Pandora's Box

Chapter 1

A/N:

Consider this my break from writing historical romance. I loveeee historical romances, but this idea of a Pandora popped up in my head one day and just would not leave. So I had to breathe life into Pandora through her own Box. xD

By the by, if I have any songs up at the sidebar/beginning of the chapter, that's usually the song I draw inspiration from as I wrote the chapter. Do listen to it as you read, it should add on to the feels. This would be fairly short (I think! But I just started so who knows. xD), but I hope you guys will enjoy it!

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Winter, 2016
Kansas City, Missouri

An individual's life, personality and values are largely made up of their history, their upbringing and their memories. So what happens when your memories are wiped clean from your mind? You start again, of course. Fighting tooth and nail for your freedom and trying to remember just who you are before you woke up in a sterile and white room, struggling to recall how did you end up there in the first place, and failing to remember just why exactly your head throbbed with pain, and your chest felt like a large part was missing.

Some people will say that time heals everything. Pandora Eve Talbott begs to differ. After two years, it has only dulled, but it has never truly went away. Of course, things didn't help that her own parents were ridiculously overprotective of her. But whenever she tried to ask, they either ignored her, or her mother would threaten her with her impossible temper. Pandora knew her parents loved her to death, but really, she shouldn't still be staying with them when she was already twenty eight. And why did they have to move out of Chicago to Kansas anyway? Chicago was home.

"Mom, I'm quite sure I can make my own decisions. Besides, Mrs. Jeremiah said this is the opportunity of a lifetime. We used to live in Chicago, I practically know every nook and cranny. I've never had someone request to showcase my work before, so it's a huge thing Mom, please." the glacial-blue eyes she had inherited from her matriarch shone with defiance as they sat next to each other on the sofa.

The place they lived as a small family of three was not large by any means. But it sufficed. They had moved here after Pandora had been released from the hospital. Within a month of her discharge, they had uprooted the whole family, sold their double-storey house in Chicago and settled down here. A three bedroom condominium suited their needs well. Both Miranda and Gerald Talbott earned enough to furnish the place with money to spare, and their wealth showed. White dominated most of the place, with marbled floors and ivory walls decorated with Pandora's various paintings throughout the years she had spent as an arts major student. The mother and daughter pair now sat on a beige sofa, where Miranda pretended to watch a soap opera on the television the sofa set faced, while Pandora sat cross legged facing her mother.

"I really don't see why you have to be there yourself, Dora darling. You know your father and I could easily send any of our associates over to help you oversee things as your gallery is showcased." Miranda replied in a patient tone, not even sparing Pandora a glance.

The girl made a frustrated sound, running a hand through the ice-blonde hair she also inherited from her mother. "It's not the same!" she cried out. "Its my art, my brainchild. No one else can explain my ideas, my symbolism, as well as I do. Its my work, Mom. I want to see people admiring it!"

"Pandora Eve T-"

"Perhaps it's time we let her go, dear." A voice that sounded like an angel to Pandora at the moment came, accompanied by the figure of her father exiting his study and approaching his wife and daughter.

"But Gerald! We can't let her go alone. She simply doesn't understand the danger that lurks on Chicago's corners." Miranda Talbott tried to argue, staring in bewilderment at her husband.