Everything has a beginning; the mighty lion was once a defenseless cub, the rooster an egg, and a story...an idea. Before Mariam and Alice were married, when Raymond had met Florence and her adopted children, they each had a backstory of their own, both unique to one another. In order to understand all this, we must go back to where it all began...post apocalyptic Indianapolis.
After the bombs had dropped, a teenage Raymond had deserted to the city after being overwhelmed from the horrors of war. Within the next three years, he would work until he purchased a local inn and started a successful, yet stressful business therein. Eventually, one fateful night, he had seen a mob chasing out a group of "mutated felines", one of them having dropped their own child. Being the gentle and fatherly man that he was, he ran outside and grabbed them when no one was looking before running back inside his establishment.
Without a family of his own, he decided to take the child and raise them as his own, giving them the name, Alice. For the next several years, he had taught the small kitten basic education, religion, survival skills, and most importantly, learning about the business. Eventually, Alice was all grown up, spending most of her time with her adoptive father and his business, keeping her true identity to herself...or as of right now, she was asleep until Raymond knocked on the door
