This is very short, but it is the beginning of getting me back into writing this story. I've lost site of it what with essays to write for school and the sequel I'm writing for my story Crush and another story I'm writing about Pride and Prejudice. But I've discovered it, and delightedly decided what to do with it. So this is short and sweet, but is really just to segue into all the action that is about to start. Stuff is about to hit the fan my friends. I hope you haven't lost interest after it and me being idle for so long. Sorry, and I promise to do better in the future… don't hold me to that.
Abriella had been shown to a very large, very sumptuous room in which she immediately sat down and convinced herself that her situation was not that bad. However, she was now more than ever convinced that she must escape. The scene in the hallway with the Prince had shaken her, and the cold look in his mother's eyes had certainly not been a comfort. She had wished since her imprisonment in the tower for nothing more than to be out, to be caught up in dangerous, exciting adventures, now she'd come to the conclusion that dangerous and exciting weren't exactly the same thing.
"I'll just leave," she said out loud to herself. She had made a habit of filling the sometimes-numbing silence of the tower with her own voice. It had often floated out her window and echoed through the forest, making her feel less lonely. There was no echo now. As soon as the words passed her lips they halted in the cold castle air. In a castle she assumed must be filled with more people than she'd been around in ten years, she was more alone than she had ever been. With this devastating conclusion, she threw herself face down on the pile of pillows at the head of the bed, and cried herself to sleep.
The next few days were a blur of activity. The prince was always hovering somewhere in Abriella's vicinity, the king was always yelling at a servant, the prince, the queen, or at her, the queen was always glancing coldly in Abriella's direction when she was not desperately trying to gain the attentions of some man.
Abriella had at first been amazed by all that there had been to look at in the castle. Looking at things, people, observing, began to be a way to escape her unhappiness about being trapped with such people. From observing, she now knew that the queen rarely went to bed alone, but never went to bed with the king. She had at first been appalled by this piece of observation, and even now the knowing of it made her dislike the queen even more, but she learned quickly to ignore such things, as everyone else did. Everyone knew the queen was unfaithful, but everyone acted as if they didn't know.
Another observation Abriella had made about the queen also concerned Prince Timothy's cousin, Lord Evan. He was perhaps the most handsome man Abriella had ever seen, and in some ways, reminded her of the image of her father that she held so deeply in her memories. And Abriella was not the only one to notice Evan's good looks. The queen was also somewhat the admirer, and though Abriella admired in secret, the queen admired quite openly. She flirted and gazed and made a fool of herself over the young man who paid her little or no attention.
In truth, Abriella did not understand why the young man spent so much time with his royal family. He obviously did not care for them. He spent half his time glaring disdainfully at his cousin and uncle, and the other half running from his aunt. But, Evan seemed to always be at the castle.
Abriella pondered all this one day while she was sitting at a window, being instructed in the fine art of needlepoint. Her fingers were soar from poking them with the needle so many times, and the simple design in red thread on the white background looked like nothing at all. She sighed and turned to look out the window. It seemed that even in her escape, she was once more trapped, and looking out of windows to a world beyond that she could not reach. Though this view was much more interesting, there was no peace in the bustle of castle life, no beauty in the dust strewn streets and songless world of the city. There was only noise, and chaos, and discomfort.
She remembered now, not the tower and forest, but the little cottage she had lived the first ten years of her life in. It had set on a cliff in a little wood. Its thatched roof had leaked a bit in the spring, and well sometimes ran dry in the summer, but it had always been a haven for her. A place of safety and dreams, a place of love and hope. She wanted to find it, to go back there and throw her arms around her father and brothers. She could only imagine them as she last saw them, and not as aging man with gray at his temples that her father must be, and the strapping lads of eighteen that her brothers surely were.
She pulled her mind away from such dangerous thoughts as tears began to pull at her eyes. She would not cry. She had determined this after her second day in the castle when the Prince had pulled her by her hair into the dinning hall to have breakfast with the royal family after she had said that she was not hungry that morning.
She had cried all the way down the hall, and all during breakfast. She had cried after that for hours in her room. Not even witch had been so cruel to her. And her well-intentioned father most certainly had never thought of laying a hurtful hand to her. She cried until she had no more tears left, then lay in silence for hours more. When she emerged from her coma like state, she had made the promise to herself that she would never cry again. Life would throw at her what it may and she would not balk at it. It was simply life, and life was cruel.