Chapter 1
Once upon a time there was a girl with hair as black as a raven who lived in a tiny studio apartment on the 23rd floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. She did not hail originally from New York City, but had grown up among the cows and corn of the great Middle America state of Iowa. Being particularly fond of music and the theatre, (often singing or dancing for the local herds of cattle) she felt quite stifled among the tractors and livestock that created the natural landscape of her home state. College proved her ticket out of the Corn Belt when she successfully auditioned into the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.  Four years later she found herself as a chorus member in the cast of The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway.
Her hair color had always been a topic of conversation when it came to auditions,  auditioners always asked if it was her natural color. She always proudly responded yes. Her hair had made her stand out in Iowa, among the corn-colored hair of her peers. She was born with brown hair that had increasingly gotten darker as she got older, now often described as “black as midnight” or “black as a raven’s feather”. It was very unusual and stumped the local doctors.
...
One day she had opened her apartment window to let in some fresh air (as fresh as air can be in New York City) as well as to peer at the bustling city below. She loved watching the streets below that bustled with life, she looked down as though observing a microorganism through a microscope.
As she was looking below she felt something sharp, like the prick of a needle, on her head. She scratched her head, looked around outside and in her apartment for the source. Not thirty seconds after this did she feel more pricks. 
Suddenly, her hair began to transform into ravens. Each strand folded and transfigured into a bird. The unkindness of ravens quickly ascended into the sky, darkening it for only a brief moment, as if like a cloud momentarily moving past the sun. The birds flew higher and high, disappearing into the clouds.
Naturally, she panicked and ran to her bathroom mirror to find not only that her hair was all gone but also that it had been replaced with an elaborate tattoo of ravens that covered her head, like a disturbing hat.
She stood in front of the mirror, entranced by the ornate and intricate pattern of ravens. Touching her head, feeling the smoothness, like it had been shaved. Her beautiful hair--gone-- replaced with this outlandish piece of art, her head the canvas.
“What could this mean?” she wondered.
She walked back to her window, looked out and up at the sky, blue as usual, nothing different. She looked below, waiting for police cars or fire trucks to be blaring, called by someone who had witnessed what had just happened to her. But there were no sirens, the city went on as if nothing had happened. No one ever looked up in New York City. They were all too busy walking with purpose towards a destination or riding in taxis.
What had just happened to her?
Why had nobody seen it happen? 
Who would believe her?