Chapter 1: Who they were...

Our story begins with a girl.
In terms of physical appearance, there wasn’t anything extraordinary about her, that is, until she smiled.  Actually, her smile was more like an easy grin that spread across her face in the blink of an eye and at seemingly random moments.  Her lips would part to reveal perfectly straight teeth.  Hardly anyone knew what it was that made her smile half the time, but no one really minded.  It kept them on their toes.
Her skin was a hue that could only be described as a naturally golden tan.  She had dark brown eyes that seemed black at times and sparkled with mystery.  They were topped with long eyelashes that no one noticed because the tips were white blonde.  There were two tiny freckles under the outside corner of her right eye.  Her eyebrows were a wild sort of perfect.  A tweezers had never come anywhere near them and had never needed to.  If you looked at her face closely and long enough, you could see that her nose tilted ever so slightly to the left.
Her hair was something of a puzzlement, even to her.  It was a medium brown that was streaked with sun-made highlights and fell to the middle of her back on a good day.
When it was wet, her hair was a wavy texture that people envied, even though it tended to be more knots than anything else.  When it was dry, it hung limply in her face due to two very stubborn cowlicks that she had inherited from her grandmother.
Though her hair was soft, it was prone to be static-y if given the chance.  The only way to make it behave was to brush it out when it was in that damp, half-way in-between stage or to throw it up into a ponytail or haphazard bun.
She had elegant hands with long, skinny fingers that were perfect for playing piano and guitar.  The elegance only extended to the shape of her hands however because her knuckles were covered in scars.  She kept the nails on her right hand short so they wouldn’t interfere with her fingerings on the guitar while she kept the ones on the left long for strumming.  There was a freckle in the dead-center of the second section of the thumb on her left hand.  This freckle was her favorite part of her body.
The muscles of her arms were finely toned from various hard-labor jobs that she extremely enjoyed.  It wasn’t everyday that a girl got to show up the guys.
Her legs were as well toned as her arms (if not more so) but unlike her arms, they were covered in scars.  Most were due to years of contact sports or living in a climate perfect for breeding mosquitoes.  However, there were a few from clumsiness or a well placed attack.  She didn’t mind all her scars.  She felt they gave her character.
Due to an aversion to footwear, the bottoms of her feet were all calluses.  Her toenails bore the remains of polish forced upon them by her sister or various ambitious friends.
When she wasn’t in her school uniform, she could be seen in baggy pants or shorts if it was particularly hot out.  There’d always be a chain ensuring her wallet’s safety swinging at her side as she walked.  An old, faded grey baseball cap would be perched on her head.  It had once belonged to her best friends but she had fallen in love with its frayed edges and dragon decal so she kifed it from him one day and refused its return until he finally just gave in and let her keep it.
She would wear tank tops, beaters, men’s button down shirts or snug fitting baby doll t-shirts depending on the weather.  Most of her clothing was black of white but a few choice pieces were leaf green, scarlet or a pal blue color.  These nicely rounded out her wardrobe.
She had a strong dislike for shoes and socks so if footwear was required, she wore a pair of black Speedo slip-on sandals that had seen better days.  Most of the time, however, she went barefoot.  She felt more free, more connected to her environment this way.  She didn’t understand why more people didn’t live this way.
Her arms were fairly decorative.  On her right arm she regularly wore three metal bangles, two boldly colored woven bracelets along with one beaded one plus two hair ties (unless they were to aid here in taming her rebellious hair).  A ring made out of a coconut shell was forever on the ring finger.
The other arm was slightly less exciting.  A man’s black sport watch, two jelly bracelets (one black, the other a pink so faded it was almost white) and two white threads given to her as good luck by the Thai monks adorned it.
She carried a well worn canvas backpack with her everywhere.  There were patches featuring all the places she’d visited on the straps.  Other patches advertising local bands and declaring her favorite movies and TV shows were scattered over the rest.  Where there weren’t patches, there were doodles left over from long layovers in several airports around the world.  Some of the stitching was outlined in read or blue sharpie, another product of extreme boredom.
The contents of the knapsack were ever changing, but a few things remained constant; a brightly colored CD player that had been silver before boredom kicked in, a red and black case that held her eclectic mix of favorite CDs, several notebooks holding the beginnings of songs and stories as well as new vocabulary words from several languages, sharpies in an astounding array or colors, extras of anything one could possibly run out of, her “unbreakable” retainers, the book she was reading at the time and her camera.
The camera had evolved over time from a cheap disposable to a fairly nice, though very old, manual until it had finally come to rest at a top-of-the-line digital.  Her camera, which she had named Kachoo-ki, was her most prized possession.  Kachoo-ki helped her make the prettiness and remember things that most people forgot, if they noticed them at all.
That was one thing she prided herself on.  She was observant.  She picked up on the little things that most people missed.
She was particularly good at reading people.  She loved to sit and sip coffee and watch the people that passed her.  Kachoo-ki would be on the table next to her or resting gently in her lab just in case something interesting caught her eye.  She had several pictures of people she didn’t even know just because they had interesting faces.
Once she had printed the pictures off of her camera, she placed them on the walls.  Her room was a collage of multi-cultural faces.  Though they were originally strangers, the faces eventually became as familiar to her as her own.  There was comfort in them.  They had become her people.  When she moved around from place to place, they came too.
The rest of her room was a colorful array of objects she had acquired on her travels.  Traditional instruments, bolts of boldly colored silks, a collection of picture frames that presented the countenances of her family members and several different typed of sweets covered all the flat surfaces and there were book piled everywhere.  The odd thing about her books was that, unless they were paperbacks, they didn’t have book sleeves because she detested them.  They got in her way when she read so she removed them all.
Tucked in between these were the “pleasures” as she called them.  They were little knick-knacks and remembrances that you didn’t notice right away but once spotted, brought smiles to peoples’ faces.  They were Eeyore Pez dispensers, buffalo bells and wooden hand fans.  Clay stalker figurines, blue and red velvet turtle shaped ring cases, random chess pieces and colorfully woven hacky-sacks.
People rarely entered her room though, mainly because she rarely talked to people.  And even if she did talk to them, it was never really in depth, just comments about school or the weather.
You see, she didn’t have many “real friends”, just acquaintances that she chatted with from time to time.  She didn’t let people get close enough to her to have “real friends”.
In her opinion, “real friends” were people you could talk to about feelings and such, people you didn’t have to censor yourself around, people who could look at you and know exactly what was wrong and how to fix it.
She secretly longed to have a “real friend”, just one… even though she always held the air of one who couldn’t care less.  That “I don’t care” attitude was a blessing and a curse.  While it kept her from being crushed by rejection, it also kept many people from approaching her.
This lack of human closeness only truly bothered her when she was particularly depressed and even then, she rarely let anyone see it.  She was tough as leather on the outside and marshmallow fluff on the inside.
So why was this ordinary looking girl who lacked strong social skills so important?  She wasn’t.  She went about her business and kept out of other peoples’.  She never complained about the circumstances she had drawn and rarely took risks, but one day, she met a girl.
This girl had the beauty of the night wind.  Her face was that of a goddess, pure and perfect.  She had the green glowing eyes of a cat and when she moved, it was with the jaunty confidence and unknown grace of a born athlete and that made her extra intriguing.
Her hair was jet black and fell in sheets around her face.  When the sunlight gleamed off of it, it gave her the illusion of being an angel, but she wasn’t even close in terms of [personality] [attitude].  She was bold and brassy and so blunt that she border lined on rude sometimes.  She knew who she was and showed it.  She was also quick to tell anyone who didn’t like it to clear off.