Author's note: Hi! So this is my first fic! I hope you guys like it! Please feel free to leave reviews and tell me what you think!

Chapter One

I was back in my castle, my forest castle. I walked around the hallways where the walls were stone bricks and the ground was grass. In the grass there are a mix of gold and white wildflowers and the walls had moss and ivy growing up them. Every couple of feet there were aspen trees, reaching all the way to the ceiling. Their leaves were golden, like the wildflowers.

I walked through my castle until I came to a door. The door was as tall as the ceiling and was a dark wood. There were golden accents to the door and veins of ivy running through it. I reached up to the door and tried to push it open but it would not budge. None of the doors opened in my forest castle.

There was never anyone else in my castle; there were the occasional butterflies and birds of that were shades of blue, red, and green, but never any other sign of animals or people.

I turned away from the kept walking down a different hallway. I decided to run, I don't know why. What was I running from? Or running to? I kept running. Turn after turn and doorway after doorway I kept running. I turn a corner and there was a dead end. I sit against the wall and wait. I see a butterfly fly towards me and land softly on my knee.

I woke up in my room. The sun was just coming up and filling my room with an amber light. The light lit up my walls, which are covered in a soft floral wallpaper that has begun to fade since it had been there for as long as I could remember. I sat up in my bed. I loved my bed. It's a queen-sized bed with a white metal frame. My sheets are a light pink and incredibly soft. My comforter is white, with little fabric flowers sewn into it. I picked it out for my thirteenth birthday at a shop down the street.

I looked around my room. It has stayed the same since I was little, except the change from a cradle to a twin sized bed to my current bed. All the furniture is wooden and painted white, you could see the wood peaking through where the paint has chipped over the years. The floors are wooden, as are all the floors in the apartment.

I live above a bakery that my mom had owned with her three friends. I've lived here my entire life. The mornings always smell of cinnamon and the days smell of the various breads that would be sold the next day. My room is at the front of the building, so I have a windowsill that I could sit on and the watch people walk around on Main Street. We live in a small town in Illinois, with Main Street being the center of it.

Main Street is lined on both sides with shops just like ours, their fronts ranging in all colors of the rainbow, but they were faded, as they have not been repainted in decades. They sold things from clothes to candles to candy and most everything in-between. Most of the shopkeepers were old and didn't have any kids so I never really had anyone to socialize with.

I was homeschooled by Carol, my mother's friend. Carol was never much good at baking, so she spent most of her time chatting with customers or teaching me. Joy and Grace were the bakers. They were also my mother's friends. My mother died when I was born, my father before then, he was a soldier for the army. Grace, Carol, and Joy raised me, as was my mother's wish. They tell me I look more like her everyday, but I don't have any pictures of her or my father, and no one likes to talk about them. I used to ask more as a child, but I've given up on that now.

I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. The lights are still on, I must've forgotten to turn them off last night. I turned on the shower to the hottest setting, as it is the only way to get the water warm. I undress and check the water.

"Ow!"

Well, it's definitely hot. I turn down the heat and get into the shower. I stand there for a while just letting the water wake me up. I wash my long blonde hair. When I was little, Grace would sit and brush my hair while Carol read stories to Joy and me. Joy never lost her childhood excitement. My favorite stories were the fairy tales about princesses in far off places.

I finish up my shower and dried myself off. I stepped back into my room and grabbed my phone to check the weather. Today looks to be in the mid 70's. It's summer now. Illinois summers vary. Some years they are just rainy, some are extremely hot, some are colder, and some are mild, such as this one.

I look into my closet and grab a sundress that Grace got me last summer from one of the boutiques a few shops down. It is a pretty tan color with pink flowers. Joy got me one similar, except the flowers are blue. They always seem to get me the same things but in different colors.

When I'm dressed I quickly brush my hair and head downstairs. The regular morning rush is going on. My town is a magnet for tourists, so during the summers we are always busy with people wanting to visit our quaint little town.

I slip by Grace and Carol and grab a blueberry muffin and a bottle of fresh pressed juice we get from a store down the street. Carol is too busy chatting away with customers and Grace is busy icing some cinnamon rolls, but they both tell me good morning and Grace compliments me on my dress choice. I pop my head in the back where Joy is rolling out some dough and to tell her good morning. She says hello without looking up. I go and sit down at one of the metal tables in the back.

The shop is like a dollhouse. The room is a long rectangle with tall ceilings. The walls are a light purple with some areas chipped to show older layers of white and blue paint. The molding is white and matched the furniture that lines the side of the room. The tables and chairs are metal and painted white, like the ones you find on patios. Each table has a floral tablecloth, a stack of napkins, and a vase with fake flowers in it. On the other side of the room is the counter top and display area behind which Joy and Grace work their magic. A wall that doesn't quite reach the top of the ceiling, behind which the real baking takes place, cuts off the back of the room. There is a spiral staircase leading up to our living area in back of the room by the tables; as a little girl I would sit on the stairs and watch the people in the store.

I sit and eat my breakfast and think about what I should do with my day. I watch Carol help people decide what to get, usually persuading them to the more expensive pastries. Carol is tall, nearly six feet. She has brown hair that she likes to keep in a loose bun held up by a pencil. She is thin, aged; she looks like a mother, although none of them had children of their own. When Carol would home school me, she tended to teach me more literature and music. She encouraged me to sing around the house, she used to make me sing in front of customers, people would tell me they loved my voice, but now I mainly sing when I'm alone. She also taught me a love of reading, instead of watching movies I read books.

After I finished my muffin I went up stairs to grab my bag. I shoved my new book, a couple of granola bars, and a water bottle into it and slung it onto my shoulders. I bound down the stairs again, yelled goodbye to Joy, Grace, and Carol.

Outside I unchain my bike and begin riding down toward the forest. The part of Illinois I live in is very hilly, so biking is quite the workout, but I am used to it now. After you leave Main Street you have to go through all the houses of the town, which isn't many considering only 3,000 people live here. When I reach the edge of the forest I find my trail and head down it towards the waterfall.