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The next thrilling--ha..ha--installment of my NaNo. biggrin
This won't be so amazing like the minifict of the prologue...because it's all..dialogue and stuff. But it's pretty good. Setting up the story more than the prologue. xDD
Chapter 1
The trumpets of the previous day rang in the ears of the young princess as she felt a gentle finger touch the bare patch of her arm exposed by her three layered night gown adornments, eyes shooting wide and gasping for breath she was sure would not come. The plain room that materialized about her became instantly familiar, and she found herself no longer afraid of what she had come from.
“Princess…? Princess Saundra…?”
The distant voice did not nudge her eyes from the brightly gleaming golden metal handle resting on the delicately carved mahogany door that led into the outside world. Her breathing had slowed to a rush, but the voice persisted.
“Princess???”
She felt a hand on her shoulder, five almost nonexistent sensations on the fabric of her night gown, delicate at first, but slowly pressing into her skin until she finally noticed and swung her head in the direction of the intruding sensation with the accuracy of a knife against a target within arms length. The fire in her eyes doused the moment she saw who happened to be putting their fingers on her shoulder.
“Mabelle…”
“Yet another dream, Princess…?”
“You may call me Saundra, Mabelle—you know that much. We have been close since the both of us were young and your mother was as if my own. I am Saundra, not Princess.”
“Yes…”
The words ceased as Saundra lifted from her bed and began removing the two top layers of clothing until only her slip and below it nearly ragged undergarments remained. Mabelle leaned on the balls of her feet to slip each new layer of clothing over the round-chinned girl, tying about her the whale-bone lined corset until she was comfortably dizzy with the slowed breaths and paler skin tone. A heavy knock came at the mahogany door moments before Mabelle had finished pinning Saundra’s waist-length hair closer to the top of her head.
“The Princess is requested at the chambers of the Queen…at once.”
Saundra felt her heart begin to race; a light flutter that spoke no more of happiness than it did of anxiety…it spoke of fear. New expectations or warnings always came with council. Perhaps the Kingdom would rest upon the shoulders of a decision the Princess Saundra made; she had never known what to expect when coming to the castle of her Aunt, finding herself the only child and chosen heir to the kingdoms of Man, she had never expected what had become of her.
Behind her the young maid that had found accommodations near the chambers of her mistress pressed a delicate finger on the carved shell comb she held between her fingers, and released her hands, a sign that Saundra was to be released into the world until the day was done again, when she could finally speak with Mabelle once more.
The feet shuffled forward with a step delicate enough to be nearly unheard, one white frilled silk gloved hand raising the hem of her skirts only enough to show the toe of her boot, eyes forward and chin held high as the heavy door swung wide.
“Princess Saundra…”
She did not respond to the greeting that came from the young page beside her. The young men and boys that scurried about the halls running errands for all of those that requested something from them did not hold a high enough esteem to deserve a response from her; Saundra had learned this fact with from the stinging slap had fallen upon her left cheek at the heavy hand of a tutor who had seen her—not speak, but—smile at a page in passing.
She turned and held her chin steadily high, each shuffling step giving her the appearance of gliding across the gleaming tile floors. Her clear face held no expression upon it, once more at the threat of the same heavy hand by which she had learned the wrong of smiling.
Within minutes she stood before the chambers of the lone woman who ruled all of mankind with an iron fist, Queen Adelaide Halstein. Two fully armored guards held station before the doors, as if mere suits of armor positioned in such a way that the wind could perhaps whistle through them…but only until perhaps an ever so rare nobility or general that had proper authorization to enter the chambers of the Queen passed near, in which case they would turn in proper timing and swing wide the oversized oak doors above which the known national saying “Nam Umquam Promitto” was seared into the wood, as if to say they were the words by which the Queen herself governed.
The Princess did not turn her eyes toward either of the guards, listening for the shuffling of their feet against the hand-lain tile and watching as the doors were swung open and her name announced in the same timing she was so used to. With a gentle foot forward Saundra stepped inside the rotunda room, at the corner of which a tiny woman stood with her hands folded and arms crooked, resting against her body. The bright wide-set wrinkled eyes studied Saundra for a moment before the thin lips parted and instructed the young girl down the hall to her left, to a room in which she would find the woman she had waited to find.
Voices emerged from the room, both calm and calculated in their speech. The clicking of her heels stopped and she waited before the open arched doorway to the sitting room within which the Queen and an adviser were speaking.
“Your highness I pray you, our Eastern borders are losing ground…miles of fields have been burned. Our revenues are ruined. The Elves are on the attack…I pray you…spare soldiers from the army. We are desperate for trained men, men who may stand a chance against the heathens.”
“You know that is not the case, kind sir. Be that as it may, I will not send soldiers to fight your battle when more important ones must be fought closer to my own home. I will send an ambassador. If he shall return with positive news, I shall send no soldiers. Shall he return with negative news, I shall send soldiers and a second ambassador for peace negotiations.”
“Thank you your highness, always knowing what is best for the people. Thank you, thank you.”
“Dismissed.”
The final voice had been one the Princess Saundra recognized with certainty, the cold calculative aunt who had called her to this place but months ago, testing her vigor with only the toughest of tutors in the lands she controlled, and one from thousands of miles farther. She followed the man that exited the sitting room with her eyes, taking care to not speak or turn her lips up or down with any emotion as he left. This man held a closer stature to her, for he was a leader of his people, and a man—thus he owed nothing to her.
“Saundra. Please enter.”
Saundra never questioned her aunt’s intuitive ability; it had usually far surpassed her own. The hazel eyes followed her as she entered the room and took the only seat she was allowed and had been assigned the first time she had entered these chambers, adjusting her skirts as she sat and folding her hands in the near center of her lap, lifting her chin to look at the stabbing eyes directly.
“Do you know why you are here, my Saundra?”
The girl, untrusting of a voice nearly unpracticed, shook her head in an elegant manner—right, left, center.
“As you are nearly seventeen it is of just time to begin the process of finding for you a husband. You have studied, I assume, the process—so therefore you understand how tedious its throngs are, and how messy and long of a process it can become. Years. You will be suited for until you are eighteen, perhaps nineteen. The process is more difficult. We must find a youngest child that is suitable for the overseeing of an entire race. You will not be going to another kingdom. You will rule mankind.”
“Yes, your highness.”
The voice that whisked from her throat was empty of feeling, empty as she had learned to make her face—her heart being another matter entirely.
“Your first suitor will be arriving this afternoon.”
The reality felt as if a punch to the stomach, winding her and causing her cheeks to flush and her eyes to widen ever so slightly. The manicured nails tightened in the Queen’s lap and her arched brows pressed down with her abnormally squinted eyes. Saundra swallowed heavily.
“Maintain yourself, Saundra. Maintain yourself or you will be sent home.”
Home. The thought did not thrill her soul despite the horrors of the castle itself, her father’s utter disappointment that his daughter had been unable to retain her given title of Princess of Man would not depress her, it would cause her utter destruction. The beatings could perhaps kill her.
“You will see your tutor. And then you will meet your suitor.”
Saundra nodded, feeling a tightness in her chest as she stood in a lone sweeping motion and glided toward the arched doorway and a freedom from her aunt that did not seem to be freedom at all.
“Saundra.”
She paused, “Yes, your highness?”
“Try not to fail me, my dear.”
“Yes, your highness.”
 animepurinsesu · Sat Nov 25, 2006 @ 08:21pm · 1 Comments |
