She remembered being six or seven years old, living in a high-rise apartment in the Bay Area. Her father was already very rich back then, and her mother was still alive.
To her young eyes, the living room was practically the size of a soccer field.
The floor-to-ceiling windows were like a massive, breathtakingly beautiful painting. Beyond them, the most prosperous and dazzling Blackmoor City stretched between the skyline and the bay, its reflection a river of stars in the Human World.
When she pressed her forehead against the glass, she saw the vast nightscape outside; when she stood up straight, she could see her own reflection, and behind her, the reflections of her parents.
Just a faint, hazy, and unreal part of them.
"Don't take that out in the house," her mother said warily.
As she spoke, her mother stood at a distance, separated from her father by the sofa, an end table, and an entire rug. "That thing is dangerous, isn't it? And Brianna is here."
