Penny
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"Be still, be quiet, be perfect. You are nothing more than your family's name and it is your duty to preserve our reputation. Your life was forfeit since the day of your birth; you are to devote yourself entirely to this family and its image. As a priveledged child you do not get the priveledge of being a child. You must be perfect in all ways at all hours and in all situations. You are Pennyblossom Petunia Gardner, heiress of the Gardner estate, and filling this role is all you will ever accomplish in this life for this role is your life. Without it you are nothing."
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It was her world now and perfection was based on her standards, not anyone else's. Ever since the day Penny awoke in this odd place, the great wide expanse of nothingness that was her reverie, she was in control of her own fate and life. She was the one who decided what she wanted to do and who she wished to be and, for the first time in her seventeen years of existence, she was capable of choosing to be herself and not what everyone else wanted her to be.
But who was she? How can one know themselves when they were always told who they were? With an identity shaped by everyone but herself how could she know how much of her was really her and what parts were ingrained into her, seared into her brain from hours of lessons and lectures, by others? Had her own true self been chipped away, leaving her as nothing but a hollowed out shell to be filled with the ideas of others? No, while this may have been the miserable excuse of a life her old self was forced to live Penny had been granted a second chance by this mysterious place and she was set on making the most of it.
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Waking up in an unknown place would be disorienting in its own right but when Penny awoke and found herself surrounding by nothing in quite the literal sense it was more than she could comprehend. More than anyone could comprehend, really. In this place there were no walls to be seen, no discernable color for the sky, no landmarks or even a horizon around to break up the monotony. Penny was alone in a land emptier than even the most barren of deserts. Even the ground on which she stood was barely perceptable to the eye.
There was nothing and nowhere for her to go but she couldn't stay there, or so Penny's logic told her. Without food or water she would perish without anyone knowing what happened to her. When putting one foot in front of the other didn't lead to her plummeting down an unseen hole or stepping off the end of this world Penny set out walking, hoping to find something, anything, but the minutes all seemed to flow together making the telling of time impossible. And, no matter how long she felt she had been walking, nothing changed; she remained the only figure around.
She wondered if all of this was a dream but it was too real, or perhaps even too surreal, for that to be the case. -to be continued once I figure out the right wording-
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Her world, her reverie, was a blank slate, a canvas on which she could paint her emotions and have the world take shape as a result of them, as an extension of her. All that would exist here would be formed through pure unadulterated expression on her part. And someday, should this all turn out to be a dream, Penny knew that no one could take the memories of this place away from her. This place was her own, no, it was her, and she would never let anyone take that from her again.
