(A/N: so here's the next one to introduce one of the main characters. The next chapter will re-introduce the Zodiacs and blah blah blah. But doesn't my main char have such a nice little quirk?)

Piper Willows sighed as she stared outside her window. The world was mocking her with its bright clear sky, warm sun and blooming flowers when more than anything it should be raining and miserable on a day such as this. Today was a day of sorrow, not beauty. Today, she hated the world for taking away her grandmother.

"Piper! Its time to go!" her mother called from the bottom of the stairs.

With another sigh, Piper stood up and gave herself a quick once-over in the mirror, applying a little blush and mascara, and a little lipgloss before she deemed herself ready. Piper was a slim, 15 year old girl with an appearance that many told her was pixie or fairy-like. Her white-blond hair was pulled back into a high pony-tail instead of providing the curtain that it usually did, with locks of hair framing her pale face. In Piper's opinion, there was nothing remotely beautiful about her except for her eyes, which were a brilliant green, swirling pools of jade, emerald and forest green. She straightened her black dress and her silver necklace and carefully walked down the stairs in her black pumps. She hated being so dressed up but...it was all for her grandmother.

"What took you so long? We're going to be late!" Her mother practically dragged her into the car, but not before Piper slipped a pad and pencil into her purse.

"Now some other families may be there as my mother, God rest her soul, insisted on being buried alongside some old friends of her. Tragic really, they all just seemed to die all around the same time. But it was they're time to go- I heard they were all going a bit batty." Piper's mother continued to ramble and Piper nodded slightly, letting her attention drift away.

Piper's grandmother was estranged from their family, they'd gotten in a big argument a number of years ago, just before the accident that killed Piper's father and left Piper without her voice. Piper had only seen her Grandma Meredith only a few times since then, and the accident had been ten years ago. And each time she saw her grandmother, she seemed strange and eccentric, always believing in herbal remedies and saying that one day one of those remedies would bring back her voice. The idea was preposterous though, if doctors couldn't figure out why her voice was gone why should some stupid herbs help? No amount of therapy, medicine, brain scans or any type of doctor could explain or fix her inability to speak. Then recently, her grandmother's health started deteriorating until she died in her sleep.

She couldn't even tell her grandmother goodbye.

Piper hadn't been to a funeral before, well at least not one that she could remember. She thought she'd been to her fathers but she wasn't sure. She wished her father was alive though, because she hated all the men her mom went out with now.

"Piper? Piper! Are you listening to me?"

Piper was jerked out of her thoughts and shook her head in a "no" gesture.

Her mother sighed, "As I was saying, some press reporters might be there. The entire town is shocked that twelve women who were close friends and estranged from their families all died within a week of each other. The press is supposed to be kept out, but you never know about these people. Hopefully this won't take long, I have an appointment with her dermatologist this afternoon..."

Piper nodded again, but she knew that her mother was really going to get botox injections to look younger- she just didn't want Piper to know(as if it wasn't obvious enough already). Piper hated how superficial her mother could be sometimes. They were polar opposites. Stacy Willows cared about her looks- her hair, her skin, her clothes, all those things. She always tried to be "in style" and she'd been in all the popular cliques in high school. Piper just wanted to be invisible to the high school world. She didn't care about her looks, just as long as she was happy with herself. At the same time she didn't want to attract attention and ridicule from the cruel popular girls of high school. Stacy also wanted her daughter to be an Olympic gymnast as that had been her dream long ago and she believed her daughter could do it. Even though Piper was a decent gymnast, she wanted to be a writer.

The car stopped and Piper and her mother stepped out into the cemetery. For such a depressing place, it was actually quite beautiful. There were flowers and other things among all the gravestones. Yet another thing that contradicted the purpose of the day. It should be an ugly day, and a cemetery should be an ugly place.

The service itself took place at the church, since in their wills, the deceased women had requested that in the event two or more of them died around the same time, that they be buried together in a joint service. The families were gathered at a place up on the hill of the cemetery that had few gravestones so there was enough room for all of them, and the twelve caskets were lined up and ready to be buried.

Piper didn't listen to the minister as he spoke. He didn't know her grandmother, or any of these other ladies so nothing he could say could have any meaning or worth. He only spoke empty words, however well-intended those words may be. Piper looked around and recognized quite a few faces from her school. She should have realized that that would have been the case, it was a small town that they all lived in so it should be no surprise that their grandmother's were friends. Up towards the front she saw Ashton Nakahara and his younger sister Leiko. For once Leiko's hair wasn't died bright and colorful, but black with dark violet tips. Leiko was a year older than Piper, a sophemore at their school. Ashton, her handsome blond brother, was a freshman at a community college even though he probably could have gone somewhere much better. Piper saw Blade Steele off towards the sides with his family. Blade was the quiet trouble maker in the school; he'd just moved here to live with his aunts after getting expelled from nearly every other school up in the city where his parents lived. Some of her classmates she knew only by face, but some were the snobby preppy girls that she usually tried to avoid.

Finally, the service was over and the families paid their respects. True to their grandmothers' wills, the family laid the flowers requested in their wills. Each flower corresponded with the old woman's birth flower. These old ladies were rather strange...but still, they seemed to have been close. I don't have any close friends. People always feel to much pity for me, she thought bitterly. The caskets were lowered into the ground, and the women were entombed forever into the earth.

The families stood around, making small talk with one another but Piper could tell from their body language that few actually mourned the passing of these strange women, they all thought they were too crazy or into voodoo and the occult. A figure bumped into Piper, nearly knocking her into the ground.

Quick as a flash, a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist before she could fall into the grass. "Oops! Sorry about that!" apologized a light accented voice.

Piper looked up and saw Leiko Nakahara looking at her. Leiko was a tall, slender Japanese-American with the most vivid, electric blue eyes Piper had ever seen. Piper knew she'd been born in Japan but for some reason, her father agreed to move back to her mother's hometown and now drives up to the big city up north every day to work for his company. Ever since then, the Nakahara children have gone to the local schools and most everyone agreed that they were all a little strange, but despite that they also got the most attention from the opposite gender. Must be the exotic foreigner thing, Piper took out her pad and pencil and wrote, "Its no problem." then showed the message to Leiko.

Leiko looked at her curiously, "Do I know you?"

Piper wrote again, "Probably not but we go to the same school."

"Oh that's right! You're the girl who can't speak!" Leiko suddenly looked sheepish and blushed slightly, "Er...sorry..."

Piper once again handed Leiko the pad, this time with the message, "Don't worry about it. I get that all the time. Its no big, really."

"But if you can hear fine, why can't you speak?"

Piper explained it all on the paper and Leiko nodded in understanding. "Well that must really suck. Maybe in the future the doctors will have the technology to help you speak again."

"Maybe. My grandmother Meredith always told me to try these natural remedies in this book she had at her house, but my mother refused to let me go over. My grandmother was very...well she preferred her own methods of medicine. "

"Mine was the same way. She had all sorts of crazy beliefs. My mother cut off all ties with her. We haven't spoken to her in...well...not since we moved here."

Piper glanced around and saw that the crowd was dispersing as Ashton called for Leiko, telling her it was time to go.

"I'll see you around Piper!" Leiko called as she ran off with a wave.

Piper gave a small wave back and a slight smile. She turned around and looked for her mother, seeing her trying to detach herself from the minister's conversation. Piper walked over to her mother, tapping her on the shoulder and making a "Can We Go?" face.

Stacy turned towards the minister. "Well Reverend, its been lovely talking to you but its been such a stressful day for my daughter and she needs her rest."

"Of course, Ms. Willows, of course. She'll be in my prayers."

"Thank you, Reverend." Stacy turned away and steered her daughter towards the car and briskly drove off. She dropped Piper off at the house before driving off again for her appointment. She probably had a date coming up.

Piper walked into the empty house and went up to her room. She washed her face and changed into a pair of shorts, a T-shirt and a dark sweatshirt and took her ponytail down. She was more than happy to get out of those painful heels. Piper made herself dinner then curled up on the couch with a good book. It was an enthralling novel by some author she'd never heard of about vampires, witches, werewolves, and shape-shifters. Piper loved stories like this, but her mother hated them and said they'd rot her brain cells. Personally, Piper thought that stories that were completely unrealistic were better for the mind as fantasy allowed it to wander past the depths of reality and let the imagination soar.

After she finished the book, she looked up at the time, seeing that it was later and her mother wasn't yet home. She probably had a date or something that she didn't tell me about. Or maybe she went on a random shopping spree or did some other thing and forgot to come home. She's so scatterbrained sometimes. Piper sighed and went upstairs to her room. Her room was rather small and consisted of a desk with a laptop, a bed, a dresser, and bookcases and shelves all around the room(with a stereo and CD's on one shelf). Her desk was cluttered with papers and story ideas. There wasn't any room for her gymnastic trophies, they were in a case out in the main hallway so that any time a guest came, her mother could brag about her daughters achievements and how she'd win the Olympic Gold Medal one day(Piper laughed at the thought).

Piper crawled into bed, but was unable to sleep. She couldn't help but remember the dream that she'd been having for the past couple of weeks, and was worried that she'd have it again. She'd heard of people who said that dreams meant something but Piper didn't believe that, she always thought it was the subconscious sorting out the troubles of the mind so that everyone is less irritable when they're awake. So what problem do I have the involves a dragon, weird symbols, robed figures chanting, colored smoke, the astrological Zodiac constellations and my dead grandmother telling me to embrace?Ugh, I'm sure its just my imagination gone wild again. Maybe writing about it would help?Piper always found that strange dreams lead to colorful story ideas and made it easier to have a dreamless sleep. She brought her laptop over and crawled back into bed, setting the computer into her lap and opening Microsoft Word. Her fingers flew across the keys, describing the dream as the gears of her mind worked to come up with a plot, storyline and characters. One word kept coming to mind: Witch.

The chanting and symbols of the dream with all the weird smoke did seem like stuff she'd always read in fantasy novels that deal with witchcraft. Why would she dream about it though? And it was so vivid, it was almost like it could really happen. Plus, the eyes of the dragon seemed to be trying to tell her something, but what? And why did her grandmother seem so pleading and desperate?

Piper pushed those thoughts aside and went back to typing as the ideas flew to her mind. Piper loved to write, everything about it fit. It was easy for her, it was fun. This was her voice. Writing was the only way she could speak, and writing about the unexplained, the supernatural, and the fantasies of life seemed to be the only way she could convey the thoughts of her mind.

At around 10:30, she heard the toward open and quite giggling of her mother. Piper rolled her eyes. She's brought home another guy. Men were attracted to Stacy Willows like bees to flowers. It was sickening, to Piper, that her mother would bring home all these guys while she was in the house! Piper scowled and stopped typing. Her writing muse was gone and her mood permanently ruined. There would be no sleeping now unless she wanted some twisted nightmares.

Piper scowled in disgust. She recognized the guy's voice. It was their new single neighbor from down the street, Harold Warner. Piper's scowl became deeper as she clenched her fists. He'd been hitting on her mom for the past week. They barely knew each other! And now her mom was bringing him home to do God knows what! Piper slammed her laptop shut, then stiffened. The voices were louder now, closer. Piper narrowed her eyes as she heard them sweet-talking each other…but Harold's tone of voice changed suddenly, becoming more apprehensive yet at the same time slightly toneless and trance-like.

"Stacy…do you think that maybe we could be rushing it?"

"Huh? What do you mean? We've been dating-"

"Yeah, I know but its only been a couple dates and we still don't know each other that well. Besides, your daughter is just down the hall. Now that I've thought about it, I'm not too comfortable about doing this right now."

"Well Harold, if you really think it's a bad idea then we'll wait a while."

"Thanks, honey."

His heavy footsteps retreated and she heard two different doors close, her mothers bedroom door and the front door. Piper couldn't believe it. Her mom was dating that creep! But what had come over him just then? One minute he seemed more than happy to follow her mother to the bedroom and then…he came to his senses just like that? It was so weird. Not that she was complaining, though. Smirking slightly, Piper crawled into bed and closed her eyes to sleep. She hoped she have more good luck like that.