A/N: I was looking at my family tree when this idea popped in, hahaha.


Genealogy

2008 Pensacola, Florida

Kristen Perry was an agile climber and always had been. She'd been climbing trees for as long as she could remember, and despite nearing her eighteenth birthday, she still reveled in the feeling of being high in a towering tree's branches, looking down at the rooftops of the houses that made up her small, but pleasant, home. Her backyard was gifted with an extremely large black walnut tree, and it had been (and still was) the place she withdrew to when she needed to be alone.

She had just heard the news that her sister would be returning from college soon, and she knew nothing good would come with her. They had never gotten along, and we never will, she thought with a sigh. Her sister Diane was two years older than her and was a pre-med sophomore at Yale. Needless to say, especially being the firstborn, she was pretty much perfect. Kristen's parents always expected her to be just as perfect as her sister, always failing to realise they were not the same person, and that many of the things Diane could do, Kristen could not, and vice versa. Diane's shortcomings were overlooked by their parents, however, while her own were made blaringly obvious and often exaggerated. She almost always felt inadequate, despite succeeding in nearly everything she set her mind to. She simply couldn't live up to her parents' standards, it seemed. This was one of those times, and Kristen had just barely escaped to her haven in the trees.

She sat in the top branches, staring into the endless sky, the faint salty smell of the ocean wafting over on the winds. She just allowed her mind to roam, trying to forget who she was and, if only for a moment, pretend she was someone else. She sat that way for a long time, and when she had calmed down sufficiently, she began her descent. Typically she wouldn't have had a problem, but today she was more distracted than usual. She wasn't paying attention, and with one slip of her foot and a twist of her ankle, she fell.

***

Kristen's adrenaline started pumping furiously, and what were in reality mere seconds felt like whole minutes. She could feel the air streaming past her face and her dark brown hair flying out behind her, tears in her eyes from the sheer speed at which she fell. She was too petrified to make a sound, and she closed her eyes tightly to brace herself for what she believed would be her final moments as she plummeted toward the Earth. The wind roared in her ears and she could see her life flash within her mind; random moments from her childhood, from school, from vacations, all merging together to form the mosaic of her short existence.

Suddenly her entire body tingled with a strange and intense warmth, and it was only then that she realised the wind was no longer rushing in her ears, and the tears that stung her eyes had disappeared. She opened her eyes slowly, thinking that she had already died, expecting an endless sea of clouds or a huge gold gate or something; expecting anything but that which she saw before her.

She was still at home in her backyard, but the most peculiar thing had happened. Kristen had stopped falling about two feet from the ground, and it was there that she now hovered in mid-air, with absolutely no idea of how it was possible, let alone if she was making it happen. The tingling warmth beneath her skin abruptly and without warning vanished, and she ungracefully dropped the rest of the distance to the ground, hitting its solid surface with a crash.

"OW! Holy mother—" she cursed loudly and clutched her side in pain. She sat straight and rubbed a small bruise she could feel forming below her elbow. Kristen sat on the ground in a stunned haze, more freaked out than excited. What the hell is going on? She thought frantically. These things obviously do not happen regularly. Something must be terribly, terribly wrong with me. Kristen's thoughts continued thus for a while: halfway between berating herself for her newfound, incredibly abnormal ability and intense confusion. There is no way this is normal… this has to be a fluke. I can't do this… can I?

She finally rose from the grass and sprinted to the back door and it slammed behind her with a loud bang, her mother yelling at her from the kitchen.

"Do you mind, Kristen? I'm making dinner and the news is on!"

She ignored her and continued upstairs to her room. She passed Diane's still empty room and entered her own with an extremely upset sigh. She lay down on her bed and closed her eyes, trying to ignore and dissolve her complete and utter fear and confusion regarding the beyond weird things that had happened to her. The cool early evening breeze drifted in through the open window, and her purple curtains fluttered wildly. Kristen opened her eyes in irritation and made to go close the window, but the wind suddenly picked up and burst into her room, sending papers flying everywhere. Like this day couldn't get any worse! she screamed in her mind. She closed the window forcefully and turned slowly around to survey the mess the wind had made of her room. Papers were scattered all across the floor, and the photos and posters hanging on her walls had come undone and were folding over themselves. She took a long, deep, unhappy breath, ran her hands through her dark hair, muttered a few choice words, and began to clean.

After twenty minutes of picking up papers, Kristen was still nowhere close to being finished.

"There has got to be an easier way of doing this," she said. She cursed the wind for its impudence and continued going about her cleaning. She stacked papers in neat piles, placing them precisely where they had been before. Her hand closed over the last piece of paper on the floor, and when she turned it over, she did a double take; she had forgotten she had this. Kristen stared at it for a moment, tracing the elegant script with her index finger. She had never taken much interest in her family's past, but her father had insisted that she have a copy of the family tree anyway, saying something about how the past shapes the future and how she would have to live up to the family name. No pressure, right? she had thought darkly. There was always pressure; pressure to be like her flawless sister, pressure to be the best, pressure to be, well… perfect. She laughed scornfully as she scanned the names on the paper, not really caring, but finding herself curious nonetheless. Her eyes stopped on a pair of names four tiers above her own, and her jaw dropped in absolute disbelief. That cannot be possible.

***

She stared at the names, hands trembling, and everything started to become clear, though thousands of questions raced though her head. Why would nobody know? Why would no one talk about that? One would think that would be an enormous deal! Is it a family secret? Or do we truly not know about this? Kristen needed answers, so she, paper in hand, rushed downstairs to the kitchen to find her father. It was his side of the family, after all.

"Dad?" she asked tentatively, suddenly nervous about what he would say.

"Yes, dear?" he said inattentively, without looking up from his newspaper.

"Um… you know great-great-grandfather Herbert?" she asked.

"Of course."

"Well… um… did you know his wife?"

He looked up from his paper and stared at Kristen with a strange look in his eye; gazing at her as if she had lost her mind.

"His wife?" he asked slowly.

"Yes, right here," she put the paper down on the kitchen table and pointed at the spot where the name in question was. He gave her another glare.

"Great-grandfather Herbert never married. There's nothing there, Kristen, and there never has been. You're pointing at blank space."

Her face contorted in shock; mouth agape and blue eyes wide as saucers.

"Are you sure you don't see anything there?" she asked, her voice starting to waver slightly. Her mother had joined them now and was looking at the paper, as well. She received an odd glare from her, too.

"The only names there are his and his adopted daughter, your great-grandmother. He never married, Kristen. You knew that." Her mother paused momentarily. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yeah, I—I'm fine," she stuttered. "I'm just gonna go lie down for a bit."

Kristen swiftly ran up the stairs and back into her room and flung herself onto her bed. She stared at the paper; half terrified and half in awe of it. She was the only one who could read upon it the name of her great-great grandmother. She was the only one who could see the name of perhaps one of the most famous, and apparently not-so-fictional, women in the world; only Kristen could see the little dash connecting the words Herbert Alfred to her name: Mary Poppins.

***

Kristen couldn't take her eyes off of that name. She couldn't believe it to be real; that she, the klutzy, foolish, scared-out-of-her-mind girl was directly descended from the Mary Poppins. Well, she could only assume it was the Mary from the books and such, taking into consideration the fact that she suddenly could do things she had only dreamed of previous. There could be no other explanation. But why now? she thought. Why now, when I could've used it so many times before?

It suddenly dawned on her and she felt incredibly stupid for not realising it sooner. I fell out of that tree, and if it hadn't been for these powers, I would've died for sure, she thought. This magic saved my life. It had revealed itself only when she was in the direst need. Now that she was aware of it and had had a while to adjust to the new feelings within her and accept them, she had never felt more at ease with herself or comfortable in her own skin. She felt good; really good. It was as if she had finally found that something that could fill the empty space she had always felt within her heart. This magic completed her; it made her who she truly was.

***

After dinner and a few successful attempts to fly again, Kristen sighed happily and stared out her window as the stars began to twinkle in the darkening sky. She marveled that just a few hours ago, she had been falling out of trees, and here she was now, feeling the warmth of an unknown power course through her veins.

Kristen had often been told that she had her mother's brilliant blue eyes; her grandmother's dark, shining hair; her grandfather's stubbornness; her father's dry sense of humour. But this talent she had somehow inherited was something far larger than a smile or a skill; her great-great-grandmother had bestowed upon her the confidence with which to grow, and something incredibly special that she could truly call her own.

She looked up to the sky, hoping that, wherever she was, she would hear her.

"Thank you," she whispered, a true smile gracing her lips for the first time in months.

Though she could not yet sense it, a star in the heavens above shone a little brighter than before and, if she had listened closely enough, she would have distinguished a woman's musical laughter floating on the whispers of the wind and in the silver light of the full, vigilant moon.