Amber crashed the front door of the flat open in an excited flare of movement. She swung her school bag off her shoulder and let it thump onto the floor with a loud bang that echoed down the open corridor.

"Amber, calm down, you'll have the neighbours complaining again!" Astrid scolded her, with an amused twinkle in her eye.

"But, but it's the perfect idea! Oh my goodness! Why did it take this long for us to think of doing this! We are such idiots!" Amber seemed to have no control of her volume, as her exhilarated thoughts tumbled out of her like beads falling from a snapped necklace.

"Okay, okay calm down. I agree, it does seem obvious now," Astrid shrugged her jacket off and made her way through to the living room. Her easy-going demeanour didn't sit right with Amber and it failed to bring her down to a level where she no longer needed to flap about.

"Well, yeah!" Amber's voice shook in anticipation. "Come on, help me sort your paintings out!"

"What? Right now?"

"Yes, right now!" Amber skipped through to her bedroom.

With a roll of her eyes, Astrid followed her. "We just got in, Amber. What's the hurry?" she said gently in her new found "mum" voice that she didn't take too long to get used to using after living with Amber for a few months.

"How can you wait around? Don't you want to find out what you have forgotten?" Amber questioned in a chipper tone. She grabbed the box with Astrid's college portfolio inside and brushed past her on the way back to the living room. She sat down, placed the box on the coffee table and dove in; paper and canvases flying through her hands in a blur of mixed colours.

"Amber..."

"Go and get the paintings from your room too!" Amber commanded whilst shuffling her finds around on any empty surface she could find around her.

Astrid bit back the words she planned to say to her determined foster daughter. She supposed that it would be easier if she just obeyed, so she sauntered to her bedroom and grabbed the couple of boxes of paintings that she couldn't bring herself to sell. With a deep sigh she joined Amber in the living room and placed the boxes by the coffee table- where she could find space.

"Okay, so I sorted your college paintings into landscape pictures and portraits. I put all the ones that are obviously just paintings your tutor got you to do, of apples and that, back in the box."

Astrid had no idea where Amber got the drive to undertake such an intricate task. She stood there and watched in awe.

"What are you just standing there for? Come down here and help me through these!"
Astrid shook into action, Amber's authoritative tone taking its toll on her.

"Right, I noticed in your college paintings that there is a sort of theme," Amber began.

"Yeah?"

"Yes, you have painted in mostly greens and yellows."

Astrid looked down at the mosaic of various shades of greens, yellows and browns that proved Amber's statement correct. Her eyes were then drawn to a small painted basket that sat majestically on one of the pages that lay amongst the pile of forest landscapes.

This was a painting that Astrid had painted a number of times, but she forgot that she painted it in college first. A thought echoed in her mind and she felt the urge to rummage through the other boxes.

"Who is this guy?" Amber's question pulled Astrid's gaze away from the pile of paper in the box she grabbed first.

"What guy?"

"Him." Amber held up a picture of a young lad, with red, curly hair and piercing blue eyes.

"I don't know," Astrid dismissed and moved her focus back to the box that she had balanced on her lap. She had decided to make herself more comfortable by sitting on the armchair adjacent to the sofa.

"You've painted him a couple of times, wearing green and with those eyes..." Amber stopped as something within those painted blue eyes dragged her to a far-away place.

"Blue eyes?" Astrid asked, ripping Amber out of her day dream.

"Yes, blue, why?"

"I think, this is the same guy again." Astrid waved another painting of the same lad.

Amber scrunched her own blue eyes to focus and nodded her head. "He must be in your dreams quite a bit if you have painted him so many times. I mean, he must be important." She looked over at Astrid who was now studying the painting more closely. A puzzled expression etched across her face.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, yes. Fine. I was just trying to work out why it says "True" right here..." Astrid said pointing her finger on a tiny squiggle on the edge of the lad's green lapel. She had completely forgotten that she wrote that there, and in such small writing! It was a wonder that she had happened to notice it now.

"True?" Amber repeated the word, her voice rivalling the melody of Astrid's confusion.

"I have no idea..." Astrid confessed, shaking her head, before she carried on filing through the paintings of her past dreams.

A week had past since their first expedition into Astrid's painted dream journal and they both felt no closer to the truth. The larger picture within Astrid's brain stayed foggy, lacking all certainty.

Disappointed with both her fruitless work and Astrid's lack of commitment, Amber sat in silence in the living room, waiting for Astrid to return. She was eager to try again even though she knew that her foster mother begrudged the task.

She tried her hardest to ignore that Astrid's never-ending stream of excuses to not go down "dream memory lane", whether it was having to do marking, make dinner or endless cups of tea. There was always something that managed to pull her away from searching those painted clues. It was as if there was something blocking the information in her mind - like a wall had been built up in her brain.

Amber would give anything to take a sledge-hammer to that wall that trapped Astrid in her amnesia. She was convinced that the truth about Astrid's past was connected with the mystery of her own beginnings. But she couldn't piece it together without her far too laid back foster mother's memories intact.

When Astrid finally returned to the living room, she wasn't alone.

"What has been going on in here?" A familiar, caring, deep voice soothed the air in Amber's chaotic space.

"Oh, hey James! I forgot it was Friday!"

"Imagine, forgetting my day!" James responded with a cheeky grin.

Amber smirked, reflecting his cheekiness back at him; like Astrid, Amber adored James. She found him easy to speak to. He was approachable, understanding and he didn't speak in that weird condescending way that other old people did. He was unapologetically himself.

"Amber has been trying to get me to remember stuff before the forest day," Astrid explained.

"Oh, been there!" James related with Amber's frustration. "I gave up! This one is impossible!" he added, jabbing Astrid in the side with his elbow.

"You're telling me!" Amber responded, not catching James' playful manner.

"She's determined. I've decided to just go with it." Astrid shrugged.

"Now, Astrid, it is obvious that this is very important to Amber, don't give up as easily as you did with me, alright?" James said with that fatherly tone that he liked to adopt when with his girls.

"Sure. I know!" Astrid said before turning towards the kitchen. "Tea?"

"Coffee, please."

Astrid nodded and disappeared through the doorway as James made his way to the seat next to Amber on the sofa.

"So, my girl, what have you discovered so far?" James probed.

"Well," Amber began, knowing that she needn't hold back with James, "Astrid paints her dreams, right?" She was glad to have the chance to speak to somebody who could, at the very least, look as though they took an interest in her research. Astrid humoured her now and again, but Amber was aware that their lack of progress was, in fact, causing her to disengage.

"Yes, she has told me as much," James admitted.

"Well, I think her dreams are about her past. Maybe," Amber continued, her confidence dwindled as she heard her thoughts out loud.

"Well, you are already doing better than I did, I would have never thought to explore that route!" James said, smiling at the young girl's face that now beamed with pride. "You carry on doing what you're doing, I'm sure you will have a break-through soon!"

"Thanks, James, I needed to hear that!" Amber smiled.

"Anytime."

A comfortable silence embraced them, before Amber's mind went back onto the paintings. She picked up one that she felt drawn to. One that gave her chills. A pair of dark eyes stared into her as she looked at the page. Those eyes looked like deep, black chasms that if she were to fall into them she would plummet forever into eternal darkness. Right in the centre of those eyes shone twinkling purple stars that began to pull her in before the picture was batted out of her grasp.

"What are you doing?" Amber demanded, her voice high with shock. She turned towards James who was now trembling by her side. "James? What is it?"

"Those eyes! She painted those eyes?" James' laboured breath left his chest in bursts.

"What happened?" Astrid's voice sounded from the open doorway. She stood, frozen holding two full mugs of coffee. "James?"

"Astrid, why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" She asked, while putting down the coffee mugs on the table that stood in front of the sofa. Her eyes glanced between James and Amber.

"Tell you what?" she pressed, after she received no answer.

Amber handed her the picture that James hit out of her hands and shrugged before glancing over at James who cowered away from it as it was passed in front of him. Astrid looked at the deep abyss portrayed within the two eyes that she didn't remember painting - but must've done!

"I don't know what there is to tell you, James." Astrid said, baffled, "it's just a painting..."

"A painting of a dream. You dreamt of those eyes! You have seen those eyes?" James managed to blurt out in his panicked state.

"Well yes, I dream about them often." Astrid didn't know where to put herself, she had never seen her dear friend like this before. His bottom lip quivered and his fingers grasped at his grey hair.

"James, what is it?" Amber asked in a trembling voice.

"Noir-Astra..."

"Nwah... what?" Astrid tried to get her tongue around what he had just said, but failed miserably. What he had uttered just sounded like noise to both Astrid and Amber, but the way he said it made it clear that, whatever it was, it was not good.

"What does that mean?" Amber asked, glancing between James' distant stare and Astrid's confused scowl.

"It means," James whispered, his anxiety was assaulting his vocal chords, "Astrid is Natanstrellean."

"I'm what?" Astrid coughed out through an involuntary nervous laugh.

James didn't answer, he patted down his jacket in a rush of fumbling movement. He then managed to find and hold in a shaking hand - a pouch. He held it up towards Astrid who looked at it with no spark of recognition.

"What is that?" she asked, breaking the awkward silence.

"Take it, look inside."

She did as she was told, ignoring her bewildered feelings as she prised the pouch open and took out a clear sphere that was the size of a ping pong ball. She looked up at James, whose eyes were full of hope, but as they met her unchanging expression, that hope slipped out of them like water through a sieve.

"You have no idea what that is do you?" James said his voice lower and quieter than usual.

"I'm sorry, I don't."

She went to put the sphere back inside its pouch, trying her hardest not to look at James' disappointed face. But the clear ball slipped through her fingers and made a thud on the floor, as a searing pain caused her to wince then hold her side.

"Ouch! I felt something burning me!" Astrid rushed to explain her actions. She lifted up her top and made her way to the mirror that hung over the mantle.

Amber looked across at Astrid's reflection that displayed a strange mark on her rib cage, then glanced down and lifted her own top. She stroked her index finger across a birthmark that also stung seconds ago.

"What was it? Are you alright, Astrid?" James queried after his friend.

"Oh yes, I'm fine it was just my birthmark. That was weird though."

Amber stood up, walked to Astrid's side, tapped her shoulder and silently encouraged her to look down at her rib. When the sight of the matching mark reached her eye, Astrid's jaw dropped. No words could come to her.

"We are connected and we need to know how!" Amber declared through trembling lips.