Many thanks to Steve, my beta, for totally kicking ass at... being a beta! Wow, sorry, kinda off hilter today. Well, anyway, posting this now in honor of Mid Terms being over!

Uh... Yeah... enjoy?

Prologue:

It's raining. In my dreams, it's always raining.

So I sit in the rain, alone. In my dreams I'm always alone.

I swing back and forth on a wooden seat suspended from a great oak tree by thick ropes. Oh, how well I once knew this tree – always the same tree.

The rain falls; I swing. I can see the water droplets collected on my eyelashes. Melancholy: that's what it is, that emotion that's building with every drop that touches my skin. Morose, depressing, frustratingly heartbreaking feelings fill my chest. Higher, I swing; harder, it rains. These feelings build, threatening to overflow until suddenly…

I fall.

My descent seems slow, yet so unexpected that all I can do is watch him. His eyes lock with mine, and I wonder what I could have done to disappoint him so much. I can read his distrust for me in his eyes. When did that happen?

CRACK!

The mask. I landed on the mask.

Pulling my hands away from my face, I look down at the shards of what once was, and would now be forever forgotten. I lift my face to watch him, waiting for a reaction. Boy, did I get one. A sort of fearful anger crosses his face, and he turns tail and runs.

"No!" I scream hoarsely after him. Scrambling to my feet, I bolt after him. The mud grips at my feet, threatening to trip me up. "Please," I cry, "let me explain!" But as I run, I begin to realize how futile it would be to try to explain why I had built up the mask in the first place.

He looks back only once before he rounds the corner of the house – the same red brick house as every other dream – and is out of sight. "Come back," I shout, turning the corner myself.

He's not there.

But someone quite unexpected is standing there: a little girl with, with short, straight, blond hair that accents her brilliant blue eyes.

Shock grips my insides, stopping my heart for the longest second of my life. Thunder claps above my head, bringing me to my senses. It's a long moment of wordlessly opening and closing my mouth, before I can finally studder, "Wh—What are you doing here? Where did he go?"

She giggles innocently at my bewilderment. But she knows; I know she knows.

Angry fear rages through my veins like snake venom, poisoning my senses. "What did you do to him!" I screech over the roaring wind. The storm is building, just like my emotions. "What did you tell him!"

The bubbling laughter grows louder in the wind. She bends over, now laughing so hard it seems that she cannot breathe.

"What?" I ask anxiously. Her sudden hysterics are confusing me.

The little girl finally finds herself coherent enough to answer me. "I didn't have to tell him anything," she accuses me, "you showed him everything he needed to know."

"So," I ask frantically, "he knows that it wasn't me? That it was always her, the whole time?" More laughter is her only reply. I start to panic. "So does he know who I am? Does he know that I'm really—"

So, here we go. The cut off of the girl's speech will segway into Chapter One, so keep that in mind. Please, R&R, seeing as I'm a review whore.

Love ya!

--Falcon Z