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Outside the hospital, it was a cloudy day.

No blue sky. No sunlight. No shade. So it was strange when a shadow formed in the middle of the parking lot.

It started as a blot and spread across the pavement. Even if there had been a sun out, casting shadows, there was no source nearby -- no car, no lamppost, and certainly no person -- to cast this particular one.

The impossible shadow grew until it was roughly the size and shape of a twelve-year-old girl with long, wavy hair. And once it was done growing, the shadow changed. It went from dark to blinding white, as if a hundred lights had been turned on somewhere deep inside of it. And out of the light came a girl.

In one slow, fluid motion, like coming up through water, the girl rose out of the mark on the ground. And when she was standing on top of the girl-shaped puddle of white, the blinding light inside went off like a switch.

The girl looked down at her shadow approvingly.

"Nice work," she said to it.

The shadow seemed pleased, fidgeting happily beneath her feet. The girl looked around, marveling at the fact she was here -- even if here was a hospital parking lot on a cloudy afternoon -- and a thrill ran through her at the thought of being somewhere.

Being someone.

There was only one problem.

The girl in the parking lot didn’t know who she was.

That is to say, she knew what she was, but this was her first day as a who. And now that she was a who, she couldn't help but wonder what type of who she was. She brought her hands up in front of her face, as if they would tell her, and in a way they did. A blue bracelet circled her wrist, bare except for a pendant with a name carved on it in small, delicate script.