Culture Shock (LGBT)

Wake Me Up

I apologize for not updating for such a long time but my schedule has been INSANE lately and I've only got time to write this one chapter real quick. I probably won't get the chance to do it again for a while so I hope the wait has been worth it. I'm also going to be skipping quite a few chapters that I originally wanted to write but for the sake of getting something done I'll  go back and add them in later. Bye!

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Snow White's POV

It has been a long and tiring week. We started in Orleans, France, 1428, with Joan then we visited Queen Isabella at the Spanish Court in 1492 and had a chat with a man named Christopher Columbus. But right now Black Cat and I are sitting in a lovely parlor in Florence, Italy watching the "famed" artist/ scientist-as she has said many times-Leonardo da Vinci painting a portrait in 1507.

Tomorrow we will be on the deck of the Santa Maria on her way to the New World to have a chat with Sebastian, Christopher's youngest so, then on to meet a playwright by the name of William Shakespeare and take a tour of his Globe Theatre in London. Maybe later we'll find ourselves in Napoleon Bonaparte's throne room watching the brilliant man work. Who knows what the future holds, because when you are a time traveler things like that cease to matter all that much.

But anyway, I think I may be beginning to understand what Black Cat was meant to teach me. Maybe it's not the the person that really maters so much, rather the things that person is capable of doing, their potential if you will, that is the important thing. Nothing is as black and white as I had originally thought, but a rainbow of ever changing tints and shades.

And now that I've begun to see the error of my ways, I've started to think that everything I've ever held as fact up until this point may have only existed in the imagination of a small child. I'll be the first to admit that I was wrong in judging people I didn't know and had never met. The lords and ladies of my father's court, for example, didn't deserve to be treated that way. I don't know them, don't know the smallest thing about their lives. I merely wrote them off as feather headed users and continued on my merry way, never sparing them a second thought.

I'm done playing the part my father cast for me, done hiding in his shadow. I think it's finally time to start being me. I've learned so much in such a short span and I'm done being blind all the time. Now that I am older and wiser things don't seem so hopeless anymore. Maybe I can do something to change now that I've realized that all along the real problem had been myself and I was too prideful to see it. Maybe now I can do something to make a change in how the world works just like Black Cat keeps saying I can.

Maybe I can...

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Master da Vinci is a very bright man just like Black Cat had been insisting. The artist is an innovator of the highest degree. He has even been trying to teach me Italian. He is centuries ahead of his time, da Vinci is. But then, most of us travelers are.

He's been painting all morning, barely even taking the time to break his fast. I is quite liberating to watch a master so passionate about his work and makes me wish I could love something as much as he obviously does. He says that this will be his best creation yet, his masterpiece. According to him a nobleman had commissioned it for his wife, Mona Lisa. It really is quite beautiful, but there is just one thing I do not understand about I. Why is she smiling like that? When I asked him the old man merely shook his head and chuckled. I suppose it shall forever remain a mystery...

I wonder what this man thinks when he is alone and the sky is dark. How can someone who has seen too much still retain such a cheerful disposition? Is he really as mad as people claim? Is he really a murderer or a pedophile? Only the man with paint on his skeletal fingers standing in front of the nearly finished portrait can answer and he'll be taking his secrets to the grave. But then again, is any of that really important? If so, then why?

It is all Black Cat's fault, truly it is. Before she came crashing into my life l never thought to ask these kinds of questions. It was she that made me wonder if I didn't know everything I needed to know. She has ruined for anyone else, my confounding niece.

Hmm... I've never stopped to think about it like that before. If Black Cat is Cecelia's daughter then that would make me her uncle. What strange times these are when my little sister could have a daughter years older than me. But when you are a time traveler things like that become possible and maybe even ordinary.

And I still can't help but wonder what Alistar's future holds. Will he be a time traveler like us or will he be the son my father always wanted? All I know is that whoever he grows up to be, Black Cat, Cecelia, and I will always love him unconditionally.

I miss both of my siblings so much that it physically hurts but it will be a long time before I will be able to hold them in my arms once more. I just hope that wherever they are that they're safe. Edlyn has no reason to harm them, but then again she had no reason to harm Black Cat, either.

I've only ever wanted the best for my family but that has nor always been the case. My mother died young, hardly any older than Black Cat, and my father has become cold and unfeeling. My sister never had any real parents though I've tried my best to teach her right from wrong. My baby brother will have a country thrown into his lap much too young, like his brother before him. I just hope that this cycle of misery will end with me because our future generations don't deserve it.

Now that I have thoroughly confounded myself along with my audience, I do believe that we should be on our way to ages unknown. Our journey is far from over and we still have a while yet to go but I have no doubt that it shall be fulfilled in its purpose to further my education. Time is a precious thing and one should not waste it.

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So what did everyone think? I know this chapter wasn't very long but it was all I could come up with and I hope you liked it. First comment gets a dedication. Oh, and the song for this chapter is Wake Me Up by Avicii and it's kind of Snow's theme song for now.