Alexia
Legacy Name: Alexia

Alexia never asked about her father. It was one of those unspoken rules she picked up on from a very young age, along with the importance of never removing the amulet hung around her neck.

It looked like a relic from some ancient treasure hoard, the red stone at its center glowing subtly at all times. With each passing birthday, the gem widened a little more, though Mother warned that the stone would cease to grow on the day she turned eighteen. Alexia never gave a thought to what this might mean. She delighted in using the gem's power to fill the lonely daytime hours, shifting her shape to take on the form of a unicorn and running wild in the forests surrounding the family ranch.

She befriended squirrels and robins, raccoons and a family of inquisitive otters. There was not an animal she could not approach in the unicorn's body. She saw many wonderful sights of nature and never lacked for young playmates eager to frisk through the grass and challenge her to leaps over the stream. The horses of the nearby ranches were her very special friends, leaning their heads on her neck to murmur compliments and secrets about the best grazing places in her ear.

She thought about the other little girl only on rare occasions where bad weather kept her inside, trapped in her human form. The girls had shared their mother's wavy brown hair but every other feature of Andrea's had replicated their father's looks. It was many years before Alexia would come to realize that the price of being Mother's spoiled favorite was growing up beside her only sister.

The little girl quickly became another forbidden subject but Alexia was content. How could she feel lonely when her days were spent wandering through field and forest, free of tedious hours behind a desk. The very word "school" took on a dark magic that would make Alexia shudder at its mere mention.

Alexia's mother never instructed her on how to spend her hours. Every day the woman came home crying after another hard day of work, sobbing and refusing to say a word. Alexia didn't even know her mother's occupation. Asking about work ranked number three on the List of Things Never to be Discussed.

Three things happened on the day Alexia turned eighteen. The glow of the amulet went out, she forgot how to shift her shape forever, and she finally realized that she did not want to spend the rest of her life sitting and waiting for Mother to come home. She knew about money, though she rarely had any of her own. She took the crumpled bills from the back of the kitchen drawer, stuffing them into a faded blue denim bag. She scratched her name on a small slip of paper, the letters roughly formed in crayon. It was the only bit of writing her mother had ever been willing to teach. She laid the amulet on top. She could not recall why she had always been so concerned with wearing it all the time. The facets were quite obviously formed of plastic, a toy for a little girl and no trinket for a woman grown.

Her mother had two brothers and a sister, though they had fallen out of contact for the last few years. All closed the door in her face when she asked for a place to stay; one muttering an apology, one simply shaking his head and one slamming the door with a look of disgust. Alexia was not one to beg. Though she had traveled many miles and spent almost all the money, she reassured herself that she would be just fine on her own and that the stars would serve just as well as a timbered roof.

Her once-fine dress was soon reduced to rags and she rarely ate more than she could gather from the forest but so much time spent playing in the natural world had taught her to navigate by the sun and stars. Sometimes a kind farmer would allow her a bed in the loft and a bowl of porridge with cream or a hunk of bread with strawberry preserves in exchange for a day's work. She was especially good with horses, having been raised around them.

The last of her money went into buying a tiny square of land. The old owner took pity and threw in his old farm tools and a few bags of seed for free. The old books forgotten in the cellar were a special winter project. She agonized over reading something as simple as "See Jane Run" but she was persistent. Her face still reddened when she recalled how the others had stared at her in the farmer's market when she'd asked for help discerning the marks on the note written for the bounty she'd brought in.

Every year her crop grew just a little more. She acquired a few chickens and a goat but her real desire was to raise her own stable and fine horses to populate it. It was only a dream for the deepest winter days, she knew. Her profits went into maintaining the farm, with just enough left over to fill her belly. She was good at being content with what she had. She'd been raised to it.

Until the day a very special gift arrived from across the sea.

Her uncle was extremely wealthy and very lonely. He had been following her progress for years, on the wish of her father. The parcel he'd sent contained a packet of money, more than she'd ever seen in her life. It also held a photograph of a gorgeous white house which sat on four hundred acres of good farming land. The stable was to the east of the house.

All the original furnishings were just where they'd been left. An intricate balcony with lattice panels let out onto a sweeping lawn which in turn gave way to untamed forest. It was all she'd ever dreamed of owning before she even walked through the stable doors.

Three magnificent Paints peered over the tops of their stalls, wickering a welcome. Her equine family would soon expand to include more Paints and a half-dozen Arabians that would fill the shelves of the antique cabinet in her living room with trophies and ribbons. She wrote a gushing note of thanks to the mysterious uncle.

His reply was equally affectionate, inviting her to call on him for anything she might ever need. Tucked into the folds of the letter was a yellowed photograph of a young man. She could not fail to recognize the brown eyes peering at her above a shy smile.

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