Charlotte

It was strange, having her around. Even though I was five years younger than her, it felt like I had a younger sister. Everything about her just gives off little sister qualities. But at the same time, she felt like my mother.
"Hey, Charlotte." Jemma says, scraping bark off of a twig.
"What?" I ask.
"What have you been doing this whole time?" she asks.
"I've been watching." I answer.
"Watching who?" she asks.
"Everyone." I answer.
"Oh, like a stalker." she says, laughing.
"No! I am not a stalker! Take it back!" I whine.
"You're funny. But seriously, though, did you see me come here or something?" she asks.
"No, I was watching the Unknown portal then." I say.
"You mean that large stone in the government building?" she asks.
"Yeah, usually things spawn through that portal. But you didn't, which was strange." I say. 
"Hm. Is that why there was such a large circle indent in it? Because of your necklace?" she asks.
I nod my head, and she replies with another nod. 
"Well, the truth about that is, I wanted to escape here." I say.
"Well, I would understand why you would want to escape now, but why then? When this place was so beautiful?" she asks.
"This world is different in everyone's perspective. Mainly designed so when you look around, it will appear likeable to the person seeing it. But I think, since I was dead coming here, I'm immune to the prettiness, or something like that." I say, looking at her.
"This tree is bright purple, pink, and blue. In my perspective, anyway." she says.
"To me, it's a dying birch tree." I say.
"That is so strange." she says, looking closer at the tree.

"Yeah, it is." I repeat. "Anyways, you are taking this surprisingly well, since your two closest friends were just murdered." 
"Really? I didn't think so. I took having my little sister murdered well." she says, nudging me in the shoulder, making me almost fall off of the tree.
"Well, duh, you didn't even remember me for a month!" I say, laughing.
"Was is weird? Roaming around with nothing to do but watch people do random everyday things?" she asks.
"You sure do ask a lot of questions, you know." I say.
"Yeah, well, you seem to have most of the answers, so why not ask?" she says.
"There's a lot of things I don't know. Like, why you always act like you're five." I say, and she shoves me again, and I grab onto the tree branch, which mind you, was seven feet off the ground. 
"Whoops," Jemma says, lifting back onto the tree, "Upsy daisy!"
As soon as I was back up, I fix my dress, and sit back down. "Yup, literally five."
"Anyways, hey, do you want to see my apartment?" Jemma says, jumping off without a care in the world.
"Uh, sure." I say, stepping down.
"It looks really creepy when you just walk on air like that." Jemma notifies.
"Thanks."
I follow her to a brick building, with dead plants surrounding the perimeter. It gave off an uneasy feeling, that knocked me off of my feet. Jemma lends a hand, and I sit up. Everything about this place was eerie. 
"This is where you live?" I ask, taking in the scenery.
"Yup! Isn't it pretty?" she asks. I didn't want to let her down, so I swallowed hard, and nodded.
She walks inside the doors, where there was a large work desk covering most of the area of the entryway. She walks up to the desk, and rings a rusty golden bell. It gave a creaky dinging noise, but no one came. She leans over the desk to look in the room to the right, probably the owner's apartment.
"That's strange, he doesn't seem to be here." Jemma says, landing back on her feet. "I guess I'll have you meet him later."
I follow her up a flight of stairs into a door that had the number 177 in gold lettering on it. She takes a key out of nowhere, and puts it into the keyhole. When it doesn't unlock, she tries to open the door. It opens with no trouble at all.  
"That's weird," she starts, "It's unlocked."
I follow her in the room, which instantly smelled like rotting apples. I plug my nose, making it fairly obvious that I hated the smell. 
"What smells so bad?" Jemma asks, looking around. I sigh in relief that I wasn't the only one who smelled it. 
I walked into a tile floored opening where the kitchen was. 
"Oh wait, can you take off your shoes?" Jemma asks.
I look down at my bare feet. My toenails were painted white. "I don't wear shoes." I answer.
"Just when I thought you couldn't get any weirder." she says.
I look at the cracked marble counter. I walk to the far corner of the kitchen, where I noticed there was a baking pan. I looked inside, and sliced apples were rotting inside. "It looks like someone was in the middle of baking when they left. Must have been an emergency." I say, throwing away the apples, pan and all.
"Laye always liked baking. She must have been making apple crisp before the agents took them away." Jemma says, sitting on a bar chair at the breakfast island. She rests her head on her hand and gives a half-smile.
I walk over to the couch, and sit down. It was like sitting on a metal slab. 
"Hey, Charlotte?" she asks, not even looking at me.
"What do you need?" I ask.
"What happened to our dad? You said he died, right? How?" she asks.
"It's kind of a long story." I say, looking as she turns around in the chair.
"I've got time." she says, before losing conscious.