When people see a little, blonde girl, do they all think: 'she must like flowers, and princesses, and all things bright and cheery'? How does the saying go again? 'Sugar, and spice, and everything nice.' Something like that. It is what I've known most people to think.

But I don't like bright colors. I don't like flowers and princesses.

I like black, and white, and gray. I like curses, dragons, and witches. I like and broken bones, and gravestones.

I like ghost stories.

I am not afraid of death, or the dark.

There's something about this force, grand enough to swallow you up, like a crescendo at the end of a dramatic song, small enough to crawl into the cracks in your heart, something I find terribly fascinating, and unbearably charming.

But when I tell people that, it scares them.

Death and I were introduced when I was very young. My twin sister and I found a bird on the ground while playing outside, and it wasn't moving. We showed it to our father, and he called it a wendy, like in Peter Pan. That was before he knew it was dead. When he saw that it was, he decided to choose his words carefully, and explained that it was in another world, flying far away.

'Wendy', like me. But when I thought of myself, dead, in its place I was not scared, or sad. There was something about leaving this world, easy as closing your eyes, that was almost comforting. No more scraped knees, or battered feelings. No more broken bones, or ruptured souls.

This was not something frilly, and pretty. Or at least, it was pretty, in another way. I think that might have been the moment I first thought I rather liked this 'death', this idea of closing your eyes, and leaving this world behind.

Father's stories…mother's eyes… The perfect match.

Mother liked astronomy, and archaeology, and father liked literature. With Father's voice, Shakespeare would recite us poetry about the stars, and Mother would point at the sky, and tell us their names. Before we went to bed, often times we would lie in the backyard, tracing constellations, and father would read us Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland though in later years, I was fonder of Jekyll and Hyde, and Frankenstein.

That doesn't mean Mother wasn't fond of stories too, just less the language, and more the mystery. Perhaps that's why she liked the stars, and the ancients.

For instance, people thought her wedding ring was topaz, or amber, but she told us that the yellow gem was from another world. She wouldn't tell us its name, but she said it was manufactured by some ancient being, and it was comprised pure light. (True it was brighter than topaz or amber, but I had a hard time believing that was the reason). That the world used to be made of light too, but one day, man fell, and the shadows crawled out, preying upon things like light, and little girls. (My sister shuddered when she heard that part, but it was my favorite line). She said it was so rare that if you brought just two of the gems together, and you were very lucky, and very reckless, you could use their light to call a star down.

Just a fairy tale, of course. I thought they must have sewed that one together with romance, and wishful thinking. But I liked that story too, even if wasn't true. I liked all their stories, regardless of their validity.

I told myself it couldn't be true, even if I had seen things that would make people question my sanity.

Now I know I was wrong.

Mother, Father, me, and Abigail.

Yes, Abigail. My twin sister. The picture of sanity. A golden-haired-girl who loved dolls, and wildflowers, birds and the spring that came with them. She liked what she was supposed to like, and feared what she was supposed to be fear. She had ordinary interests, and ordinary courage. She was everythingordinary.

I looked up to her. I loved her. Sometimes I wished I could be more like her. Yet there was something about the idea of ordinary, and how she was, and I wasn't, that haunted me.

Still, there are good things about being abnormal.

We would often sit in our rooms and, by the spark our parents put in us, make up stories. Hers would be full of hope, and happy endings, such as stray dogs finding homes (she always wished we could have a dog), and knights with glittering armor. Mine would often end in funerals, and I would wonder why my sister didn't think that sort of ending was happy.

But my favorite kind of stories were the ones I told her when she was afraid.

One night, when we werelittle, she found our room was too dark for her tastes. She said that there must be monsters there, in the corners, beneath the beds, that she was scared. I walked over to her, heldher close, and I told her that there weremonsters in there. It made her feel more terrified at first. But then I told her there was a whole kingdom of creatures in the shadows, and that they were not there to hurt her, only to watch, to live their own lives, to play their own games. I told her this kingdom had a queen, a queen who was once like us, but who had forgotten who she was, and if only we helped her remember, no one would have to be scared anymore.

(How was I to know it was true?)

I told her about how thunder was what it sounded like when angels tried to talk to us, but they spoke too loud, or too much, and earthquakes were demons shaking their fists against hope, and the odds, or else trying to drag us into their world, or climb up into ours.

I liked making her smile. Though sometimes my stories made her feel worse, and someone else had to fix it, because I didn't understand why.

With all that ordinary-ness, that kindness, the hope she brought to the world, I've lost track of the amount of times I've asked those angels, and that darkness, why she had to be the one that died.

Notes

Not sure if this is common knowledge, but for anyone who doesn't know, in the original Peter Pan, Tinkerbell coerces one of the lost boys to shoot Wendy down, telling them that she's a bird. Yeah, I know it's dark, that's why I think our Wendy would like it :)

Also for anyone who doesn't know, if you examine a yellow gem as Wendy she says it reminds her of her mother.