November 31st

Dear Child Mine,

I learned today that I was with child. Which is a blessing, no matter what your Grandparents think. I went to the Doctor thinking I had some sort of stomach bug if you can imagine. It was laughable now that I think about it.

However back to you and what you need to know. You're father is a was a military man. He died in a horrible accident in the Vietnam War.

From what I understand, it was unusual, even for this foreign land. His death unexplainable, nevertheless it happened and i just want you to know that it's suspicious and I plan to know what exactly happened. The second is that your father and I were never married.

While some people (your grandparents) may see that as a issue I do not. If you love someone you should love them with all you have, no matter what morals come to question. Because of this my darling, you were conceived; so I have no regrets.

The last and final thing I want you to know is that the world may seem quiet at times, but nothing is ever as it seems.

Your Loving Mother

-Claudia

Jazz stared down at her Granm's letter to her mom almost seventy years ago with a grimace. The last sentence had always bothered her, the whole letter in fact bothered her, but it was "Nothing is as it seems" that gave her chills that corsed through her entire body. Jazz was always a fan of Black and White, having a gray area was never an option. It either was or it wasn't. There was never room for in between in her life.

however after her eighteenth birthday she noticed that things started to change. First were the unnatural natural disasters and then a country-wide lightning storm. She wasn't a meteorologist but neither of these occurrences seemed right to her, and then the oddities continued. Twelve people went missing in her town of Des Moines, Iowa. All from very popular places around the approximate eighty three square miles of the city.

Which sure when you think about it isn't all that odd, but when twelve people turn up missing in the span of less than two weeks it isn't coincidence. No matter what the local PD decided to tell Jazz; and to be brutally honest the only reason Jazz was interested was because one of those missing twelve was her younger brother Axel. Jazz and Axel weren't blood, but none the less they were family, and family stuck together.

Their relationship was born from a foster home visit when Jazz was nine and Axe was six. They had picked each other seemingly by chance while Axel was drawing on the wall with crayon and Jazz was meekishly searching for her parents; whom she had been separated from by the excitement of possibly having another child in the house. By pure smitten they stayed together until they had found her mother and Jazz pleaded Axel's case and why he would be the perfect addition to their family.

After that they were inseparable Jazz had flourished in her new role as big sister and Axel was finally in a home with people that truly loved him. Though Axel had his ups and downs with what was right and wrong where Jazz was always there to get him back on the right track until he would eventually slipped off. Again. This dynamic grew with them into adulthood and sometimes it was very taxing especially with Jazz's two horrible jobs and Axel's unemployment along with his "band" that wasn't getting that big break Axel was always searching for.

Nevertheless nothing like this had ever happened. Throughout their trials Axel had never just simply disappeared. it was unthinkable, inconceivable, irrational and a whole dictionary's worth of synonyms that explained why neither she nor Axel would never just vanish from each other. At least not of their own free will.

So there lies the problem. Nothing of this Earth could ever keep them apart. They'd find a way back to each other. Always. So when nearly a year has passed after Axel's kidnapping Jazz still didn't understand, or maybe she just didn't want to.

Again those words continued to stick with her.

"Nothing is as it seems."