Author's Note: I wouldn't call this a period piece though it is set in the 1800s and that time period does have much influence on this fic. But I believe that this is more of a fairytale. This is just the prologue, hope you enjoy.

Some Enchanted Evening- Prologue

First, it is one rain drop that falls. Then, of course, another has to fall as well. Then another hundred must fall, because it wouldn't make sense for them not to. Then the sky opens up, suddenly dropping all the water it can on the small island of England.

By then, no one is safe from the cold splashes of wetness. The water will hit every square inch of England it can. And what falls must land, it won't stay suspended forever.

She turned to her family, the two people she loved the most, and smiled, watching as the relief pooled into their old, aging faces. She tried to blink back the tears that were forcing their way to the brim of her eyes. She was determined to stay grinning. Those concerned eyes of the people she loved would never stop assessing her body language, not as long as she lived and she couldn't let them down.

If one tear fell, then all would fall and they would see that she was actually vulnerable. They would stop her plans, feed on her doubts, and convince her to stay though she couldn't. It was wrong to burden them any longer. She would send herself to exile and live with people she knew but still felt were strangers. It was time for a change; it was time for life to become something other than an enchanted dream.

There is one way to be sure you are safe from the rain. You could be one of those people inside a house, one with a big, warm family and caring friends to fill your rainy days with entertainment and joy. The menacing clouds would clear away from you, eventually too tired of trying to make someone so content miserable. They'd realize that all the bad that they'd drop on you would somehow find a way to turn into good.

"You, Sir, are fine," the doctor said as he examined his patient. He widened one of the young man's eyes between his impersonal fingers, peering closely into the blue eye, noting the dilated black pupil then doing the same to the other one. "But I guess you won't be remembering much."

"What won't I be remembering," his patient creased his brow and asked. The doctor paused and scratched his head. He wasn't a particularly good doctor. How would he be expected to give the young man all the details of his condition? Course, he'd seen a case like this before, in his youth, when he practiced under his father. The man in that case had suffered a head injury and when he woke up; he didn't remember anything about his family. He didn't act, to them, the way he was supposed to and he rebelled against his own family so completely that he severed their relation and became a new man with a new life.

This would be the same with this man. But from what the doctor could tell, the man didn't have any family. He only had the kind heart of the Duke of Wyndemere, who wanted him well because he was injured saving the young marquees. This case wouldn't be as heartbreaking as the last one which meant the news wouldn't be taken too gravely. What luck, the doctor thought and smiled to the young, irrelevant man.

"You won't remember a thing from you past, sir. You might possibly remember maybe a few things here and there. Like possibly, how things are supposed to smell. The natural order of certain things," he paused dramatically, "but I doubt your memory will ever return to you. You will never be the same gentleman you were before."

Even in the face of thunder and lighting, you will laugh and lift your child to the sky, risk getting hit by burning bolts of lightning. The gray will part for your laughter. The gray will part for your sheer joy of life. It will be tingled by your happiness, annoyed with your smile, angered with your teasing tears of love and happiness.

"You're quiet," the doctor frowned. So the man wasn't taking the news well. He was grieving though he had no memory of substance to mourn. "Are you confused about anything," he waited cautiously, terrified of an outburst, "Young man?"

"Yes. About one thing," the man spoke softly, pain dripping over his eyes, shattering them. "Who am I?"

Like searching for the bright sun in a day of shielding gray clouds, happiness has to be found. And one could get lost in the gray fluff, being blinded all the time by sadness. One's happiness is behind the bumping clouds, the shattering thunder, the disorienting lightening. Fools waste their time searching through that. To be smart, you must realize that you are your own great ball of suspended fire, and what the clouds blind you from are the people staring up at you from ground.

I believe it is not "reach for the sky". It's find a way to realize "you are already flying".

-Lady Elizabeth (1860)