Chapter One: Little Doves and Snowfall
Have you ever wondered where children come from? I'm sure you have. Every child of every age has. Oh sure we ask our parents, every year that goes by we ask. Even before we could talk we would ask. Though no grown up can understand the language babies speak. Their language is a muddled mess of all the languages unspoken by man. Words from the clouds and stars, words from the ground and trees, words from the Sun and Moon themselves. For you see, what all grown ups have forgotten is where babies are from.
You see, when a couple gets together and the feel love in each other they get chosen. They are chosen by a wind. A light fall of snow. A small drop of rain. The stars you see in the sky. They all choose a couple and when they choose a couple they are swept up by the night mother. The moon takes them up and puts together a child's sense of curiosity, kindness, gentility. Then they are handed over to the day father. The sun sweeps them to him and creates a child's boldness, sense of fear and adventure. All put together the child is delivered to the couple. This is how all children begin and how all grown ups will end. You are truly completed when your parents hold you for the first time. They give a small piece of themselves to you and you become complete.
This is why when your aunt says you have your fathers eyes or you are as stubborn as your mother it is because of that piece that they gave you. Of course you will never be just like your parents. It is because children pick up other pieces from many other places. You will get pieces from your friends and it is the most magical thing to watch for grown ups. For grown ups somehow forget exactly how to swap pieces like children do. Children run about in their playgrounds meeting other children and swapping pieces as easily and freely as snacks and trading cards. They also take pieces from places they go and leave a piece behind. It is common politeness to leave a piece of yourself in classrooms and playgrounds if you take one.
It is said that when the very first playground was created it was a small girl by the name of Gloria who was playing a game with her friends, passing pieces around when she accidentally dropped a rather large piece of herself and it shattered into many more pieces. She felt so bad she began to cry all the children in the playground felt so bad for her they all came and put a piece of themselves alongside Gloria's broken pieces and promised they would place a piece of themselves in every playground, class room and garden. Of course you can't go on leaving pieces of yourself everywhere you go so it became common to take piece when you leave one.
New buildings and playgrounds don't come with pieces. They have to be given them by a generous child or dropped accidentally in passing. However places like gardens, forests, rivers and graveyards are filled with pieces naturally. All pieces of grown ups long after they've stopped being a grown up and moved on. There's a place from my childhood that I took many pieces from. A piece of the river that I would spend every summer in and a piece I left with it. A piece of the forest that surrounded it on all sides with pieces of myself all over it as well. This place will forever be apart of me as much as I am a part of it and it hurts in many ways to know that my children will never see it.
Now that you know where you came from you can't be surprised that when an infant first becomes human they are a little unsettled. They have bodies that aren't like what they used to be. They can't simply drift through homes and trees like the breezes they were. So when stuck in a room or playpen they are unnerved, they have never been stuck before. They can't illuminate the darkness like they did while they are stars. So when left in the dark they cannot see nor can they be sure that there isn't anything sneaking up on them. They've never felt their stomachs yearn for food, nor felt it full from over eating. They've never had no teeth to bite and chew but they've never had teeth or felt them come in. Being a baby is hard for someone who's never been human before.
Not even mentioning how hard being human in general is, there is no instruction manual for growing up or being any certain age. No matter who you look at I will let you know they have no idea what they are doing. Especially grown ups. There are so many ways to grow up and to be grown up that no two grown ups are exactly alike. That's why no parent is exactly alike. Why sometimes your parents argue over which punishment to give you or what is better for you. They simply don't know, there is no right way to be a grown up and there is no right way to be a child.
Why is it important you know where babies come from? Well let me introduce you to a few players in this story. For starters let's talk about Franklin Bellmay. He's old money who inherited his father's fortune from his grandfather's law business. The wealth pours in like the waves of the ocean if the tide never had to ebb. The senior Bellmay's lived in a nice house near the ocean. With the best view of the sunset in the world. Their only son was Franklin and they gave him the world. He was trained from birth to take over the family business and marry a lovely woman and bring another heir to the business and so on and so forth. It was expected, demanded. As it is in all old money families. Just like the olden days of kings and queens who had to pass on their royal blood as a sign of their prominence. Franklin Bellmay grew up to be a self important man who honestly forgotten to look for a partner to produce a child to raise. He didn't have to look far to find a suitable woman. Enter our second character, Nan Wilson. A kind of woman who was looking for the easy way out. The easy way to live and a man to care for her.
This is a very different time from now. When it was expected of men to take care of the women and for the women to take care of the house. So for Nan, when she met Franklin, it was perfect. The house and marriage came with a team of maids, a personal chef and upon the birth of a child, a full time nanny. The only condition was to produce a child. Produce a child and she could live out the rest of her life in ease. There was simply nothing better for her. So they married hurriedly, Nan was married in white as most brides are. In a dress that could be considered fit for a princess. To be fair the girl was a bit of a bridezilla. To say that she wanted everything perfect and it must be perfect. There was no room for failure. If things didn't go her way she would pitch a fit like you wouldn't believe! She would go on and on whining and crying until she got her way, and get her way she would! The wedding was undeniably beautiful, with the whitest dress and flowers that would put any field to shame. It was at dawn and on the side of a cliff facing the ocean.
In the first year of their marriage no child came and rightfully so. As I stated previously a couple has to be chosen by the child they will have and only when they truly feel love for each other, even if it's a kind of love you feel for a sister or a brother, a child will be chosen. It took another two years before a very strange occurrence happened.