People had said that I looked like the exact copy of my mother. They weren't wrong. From the heart-shaped face, the pair of deep blue eyes, to the curly golden hair, the only thing that set us apart was that she had laugh lines at the sides of her eyes and mouth. Not that it made her any less beautiful. My mother used to love smiling, having that omnipresent brightness of a sunflower.
But even sunflowers wilt without the sun. I could see the toll my absence caused on her, the stress weighing heavy on her shoulders. Left without any clue as to where I went, my parents were forced to resort to scraping for dregs of clues on where I was. Galen hadn't told them where I had been staying, it was that he merely promised that he would soon take me home soon. And he did.
