When Brendon and Matilda Lewis had a daughter, they named her Brenda. The Lewis family lived in a small village in Australia, where they worked as farmers. Little Brenda’s life began with rolling through the grass and playing with animals.
She spent her entire day loving the animals and running freely across the beautiful fields of her village. In the evenings, her only entertainment was reading books. Even before starting school, she would finish books that her peers wouldn’t even touch. Whenever she misbehaved, threatening to lock the bookshelf always worked—except when it came to spending time with her beloved animals.
One of the animals Brenda spent the most time with was a snake she found in the hollow of a tree. She named it Medusa. When the Lewis couple first discovered this, they turned pale with fear and scrambled to get the snake out of the garden. But their daughter’s intense crying made them stop. From that day on, Medusa became a resident of the Lewis family’s garden.
Starting school was the first time Brenda ever left her village. From the very first day, she drew everyone’s attention. Her school uniform had been handmade from several mismatched fabrics. The colors didn’t match. While the other children talked excitedly about augmented reality games and the latest movies, Brenda didn’t even know what those things were. They didn’t even have an old-fashioned television at home. Though she arrived at school spotless, she would often end the day covered in mud—sometimes hugging a stray dog, sometimes playing with earthworms in the soil. Other children always described her as “weird and scary.”
Over the years, little Brenda’s behavior never changed. She never tried to act like someone else to be liked or accepted. As she grew into a young woman, she was always rejected by the boys she liked. No one wanted to be seen with the “weird” girl.
One night, she woke up lying on the grass in the garden. The air was thin, and the noise was overwhelming. The darkness of night had been replaced by the glow of orange flames. Her home of sixteen years was burning. She stood frozen in shock, unable to react. Then, sobbing uncontrollably, she ran toward the house. It took three people to calm her enough to get her into an ambulance. She never saw her mother, father, Medusa, or any of the other animals again.
After that dark night, she never returned to her village. Left to face life on her own, Brenda learned how to stand on her own two feet. She enrolled in a horticulture program at university and began working part-time in the campus library. In the rest of her time, she found work at a local botanical shop. As she did everything she could to hold on to life, she channeled her bottled-up emotions and longing into the tattoos she had inked on her arms.
Until the day Halley passed over Earth, she had never been with anyone. But after that day, everything was about to become far more complicated.