Howdy and hello! I think this is the first fanfiction I've written in nearly ten years. Isn't that crazy? XD I once wrote under the penname DaysOfTheNight, but since it's been such a long time, I decided to make a new account here.

This idea has been bouncing around my head for a really long time, and I'm finally putting fingers to keys. While the idea's been here, I'm winging much of this as I go along. Plus, I'm a little rusty. Bear with me. :) I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I enjoy the writing!

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The girl had always been the red rose left in a field of daisies. Growing up, she tried to accommodate others to her thorns, wilting herself down and curling her petals in to no avail. It was impossible, as even the sun is never truly hidden; the world instead turns away. She was just too different. Too true to her eccentricity, too aware of how much she didn't belong without knowing exactly why, and better at dancing to her own beat rather than tripping over the two-step of the status quo. She stopped trying when she got tired of failing, and when the girl became a young woman, she enjoyed herself too much to think of bleaching her wild colors ever again. The world would always turn away, but round about again to her confidence. If given the chance, there were still things she would change about herself. Her natural borne inclination towards whimsy, for example, doesn't have be synonymous with perpetually unprepared.

She could have brought an umbrella to England. American umbrellas work in Europe. But this American brain hardly worked in America, much less a foreign land. So she walked from landmark to museum to monument (what was left, anyway, after the terrorist attack three decades ago) with a wet head and wetter eyes, because her whimsical nature walked hand-in-hand with a raging sensitivity. It was her destiny, coming to London, but she never knew until she got here. Even so, she knew she wasn't dumping her life savings on this class trip for nothing. Nothing is that simple. They say there's a method to madness, and she could believe it because there was a reason behind her every eccentricity. She came to London because standing outside her one o'clock religions class, staring at a bulletin board, that flyer for the summer semester art history class across the pond spoke to her. It's time. Go. It's time.

It was that same voice that cajoled her into wearing corsets. The garment was outdated, unnecessary, and quite frankly, corsetry is widely misunderstood. Yet the routine of lacing in every morning was like second nature, like the corset was as a second skin. She could never put to words why, even to herself. It simply was. And now she was simply here, and the damp, chilled air of this country reached into her and brought wells of emotion she could barely parcel inside herself. A few fellow students who were assigned to the same study group had been giving her space without a second glance or thought, such was the reliability of her tears.

Despite this - being wet, cold, and regularly embarrassed by her inability to control herself - she was happy. She felt a calm connectedness that she could only liken to coming home. Yes, that was exactly it. She was coming home, and she wasn't sure what that meant yet.

Little did she know that the shadows of London received her homecoming. And the shadows, she would soon learn, had red eyes filled with knowing everything that she couldn't yet possibly fathom.