the mid-August of 1883, on the outskirts of a small, remote mountain village in Hungary. . .

"Zara!" the young dark-haired boy called out, peering out through the window, to where his six-year-old younger twin sister was climbing down the mossy, ivy-covered walls of their old family schloss. "Zara! It's too dangerous, you'll fall!"

"I'll be fine, Alek! Stop worrying about me and go back to bed!" she called up, finally letting her feet touch the ground.

"No! I'm coming down after you!"

"You can't!"

"Then I'll tell mother and father; you know they forbid you from seeing the gypsies' camp!"

Zara glared up at him. "You wouldn't dare!"

Alek grinned slyly. "Oh fine, then come along and don't be such a turtle" she finally said with an annoyed humph. The boy let out a triumphant beaming smile, then told her to wait, disappearing back in the room and coming back out with a cloak. He scurried down the stone wall and handed Zara the shimmering grey-green velvet cloak. "Mother's cloak?" she asked with some surprise. "So you won't catch cold," he said with a gentle smile. They hurried through the night, towards the edge of the forest.

"Look, Zara, the fireflies are out..."

They almost look like fairies... Like you. Tündér...