Chapter I: Resurrection

I woke at some time in the night and I remained still in the cold darkness of where I was. The first question that came to me was simple. "Where am I?" Followed by another simple, yet disheartening query: "Am I dead?" No, if I were then I would not feel panic. "Am I alive?" Perhaps, but was I ever alive before? I guess I was way back in a happier time, where I used to live with contentment, but that was a flash of a memory. 

As I questioned my existence, as most do when they awaken in a small box with no light or air, I punched my fist against the cold steel ceiling. It didn't budge. Perhaps I was dead, but I was not anymore, perhaps I was spared the Reaper's Scythe for another day. As I struggled against the weight of the world on top of me, there are words that floated around my head, but the one that caught me off-guard the most was one that caused me the most pain when it escaped my dry lips. 

"Annabelle." 

The name of a woman who put me here, I was sure of it! Why else would I think of her? Why else would her name be the one that caused me grief?! I struggled to remember more. My mind raced as it flashes bursts of black and purple, colors of darkness itself. Why is she the one who I hated without realizing it? Did I hate her? 

I repeated the name as I punched against the steel above me. "Annabelle." Every mention of the name pushed me over the edge. "Annabelle!" I mustered the strength of a hundred lost souls as my fist finally broke the surface and dust filled the chasm that I had called my homely prison since I opened my weak eyes. I punched through the ground, through the rotting tree roots that seemed to find their grasp across my tomb, and finally my hand reached the surface and my lungs filled to the brim with loving oxygen. 

I remained on the ground for a few moments, catching my breath. As I did so, I looked up and saw the reaper standing above me, his blank look staring down upon my fragile form, mocking me. Is this what I worked so much for, for him to take me back to the grave?

Then I realized it was just a statue. 

I rested for a few minutes more and stood up, looking around. With the flashes of lightning from an overhead storm I spot a glimpse of other fallen men and women and children, their gray stone memorials shining a light on their lives that once were, now that their lives were over. My strength wavering, I walked weakly over to a certain gravestone, one that marked my own burial, and noticed that my name wasn't there. Who was I? Why did I have to die? 

I sat there for a moment more, waiting in the rain for the answers to come to me.

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I must have waited too long because the next thing I knew I was waking up at the hospital. Someone must have walked by the graveyard and found me passed out, and called the ambulance to bring me here. I didn't know how long I was asleep there, or who brought me there, but as I woke I felt my strength returning and my memories flowing.

I stood up and walked over to the window, looking out to Sunset Valley. The town was a small one in California put on the map by being wiped off it. Of course by this I mean it was half-destroyed by a meteor shower. At the moment, where I was standing there, I didn't know about the event, and I found out about it later on down the line.

The doctor walked in and looked at me, after which she told me that I was okay, and that all my vitals checked out. She asked me how I got to the graveyard and I tell her I do not know. Of course I did know, but I wasn't about to tell her the circumstances lest she deemed me some kind of freak of nature and send me on a one-way trip to a science facility.

At this thought, however, I looked at my hands and realized that I was a freak of nature, at least on Earth. After a short discussion regarding dangers at graveyards at night, the doctor told me that I could go after a couple more days. I made the rebuttal that I had nowhere to go, and she nodded, telling me that she could get me set up with a small house here in town.

At the moment I didn't seem to understand why this woman was so nice to me, a patient that she had only then started talking to. She then mentioned that she herself was without a home here in the town, having recently moved to the town from Moonlight Falls, and I realized I could be some kind of roommate for her, and that way she could still keep an eye on me and make sure I'm okay. It wasn't until later on I found out why she was so nice, though.

"So it seems you don't have a name listed here." The doctor said. "You were brought in unconscious, and were listed as a 'Jane Doe' because you had no I.D. on you or anything."

I looked out to the window again, then back to her. Of course I had no identification, they don't exactly bury you with those things. "My name?..." I couldn't remember it at the moment, but  then it came to me, the ocean in my mind flowed and hit the metaphorical beach, waves crashing to spell out my name in the sand.

"My name is Andromeda. Andromeda Roshali."

"I like that name! It sounds exotic!" The doctor replied. I could tell she had a youthful tone in her voice, one that held strong through the times.  "Mine's Charity Landon."

I couldn't help but chuckle a bit. This was a nice person, one of the nicest I could tell, and her name was Charity. It almost as if her destiny was written as just that word alone. I thanked her, and felt drained again, passing out.

In hindsight being so tired and fatigued easily made sense seeing as I had just woken up from being, you know, dead.

..........................

Some time later I woke from a nightmare where I saw myself as a dark monstrosity, causing pain and suffering everywhere I went. I then realized that it wasn't a nightmare, but a memory. I WAS that monstrosity, a dark one who had a horrid life from the moment I landed on this damn planet. I stood up and looked out to the town again, and I saw a memory of the town as it was a long time before, when I first arrived in the 1950's. That's where it all came back to me... 

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August 3rd, 1946.
Torra Sev

"Why don't I look like everyone else?" Andromeda asked her mother, Hera Roshali, while staring at a picture of the two of them. "I mean, you have black eyes, dad has black eyes, even Daelus has black eyes and fangs! I don't! I look different! I also age quicker than everyone else. Am I.... mutated or something?"

"Not at all! You're just different! That's something you should be proud of, my daughter." Hera said with a staunch voice. "Difference is key."

"Yeah but when I was talking to... um... someone, and he said I looked different enough. I don't know if I should be happy or sad to hear that."

"Well you're young. Young ones find it hard to understand certain things, like how people see them over how they see themselves. I know because I was that way myself when I was around your age. Trust me, Andromeda, you're going places."

Andromeda didn't know exactly what she meant by "going places", on a metaphorical level, nor did she expect to be "going places" on a literal level as well. After some thinking over, she walked outside to look out to the town of Lorloa Shozi, but went back inside after her mother called her name.

"Yeah?" Andromeda asked, "I was going to go downtown."

"Not now, Andy." Hera replied, using her nickname, "I need you to get your sister from the sitter. Then you can go downtown and hang with your friends."

"Great." Andromeda was visibly upset as she walked over to the doorway. She wanted to go out and do something, anything, without her mother keeping her tied down. "And where is the little girl?"

"She's just next door. Go get her and then you can go downtown."

Andromeda rolled her eyes as she left the house, walked to the house next to hers, and knocked on the door. The woman inside was happy to see her, as she was watching Andromeda's little sister all day while the latter was at school and Hera and her husband Kalen were both at work. Andromeda walked into the house and picked up her sister, Verena. "Are you ready to go home?"

Verena smiled and said "Home! Home!", and the two walked back to their house, but not before Andromeda paid the sitter. As they left, Andromeda thought about how Verena looked, with her black eyes as well. She then wondered if she herself was a mutant, as she did not look like anyone else on the entire planet, and to her knowledge the only one in the entire universe.

Hera never told her the truth about her origins, she simply wanted her to find out on her own.