My younger sister Jessica and I have always been close. We have two other siblings but We’re only a year apart in age so we grew up with a lot of th... same experiences. We were raised first generation Americans in a really close nit Italian family. We grew up in a Midwestern suburb and went to school together our whole lives right up to college when I took off to study on the east coast and my sister dropped out of a local school at the end of her freshman year.Now to give you an insight into. A bit of history may help in understanding the workings of the magic inthe valley. Now while it is likely that the valley was always a placeof power, it never really gained a reputation for specific magic untilthe 1830's. The legend goes that a small tribe of the Choctaw Nationwas trapped in the valley in late 1831 and they all died of exposure.One of the members of that tribe was betrothed to a young member ofanother tribe, a nascent shaman, who backtrailed to find his beloved,and, finding. In 1995 he moved back in with his wife just as the second baby was born. I was devastated, but I tried to bury myself in work. I stopped really caring about myself, though. I stopped wearing make-up, or dressing nicely, just for the fun of it. I stopped being me. I was simply this mass of sorrow, grieving for what I had lost, though I didn’t realize how much I had lost. Somewhere in the equation of Mike and Ruth, I lost myself. I lived only for those stolen moments on the phone, or that furtive. My earrings were still in, but I was otherwise completely naked. Of course, that wasn’t exactly unusual any more. I went to the sink and started washing my face, and Gabe came in.“Hey, bro, you want to get breakfast?”“Yeah, thanks.”“Alright, we’ve got more orientation shit at 10:30, so we probably don’t have time to get dressed. Here.” He handed me a pair of sunglasses and I followed him out of the dorm and across the street to the dining hall.After a cup of coffee and an omelette, I was.