Emily sat alone in her room, gazing out the window at the falling snow. At the blanket of suffocation that drove most animals into the depths of the dirt to hope their fat reserves will once again be enough to keep them living.

It was hard, for her, to see it as anything different. As something positive. That word that had been pinned to her name since before she was born.

Positive.

Like it was all she was allowed to be.

When she was younger, she'd been positive and happy. Naive.

Perhaps because her mother had never lost her optimism, her positivity, it was expected she wouldn't either. That she couldn't. But she isn't Rachel, only her daughter.

She loves her mum but sometimes, no, almost all the time, the expectation to be her is too much. It brings her here, to the window. To watch the snow, rain, leaves falling or dancing, animals hiding or running or looking for food, anything to take her mind off what was her side of the window. Expectation.

But worse than that.

An expectation she couldn't meet.

Nothing was as pink, as fluffy, as magical as it had seemed when she'd been small. Now, at 15, it seemed her teenage years had pulled apart her childhood at the seams as if it had been nothing but a dream.

But why did she feel that she was still living a dream?

Like she wasn't real?

Because she could be negative sometimes.

And she wasn't allowed to be.