N is for Nathalie

Hello, all you bright-eyed readers and lovers of story! I’m Nathalie, a character in a Work in Progress called Wind Me Up, One More Time. Oh, I could tell you a tale of two myself. Stories, you might say, are in my blood. I take after Morisot, my mother, in that respect despite being adopted. She and her partner, Cassat, once left the factory to tell stories together. Only Cassat returned our small town of Verity to stay. Morisot did not. She left Grace, my adopted sister and myself in a big house within Verity and told me to look after Grace while I was gone. Only she never came back. I have to go find out what happened to our mother. Why didn’t she ever come back? Grace grew up for most of her life without ever knowing Morisot. Only I get a telegram from a woman in another land who claims to be my birth mother, telling me that Morisot is dead. I’ve got to go to this woman, even if it means leaving Maia and Grace. I have to meet this stranger, find out who she is, what happened. I’ll return to my family with lots of stories for Grace about Morisot and this other woman. Perhaps they’ll even be true. I’m not sure if the truth will make Grace happy. It may not make me happy either. I still have to face it, no matter how painful it might be. I’ll decide later how much of it to reveal. I want what’s best for Grace, but I need to know why our mother wasn’t with us for all those years. I need to confront whatever lured her away and make peace with it, no matter how much it hurts. Only then can I finally admit Mother is dead. Only then can I say goodbye.