eeeeaud, thank you so much for your review - maybe 30 minutes is a bit faster than you imagined for an update, but I hope you like it. It was really short, I agree - the shortest I've ever written!

Just to let everyone know, as this is an introduction most chapters will be around this long, but with the writing style of the first chapter.

Chapter 2 - An Introduction to Carys Vale

When she was a child, Carys Vale's mother would always use the same word to describe her daughter: compulsive.

Carys had grown up resenting the use of the word, especially after she'd watched her mother roll her eyes and state it time after time, often smiling as she did so. It wasn't until she was 12 and happened to overhear a conversation her mother was having with a new bookshop clerk, that she understood her meaning and began to think it really wasn't so bad after all.

The clerk had approached her mother after they'd been in the bookshop for around an hour, as Carys flicked through book after book, searching for the right one. She'd remembered part of a book she'd read, but other than the general genre and a few lines, she couldn't recall anything else about it. Carys just knew that she needed to read it again - and to do that, she might just have to keep looking.

The clerk had asked if they needed any help, but her mother had dismissed him with a smile and the explanation that her daughter was compulsive - perfectly compulsive. As she'd gone on to explain, Carys sometimes got a feeling - an irresistible urge. It usually involved a book she needed to finish (in this case: find), or a visit the National Gallery because she needed to see The Execution of Lady Jane Grey painting again.

The only thing to do was to eventually let her.

They were absolutely fine, was her point, but could he keep an eye out for Carys whilst she popped off to run some errands? Carys would probably be done in a while, and most of the clerks knew her already so they usually just let her read and wait there.

The smiling clerk had assured her mother he'd do just that if it was an established routine. After all, he'd told Carys' mother, who hadn't been in that situation before?

What her mother didn't explain to the complete stranger, was that Carys was irresistibly drawn to the beauty of things, and that when she was compelled to something and could fulfil the compulsion, it tended to be the only time anyone would see her happy.

The frustration she clearly had with herself when she couldn't sate her feelings of interest or excitement for new or remembered knowledge was equally noticeable to her parents and far less appreciated. As was the ease at which she could lapse into low patches - depressive patches which could sometimes last until she found her next compulsion, which, this time, had been a book she could hardly remember except that she loved it.

Still, Carys' mother would much rather her daughter be compelled to read or drag her to a gallery so she could stare at a morbid painting of the Nine Days' Queen being led blindfolded to the block than if she wanted to go out getting herself into trouble.

Not that she was usually a morbid child.

As a little one, she liked to run around in the garden making mud pies and hiding from her parents when it was time to come in. She liked riding her bike, desperately wanted a pair of roller skates one summer before she'd found out just how unsteady they were when she borrowed a friend's, liked ice skating the one time she went, and hated swimming because of her PE teacher.

Carys wasn't bad at sports, she'd just prefer to read a novel on the sidelines - so unless it was one of the few she really liked, she'd not really try too hard. Carys did well in classes, but she just didn't have the same interest in some subjects and could find it harder to apply herself.

And, like more children than TV shows might like to admit, she'd always been both shy and a bookworm. As Carys was happy to explain to the few friends she'd made who shared her interests in her teenage years, often with a book in hand, books weren't just books. Music wasn't just music. Art wasn't just art. They were gateways to each of us - each person saw something different when they looked at, listened to, or read something which touched them.

"Take reading for example: there are books, and there are books." She'd say emphatically, her eyes alight with excitement, head tipping back as she searched for the right words, her friends already agreeing wholeheartedly with her statement. "Books are the ones you read and enjoy, but books are the ones you read and have to put down every so often just because you can't wait to imagine what you'd do if you were in that world. They're... God, they're the ones you still want to go back to years after in your mind because you want to dive straight back into your own daydreams about them."

If you reminded her of her comments as an adult, Carys would more likely than not drop her eyes to the ground and murmur something about how silly she must have sounded - though she still completely agreed with the sentiment on the inside of course.

Growing up on the outskirts of London, Carys had always liked how open it was - how you could hop on the tube into the City, but you could just as easily go for a walk in the park or meet up with your friends telling your parents you were going to the park, but really going to the woods and chatting about everything and anything teenagers talked about when they were alone.

Still, it often felt like there were other places she wanted to go, other places she wanted to visit or live, or just to experience in more than her daydreams. It just as often felt like she'd never really get around to doing any of them, that she was somehow stuck where she was.

The knowledge that she was the one keeping herself where she was was tiring to say the least. Sometimes everything was tiring and she just couldn't explain why. Other times, when she'd lie awake reading for nights at a time, it was as if she had all the energy in the world.

As a young adult, she'd not really say anything had changed except that the nights reading had changed into nights spent daydreaming and unable to sleep, and the days were almost always tiring somehow, no matter what she did with them.

As a teenager, Carys had gone away to university and then come back home at the age of 21 with a 2:1 degree and absolutely no idea what to do with herself - with her life.

That was where Forks came into the picture. In a roundabout way anyway. Really, it was where Seattle came into the picture originally, and Forks quickly followed.

See, after a couple of months spent milling around at home, reading, watching TV, working, and helping out around the house, Carys had a life-changing conversation with her step-father (though neither knew just how life-changing it would be).

A kind and amiable man (in stark contrast to what she remembered of her biological father), he'd officially adopted her as his own when she was a teenager - which, as he pointed out, could kill two birds with one stone.

Why? You may ask. Well... Because her step-father was an American who'd come to England to live and work over 20 years before and simply never left, unless you counted the one week every winter when he'd go home to Seattle.

When he'd married Carys' mother Amy, he'd decided to bring both her and her daughter with him on his trips home... And when he'd adopted Carys, it had been in the midst of a year-long conversation between the parents about potentially moving there.

They hadn't ended up making the move in the end, but during the process, they had applied for Carys to have dual citizenship - a decision which hadn't made too much sense to Carys at the time (though she'd of course been excited to have two passports), but had made the world of sense to her parents when they'd worked out the difference in costs and ease if they'd moved and no longer needed to apply for an additional visa.

So. How and why could U.S. citizenship be of use to a 21-year-old with no idea of what she wanted to do with her life, a romantic outlook on the world, depression, and a rather tenuous connection to Seattle? In a word: adventure. In three: a safe adventure.


Though he'd grown up in Seattle, Carys' step-father Findlay had been born in the city of Port Angeles.

Still not seeing the connection to Forks? Not to worry, you're not alone - Carys was the same.

His immediate family had moved to Seattle when he was a child, but Findlay had still had wider family living and working in and around Port Angeles - family he had been in regular and close contact with when Carys was a teenager. Family which had included a great-uncle who'd left him a small house in the town of Forks when he'd died - a bequeathment which had originally triggered his wife Amy and himself to think about a potential move to America.

Whilst they'd thought to sell the Forks house and look at something in Seattle, they'd quickly discovered that it was worth very little and renting it out just about covered the cost of upkeep, with a little left over. Whilst they weren't poor exactly, after taking into account the cost of three people making a yearly trip to Seattle, they did have a strict enough budget that it would never have been a feasible move. They didn't, after all, even own their house in London - they estimated it would be another ten years at least before they could even start to look at mortgages - and that was with the rent from the Forks house taken into account.

It had occurred to them, however, when Carys had continued to seem at a loss of what to do with her life and her low moods hadn't left her, that she might benefit from a year or two in the most romantic place they could think of: Forks, Washington.

After all, she loved the picturesque, and it was picturesque. She thrived on long walks and green spaces, and if there was one thing Forks definitely had, it was large expanses of greenery and woodland. Carys was used to rain and cold, though Forks was far colder and rainier than London ever was...

Yes, as Findlay had explained to her, if she wanted to go - as long as she could pay the rent (at a slightly reduced cost, of course), it might do her good.

Excited and confused in equal measure (her parents hadn't thought it was worth getting her hopes up about the Forks house, so they'd simply never bothered to tell her it existed), Carys had informed him she thought she might need some time to think about it.

As it turned out, she hardly needed more time than it took to Google Forks before the familiar yearning had taken root inside her for the first time in years.

A month later, more excited and terrified than she'd ever been in her life, with just enough money left to last her a month or two in her new town, Carys stepped off a plane at Seattle airport and began to wonder if this was going to be the best decision of her life, or the worst.