A/n: This story...epilouge...one-shot...thingey has been written to clear things up about Renee's past!! Please Read and Review!! Tell me what you think!! Should I write another one to explain the Devil's Heart? Or the mysterious powers of the rare and talented art mages? Tell me in a review and I'll see what I can do!!

Thanks a billion and one to Kairi's-Twin for the title and for being an awesome beta-reader!

R&R!

Reminiscence

Perhaps I should introduce myself; my name is Renee Massey. I'm nine and a half years old and I'm an ambient art mage, someone with the power to bring the things I paint to life. My own life is complicated. My parents were murdered in front of my eyes when I was five or six by a mage named Zarran Killen Heartstopper also known as the terrifying work of art known as the Devil's Heart. I became an art mage when they-my parents-died, although I didn't know it until I met a fifteen year old girl named Tris. I lived in the orphanage with my family, but no one would adopt us, because they thought I was a monster. In the end I killed the Devil's Heart as I was predicted to, and left with my family and Tris, Keth and Niko for Winding Cricle Temple. And even now, even when Zarran Killen Heartstopper has been dead for half a year, I can still feel his ice hand on top of my heart.

Always there….Always on my heart….Forever…

I stood staring out the window of my room in the Temple where me, my family, and Tris, Niko, and Keth were staying at and watching the gray sky let loose the water in its clouds. I felt irritable, it had been raining for a week since we arrived and I was starting to wonder whether my teacher; Trisana –Tris – Chandler was in a bad mood. She had been very grumpy lately although that wasn't very unusual, what was unusual (and scared me) was that she wasn't grumbling and snapping at every little thing that annoyed her anymore.

I took a sidelong glance at Tris; she was sitting on a chair and holding one of her many books in her hands, but she wasn't reading it. Instead she was staring out the window her normally steely grey eyes unfocused, staring into the distance. Her braided red hair was tied back with a light blue sash she had borrowed from my older sister Sonya Massey. Her gigantic ivory colored dog Little Bear was lying on her feet, his chocolate colored eyes shut tightly.

"Renee?" I jumped as Tris' voice suddenly broke the silence. Her voice was soft, and she kept her eyes on the steady stream of water that poured from the sky the color of her eyes as she spoke.

"Yes?" I asked, turning to look at her.

"Do you want to go for a walk?" The question startled me.

"In this weather?" I asked grinning; I knew that as a weather mage she saw the rain as a friend. I, on the other hand, don't like rain because it means I can't go out and paint.

"When else? The best time to take a walk and talk about things that you don't want others to hear is when nobody else is around." Tris said looking at me as she put her glasses back on. I could see she really wanted to talk and that she wasn't going to take no for an answer.

"Fine." I agreed and ran to the wardrobe to get my matching sky-blue hat and cloak, I set them down and then ran to take out Tris' dark blue, hooded, outdoor robe, swirling with silver that she had received from her foster sister Lady Sandrilene fa Toren a thread mage and the great-niece of Duke Vedris of Emelan.

"Thank you." Tris said in the same soft, unnerving voice. She slipped it over her gray peasant style dress and then waited while I fumbled to get my cloak on. At last I was ready to leave and we slipped out of our room in the dormitories and made our way out of the very puzzlingly built Temple and into the beautiful gardens.

We walked down the rose path for awhile in silence, listening to the rain pattering like tiny footprints on the ground.

"You know, I think Briar would appreciate these gardens." Tris suddenly said I frowned as I looked down at my black shoes already splattered with wet mud. It wasn't often that she spoke about her foster siblings to me and Keth, and it usually meant that something was troubling her.

"Yeah he's an earth mage, right?" I asked looking up at her expectantly, she nodded in reply. Her nose was the only feature I could see, the rest of her face was hidden in the depths of her hood. "Tris, are you okay? You've been acting odd recently."

"I've just been reminiscing about my past," Tris said softly, throwing off her hood and lifting her face to the stormy sky letting the rain roll down her cheeks and soak her hair. "I've been thinking that it was a little like yours."

"Really? How?" I asked curiously, forgetting for a moment that it wasn't any of my business.

"I come from a merchant's family, like you I was tested for magic but nothing was found. My family sent me from house to house but none of them wanted me. They all thought I was possessed by an elemental spirit or something." I gazed up at Tris as her voice cracked.

"And?" I asked softly reaching out for her hand and placing my small freezing one in hers.

"And then, when none of them wanted me anymore I was passed from one Temple to the next. I had thought it was bad enough that my family didn't want me, but I was wrong; nobody wanted me.

"But that all changed when Niko arrived on the doorstep of one temple I was at. I had heard the head dedicate saying they didn't want me any more. I got angry and lost my temper and suddenly it was hailing in the hallway." I suppressed a giggle, the hailing in the hallway bit was kind of funny. "Niko came out of the office and saw me picking the hail up off the floor; he said he would take me to Winding Circle Temple in Emelan. When we finally arrived there I didn't fit in with the other students, they laughed at me and called me all sorts of names.

"Then one day I cracked and was brought down to Dedicate Moonstreams office where I met Sandry for the first time." Tris smiled, "I remember her net was crooked and she was excited about a strip of lightning that hit a tree. Then Niko and Dedicate Moonstream came out and told us we were being sent to a little cottage on the grounds called Discipline."

"And you still didn't know you were a mage?" I asked, amazed.

"No. I only found out when I accidentally created a mini water cyclone when I tried saving a little dog." She looked down at Little Bear trotting faithfully by her side and smiled. "I had thought I was crazy, I almost believed what my family believed; that I was possessed by some sort of spirit. I was so relived, that I didn't want to believe it." Tris squeezed my hand tightly. "It took me awhile before I could start trusting people again, it was hard but I managed to do it. And I managed to become part of a family once more." She smiled, "Well; now you know my life story, so what about yours? You haven't really talked about it to me yet."

I looked up at her and then down to my mud splattered shoes. "I…" I began and then stopped. I took a deep breath and continued.

"I remember the day I first learned how to paint, Mommy was holding my hand with the brush and explaining different strokes. My first picture was of her, and I always carried it with me wherever I went so I always knew she was there, with me. I burned it when she and Daddy died.

"When I was five or six, I remember peeking in on Mommy when she was painting, it was a huge cherry, but as she painted it mutated it became a beating heart sitting in a pool of blood, and Mommy was painting that heart. I felt petrified; I wondered why Mommy had lied to me. I suddenly found my voice and screamed, Mommy whirled around and her white painting robe hit the heart and it fell to the floor with a sickening splat.

"Mommy cried out and grabbed for it, but it rolled out of her circle of charcoal and disappeared. The only proof it had been there was the pool of blood it had been sitting in and the half finished painting of it. Mommy told me later about the heart, she said it was calledby many names, the most common ones being the Devil's Heart and The Devil's Fruit and it was a creation of the ignorance and stupidity of mankind. The men who created it had been looking to create immortality, an impossible dream. The irony in it all was that they died the moment the heart was finished."

"Why was it called The Devil's Fruit if it was a heart?" Tris asked curiously.

"Because it took the form of a large fruit to tempt people to eat it. And when they did they got powers and magic but only because The Devil's Heart was slowly taking over their body from the inside." I answered and then shuddered as I remembered my friend and fellow prankster at the orphanage Aaron Mihawk. The Devil's Heart had destroyed his body on the inside till Aaron was nothing but a hollow shell to be worn as a disguise. Even now, months later, I still find it hard to believe that he's gone for good. That he won't ever return. I shook my head and continued to tell my story to Tris as though there hadn't been any interuptions.

"After that, Mommy and Daddy began looking very scared and stopped leaving the house, they talked late into the night in hushed whispers. I stayed home from school one day because I was sick; I was lying in bed when I heard a knock at the door. I was about to slip back into dreamland when Mommy came into my room with a face full of fear. She told me to run and get out of the house immediately and stay out, and then she dragged me downstairs and pushed me out the door and slammed it behind me. I ignored her words and slipped back into the house and crept up to Mommy's and Daddy's room. I was about to knock when I heard screams coming from behind the door. I threw it open and saw a man in shadows holding a dagger standing in a corner and Mommy and Daddy lying on the ground, their blood staining the walls. Then the strange man stuck his hand in their chests and yanked out their hearts and in front of my eyes he swallowed them as my parents died." I felt the tears rolling down my cheeks, but I didn't want to stop talking, I wanted Tris to know me and what I'd been through.

"Then he cursed me and I passed out as he left and the law enforcement arrived. I lay in the healer's ward for months without talking, I tried to talk-I really did! But it was as if the words were frozen in my throat and they couldn't come out no matter how hard I tried. Healer Goodheart said I was traumatized by what happened and the fact that I couldn't talk wasn't something that could be healed by magic or medicine, so I stopped trying to talk and waited for the day when I could wake up and speak."

"How long did it take?" Tris asked.

"Half a year." I replied, "I woke up from a nap and when I yawned my voice came out with it. I was so shocked that I fell out of bed and Healer Goodheart dropped the cup of tea she was carrying to me. And then we laughed.

"After another month in the healer's ward I was strong enough to leave, and I joined the rest of my family in the orphanage. That was about the time the rumors started. The rumors that I had been possessed by a demon and then killed my own parents, but I ignored them and held my head high. They couldn't hurt me, I had already lost my Mommy and Daddy and that was the worst hurt of all. The other children in the orphanage agreed with me because we all knew what it was like to lose your parents." I brushed a strand of hair the color of corn tassels out of my face as I looked up at my teacher. "And so now you know me as well as I know you."

"Yes," Tris said thoughtfully then looked down at me and smiled, "It's stopped raining, haven't you noticed?" I looked up in amazement as I realized her words were true. The rain had stopped falling and the grey clouds were dispersing, revealing the bright sun, its warm rays dancing over everything and giving it a sparkling look.

"Look! It's a rainbow!" I shouted gleefully pointing to the arch of colors in the light blue sky. "Let's hurry! We might find a pot of gold underneath it!" I ran down the path through the gardens and laughed as Little Bear ran after me, thinking it was a game of chase. When I returned to Tris ten minutes later, my cloak and hat were coated in mud and I had brown streaks on my face and in my hair.

We walked back through the garden and up the marble steps of the temple; we slipped in quietly and came face to face with Niko and Keth.

"Where have you two been? We've been looking all over for you in this giant, maze-like temple all morning!" Keth exclaimed. "And what has Renee done to her beautiful new hat and cloak?" It was then I noticed how dirty I was.

I looked at Tris, and she looked at me, and we smiled.

"Just reminiscing." We chorused happily and then laughed, leaving Niko and Keth standing in the entrance. Keth blinked in confusion as we made our way up to our room. Niko stood next to him a knowing look in his warm black eyes.

"Just reminiscing…"

THE END

A/n: I have given permission to AnyaDiva101 to use my characters in her story as a sorta continuation of this story. It's called Magestic Situations. Go read it so far!

Anyway, thank you again to Kairi's-Twin. If it weren't for her this story wouldn't be here!

Right, almost forgot to put down different ideas for one-shot story things to explain more of the mysteries surrounding "An Artist's Tale"
1) The creation of The Devil's Heart
2) The mysterious art mages
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment! If you have any other ideas then by all means please tell me in your review!!

kuro-neko16