Chapter One: A Girl from the Mountains
I don't remember my mother well… nor my father.
They both died when I was very young.
He had black hair… hers was red, stunningly beautiful red, like a rose in full bloom.
Their eyes, or so I'm told, held more love than one could imagine in an entire lifetime.
One's soul can be read through their eyes – nothing was tainted about my parents… nothing.
Daughters look like their fathers and sons look like their mothers.
We both have his black hair but I have his eyes.
My brother has our mother's sapphire eyes; I have my father's emerald-jade color.
I can only picture what they looked like, their faces.
I believe my brother looks exactly like my father and he thinks the same of me to my mother.
It's never bothered us, not knowing them… we've always had each other.
Some of my earliest memories are of my brother holding me in his arms.
He's nearly three years older than I am, but we're still very close.
Our grandfather adopted us after our parent's death.
We have no other family… had… no other family besides him.
Without him, our lives would have been lost during that first cold winter, I'm sure.
We could love him no more than we do, still, than any other we will ever know.
He took us in, became our father, in a sense.
For fifteen years of my life, my grandfather raised me until his death.
Afterward, my brother became my entire world, my entire family.
He was my mother, father and brother.
I know, without him, even at the age of sixteen, I would not have survived, but… now I'm getting ahead of myself.
This is my story.
Our story… and I want to share it with you, before I leave.
For, I never do know where the morning wind will take me again after the dawn breaks…