I had this story idea for months but never got around to writing it... So here it is ^^
Prologue
It was noon and the sun was bright and high in the sky, while Mari and Jowee entered Creation Hall. Jowee opened and held the door for her, and she smiled at him as she walked in swiftly. Mari walked over to the book shelves and began searching for some books to read. She had just read the last book she had at her house and asked Jowee to help her find something interesting in Creation Hall, because there were all sorts of books stashed in there. Even Isaac's shop couldn't compare to the abundant overflow of books in this building.
Mari picked up book after book after book, brushing away dust to view the book cover, then gently setting them back exactly as they were. Jowee wasn't as gentle, but did respect and listened to Mari when she told him to put everything back as it was. The dust was flying in the air and tickling Jowee's nose, causing him to sniffle. He grabbed a book and wiped the dust away, read the cover, and set it back down again. Then looked at Mari, who was focused on hunting down the perfect book to read.
"Did you find anything interesting?" Mari called over her shoulder, then coughed a little.
"Nah. Nothing but dust and spiders." Jowee answered as he eyeballed a tiny spider crawling up to the ceiling and perching on a web.
"So how's-" Mari began, but stopped as she accidentally knocked a book to the floor, causing some papers that were inside to scatter on the ground. "Oh rapo…" Mari mumbled and squatted to clean up the mess. Jowee quickly came over to help. But Mari soon paused her cleaning and held up one of the papers, a picture. She studied the image carefully and turned her head sideways and smiled with a sigh, but yet, she had sad eyes.
Jowee noticed her staring at the picture, then leaned over to see. It was a picture of a raposa, that looked much like the mayor, standing next to a bed that had a mother, that had a colorful feather nestled in her thick, red-ish brown hair, and she was holding a baby. The parents smiled and the baby had her eyes closed. Sleeping.
Jowee looked at Mari, "Is that your mom?" Jowee pointed to the one in the bed.
"Yeah…" Mari sighed, then flipped the piece of paper over to read the back. The date on the back told that Mari was just born. And written in Mari's father's handwriting were the words, 'Kristine, Me, and our new, sweet, baby girl Mari at Dr. Cure's hospital.'
"Um… How… How did she die?" Jowee asked Mari hesitantly.
"I don't know." Mari answered then began putting the papers and the picture back into the book. The photograph book, to be exact, "My dad never told me." Mari continued, with a bit of anger to her voice. Angry that her father didn't even tell her how she lost her mother. He never did. And now he couldn't because he too was gone.
Mari placed the book back where it was and continued her quest to find a book to read. With Mari's back turned to him, Jowee watched her with concern written all over his face. He walked up closer, and stood beside Mari, thinking of what he should say. Before he could say anything though, something caught his eye. He reached down and pulled up a book. The book was a dark shade of brown, and a string looped through the spine of the book, holding the cover and pages together. The book was old looking, and worn out, and starting to fall apart a little. The name Thomas was painted in black on the spine of the book. Which Thomas was the mayor's name, Mari's father's name. The front cover, though, didn't have anything written or painted on. Just a green colored necklace type thing with a fake, velvety rose attached to the necklace, was somehow glued onto the cover.
"Hey, Mari," Jowee said, then dusted off the book, "What's this? It has your dad's name on it."
Mari then grabbed the thick book from Jowee to look at it, "I don't know. It looks like some sort of journal…" she opened it and examined the pale tan-ish yellow, stained page. It was filled with finely written handwriting from top to bottom. She read the date at the top and confusingly said aloud, "This was written by my dad when he was sixteen." Mari flipped quickly through all the pages, only glancing to see words on every single page. She flipped back to the first page.
"What's it say?" Jowee asked impatiently.
Mari looked back at the shelf where the journal had been originally. She saw several more journals with her dad's name on it. Each having a number painted on the spines, and in order. Probably of which was written first. "Look at all of them!" Mari began grabbing the journals off the shelves, two at a time, and setting them onto the floor in a tall stack.
"Are you gonna read all of those?" Jowee asked, surprisingly.
"He probably wrote everything in these… I have to read them all. To know what happened."
"To know what happened to your mother?"
"My dad hardly told me anything. I want to know everything that happened in his past." Mari opened up the first journal again, to the first page, and began reading aloud.
And now to the Mayor's, er, Thomas' point of view...