At this very moment in time Piper McLean felt like a rotten leaf.
Yes she did.
She had been floating along in a summer breeze gentle and warm. Her life had been going right. And suddenly, wham! She hit an obstacle and was nearly crushed to pieces.
Stupid Jason Grace! She punched her pillow again. Leaving her to rot to on the ground. Urggghhh! If only she could just empty her head of all these false memories, she could go back to being Piper Without A Broken Heart.
If only... She was beginning to realise the torment to simple words could bring her.
If only she hadn't hit this bump in the road. If only she didn't have a stupid heart.
Or, she thought sadly, at least a heart that wasn't made of glass.
Piper dreamed in her sleep. And thinking about glass hearts had dredged up another painful memory...
She was young and carefree. Her dark hair streamed behind her as she ran across the moonlit sands.
The sea rushed up to caress her small toes and then released her, ebbing a little further away each time.
The young girl had not an earthly care in the world for she was an angel. An angel who had fallen from the stars and was brought up on earth as a child.
The angelic child should not have been here on earth, no for her heart was not earthly, it was made of glass.
Glass shatters.
And so the earthly couple who protected her were careful, very careful that her heart was protected all through her childhood. A few cracks and scratches here and there on her glass heart, but nothing so far that couldn't be mended.
But the child grew up into a beautiful earthly woman. It is said that her beauty was unrivalled and unparalleled anywhere across the land. It was almost otherworldly.
The young angel knew about her glass heart and sought to protect it from prying eyes. She rejected every suitor that came to call.
But finally as it always happens, the young angel gave her heart away... Unwillingly but it just happened. She danced she was carefree again, no longer cautious, no longer bound in chains. She let her glass heart fly.
But something that fragile was never meant to fly, it was only meant to glow from inside, to look as beautiful and as cold as its mistress.
And one slip one day. One day she woke up and something happened. She realised that it was never meant to be. There had always been another. Another better woman. Another more beautiful, more intelligent woman.
It was a simple case of heartbreak as her heart fell spiralling out of control, back down to earth.
Don't let go of something so fragile. For glass hearts are not meant to fly.
Everything went black, Grandpa Tom's face receded into the background and she thought she was going to wake up.
But suddenly a strange voice honeyed and sweet whispered in her ear.
Piper, glass can be broken, glass can be shattered. But your heart is not made of glass. Piper, trust again, love again. You were always for another.
Piper gasped and sat up. Her head span and she felt disorientated. But when the world finally came to rest the right way round, she lay back down and sank into deep thought.
The storyteller had been Grandpa Tom, the story one she had heard long ago when she was little. But the voice in the dark...it said she would love again. It said she was for another.
And there was only one person who could decide that.