Dreams Of Fame
1.1 - The Mystery of Giovanna
A woman with long, tangled black hair tugged a man across a park, both laughing. Her clothes were torn and ratty, and the soles of her shoes had long since worn away, but she kept laughing with the man beside her, all the same.
The woman’s name was Giovanna Cardwell. She was an odd one. She was completely lacking of everything- friends, family, or even a place to call home. All she had was the man beside her, the man she called her husband. He was all she needed. Giovanna didn't need anything else to be happy.
Many years later, she’d spin tales about her mysterious husband, to the point where no one knew what was fictional, or not. At a certain point, it became unclear if the man himself even existed. And it certainly didn’t help that for as long as those stories were told, she never even gave the man a name.
Giovanna's time with her husband occurred long before this story begins. Before she met her future family and enemies, found her home and prison, and became a painter. Before all of that, Giovanna lived a simple life, dashing around with her husband, neither of the two seeming to have a single care in the world.
They made a habit of crashing in random people’s homes when they were away, taking brief naps, but never spending the night. Then, before fleeing, they'd raid their fridge. Giovanna made a habit of leaving a painting behind before they left, a parting gift, usually done on the wall, and made out of whatever paint like food items she'd manage to find in the fridge. While, obviously, the paintings never lasted, the people who received them recognized her talent.
Giovanna also regularly left paintings on easels left outside. From Oasis Springs, to Windenburg, paintings in Giovanna's distinct style have been found. For whatever reason, she never had any interest in taking them with her when she and her husband moved onto the next town.
Yet, as much as she and her husband traveled, Giovanna always found herself returning to Willow Creek. The Magnolia Blossom Park had always been one of her favorites. As she would later claim, the bathrooms were nice, and the people who visited seemed to have a habit of leaving valuable things behind, which Giovanna sold to purchase new clothing for her and her husband, or canvases to leave behind the next time she found an easel. The thought of buying a house and settling down never even occurred to the two of them.
Giovanna’s goal was to dash through life and see where it took her. She was never bothered by the fact that she had nothing, the fact that she didn’t have a cent to her name didn’t bother her. All Giovanna needed was her husband. Nothing brought her more joy.
The two never got formally married either. Giovanna would tell the tale of them getting married on the historic day where a meteor struck the shirt factory in the Fashion District of San Myshuno, claiming that the pair of them kissed as the Fashion District burnt to ash behind them, but no one truly believed she was that old.
Due to so many stories of Giovanna's being obvious fabrications, her whole life is a complete mystery. And it doesn't help that her future partner, Zoe Presley, personally recorded the details of Giovanna's life and likely transformed them into even more heavily dramatized events in her book series, A Day in the Life of Granny.
Zoe's books talk about how Giovanna once pursued a modeling career, or how she once almost attacked the president, or about how one of her best friends is an alien, but it’s more than likely that none of that is true.
Up until meeting Zoe, Giovanna hadn’t done anything formally, and wasn’t planning on it in the slightest. She was more than happy to spend the rest of her days traveling around the world with her husband. Zoe transformed her whole life. But how? That’s much later in the story.