Esmerella and Clauden had been best friends from the first ten minutes that they spent together after meeting back in 2001. It was purely by coincidence, when Esmerella's mother Irene finally married her long term boyfriend, after losing the father of Esmerella in a terrible climbing accident in the summer of 1997, just one year after their daughter was born.

Now they had moved out from the hustle and bustle of downtown Paris, and moved to a much more rural area far beyond the outskirts of the great Parisian city. There they had bought a lovely picturesque three hundred year old stone built farmhouse, some 100 kilometres due south of Paris, backing onto the Loire, France’s longest river. As it happened, right alongside their old farm residence was the house of Clauden and his parents. Their small quiet country village of Sury-aux-bois in the Loiret commune in central Northern France was also very close to the beautiful forest area of Orleans. Esmerella’s step father Jacque continued to commute some 200 kilometres a day, five days a week, between their village and his office in downtown Paris.

Her father’s accident had made front page news in every single one of the major French news papers. He had fallen into one of the deepest crevices in the French Alps, and yet unfortunately for the family, his body to this day still undiscovered.

Esmerella like Clauden was very tall for her age, and could easily be mistaken for someone much older. She wore her golden coloured hair at shoulders length, sometimes tied back into a ponytail, her complexion fair and smooth, with not one blemish upon her skin. Her rosy cheeks covered in tiny little freckles, along with big blue eyes gave Esmerella a very pretty face. When she smiled, her little ski-slope nose would crinkle, and turn up at the end. She would most certainly grow up to become one natural beauty, and although  she would probably use make-up of some kind during her lifetime, she certainly didn't need to.

Clauden was a tall thin studious looking boy, with a mop of jet black hair, pale skin, and always wore a selection of fashionably styled glasses in various coloured frames covering his small black beady eyes. Like Esmerella he always dressed smartly, normally in Chinos and a T-shirt, always changing them to colour coordinate with his glasses. He had really fallen for Esmerella from the very first time they met.

They had become very close friends indeed, sharing secrets between them which they would never tell anyone else. Clauden had a very active interest in his own country’s natural history, and convinced himself that this is what he wanted to be, if he was lucky enough to make it to University in Paris, he would study like crazy, eventually becoming a professor of French History, just maybe, one day even teaching at his childhood school .