~Aerin~

    I don’t know why I made the choice to move from the small town I’d known all my life. I don’t know why I felt compelled to leave my foster home at seventeen with my birthday in just a month. But I didn’t care. I just had to leave. Despite having acres of land at my disposal to roam and perfect my craft, I couldn’t stay.

    My mother was in tears.

    She wasn’t my real mother, obviously. I didn’t know her. But my foster mother, for how much she loved and cared, well, she just -- I don’t know, she just didn’t make home feel like home. That wasn’t for lack of trying of course, I loved her. But all the love in the world didn’t make this little house feel like mine.

    And my father . . . well, he was trying to comfort her. Kept insisting that this was my decision and that if they argue with me, they’d just make it more painful for themselves and separate us as a family in the long run.

    They looked enough like me that we could pass as a family. He had mousy brown hair with brown eyes and she had nearly black hair with blue eyes.

    Me? I had a dark chocolate brown color with eyes a subtle green. But my parents didn’t even know about me, about how . . . unusual I was. It wasn’t their fault I didn’t talk about it. I just didn’t want to get them involved.

    Anyway. Here I was. Packing. Moving from a cozy house in the country where land was plentiful to a city. Ugh. The thought made my stomach churn, but that reaction was quickly silenced by my heart. Or maybe it was my brain. Yeah, probably my brain. My heart loved the country. My brain? Well it just wouldn’t shut up lately! City this, city that.

    I didn’t WANT to go to the city. I wanted to stay in the country where my home was the land and I could feel the grass between my toes. In the city, my best bet at that was walking into a greenhouse and taking home a plant.

    Huh. I might have to do that actually. Even better yet, I’d work at a greenhouse. Maybe then my brain and my heart would shut up and get along.

    Maybe I could rent a greenhouse? I didn’t know, but I didn’t care. Right now, I just had to pack what things I had and go. This really just meant some clothes and one or two pairs of shoes. I hated the things, but I didn’t want to walk on glass or step in slime or whatever, because I didn’t even know what kind of things were in the city. All I knew was I was going whether my parents liked it or not.

    Actually, I was going whether I liked it or not. Hmph. What a great life. Had to give up what I loved just because some dumb part of my brain said so. Of course, in school I’d been great in Agriculture classes (which I’d taken a LOT of by the way). But other classes, especially science that manipulated nature . . . well, it was sickening and fascinating, to put it simply. But I learned things and I guess that was better than nothing.

    School had just ended yesterday, actually. And the life I’d known all my life was going to end today. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get to the city, but I was. I didn’t care what anyone said. It had to happen. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

    If there were, I would’ve told my brain to shut up a long time ago.