2 – Ice Princess
As the carriage rolled steadily along, bumping occasionally, Mia stared out at the moving landscape by the window. Strangely, she felt no emotion at leaving the place that had been a home for her for over ten years... maybe for even longer. Her eyes were strangely void of any emotion at all, as blank as the diary she kept in her hands. There was none of the sadness or the apprehension that she'd heard about other girls having about leaving the convent. No tears of sadness for leaving what was routine and comfortable, or shrieks of happiness at going to someplace new and exciting. She did not have to suppress any emotions; there were none to do so with.
I wonder what's wrong with me? Have I just been alone for too long? Am I really the ice princess everyone speaks of? Cold-hearted and uncaring? She sighed quietly, neither sad nor depressed. She didn't know what she felt. Almost numbly she closed her eyes, letting what little breeze there was tease through her hair and cool her face.
Her thoughts remained with her for many sol-marks into the afternoon, until she saw that the sky was beginning to darken with the warning of twilight. Knocking on the roof of the carriage, Mia called for the guard to stop. The horses, previously at a brisk pace between a trot and a canter, slowed to a smooth walk, which transitioned into a standstill. She felt the shudder of the cozy room as the driver of the carriage dismounted, and then opened the door to ask what was the matter.
She'd probably never noticed him before – it was obvious he knew who she was, or at least her name. He was broad in the shoulders, able-bodied with strong arms. She felt that he was different from most guards, because this one had the beginnings of a smile or a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth instead of the uniform stiff grimace and frown the other guards mostly sported. Also, Mia noticed that he didn't... quite exactly wear the Guards of Angara uniform the way it was supposed to. Any other girl would have swooned on the spot, for his auburn hair spiked straight up (defying the science being discovered practically daily by the University) and his brown eyes were warm and fiery at the same time. Any other girl, that is, except for Mia.
"Is there a problem, Lady Mia?" He asked seriously. He had a deep voice, but underneath was a boyish, cheerful tone. He had to be around her age, because with him was a certain confidence and pride. She almost found herself smiling.
"No, no. I just wished to ride on the seat with you. I want to catch the beginnings of twilight." Mia pointed outside, where there was still a sliver of sun to their left. The strangest and most mystical time of any day, when it was neither day nor night, would be coming soon. It was also the best time for sitting and letting ideas come to her – she'd found it easiest to write when she was watching the amethyst mountains sparkle beneath the setting sun.
Now the guard did grin, and helped her down. "Priestess Lhiell warned me that you might wish something of the sort. Please, come on up. It gets a little lonely, driving for hours on end by myself sometimes."
After helping her up into the seat and then perching there as well, the guard picked up the reins again with one hand. However, and quite unusually, he did not slap the two horses' backs, but instead a small glowing ember was uncovered by his free hand and floated in front and between the two horses. They began cantering slowly again, and Mia had no trouble gazing around her to take in the landscape.
The view from above the carriage was more exciting, as everything did not rush past her, but came up to meet her as she watched. She had no time to think of the strange event of a piece of fire exiting from the palm of a guard's hand, because twilight arrived soon after they had begun and the mere beginnings of an idea began forming. Her hand scribbled tiny notes furiously, even as her eyes raced to watch the always-breathtaking scene of the sun disappearing behind the gorgeous, sapphire and amethyst colored mountains. Looking to the right, Mia saw the chain of mountains in which the convent was nestled, and her eyes brightened at noticing an exquisite pattern of color in the forever-present snow at the mountain's peaks. Soon, the entire page was filled with fiddling bits of sentences and select words, and now Mia took her eyes entirely off the passing backdrop of early evening to begin writing more slowly. The ideas flowed through her as fish swam through the river, unwavering and steadily. Even when her hand began cramping with so much writing, she only stopped for a moment, contemplating her choice of words, and then began again. Just as she finished penning in the last word of the first stanza of what she thought would make a lyrical poem, the carriage once again slowed, then stopped at a small building in a cluster of others similar to it.
She realized that it was full dark. The last time Mia remembered looking up at the sky, it had been glowing with an aura seldom seen in the winter, for it was seasonally cloudy then, and after that Mia had kept writing without noticing that the natural light of Sol had faded into the night sky, now filled with twinkling stars instead of an ocean of red and orange hues with pink and purple clouds littered throughout the heavens. She also realized that her source of light was a floating, contained fire, just in front of her and above her head. A startled mewl managed to escape her lips.
"Wh-what's that?!"
"Ah. So you have joined us back in reality. Lady Mia, this," the guard said, indicating the floating ball of light, "-Is my magic. I am an Adept of the Mars order, with fire as my elemental. It is quite useful when matches or flint and wood are not available or unusable, or I have no free hands in which to spark a light. I noticed how intent you were on your work, and I didn't want you to stop midway, so I constructed the light so you could continue. Milady." He added quickly from the ground, bowing.
Mia, unsure of how to respond to such a kind gesture, felt the temperature in her cheeks rise. No one her age had ever been so kind to her! And here this guard was, bowing and "my lady-ing" her, smiling, even. Not to mention that he was extremely handsome, and that one could easily feel safe with him, big as he was. Her voice, when she managed to utter something, stuttered horribly.
"Thank you, Guardsman... ah, Guardsman..." Mia finally managed, but then fumbled on his title, for he was a guardsman, but proper etiquette said that she ought to say his name after his title.
The guard bowed and smiled charmingly at her, waving toward the building to indicate that they should go in.
"I am Garet. It is a pleasure, Lady Mia. Now, shall we go inside, or will you stay outside and let the nighttime ice and frost convince you?"
For the first time in a long time – I can't even remember when I last laughed at a joke, or smiled in joyful humor – Mia smiled with no sorrow behind her mask. As the distance from the convent had increased, her unreadable, emotionless mask had dropped away. She had forgotten her past sadness and pain, at least for the time being, and wanted to sit and eat dinner without being worried about a cruel joke being flung her way.
"I'll come inside. For dinner. I'm hungry!" She announced, still in a soft voice, but much more smoothly.
Garet smiled and nodded, then helped her down from her seat. Mia jumped when he kicked at a large door on a building upon approach. "Ryder! Get your lazy arse over here and tend to my horses!"
Behind the door, a stream of curses that would have made the toughest of veterans wince began steadily and increased in volume, until it slid open and light streamed onto the snow, illuminating Garet and Mia. The curses abruptly stopped, and the boy who was behind the door paled and bowed several times in succession, shakily.
"S'cuse me – fer my language – ah, lady. I, heh, I didn't say allus t'ings a-purpose." Mia only chuckled and indicated for him to take the horses.
"Watch out for my gray mare. She is to be handled gently. Unless you want bite marks along your arm, with a finger or two missing." With Mia's sharp (and surprisingly, still gentle) words, Garet relinquished the carriage and horses' reins to the still-apologizing stableboy, and escorted Mia to the nearby inn. It had the inn's name – The Misty Lake – on a rectangular piece of wood and below was a quick painting of a lake with a shroud over it.
The building itself was nothing to shout over. In fact, if anything, it was average and not even worth mentioning. The stout boards were straight, well kept, and obviously scrubbed often, for the grain of the wood was smooth and the surface free of splinters. Well-kept, such a building radiated calm and warmth from its interior, even with the door closed. The grass around it sprouted neatly, and the flowers just beneath the raised porch didn't have any sign of destruction to them. Even the grass did not have any markings that would indicate rowdiness from the inn's occupants, most likely from many parts of the continent. This particular city was the crossing of several roads.
Upon entering, Mia evaluated that the inn was very well-kept and many people stayed in it, as Garet stomped his way through the entrance. The room they had entered held no people at all. There were open doorways leading out of the room on both sides, and one had much noise exiting from it. The other side seemed dark, but Mia could see from her position that there was a stairway leading up to the rooms.
"Master Farthen!"
"Ah! Garet, how nice to see you again. And who d'ya bring with you?" A mumbled murmur that Mia didn't quite catch reached her ears. "Mia? A young lady from the convent? T'is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, me'girl. A set o' rooms next tah each other, correct? Well, all the other floors have been filled up, so I'll put you at the top. You'll have quite some steps to climb. Did you bring many things, my lady?"
At Mia's negative shake of her head, the innkeeper nodded wisely and pointed to the door on the left. He slapped a set of keys into Garet's hands. "Smart of you, Lady Mia, to bring so little. I have no one to spare to haul all your baggage up the stairs." The man snorted in disgust, obviously in dislike for the women who brought trunks and trunks of things along with them to the palace. As the four who would leave in two days surely would.
"Go up four flights of stairs. Your rooms be at the right end. Would you like your dinner down here, or will you take them in your rooms?"
"Our rooms. I'm sure everyone else has already eaten, and I know Rhia sleeps at the top floor anyway."
"Right intelligent you are! Lady Mia, should he try to crawl into your room in the middle of the night, you make sure to scream for Rhia, hear? She be in the room next to yours. Never know what these funny guardsmen will try." Mia blinked emotionlessly, looked down to prevent herself from bursting into laughter, and pulled an impassive mask on once again. With a nod and a curtsy, she began upstairs, dragging Garet with her, him denying every word Farthen had spoken the entire way. The innkeeper chuckled, shook his head, and went back to work accounting for expenses and costs behind his small wooden desk.
The din from the dining room lessened as they climbed up each stair. Garet subsided into a sullen silence, but when they had reached their rooms, he was his old smiling and courteous self again. Hauling her small trunk of belongings into Mia's room, he pulled it off his shoulders and placed it at the foot of the bed. Just as he finished, though...
"Now! Garet, are you back again to harass us all?"
He spun around warily, hand automatically going to the hilt of his sword, then relaxed slightly to greet a short girl familiarly by grunting.
"Same as always... Lady Mia, don't worry yourself about Garet, he's like this around me often. I actually have enough wits to tease and joke around with him every time he comes around. Here is your dinner-" She had hazel colored hair that was pulled into a bun, with short wisps coming undone. Her face was flushed from racing up the stairs after them.
"Chicken soup. A loaf of bread straight from the oven. Some fresh fruit juice concocted just this morning, a serving of vegetables, and meat. More for Garet, because there's so much more of him to fill. By the way, my name is Rhianon, but everyone calls me Rhia. I'm a working girl here, the daughter of Farthen and brother of Ryder, and I plan on becoming the innkeeper when Papa's too old. I bunk next door to this one, on the left, so if you have any troubles, just rap on the wall and I'll be right over. I'll be back to pick up your dishes in a few hours." Then Rhianon gusted out and once again, only Mia and Garet were left in the room. Confused from the quick encounter, Mia sat down to devour her dinner, Garet doing the same across the table from her.
"Now make sure you visit!" Rhia called, the morning after an uneventful night. Ryder, the stableboy Mia and Garet had seen, had a face that was still as red as Garet's hair. Innkeeper Farthen was waving cheerfully from the doorway as Garet drove the horses down the road to the capital city. Mia, against his wishes, had seated herself next to him, saying that she didn't mind the sun and wanted to breathe in some fresh air anyway. To his hidden surprise (after all, he'd been stationed at his post for a year) Mia did not put on a bonnet, instead letting her hair fly loose from its tight ponytail. She did, however, have a light cloak on against the morning's cold, gusty breeze.
The sun was shining, but clouds obscured its rays very often. However, the white, puffy clouds were of no danger to them, for a storm wasn't due until next month. The wind had blown itself out during the night, but a cold frost still lingered over everything, so that a white sheen could be seen on every surface, from the trees to the inn and even the last dying grasses of autumn.
Most of their ride was silent, both just sitting next to each other and admiring the day. The frost did not melt until late in the day, about the time that their lunch, and their arrival at the palace, was due. From talking to Garet, Mia found out that he had pushed the horses as fast as they would go yesterday when they started out in the early afternoon.
"I wanted to stay at Farthen's inn, because I'm most known to him as a guard and all. Also, he was a friend of my mother's until we moved away to the capital," Garet explained.
"How long have you been a guard?" Mia, for a reason unknown to herself, had felt a curious feeling inside her, one that was similar to the bond she felt with Priestess Lhiell. Could she finally be trusting someone? A friend, of sorts?
"Heh. I'd set out to become a knight, but after I was knighted about a year ago, I didn't feel like it was my sort of life. So, I signed in with the Guards of Angara at the capital. Since I'd already been trained with weapons as a page and squire for eight years, they gave me a station at the convent." The guard shrugged, a small smile still tugging at his face. He glanced at Mia before looking back to the road.
"They told me one of the Priestess's had wanted me there to take you to the capital a year after I was stationed, and guard you when you were there. Liolo? Iaera? Someone by that name."
"Priestess Lhiell?"
"Yeah, that's her. She didn't give me many details, but just told me that if any harm came to you, I'd find myself without a head. You must be a really important person, Lady Mia." When she didn't answer, Garet looked over. She had a speculative look on her face, and her eyes were pools of sadness. He let her sit with her thoughts as they rolled along.
"Milady?"
"Mia."
Silence for a moment.
"What?" He asked, confused.
"I'm just Mia. I don't care for being called a lady," she said dismissively. He nodded, then waited for her to say something. She seemed to be struggling to find the right words, her eyebrows knitted together anxiously and hands clutched tightly underneath the cloak.
"I don't know who I am, for true. Quite frankly, I know my name is Mia, but it seems I've spent my whole life at the convent. I've been literally raised at the convent. I can't remember my mother or father, and I don't know if I have any siblings. I don't know where I come from. The only thing the Priestesses would tell me was that my birth name is Mia, and I'd been left there when I was very young."
The guard blinked in surprise, absorbing it all.
"Was it hard for you? From the way you were acting when we left, it didn't seem as if you had any friends, and you were quite frosty. Chilly."
"I have no friends," she replied emotionlessly. "All the others were interested in was face paint and dresses and embroidery and learning how to flirt properly and wave their handkerchiefs at men. I have no likenesses with them. I look different, I act different. When it comes down to it, I'm more comfortable by myself than with those empty-headed clucking chickens, Sir Garet."
"If you insist to be called Mia, I insist on Garet. No one calls me 'sir' except for people trying to impress me." She turned her head aside, but Garet could almost see the small, almost nonexistent smile on her face.
"I can agree with you on that. About the vapid women from the convent, I mean," Garet continued. "I cannot tell you how many times, taking ladies to and from the palace, that they tried to seduce me. Every conversation floating to my ears consisted only of clothes and face-paint, jewelry and hairstyles," Garet said in disgust. A comfortable silence settled over them again, and the two just sat at the top of the carriage as it slowed, and the entire capital city came into view.
"You're going to have to get into the carriage. Proper etiquette." Mia hopped down reluctantly, smoothing out her dress and loosing her hair. All the front strands had gotten tangled in the wind.
"I know. I just find the small amount of room constricting. I'd much rather walk, or even ride, but etiquette dictates that we ride in a carriage and get out with the help of guards or footmen or whomever. Of course, all the others are worried about dirtying their hair and their faces and their dresses and shoes." Another noise of disgust. "That's the way things are, I suppose." A sigh punctuated the remark. Garet couldn't help but watch out of the side of his vision as her beautiful, icy blue eyes blinked, glinting in what sunlight there was.
"Well, we have a little time before we're supposed to arrive, and this is the slow time in traffic to the capital. So let's talk." Garet turned his clouded brown eyes towards her as he held open the door. "You've just turned nineteen, if what Priestess Lhiell told me was correct. What do you want to do in life?"
"Find my family. And my home. No matter what it takes. Because that's what life is all about. Family and home," Mia replied automatically, stepping carefully into the carriage. Her head reappeared in one of the blue-curtained windows. "I've been wondering about my family all my life. Wondered where my roots are, if I have any brothers and sisters. What our house would have looked like, if my parents were humorous or strict, serious or laid-back. I've been missing out on what most other people in this realm has. At least I have a little information – I'm a noble girl, and my name is Mia. From that, if I search hard enough, maybe I'll find what I'm looking for."
"No husbands or lovers? Isn't that what the convent trained you for?"
"I never cared, truly. I listened, and I know how to eat with the right utensils at dinner and all such and such as like, but I'm not that stiff and proper. I'd really prefer sitting at a window balcony and writing or dreaming. Or singing," Mia sighed. "No one will like me anyway. Once those four girls from the convent arrive, they'll taint my image until gossip follows in an imaginary train behind me. They did the same at the convent, and they'll do the same here, because they don't like me. Frankly, I don't know why I trust you. I've been shy and quiet around everyone my entire life, because they all envy me for what they do not possess. But for some reason, I thought you were someone I could trust. I don't know, maybe its the work of the Nereid or Thor, or any of the other gods."
Flattered, Garet grinned. "I appreciate you trusting me with such personal information, Mia. Do you..."
When he didn't continue, Mia smiled from her seat. He was still standing at the door, which he hadn't closed yet. "Yes?"
"Do you think I could listen to you sing sometime? I mean, I hope I am not being too forward," the big guard clarified hastily, "But it seems as if you're the kind with a beautiful voice. From – uh – talking. You know. Yes, that's it," he stammered. Obviously he was uncomfortable talking about such things. Mia smiled and nodded uncertainly, but it was because she'd never sung for anyone besides Priestess Lhiell before.
"You don't have to if you don't want to."
"No... it's just that I've never sung for anyone else before."
They laughed uncertainly
"Garet, if you're going to stand there, at least close the door. I'd like to get to the Palace in time for the nooning meal." He jumped up, laughing, which put a hesitant smile to Mia's face, and closed the carriage door. It shook as he sat himself in the driver's seat, and flicked the reins gently.
"Let's go, Starlight, Darkflame," Garet said. The horses began cantering down the road into the capital city, and toward their destination: the palace.