First, English is my second language. I will try to edit as best as I can. Please help me with my grammar and word choice. I would really appreciate it.
Second, I love writing, but this is the first time I write fan fiction, and also the first time I share my writing with an audience.
Third, I plan this to be a long term fiction. So bare with me the short chapters, it will be easier to update that way and get me more motivated daily.
Chapter 1: Little Red
April was born in the spring, of course in April, so she loved wildflowers that grew strongly and viciously in the field behind her family's horse ranch. Each of her three sisters, Libby, Kimmie, and Alice, was gifted with a cute pony on their fifth birthdays. It was their father's way of teaching them how to take care of a being, a life. When April turned five that spring, Jax, the little piglet, got fat so fast that her father decided to turn it into apple smoked bacon. Little April did not want to see her favorite pet go to the smoke house. She begged her father to give her Jax for her birthday instead of a pony. She got what she wanted as she always did. He never said no to her, and since the purpose of giving her a pony was teaching her how to take care of a pet, giving her a piggy would provide the same purpose.
April's father was a preacher. He believed that everything happened for a reason. April's tears begging for the life of Jax meant something, he thought. Among his four daughters, April had always been Joe Kepner's favorite. She shared his belief. She was truly a preacher's daughter. He trusted her and wanted her to become a lady of a neighboring house with kids and a farm, but for some reasons he always had the feeling that she was the one with wings that would fly out of this small village. April's sisters called her Duckie as in the ugly duckling. Joe and his wife, Karen also called her Duckie but only because they saw her becoming a swan. He sometimes he wish her not to grow up and be their little Duckie forever.
That summer in an attempt to show Jax' worth to keep him alive, April took Jax to a piglet competition. She bathed him and brushed his hair, and tied a cute little red ribbon around his neck. The little piglet was so happy, he kept oink oink oink the whole time. His little slanted eyes disappeared under the heavy layers of his eyelids. It was the closest to a smiling piggy they ever saw. So April and Jax won the first prize, and Jax was kept alive since. Everyone was surprised to see a piggy that could show such expressions. April felt proud that she did a good job training Jax. She thanked god that she talked herself out of putting Jax in a dress. Her effort of getting the prize might be in vain if the panel thought that was too much. The ribbon worked perfectly for the purpose of trying to impress, but not trying too hard, she told her father. Joe felt sometimes his little girl was too old for her age, but when he saw the missing front teeth when she smiled happily showing him her first prize ribbon, he let out a laugh, "Good job, Duckie." He wished again that she would not grow those wings and fly away like those swans migrating to the south every winter when this North get frozen.
Before he could say anything else, April ran away from her father eager to see her mother and show her the ribbon, and tell her that she won. Towards her running in a rushing and panic manner, a olive-skinned lady in her rabbit fur cloak called out, "Jacks, where are you?" April stopped in her step thinking why she was looking for her piggy. "Why are you looking for my piggy?" She spoke out loud her thought. People from the North did not have the olive skinned, they were either fair skinned or pale. This lady must not have been from here, she thought, and once again, she spoke her thought, "You aren't from here, are you?" The lady smiled at her, missed her first question, and answered her second one simply saying, "I am from the South coming to enjoy the beautiful summer here. It is very hot there during this time of the year. I must look for Jax, but it was nice meeting you little Red. My name is Catherine Avery. What's your name?" April giggled at the way she called her little Red and replied, "I am April. And I am five." April spotted her mother in her sight and forgot that she was still wondering why the lady was looking for April's piggy, she ran to her mother eagerly showing off the ribbon she won with Jax. When she turned around looking for the lady with that beautiful rabbit cloak that her father used to tell her that was a rare commodity here in the North, she was nowhere insight. Disappointedly she looked up to her mother exasperated, "I saw this lady with this amazingly beautiful rabbit cloak even as pretty as the one grandma wore in her portrait on our dinner hall wall. But she left without saying goodbye to me."
Kneeling down to her daughter, Karen said, "She might be in a hurry." April nodded in agreement thinking that lady needed to find her piggy, Jax. She laughed with herself such a coincidence that the lady's piggy was named Jax as well. Jax was a cute name for a piggy, April decided. Karen carried her five year old daughter in her arms walking back to their carriage where Joe had been waiting to head home for supper. The picture of the family of six with the four daughters and their mother in the carriage, and their father galloped the horses away got smaller and smaller from where Jackson was standing on a branch of the maple tree. "How dare she called me a piggy," he let out. Looking down, he saw his mother's furious face. Jackson hesitantly climbed down knowing he could not get away from his mother's wrath. He might as well listened for her lecturing. He knew he was the only child, the heir of the kingdom. He knew how dangerous it was to wander around. He knew how he might be kidnapped. He knew that he might fell climbing that high. He knew, but he wanted to play, to see, to explore. He was only eight anyway. Facing his mother on the ground, he apologized for disappearing but he ignored his mother's request of promising not to repeat that again. He knew he could not keep that promise. Because eleven years later, he once again disappeared from his soon-to-be throne and went on a journey to find his own path. Little did anyone know, his path will cross a certain swan's migration years later.