Here I was, sitting in a jolting carriage heading towards Aythoria. I was almost looking forward for the part of this journey where I had to climb out of the carriage and onto a horse. It had been nearly two weeks since my encounter with Thomas, and my dreams about him had finally stopped. Something about him just stuck with me, like a bad case of the flu. Every time I would pass a knight in the halls, his mocking grin would come back to me, and I would have to duck into a nearby room to avoid flushing, and making that knight think I was sweet on them.

The same day my dreams stopped, Char announced to the Royal Court that James and I would be taking a trip to Aythoria to renew a peace treaty. It gave me quite the shock. Apparently, he had told James and he was supposed to tell me, but James often times forgets things such as that. Once when he was younger, nine in fact, we had been on a short trip to the country right out side of the city, and he had forgotten to tell us a message had been received that there would be a hunting party that day. To make a long story short, I almost lost my head to a huntsman arrow that day. I'm sure James had conveniently forgot about that little escapade too.

At first, it had been planned that Char would go with his wife to accompany him. He changed his mind because of the Queen's delicate condition. He didn't want injure her or their unborn child on the journey, so he opted to sending James and I. Naturally, he didn't tell Ella this. She would have insisted upon going anyway, and that she would be fine. He simply said he was busy with the ongoing Ogre Wars. (Which was true, but his wife wasn't as naïve as he could have hoped in moments such as these, and she was a little skeptical.)

So here I was, bouncing about like a gunnysack full of potatoes, nearing the Elves' Forest, and supposedly somewhere just past the town of Jenn. My charming brother was already riding horseback. One of the joys of being born male.

(A/N Jenn is a town mentioned in Ella Enchanted.)

I had passed near an hour of completely nothing. I decided to take out Ella's magic book. She had been kind enough to lend it to me for the journey because she knew just how tedious they could be.

I opened to a re-telling of Sleeping Beauty. Turns out the real Sleeping Beauty wasn't all that good looking. Her prince was being wooed by another, prettier girl, even though he was meant for her. She couldn't bear to see him fall in love with the other girl, so she inflicted the spell upon herself. Turns out, he liked her more anyway.

I turned the page looking for anything else time consuming. Perhaps a novel would pop up. Instead of the entire works of the fairies, like I had hoped, I got a picture of Char attempting to explain to Edmund why hors d'oeuvres are for eating, not throwing mercilessly at innocent people who happened to walk by. (Edmund actually won that conversation, and even convinced Char to join in on the canapé throwing.) I flipped the page again, and much to my surprise, (and by much I mean much, I even dropped the book,) there was a picture of Thomas.

He was on horseback with another group of guards and he was in the middle of a forest, a forest that looked oddly familiar. Where had I seen that forest before? Then it hit me. I had just passed that part of the forest. I stuck my head out of the carriage window and peeked around behind the carriage. Sure enough, Thomas, and the group of guards were there, scanning the tree line for ogres and bandits.

I was about to run through my list of complaints and reasons why this was completely unfair, when the carriage jerked to a halt.

Somebody yelled something but I couldn't quite catch what they said. The next moment the guards were surrounding my carriage. I didn't panic or anything. Lots of times this is only over a fallen tree or something.

That's just what it was. A fallen tree, except times a thousand. Turns out a group of highwaymen had come through here a couple of weeks before and knocked over a bunch of trees to make their prey easier. They had plundered the passer-biers for near two and a half weeks until they had been arrested by the sheriff, (not before they stole his stuff three times though,) and were now serving time in the dungeons. There were only about twenty trees knocked over, but it takes a while to clear a tree when most people going through simply go around the mess, without trying to get any trees off of the road.

Naturally, traveling with chivalrous knights and all, we couldn't go on until every single twig had been lifted from the road as to not hinder any future travelers. Not to say that James or I would allow the caravan to continue without clearing the road; it was our country we were talking about, and we were trying to help it.

"Okay," James said, coming to the carriage door, "We're going to be here a while, you might as well get out." He pulled the carriage door open, stepped aside and held out his arm to help me down with.

I never really got why that was considered chivalrous. To get out of a carriage I have to hold my skirts off the ground to avoid stepping on them and falling, slowly and gracefully lower myself to the ground, land lightly, and still manage to be holding onto by brother's arm. Though it seems as if his arm might help in the balancing act, you can't really hold onto it, you simply must 'grace it with your presence' as one of my schoolmistresses had taught me, meaning that I could barely even touch his arm, and not help balance myself with it. Of course, my brother wouldn't have understood this, he was male and simply thought he was helping with the process, and didn't know what pains us women went through.

"Now that we are deep in the Elves' Forest, we shouldn't have too many problems with ogres," James said, walking with me to the side of the clearing, were a log that had been cleared was already laying, "In fact, we might even run into a couple of elves." He finished this with a grin. All three of my brothers seemed to have a fancy for all the exotic creatures in our lands. Char even battled ogres for a while. (Now he stayed at the palace more then actual fighting, but most ogres had been run out, so there wasn't much fighting to be done.)

"That's nice," I said sweetly, I didn't really care if I saw an elf or not, there were plenty of them at the menagerie. I sat down on the log that James had walked me to, and pulled out Ella's Fairy Tale book that I had brought with me from the carriage.

"I'll be fine here," I told him, "I have Ella's book to keep me company." He nodded and left. We had both found out about the book when Ella first married Char, and he knew that it would keep me amused while he helped the knights clear the path.

Near forty-five minutes passed when I came to the end of Ella's book. I would have turned to the front of the book to keep reading, but I knew if I read anymore I would be plain sick of it by the time we got going again, and then I would be faced with a dreadfully long boring trip. Also about this time, the knights were half done with their task and decided to take a break. Unfortunately for me, my brother seemed to have made friends with a certain knight with the name of Thomas.

"Cecilia," James said, striding over to me closely followed by Thomas, "May I have the pleasure of introducing Sir Thomas."

"Sir Thomas," I said with a polite curtsy. The last thing I wanted to happen was for my brother to find out about our previous tryst. Though James was chivalrous to ladies and all, he didn't see any need to refrain from teasing his sister.

Thomas raised an eyebrow at my acting as though we had never met, but went along with it and bowed curtly. "Princess Cecilia," he replied, with a short nod, almost as though he was trying to dismiss me. That simply would not do.

"James," I said quickly, stepping to his side and grasping his arm, being sure to put my back to Thomas, blocking him out, "Could you tell me again how it was the Elves' won this forest back from the gnomes?"

I had panicked and couldn't think of any other questions. I knew James would see right through me, after all, I had barely listened the first time he told me, why would I want to waste my time again?

Apparently his thoughts were occupied by the project underway for he simply replied, "I can't right now, I must go speak with Sir Bert over matters which don'' concern you." he said. "But I'm sure Sir Thomas here could explain it to you, besides, he is just newly a knight, which means his is fresh out of his training and schooling, and would know more bout it then I would anyway." With this my brother smiled and left us, walking over to discuss 'matters that did not concern me' with Sir Bert. I made a mental note to kick him next time I got him alone.

"So, Princess Cecilia," Thomas said, taking my brother's place, and strolling along beside me, "I'll assume you could care less about the history of the Elves' and just wanted to get me out of the way?"

I carefully studied his face. Was he mad? Or just annoyed? I couldn't see any emotion in his face at all, not even his eyes told tales. "What makes you say that?" I questioned in reply, taking pains to scrutinize any emotion, but still, I found none. I concluded that he was mad, or he would have no reason to hide his emotions. Unless he really was nonchalant about the whole ordeal, but I dismissed that idea almost immediately. He would have simply started in on why the Elves' Ingenuity won out over the Dwarves' Power if he didn't care what my motives for asking James that question was.

"Elves' and Dwarves', milady?" He said, disbelief in his voice, he clearly thought me petty for such an attempt, "If you did not wish to have my company, you could have said so other wise." I did not think it wise to reply to such a comment.

"And speaking of which, " Thomas said, his cool, clear voice still retaining its original calmness, "Why don't you wish to have my company?"

This stopped me, why didn't I want his company? Simply because he was conceited I told myself. Another half of me replied, 'I was acting as rude as he was, and he didn't seem to notice or mind much.'

Perhaps it was what our court astronomer would have said had he have known the situation, 'The paths of some stars meet and intertwine, and others simply collide most abruptly.' A simple explanation but that was promptly shot down by the fact that I had never once listened to the astronomer before.

Something about Thomas simply tweaked my nose, and I couldn't stand it. Perhaps it was the fact that he seemed quite different then he had at the palace gates. 'Probably because he's just trying to get to become a knight,' I told myself, 'And doesn't want to tick off the King's sister, since the King is the one who decides who gets to become a knight.'

"Well?" Thomas asked, waiting rather impatiently for a reply.

"I-I-," I stuttered, what was I going to say? "I don't know what you are talking about." I mentally kicked myself. He would definitely see around that one.

"Cecilia, don't st-" he started, but I cut him off.

"Don't tell me to don't start," I told him, getting rather worked up, "I didn't ever say I didn't want your company, but I'm starting to think against that decision, because you start going off on some spiel of how I'm not being amiable to you!"

"Amiable," he started back at me, his voice growing louder as he spoke, "You cut me off when I was talking with your brother, you tried to ignore me, you come up with a bunch of lame excuse of why you are being so rude, and you call that amiable, I hardly consider that the least bit friendly."

About this time, I noticed that some of the other knights were looking at us rather strangely. I glanced at my brother, and he raised an eyebrow at me. It sort of prompted me to go back to my royal place. It wouldn't do well to embarrass the entire family over a childish dispute. Somehow, whenever a royal does something bad, it reflects upon the entire coterie, but when one of our subjects did something wrong, we were supposed to allow them to be distinguished from their family. My brother was simply reminding me of this.

My voice went balmy and pleasant again, "I apologize for any woe I caused you," I said, trying to be over-the-edge nice, just to put him in the fool's spot. He however simply went along with it, and smiled, the same smile that had infuriated me before.

"And I you." His syrupy sweet voice was making me mad. But I couldn't show it, of course.

"All's forgiven."

"You philanthropist, you."

"I try." Somehow, this conversation wasn't turning out how I had thought it would.

Thomas nodded curtly and walked off. I first I thought it extremely rude of him, but I quickly noticed other knights resuming their work and I sat back down upon the log. To appear as the conversation hadn't bothered me as it had, I opened the Ella's book. To my horror and delight a picture of Thomas popped up on the first page.

~$~$~$~$~

Near three hours later we had reached the Elves' Forest, and were preparing to lodge the night with them. It was nearing dusk, therefore all travel was deemed too perilous and chancy to continue. I had heard Ella's story of being captured by Ogres' after traveling through the area past the Elves', and agreed with my brother's decision to accept the hospitality offered to us.

"Lose our temper did we?" asked James, coming up behind me.

"Early?" I asked. Assuming that was what he meant, "He wasn't being a rose either."

"He's not expected to be," James replied, "He's not royal, and he's not a lady."

For all I cared, 'Ladies' could run around barefoot. "I know," I said sullenly. My brother simply grinned.

"By the way, some Elven-women cooked up some carrot and potato soup, you should try it. It's delicious." With that he walked away, in all likelihood to get more soup, and left me wondering about the day's events.

A/N Okay, I have a real good excuse to why it took me forever to update. My computer had a virus, and I couldn't even get on to type much less update…. Anyway, Thank for all your reviews! I did a short chapter because I only have about two hours to get every thing done, and this was all I could type in that amount of time…

Here we go…

Christa~ Thank you so much for your review, it really made my day… Not many people bother to write such long reviews!

Skritch417~Once again, such a long review!! Yea. Anyway, take the idea of using the knight…I believe you when you say you had the idea. Even if you didn't, it's kinda a broad range, and most likely not very similar to my story.

Niki~ Yea!! Someone got that I was trying to make her annoying!

Ali~ Hopefully you like this one as much!!!

Echidne~ I think I will read that book…

Nabz~ I am going to add more Ella. In about four chapters though. Why? Because I am going to have James, Cecilia and Thomas spend some time in Aythoria. (I have to introduce a new character…)

Clearbrook~ Sorry for the delay…

Che~ Thanks!

Victoria Regina~ Thanks heaps!

The Great and Wunnerful High Goddess~ Actually, I have had a little more time to write this then I said… ;) And peer pressure is why I finally put this out…Thanks for all the compliments too…

As always, please click that little button down there and REVIEW!!!!