It should have been raining. Everyone agreed that afterwards. It should have been raining. The sky should have mourned the passing of one of the kindest men they had ever known. But then, there was moisture a-plenty from the family he left behind him; from his wife and daughters as they quietly said their goodbyes.

No one knew that in the midst of that grief, a terrible split had pulled the little family apart.

"You should have seen this coming, you should have warned us!"

The yell of her mother's voice still echoed in Genevieve's ears as she stood quietly at the back of the family gathered by the graveside. Her gloved hands twisted together in agitation as she remembered that awful row; how her mother and sister had blamed her for not warning them about her father's terminal illness, how they insisted she had to have known, that she should have shared it with them. But that wasn't the way her gift worked.

Her gift. She almost laughed aloud at that thought. Her father had always said it was a gift; she knew now it was more of a curse than anything. He'd always told her not to mind the people who looked at her in fear and loathing when they found out about her abilities. He'd said they were idiots, that she was meant to do something wonderful with her inherited gifts.

But Genevieve knew all too well the look of sudden hatred in someone's eyes, when they realised that within moments of her touching their skin that she now knew their past, the secrets they'd never told. She'd lost too many friends that way, and now ... she'd lost her family too. Her mother would never forgive her for what she had decided was a deliberate decision not to share news Genevieve had not had of the impending disaster befalling their family. And her sister, well ...let's just say that Elayne had always been her mother's daughter.

The little crowd moved away from the graveside, leaving the small woman alone with the earthly remains of her only ally on this earth. The sun shone down, mocking her in her black woollen dress and grey coat, at the pale face that was the only skin she now bared to the world. To anyone.

To touch anything with her bare skin was to know something of the person who owned it, and it was usually something they would not volunteer as conversation. To touch a person with her bare skin ... it was like seeing a lifetime flash before her eyes. But it was never her lifetime. It was such a terrible violation of privacy, so totally beyond her control, and it had always terrified and hurt her when she was young. Her father had suggested she wore gloves, and since then her visions of people and their pasts had diminished. But still, sometimes, if she grew too close, or let someone in, she would dream of them, of their lives, of what had happened and very rarely of what could be.

It was a curse, and one that had lost her everything. She turned away from the graveside, stooping to pick up her small bag of belongings, and started to walk. Where to, no one knew, not even her. But there had to be somewhere at the end of this road where no one would mind her being what she was. Somewhere.

Another day, another excursion into the welcoming anonymity that was her new life in this place called RhyDin. To think that not so many months ago, Genevieve had been ridiculed, taunted, hated by her own family, and yet she had found here some small measure of the peace denied her by her own kin.

She lived out her days simply enough. Each morning she rose to the dawning sun shining through the windows of the rented room she now lived in, surrounded by belongings of her own purchase, belongings that pertained to no one but herself and her more recent memories. She would walk to O'Dell's Deli, the place where she had earned herself employment, and take to the work of the day among those she was slowly coming to trust and admire as friends.

Such work held a routine familiar and pleasant to her, sometimes with the added boon of being able to offer her own particular skill in producing a decorative cake for one occasion or another. Her shyness, though at first acute, was slowly being eroded by the playful banter of her colleagues, and the constant flow of friendly custom through their doors.

No one here minded that she wore her gloves near constantly, and after a few fervent hints, people were careful not to touch her skin, no matter the urgency of the request. She had no wish to know of her colleagues their secrets and hidden pasts, nor of inciting that fear she knew so well in their eyes when they looked on her.

And yet, there were times when she could not hide the abnormality of her abilities. On a day when a colleague was troubled, she might forget to check herself before asking what had distressed them; only then to realise that their manner and actions had not marked them as being distressed in any way. Previous to her employer's own discovery of pregnancy, Genevieve had perceived a difference, and unconsciously prevented Sadie from ingesting anything that may be harmful to the child within.

And then, there were days like this.

The bell over the door rang with its usual merriness, distracting Genevieve from her enjoyment of the banter being performed in the kitchen behind her. Her eyes, so old for one so young, lifted to the newcomer, and she was hard pressed not to flinch back in fear. For the customer now approaching the counter in seemingly benevolent fashion did seem to her to be surrounded by an aura of darkest black, a flickering, malevolent indication of the person himself.

In the instant before he reached the counter, she looked around in vain for another to take her place, stifling the wave of nausea that arose from her proximity to such a powerfully evil presence. But there was no one to relieve her, and she was now forced to serve him as she would any other.

His manner was charm itself, his politeness almost enough to convince anyone who saw him with ordinary eyes to believe him merely a handsome, if private, individual. To Genevieve, he was abhorrent, and she could not move fast enough to be rid of him.

In serving him his ordered meal, she endeavoured to avoid touching anything he himself had touched, and was successful in this endeavour, until the time came for his payment. She had removed her gloves to bake earlier, and in the easiness of conversation around her, had neglected to replace them. In the offering of his money to her, she had no choice but to take it, and with the gold, suffer the concequences.

She could feel herself paling as the oily slickness of his past deeds burned into her mind. She saw ... children screaming for help, dying on a blade held in his hands. She felt ... delight in the sickening extent of a long and painful death. She heard ... the last breath of a dozen innocents, overlapping in deafening hush.

How she held back her nausea until his exit from the deli, she did not know, but the moment he was gone from her sight, Genevieve turned, groping her way to the bathroom with inconsiderate haste, the coins falling from her hands to jingle on the floor. Under the concerned, startled eyes of colleagues and customers alike, she fell into the bathroom, gripping hard to the seat of the nearest toilet to empty her stomach in violent answer to that sickening, unsettling nausea.

She could feel his past inside her, polluting the calm she had worked so hard to maintain. Hands touched her back; even in the midst of her distress, she was grateful to whoever had come that they did not try to take her bare hand. A question - how could they help?

Between silencing fits of sickness, she managed to mutter a few directions, and within another minute or so, the bottle she kept in her bag was brought to her, held out uncertainly by a shaking hand. She groped for it, unscrewing the lid with violence, and the soothing scent of cinnamon filled the tiny space.

In the scent, in the pouring of that oil onto her hands and the rubbing of it into her skin, Genevieve felt her calm returning, the cinnamon pervading her senses, taking her back to a time when she had been most at peace. A time when her father had lived, and had guided her through the first burgeoning awareness of her cursed gift.

She knew she would have questions to answer when she ventured back into the deli, that the answering of those questions would be difficult indeed. But that was the price, and she had never flinched from taking the consequences.