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THERE WAS MORE TO LIFE than she thought possible. Life was an infinite cycle of love, hate, happiness, pain, birth, death. In her short eighteen years of life, Rory, or Aurora Elena Reyes Aden, had experienced the most unimaginable tragedies, most of which occurring over the course of a single year.
A year can change a lot about a person.
But as all stories go, you have to go back to the start, to understand the end.
The first tragedy she could remember was moving away to San Antonio, her mom wanting to be closer to family, which meant Rory had to leave her beloved aunt and uncle as well as her best friend in Hemlock Grove when she was only six years old.
"It will all be okay, mi quierda," Her aunt promised her as she hugged the little girl.
"Pero, Tia Giselle, we won't see each other everyday, I won't explore the trees or play hide and seek with Ro anymore," Rory wiped away her tears. "I don't want to go. I want to stay here forever."
"That's the thing, my dove," Her Uncle Dante crouched beside them in the gravel driveway, "Sometimes we have to say goodbye in life even when we don't want to. It doesn't mean forever, or that it's easy. You have to remember to find the good in goodbye because it is the most painful way to say I love you."
Grandparents, family friends, etc had all passed away at some point, but being a young girl, those deaths hadn't affected her as much with the grace of innocence and naivety. Then, when she was fifteen, Rory's mother was supposed to give her and twelve year old Luna Aden a little brother. Unfortunately, the baby boy, Archer Aden, was a stillborn.
"Papa, how beautiful is Archer? Can we see them yet?" Luna asked innocently when Peter Aden walked into the waiting room. Rory and Luna had been impatiently waiting in the hospital waiting room for over half a day.
Rory didn't look at her father's face yet as she held up a notebook sized painting of the night sky. "Look, I made the baby his first painting, I finished it while we were waiting—why are you crying, dad?"
The tall, green eyed man in labor scrubs rubbed his face tiredly. "Darlings, there were...complications," Peter's voice cracked with emotion, "Mama barely made it."
It didn't take the two innocent girls to realize what had happened. Tears burned Rory's eyes as she tossed the painting aside to the plastic seat beside her, forgotten and scorned with the revelation of the tragedy. "How? The baby came right on time—"
Peter shook his head sadly. "Sometimes God has other plans. He wanted Archer to stay with him in heaven."
The whole waiting room went away as the sisters felt the pain of losing their baby brother. Rory wrapped her arm around her crying little sister's shoulders. Rory had always been Luna's protector.
