Aroha Sounor, daughter of Lord Barkus and Lady Faralda and sister of Meridia Sounor, had learned being poor was the same as the weak, the pitiful and the helpless. Status was important in the Angielle aristocrat society. People like her family had no room for the lower status. Yet, this happened to her.
She was sure it all started from the day before, when she, along with her father and sister, had walked along the streets of Angielle's aristocrat street in search of luscious gowns for Meridia and antiques for her father's collections. Maybe even possible suitors, knowing her father's desire to wed his daughters off. It was important for a nobleman's daughter to be married to a respectable lord. While her curvaceous sister inherited the beautiful raven hair and bright, blue eyes like their father, Aroha obtained her mother's copper red hair and stormy-gray eyes. A disappointment, her father would say.
"Sister, are you thinking in the clouds again? Father will be angry at you for drifting off."
A white gloved hand clasped her left wrist, jolting Aroha to examine at her sister, dressed in a lovely light blue sundress and white shoes, made by their family tailor. Aroha shuddered. Compared to her sister and her father's expensive suit, Aroha's slender form in a soft green outing dress and black flats was merely her being the odd one out.
"I'm fine." Aroha muttered and glanced towards their father noticing a beggar on the street, with a cane supporting his clasped hands and his moustache moving slightly. He didn't like what he saw. A hunched, old woman in a large, ragged cloak came to them with a basket in her hand, a weak but motherly voice escaping her lips.
"Excuse me," she said, "would you like to buy one of my fresh apples?" She smiled a one-tooth smile and held out a beautiful red apple from her basket to Barkus. He sneered and knocked away the basket from the old woman's hand, toppling down every fresh apple she planned to sell. Even if there had been witnesses, nobody would help her.
"As if I would eat from such a disgusting commoner. Come, girls. This street is being infested." Barkus stuck his nose high and began walking forward, with Meridia following suit. Aroha watched the old woman pick up the apples, the basket still lying on the ground on its side.
"Aroha!" She winced. "What are you doing?!"
"Nothing, Father!" Aroha stuttered under the glare of her father. She glanced down at an apple near her feet. Seeing the old woman reach for it, she kicked the apple to the other side of the road. The old woman looked up and Aroha faced away from her. "I'm simply annoyed by the apples this beggar had spilled! You think commoners would learn about cleanliness." Satisfied with that, her father turned away with Meridia to continue walking. Aroha looked at her father's back until she was sure he wasn't looking.
Quickly and quietly, she set the basket upright behind the old woman who had turned her back to Aroha and snuck some of the gold she had into it. Once done, she walked back to her father and sister, just as she heard the old woman's voice against her ears.
"You'll learn one day, Ancilla Maleen. I promise you." The shiver along her back made Aroha turn but the woman was gone without a trace. It unsettled Aroha but the walk home was left with no incidents. She figured she was merely being paranoid. How could an old beggar do anything to them? Surely, she was harmless.
That was all Aroha remembered before she suffered a week under her curse. The day after that, everything went wrong.
"Have you heard about the Sounor family?"
"Oh, I did! Can't you believe it, a thief, found in the late Lady Aroha's bedroom? Who would be so cruel as to steal anything from there?"
"I know, and after the incident. Suffocated in a sealed room in the middle of the night! The poor family…To deal with such a tragedy and a thief!"
Aroha tugged her hood over her face and turned away from the conversation. Someone noticed her face but they whispered in disgust. "That girl…My, such a pathetic beggar." "Ugh, I have been trying to avoid her. Just ignore her!" Aroha shivered under the coldness of the winter air and ventured onward. 7 days, she had been walking up and down the aristocrat street with little to no recognition of her identity. 7 days since she was chased out of her own home. 7 days, no one knew of her living existence. Lady Aroha was dead for seven years it seems. No one recognized her, even after she told them. They only saw a servant girl. Maid Maleen was the story Aroha was cursed with. From a princess to a kitchen servant, from a noblewoman to a beggar. She grasped the gold necklace around her neck to examine it once more. A heart-shaped, transparent gem rested on the center of the round jewelry. Every time she took it off, it would come back around her neck when she least expected it. It had been on her since the curse started. It was related. For what, she didn't know. But the witch would.
"You better be around this street, witch." She muttered to herself and lifted her head. The same street with the same shops she had passed by a week before. There were no other encounter that day. The old woman was a witch. She read the fairytales in her childhood and heard the curses Angielle had been plagued with from the whispers of other aristocrats. It seemed going to boring, gossiping parties was worth it.
"A lady shouldn't be out and about in the dark, miss. Especially alone." Aroha heard the familiar voice and found the old woman in front of an alley, smiling her one-tooth smile. "Maid Aroha, what a shock you had! Did you enjoy the lovely surprise I have set? I heard about your dazzling escape. Off into the dark night you go!" She laughed her crackling laugh, her hunched form walking up to her. Aroha felt insulted. Why would she curse her like this?
"You cursed me!" Aroha screeched. "You cursed me with a fairytale curse! No one remembers me! And my sister..." She clenched her hands into fists. "She doesn't even recognize me! She called the guards on me and I was forced out of my own home!" She raised her head and cried out. "Why did you do this to me?!"
The witch sighed. "Poor Maid Maleen, a princess so loved and cared. Down she goes, a disguise she fared." She started. "The fake bride, so hideous and ashamed. Hidden in her web of lies, his wife, she proclaimed."
"For mercy's sake, just tell me or I'll-"
Her words stopped cold at the howling roar of the wind and there, hovering above her, was the witch with her hood pulled back. Gray hair wisped and framed her wrinkled face, with eyes as white as the snow itself. She was no longer hunched or weak. She was firm and strong. One withered hand stroked along the side of the girl's cheek. "Mercy? There is no such thing for you, my dear. Not now." The old witch smiled wickedly. Aroha finally noticed how her cloak was more smoke than fabric. Her smile disappeared. "You're trapped, child. In here." She tapped on Aroha's chest. "Our encounter proved that. That necklace," she pointed towards the accessory, "shall be your curse and your cure. When the gem becomes a sunset, only then shall you learn. Love shall be your savior."
"Lo…" The young lady furrowed her brows and ran a hand along her hair. Love would be her savior? Impossible! "You can't be serious! Why am I the only one receiving this curse? Why me?"
"Faralda wished for it." The name alone shook Aroha to her core. The witch simply resume her words. "She wished, on her death bed, for your freedom, Aroha."
"That's a lie!" Her own mother cursed her? Her last words was this? She immediately stepped away from her and shook her head. "Who…Who are you?"
The witch gave a quiet smile. "Our time is up, little serpent." At that, the winter wind blew from behind the witch and grew stronger and stronger until Aroha had to shield from the impressive blast of currents.
"Wait!" Aroha called out against the winds. "Wait!" By the time the wind had calmed down, the old woman had disappeared with a crackled laugh. She was alone in that dark street. She turned around and back, her breathing heavy and released into the white mist from the winter cold. "Witch, come back!"All that was left was a piece of paper on the ground of the empty street. Aroha picked it up and there, only an address and a name was left.
Marchen Tavern.