TOWRTA: This story was originally posted as romance Light/OC. Now there are still plenty of elements of this present in the story, but over the course of a year it's grown into something much more rooted in family and overcoming challenges heaped upon your shoulders. I hope you enjoy. I will be slowly editing each chapter.

Edited 2/09/16

Prologue

Morning finally came to the room on the east side of the hallway. Sunlight streamed through the crack in the curtains, sending dust particles dancing in the air like flecks of gold. A ray sliced through the stack of paper on the desk. The wardrobe was slightly open, showing rows of blazers and shirts and trousers, all neatly pressed. The carpet was clean, the desk held the bare necessities, and the bedside table boasted a single book with a folded letter on top. One blemish distorted the landscape of perfection – a large bed with rumpled sheets, bunched into a mound.

Beneath was a young, bronze haired man whose eyes feverishly flickered under their lids. In his dreams there weren't spartan rooms filled with light.

Large black eyes laughed mockingly at the dreamer, walls dripped dark red liquid, and screams reverberated through a dreary warehouse by the ocean. His constant companion was a single notebook, two words on its cover, white lettering on black. He never could not see what those words were. They were always out of focus, as though a film covered his eyes. The letters blurred and writhed, taunting the dreamer's inability to read them. No matter how the dreamer lunged for the notebook, it always stayed just out of reach, never to be touched by his hands.

With a jerk, Light Yagami awoke. Sighing, he rubbed his forehead and pushed back the covers of the bed. The same dream again. Always the same dream every time he closed his eyes. Sometimes there was variety – the eyes would be red instead of black or a hand would be holding the notebook – but the foundation of the mocking eyes and the fuzzy white letters never changed. If only he knew what it meant.

I need to talk to Minerva, he thought with a sigh. Minerva. Minerva, Minerva. Everything would always circle back to Minerva. Then again, better Minerva than someone unapproachable like L who took everything Light said with a pinch of salt.

Light sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. As he blinked in the sunlight that felt the need to fall directly across his face, his brow furrowed. His bedside table, previously empty the night before, was now occupied by a thick book. He picked up the letter on top of the red hardcover. In an instant his frown became a rarely seen expression of delight. Taking in the simple 'Light' written in Minerva's beautiful script, he turned the letter over and carefully unfolded it.

Light,

See, I told you I would finish this eventually. Now you can stop giving me those looks across the dining table. Whether you think you are being subtle or not, the others have noticed. Even L mentioned it to me when he came last week, in his own blunt way that is about as graceful as a boulder hurtling down a cliff

I have written down everything that happened from the time we met until we arrived here. This should explain why you can't remember certain conversations or why you have no idea what made you walk into the middle of the school courtyard on the twenty-eighth of November 2003, It won't have things that happened while you were alone, but I have been assured that it will be enough to jog your memory.

I only hope that Ryuk will keep his promise to me. Otherwise I have wasted hundreds of apples on an ungrateful roof for nothing.

Also, that promise I made holds true now. Be careful, Light. Don't go down a rabbit hole I'll be forced to dray you out of.

Once you have read the book and thought things through, come find me. You will have some things to ask, of that I have no doubts.

I didn't know where to start so I decided the beginning was most appropriate, on the day we met. Everything important iws written here, including some of the things I never told you. I thought that I might as well get everything out while I was at it.

I shall see you soon.

Sincerely yours

Minerva Valeria (V) Catearro

TOWRTA: Next chapter you meet Minerva. Leave a comment if there's anything you'd like to tell me. I love reader-author conversations. Fanfiction is a great place to make friends with people you would otherwise never talk to.

Yours Truly and God Bless

TOWRTA