Day: March 16, 2018

Miranda

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I could never adhere fully to the artsy, vegetarian, boho lifestyle. I deeply respect my grandma and my mothers, but a hippie’s life’s not for me.

I often think it started with my sister. When I was born, Miranda was already well on her way to adulthood, and I think she also knew that there was more out there than the Brindleton Bay wharf. 

Like our moms and grandma, Miranda was all about the arts. But where Mom had preferred the paintbrush, and found in Mam someone with the same paint-splattered drive, Miranda liked what pleased her ears. For her 16th birthday, Grandma had given her the most stylish guitar a teenager could wish for. I was only a toddler, but I remember drooling over it.

Much like I years later, Miranda wasn’t entirely satisfied with her peaceful little town, and at the young age of twenty, she fled the countryside and invested an old warehouse in the San Myshuno bay. She started a flourishing DJ career, living by night, blasting the Spice Market with the loud bass of her speakers, and as I learned much later, fluttering from good-looking man to good-looking man.

Miranda was my idol.

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Miranda, enchanting people with music anywhere, anytime, since before I was born. Camping trips were no exception.

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I was not invited to her 21st birthday at the restaurant, but they said it was a blast. Judging by the food, I believe them.

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Miranda took reading me bedtime stories very seriously.

The incipit

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I’m Azalea Stewarts, and I come from a long line of lovable weirdos.

No, I am not the woman above. That beautiful old lady is my grandmother, Naomi, the most amazing person I know. When my great-grandparents passed, she single-handedly raised her four younger siblings, along with her own son. 

She offered them the most amazing childhood, away from the tumult of San Myshuno, denying herself the right to marry the love of her life so that she could give them her undivided attention.

My mother was her youngest child. Unlike her brother and sisters, she was born after Grandma had reunited with Grandad. She had a perfect childhood, surrounded by love, two adorable dogs, and paintbrushes.

See, Grandma is also the best artist of her time. The best artist of the century! Every canvas her brushes touch is a masterpiece, every keyboard her fingers brush sings some new, incredible melody. Grandma raised us all, all three generations of us, to recognize the beauty that lies in art, in nature, in ourselves.

She also raised us to be vegetarians, and groomed us to take her place, when she dies, as the owners of the Windenburg Herbology Shop. You should see the garden she has in the back of the house. She and Mom spent their days there when I left.

Yes, I left.

The perfect life is a great life, but this was not the life for me.


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When Grandma got older, her herbology shop became her hobby and her passion.

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That, and yoga.