I might as well write up about this since as I've said, I'm a writer, even in my drawing. My muse tells stories, and I'll be uploading a pic in a few days that I've done in the past wich is a story being told.

Imagine if you will what being in Filia's shoes is like. You're not quite fully an adult, just a teenager, and you've never questioned the answers given to anything in your life. Black is black and white is white. You're assured of who you are, what you are, and your place in the world. You have very little questions, and many, many answers.

Then you find out everything's a lie. Your family? You've discovered you're expendable to them. All the beliefs and values they've instilled in you? Lies. So many lies all tangled up within one another, how can you possibly begin to tell where the truth begins, if there's any truth at all? And to top it off, every last one of them dies before you can even ask them why, let alone get any sense of closure.

You've never really had to worry about anything before. Where would your clothes come from? What about soap? A roof over your head and food on the table? You've never had to worry about your basic needs, and you have only a vague idea of what goes into running a household. And now, abruptly, you find yourself alone and forced to find out, not just for yourself but for a child you've adopted, someone orphaned by the deeds and lies of your family.

You know nothing of raising a child, and your purse is a bit light. You have a couple friends to help out, but it's still difficult. You know your first objective is to try to get enough money to buy a place to live; inns are expensive, after all, and once you have a stationary place, you can try to sell some crafts you know you can make. Even if you get a windfall and get a decent deal on a house that's mostly furnished when an old widow moves out to live with her son's family, you're still not out of the woods.

It costs money to set up a shop. Food costs money. Your dress has become a bit worn from all the traveling, and so have your boots. Can you afford new clothes? Do you even know how to sew your own? You can't exactly go into JoAnn's Fabrics and pick up a pattern in those days, and store-bought clothes are rather pricey. No. Your boots, you'll have to figure out a way to make do, repair the soles if necessary. You find a trunk of old, out of style dresses in the cellar, but none of them fit. You get practical and piece dresses together, trying to find things that don't clash too much, and try to make them look somewhat presentable.

Food. Where do you get your butter? Your milk? Your eggs and your meat and your bread? Where are your vegetables? You'll have to start a garden; until then, it's spending money at the market. You could probably afford a few hens for eggs, since feeding them wouldn't be too pricey and good hens are productive, but a cow and a pig? Forget it. You're still trying to figure out how to put food in the bellies of three people and a growing baby; you don't need to worry about the cost of grain and hay. So for the time being it's more expensive than it's worth to buy the livestock. You keep buying your milk and meat at the market. Do you know how to make butter? What about soap? You don't have a pig to slaughter in the fall, so you don't have the fat you need to boil in with lye to make soap. You'll have to buy it. Firewood's another big chore, since you don't have a wagon to haul it back into town. Candles - do you have the supplies and the knowledge to make them? You'll have to buy them if you don't, and oil for the lamps. Just one expense after another that you never really thought about before. And you still have to get that shop up and running. What about when winter comes? Do you know how to prepare food and can it? Do you even have the equipment for it? Can you afford it? Can you afford to NOT afford it come winter?

Now let's look at the child - do you know how to raise a child? Do you have any good role models in your life to emulate? Do you know what normal interaction in a family should be like? There were so many lies, how do you know if you're doing it right, or if you're becoming like them? And what of the child? Will he hate you when he finds out the truth of who he is, and what you are? And you're lonely. There's no one you can really talk to, it seems, and you're proud. You don't want people to know about all the darkness you keep locked in a deep little place in your heart, the fears, the doubts, the anger. You used to have all answers and no questions. Now you have no answers and nothing but questions, and no one to really ask.

You're alive.

But will you survive the storm?