Hey guys! This is my first publicized NanoFate story and it's based on my favorite novel by Radclyffe!

I hope you enjoy this story!

Disclaimer: I do not own Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and its characters, nor do I own this plot since it's directly based on Radclyffe's story of the same title. I just love the story so much and the characters had an uncanny similarity with NanoFate that I had to share this awesome story .. Apologies if I offend anyone.

Chapter 1

Shiro Takamachi halted the wagon on a knoll overlooking a sprawling town that lay nestled in a valley hewn from the eastern reaches of the mountains. He sat forward eagerly, anxious for his first glimpse of their new home.

"There it is, Momoko. Come look, Nanoha. We've finally arrived!" he exclaimed, reaching for his wife's hand. She sat beside him on the rough wagon bench, stiff from the lingering chill of the late spring nights, bundled to the nose in a heavy blanket.

Momoko Takamachi surveyed the scene before her and tried to quell the quick surge of dread. There were perhaps a dozen buildings in all on either side of a rutted dirt road that was clearly 'Main Street'. She shielded her eyes, squinting in the early morning sun to make out other houses scattered along the outskirts of the town and further into the foothills wherever homesteaders had settled.

A young woman pushed between them from the rear of the covered wagon, one gloved hand on each of their shoulders. Despite the chill she was bareheaded and her glossy hair shone in the bright sunlight. "Is that it?" she asked, her voice alight with an echo of her father's enthusiasm. "Are we here?"

"At last, Nanoha," Shiro answered cheerfully. "Altseim."

"I am so glad! I can't wait to meet the Harlaowns! Do you know which is their house?'"

He laughed, delighted by her eagerness. Perhaps he needn't have worried about her after all. He pointed toward the spire-peaked square clapboard building nearest them. "That's the church. Clyde says it was the first building they raised, and next to that the schoolhouse, I imagine. The Harlaowns live somewhere near the center of town. I'm sure that we will have no trouble finding them."

Nanoha did not see the stark simplicity of the town and the wild countryside as something to fear, as her mother did. Like her father, she saw a chance that her life might be more than she had been raised to believe it would be. Nanoha thought about the last year of her life, the year that most girls her age remembered as the most exciting. It had not been for her. She had attended the required coming out parties, and the afternoon socials, and the debutante balls. She had been properly introduced and had made the proper connections. It had been pleasant, but somehow it struck her as frivolous, too. She found the conversations considered appropriate between young ladies and gentlemen tiring and the attentions of would-be suitors tiresome. Perhaps here she would find that there was more to life than that.

She gripped her father's shoulder harder, asking, "And the newspaper office, where you'll be working? That's here, too?"

"One of the very first in the territory," Shiro pronounced proudly, throwing his arms around his wife. "Just think of it!"

His excitement was so boundless, and so simple, that Momoko's heart lifted at the sight of his pleasure. She returned his hug and said softly with more conviction than she felt, "It will be wonderful, darling. I'm sure of it."

As he snapped the reins, the horses surged forward and the wagon jerked into motion. Momoko clutched her husband's arm, remembering how impossible it had all seemed at first. A letter from Shiro's childhood friend Clyde had arrived in Cranagan nearly a year before, extolling the virtues of the unsettled west and the Altseim Territory in particular. Pure air, clear skies, no crowds or stench of factories, he had written. The war that divided the nation was a distant thunder out in the northern territories where any man could claim land just for the tending of it and make his fortune with the sweat of his brow. Clyde Harlaown wanted a partner for his fledgling newspaper, and he wanted Shiro Takamachi to be that man.

The idea of moving west had been only a wild dream then. True, Shiro had been growing steadily more discontented with his teaching position, and the offer of a partnership on a newspaper had electrified him. With each letter from Clyde, Shiro's interest grew. They had searched the library for a map of the new territory to locate the town that had then been only a name. Momoko quickly smothered her look of horror when she saw the glow in her husband's face.

"But Shiro, isn't it very far away?" she began cautiously. All she could appreciate was a vast open area marked by very little evidence of civilization. What had Shiro said? Most of the settled areas had started out as mining camps during the rush west to find gold.

Shiro had traced the route of the Oregon Trail with his finger, oblivious to his wife's reservations. "Clyde says about four months altogether, and the roads are good all the way into Rigate. Of course, we would have to leave most of the furniture behind- but Momoko! Think of it! It's a brand new country out there, just beginning to grow. With the new policy promising land to any man who lives on it, a whole new world is going to spring up overnight! We could be a part of something grand, and the newspaper would be at the heart of it!"

He was taken with the idea already. His wife recognized the tremor in his voice. She knew he was dissatisfied with the changes in their life that the war and industrialization had brought, but what did they know of frontier living? They who had never been further west than Uminari?

"What about Nanoha?" she had asked quietly, struggling to hide her apprehension. "She is eighteen now and at the age when a girl should be marrying. Can we ask her to simply leave this behind and begin again in a place we know nothing of?"

Momoko would go anywhere her husband chose, because his happiness was hers, but could she ask the same of their daughter? Didn't they owe her more? Who knew what type of men they might find in such an unsettled place. Nanoha was much too refined to become the wife of a shopkeeper, or worse, a farmer!

"Momoko, I don't know how I know, but I feel it would be right for us. We could do as we liked with our lives again. It would be hard for you to give up your friends and the comforts we have here, but we would have friends there, too. There would be so much you and I could share!"His voice was thick with emotion and his eyes grew cloudy. "But Nanoha? You may be right. A young woman like her, giving up all of this - the dances, the parties, the finer things. Perhaps it would be too much of a hardship."

Doubt had crept into his voice, and Momoko could not bear that. She took his large hand into her small one and said with sudden determination, "Nanoha can stay here with my cousin Misato. She is almost of the age when she would be leaving us soon for a husband. Perhaps it will be sooner, that's all." Her calm, strong words comforted him, and he smiled again. Then Shiro and Momoko went together to talk with Nanoha.

"Nanoha, darling," Momoko began, "your father and I have talked at great length about this move west, and we feel that we should go." She glanced at Shiro who was strangely silent and took his hand. "We are not sure what lies ahead, but it will be very different from our life here. We are prepared to leave, but you're a young woman now, and this is the only life you have known. There are many opportunities here, and comforts that you might never have in Altseim. The theater, opera, your friends..." Her voice trailed off and she looked intently at her daughter, who seemed to be struggling not to interrupt.

Nanoha was seated in front of the fire, the flickering light highlighting her elegant features and shimmering waves of long auburn hair. Her hands were folded gently in her lap, but her face was alive with laughter as she glanced from one to the other.

"You two! Do you think I would let you go without me and miss this great adventure? There is nothing I care for enough to keep me here, and no one I care for more than you. I want to come. I feel somehow that this is not where I belong. Perhaps I will not find that so in Altseim."

Her father looked at her with his mouth agape. Surely, there was none more popular nor more accomplished than his daughter! She had many friends and not a few would-be suitors. In addition to her sapphire-eyed, auburn-haired beauty, her wit and intelligence quickly won her acceptance in any circle. Not belong here? Preposterous!

Momoko ignored the excitement, so like Shiro's, in Nanoha's voice. Nanoha had altogether too much of her father's adventurous spirit. Momoko blamed herself for allowing Nanoha to spend so much time with her father as a child and not emphasizing enough that Nanoha needed to prepare for a life as a wife and mother. She had warned Shiro that the college library was no place for a girl to be spending so much time, and although she accepted a young lady's need to read and write, Nanoha spent far too many hours alone with her books. Momoko had finally put her foot down after Shiro had insisted on giving in to Nanoha's demands that he teach her about his photographic pastime. A dark room filled with foul smelling chemicals was no place for a girl, even if Nanoha was a 'natural' at image making, as Shiro so proudly proclaimed. If Nanoha needed something to occupy her time, she could learn needlepoint!

"There are not likely to be the prospects for your future that you would find here," Momoko insisted. She looked to her husband for support, but found none.

Nanoha spoke carefully, because she knew that her mother could insist that she remain behind. "Whether I am here or there, Mother, I will only make a match that feels right in my heart. I do not believe that love is dictated by geography. You know there is no one here for whom I have any attachment."

That was precisely what concerned Momoko most. There had been more than one suitable young man to appear at their door, and Nanoha had received each one politely and had just as politely sent each one on his way. Before Momoko could protest further, Shiro interceded, for in truth, he could not bear the thought of leaving for a new life without his daughter.

"Are you sure, Nanoha?" he asked.

"Quite sure, Father," she answered, feeling the first thrill of new possibility. "Make no mistake – I want to go!"

Once the decision was made, things happened quickly. Shiro resigned from the college and sold their house and most of the furnishings at a good profit. People were moving to the city in great numbers for work in the factories that seemed to have sprung up overnight, and there were plenty of buyers. Momoko donated much of her wardrobe to charities that cared for those who were displaced or left behind by the rapid pace of progress. Silk dresses and finery would be useless in a small frontier town. She purchased simple, sensible traveling clothes for her family. She would not have believed that all of their worldly goods could fit into less than a dozen stout trunks, along with several boxes of books and a wardrobe of her mother's with which she refused to part.

They had left their home before the last graying snows of winter had melted from the streets, planning to follow the warm winds west. Like so many hopeful travelers of the time, they had no idea what truly lay ahead. The first leg of their journey had been by rail to Erusia where the 'regular' railroad service ended, and where most expeditions into the western territories began.

In Erusia, they joined a wagon train, both for safety and to afford company for Momoko and Nanoha, neither of whom had ever been beyond the civilized confines of eastern society. Spring had first overtaken, then threatened to pass them by somewhere along the northern trail through the plains to the newly created Altseim Territory. As they traversed the flat lands toward the eastern slopes of the mountains, the last snows retreated, swelling riverbeds and streams to overflowing, making the last few weeks of their trek arduous for animal and human alike. The journey had been longer than expected, and harsher than they had imagined, but Shiro's unfailing optimism and Nanoha's buoyant sense of anticipation kept all their spirits from flagging. Now, with Cranagan receding into a distant memory, they were about to begin their great adventure.

A/N: Next chapter will be updated soon~