My childhood wasn't exactly a bad one. At least not at home. Our parents loved us and encouraged us. You see, when we were little, Alannah and I created characters of our own, people we could put our imaginations into. People we could relate to. I created a woodland el, druid named Enyo Brashmar. Scarlet created a half-elf paladin named Scarlet Quarin. We would roam about the woods outside our farm and live out the lives of these two characters. Of course, in doing that we either never got our chores done, or we would cause more damage and give ourselves more to do the next day. But we didn't care.

"Come on girls, time to get cleaned up!" Sayuri called out to her two daughters. She was cleaning her hands off on a her apron as she watched and waited for the two girls to round the corner. "Alannah! Rhya! Come on! It's getting late!"

She could hear their whispering from around the corner. This normally meant the two were going to have to be hosed off before they would even be allowed in the house. She sighed to herself and stepped out onto the porch, pretending she didn't know where the two were.

After another round of giggles, Alannah suddenly jumped from around the corner, a stick in her hand that she waved around like a sword. As she figured, the child was covered from head to toe in dirt and mud, just as she normally was when the two girls played this game.

"Stop right there monster! Ye've caused enough damage for one day!" she yelled, pointing her sword stick at her mother.

"Oh no! I didn't think you'd find me!"

Sayuri turned to try to run the other way, but there stood Rhya on top of a barrel, her fingers dancing about as if she were trying to weave a magic spell.

"You won't escape from us this time!" Rhya grinned.

"What am I going to do now?!"

"You can't run! I'll root you to the ground!"

"I'll use my fire breath to burn through the roots!"

She was tapped on the leg by the stick sword from behind her.

"You forgot about me didn't you?" Alannah asked with a smirk on her face.

"This is hardly fair. It's two against one!"

"Try two against two!" Patrick growled. He grabbed Rhya and tossed her on his shoulders before bending down and picking Alannah up and carrying her under his arm. "You two should think twice before picking a fight on my witch."

"She's not a witch dad, she's a dragon!" Rhya scolded him.

"Eh, tomato, tomato," he joked, saying the word two different ways. Sayuri gently smacked her husband's arm as they took the girls around the side of the house to hose them down.

It was those days that I long for the most. Things were simple then, as they are for most children. It was before either of us were in school. We were allowed to let our imaginations run rampant. Time is supposed to make me forget – or so I had been told. But there were things in my life that I would remember for centuries to come.

During these times, Alannah and I began to come up with our own little world. Our own characters which we pretended we were. Even at such a young age, our stories were elaborate and thought out. I was a magical elf, that became a wood elf druid named Enyo. She was a warrior, that eventually became a half elf paladin named Scarlet. We even created our own language that no one else would ever be able to understand

We were more than sisters. More than friends. We were bound in blood and soul.

Each day as we did our chores, or attempted to do our chores, we would usually end up playing our own little games, and normally ended up causing more work for us the next day.

It was these days that I last remember being happy.

Within a few months, Alannah was off for her first day at kindergarten. I was to spend the days at home, alone with my mother. It would be another two years before I would be going to school with Alannah. I'll never forget that first day my sister left for school. She left with both of us in tears, but by the time she came back, she was the only one crying.

She told mom the other kids picked on her. We didn't realize it yet, being as secluded on the farm as we had been, but we weren't like anyone else. Our mother was Asian, and we carried those traits. She said they teased her for the way she looked. For her black hair, her olive skin tone, and for her eyes. We knew of prejudice, we just never imagined it would happen to us.

Alannah was forced to face that nightmare day after day. After our parents went to the teacher, she then got teased for being a tattle tale. There was always something. Alannah began to become detached. She began to get angry much easier. At first she even had little patience for me and our old games.

After Christmas, Alannah got in her first fight. She won the fight, but that only made things worse. Because we were among the few that grew up on and worked a farm, we were probably stronger than others our age. She grew to be a bully because of this strength. The kids stopped picking on her in front of her face though. And that made her calm down and the relationship between us again became that which it used to be.

When it was my turn to go to school, I had the reputation of my sister to proceed me, which was probably my saving grace. I was a runt. I also resembled my mother more than Alannah did. Alannah looked tanned by the sun, I had a distinct olive tone. I had a more distinct slant of the eyes.

I heard the whispers of the other children, though nothing was ever said to my face. I made no friends. I kept to myself and kept quiet. Many teased that I was a mute because of this. The only thing that kept them from teasing me to my face was the fact that many had an elder sibling that knew my sister. Surely the sister of Alannah would be just as tough.

No. The sister of Alannah was weak and quiet. Alannah kept me safe those years we were in school together. But once she moved on to the next, it wasn't long before the whispers became loudly spoken words. Words I had to put up with and act like I couldn't hear each and every day.

It was in these days that I first began to pour my heart out into my art. I put those characters Alannah and I came up with on paper. I gave them shape and forms as we gave them personalities. They turned into little comics that I would let only my family read. The one time I took them to school with me, one of the other kids stole it from me, and they teased me about it for weeks to come.

During this time I also first began to play music. My mother had learned to play when she was young and she wanted the same for us. I chose to learn several instruments, some from my Japanese heritage. I loved them all, but my favorite was the flute. Its sound spoke my words for me. Its mellow voice sounded out my heart's emotions. I was taught at home by a friend of my father's. It was the one person outside of my family that hadn't laughed at me. She thought I was a beautiful girl, and kept telling me that every day. She was the only one.

So I waited. I waited patiently till my sister and I were together again. I waited till the day that I could go through the day without hearing the laughter and whispers, without seeing the looks and the fingers pointing.

By that time Alannah had become quite the bully and trouble maker. She was always in detention or suspended. No one picked on her anymore, but she had become so much of a bully that she just liked to start problems now. She started to hang with the rougher crowd, the ones that were always getting into things they shouldn't be. I didn't fit into her world anymore, not while we were at school. She would still look out for me but I tried to stay away from her friends.

I joined the band and finally made my first friends. They were like me in the sense that they got teased every day too. They were labeled as different for some reason, just as I had been. I never was entirely sure what made us so different, aside from my appearance, but we didn't fit in with the 'cool kids' and so we weren't worth the attention, except when they decided to point and laugh at us.