What My Heart is Made Of

I am not Mushi Master. I am a 17-year-old teenage girl with yellow hair and blue eyes.I'm tired of ever old coot who lives up in a mountain tell me it's my destiny to protect the world. Please. I've already decided my destiny.

I'm going to become an actress!

Yes, you heard me right. An actress. My mother used to call me a drama queen, but she always grinned and giggled, so I knew she's just joking around.

Whenever I squealed at the wriggly little glowing bugs crawling around my room, my mother would sigh and say, "Alright little drama queen, I'll get rid of the bugs." She never seemed to see the things, but whatever, they just floated there.

When I brought my father a strange looking animal I found outside our house, he ruffled my hair and said I had quite an imagination. Then he would go back to reading the paper or something while I put my newest find in one of my mother's jars and put it in my room.

My grandmother would always give the weird creatures little names. I can't remember any right now, but whatever.

And then there was my future husband, Ginko. He always dropped by a few times every year, and he'd tell me stories about the things he would find. Sometimes, if he stayed for a few days, we'd set up a futon in m room and he'd give me names about my little collections. The names were always the same ones my grandmother gave me, but Ginko's voice was much nicer to listen to. Other nights we would go camping in the woods. He'd tell me about a river that I had never heard of. One that was full of little glowing things and that he could see when he closed his eyes. I could never see it, but I didn't care.

Okay, so Ginko wasn't honestly my future husband. He never really proposed to me, but he did give me a really cool ring a while back. It was gold "like my hair," he said, with a jewel in the center that was blue "like my eyes." He told me to never ever lose it, so I kept it safe and never took it off.

So my life was peaceful with my collections and my family and my love life. And everyhing was perfect... until my mother began to wonder where her glass jars were going. One day she wandered into my room and found it full of glass jars of grass and mud and dirt and mushrooms. She screamed at me until her face turned red and my grandmother awoke from her nap. When she saw my mother dumping the dirt and debris outside of my window, she freaked out.

"Don't you dare toss those materials out!" my grandmother screamed. She tried to pry a jar from my mother's hands, but it slipped and shattered on my bedroom floor. I watched in horror as something slimy and gross - something I know I didn't put in that jar earlier that year - slid across my floor and crawled into a hole in the floorboards. My grandmother saw it, too, and she shrieked, "Now look what you've done! We have to burn this house immediately!" She pulled a match from her pocket and struck it. My mother blew it out and I slunk out of my room while the two argued amongst eachother.

My grandmother left that night.

She never came back.

***

The next time Ginko visited, I told him everything that had happened. So he sat down to talk with my parents. I hid, eavesdropping in the next room.

"Your mother was right," he said. "It would be better if you burned this house, and everything in it. Better yet, just leave your home and possesions here and don't return."

An argument arose between my parents and Ginko. (although, Ginko never rose his voice or anything - he's just cool like that). My father screamed at him to leave and stay away from our property. I ran into the living room and flung myself into Ginko's arms. Crying, I begged him not to leave, and I begged my parents not to banish him from our home. But our father was persistant, and as Ginko was leaving, he bent down and whispered into my ear.

"Give me that ring I gave you."

My ring.

I looked down at my hand with the ring still on my finger. I looked up at his face and hesitaited. This ring was all I had to remember him by. But then again...

"I love you, Ginko," I whispered. I slipped the beautiful momento into his hand.

He didn't return the love, but he did reply, "Promise me you won't stay in this house. Even if you have to leave your parents behind, do not stay here. Look for your grandmother when you leave." I nodded. And for a split second, I thought he was about to kiss me... but he never did.

I felt dissapointed, but when I saw my parents watching from the window and I set my emotions aside. I watched Ginko walk down our pathway... and he never returned to our house again.

***

I stopped looking for creatures after Ginko left. I was too afraid. Over the next six months, I began seeing things in the shadows, crawling up our walls. Five months later I finally caught one in candle-light; it looked like a spider. It had one big eye that stared at me for a second and seemed to stuff itself into a crack in my wall and disapear. I told my parents about it, but they just called me a drama queen.

One day, I woke up to find that my mother had a large burn mark on her leg. She couldn't see it, but every time the wind brushed past it, she would scream in agony. My father and I kept her locked in a seperate bedroom. Soon my father got one on his neck, and my mother's had taken up over her etire leg.

My parents were dying. I would have to take care of them.

If they died in my care, I'd feel miserable.

I was next in line.

One night, I light a match, dropped it at the base of our house and ran.

I never came back.

To Be Continued...