Hey, it's the obligatory a/n. Obligatory. That is such an awful word. Awkward is also an awkward word. Like, awkw... anyway, I wanted to know if you thought I should update chapters seperately or a Serena and an Arna together. Because I wrote the Serena awhile ago, and just finished the Arna at 11 last night. So much for going to be at 9... But, it's all for you, my one fan: PEARLWALRUS!
Do you want your name in lights? Just reveiw, and it can happen, I'll even respond! In long, drawn out, run-on sentances that are probably beyond human comprehension, but I'll respond anyway.
Disclaimer: I've always just wanted to do a disclaimer. Technically, I don't need one, since it's all mine, except for a few references to some real Fairy tales.
And now, without further ado, a chapter without a title because that's pretty much the bounds of my creativity. Have fun reading!
Chapter 2
The Training Grounds at the Stadium rung with the sounds of steel hitting steel. Today was the first round of the semi-annual fencing tournament. Prince Griffon and his friend Henry had finished their duels and were watching their friend Jack compete with someone from the city of Gherald.
The man from Gherald had him backed against a wall, and was about to swing his sword around for a final blow when Jack crouched and darted around him, coming up and tripping the man from behind. The man went down, Jack knocked his sword away and drove his chalk-covered sword point down onto the man's neck, scoring the required red dot.
His two friends cheered and the three of them headed over to the water table, filling their cups as they waited to hear who had gone on to the next round.
Henry broke the short silence, as usual. "I head that a Princess from Opyll is staying at the Palace during the Hunt."
Jack grinned at the expression of dread spreading over the Prince's face. "The single one?"
Henry caught on and grinned too. "Oh, yes, the one still on the marriage market?"
"Will you guys shut up? I knew there was something going on. Mother had that 'marriage' look on her face this morning. When will she accept the fact that I will not be set up with someone? Just because she fell in love with Dad, she seems to think that I will like whoever she finds. Remember Lady Lara?"
"How could we forget? When she wasn't attached to you she was screeching at everyone else trying to find you. Good thing they don't let women in here, or else you'd have probably been married by now." Henry shook his head at the memory.
Jack smiled again. "I wouldn't be so quick to judge this one. I've heard that Princes Arnalia is a knock-out. Blonde hair, blue eyes, the works."
Grif snorted. His friend was famous for his fancies of the month. Many a Lady had returned home from court heartbroken from his fickle ways. "Somehow I don't think that she's looking for a Knight's son. Especially not one who was just recently rejected by a woman. You really ought to work on that manly strut thing. Just telling you, you could definitely work on your technique."
Henry laughed. "Is that a challenge?"
Jack adopted a jokingly angry voice. "I, Jack the magnificent, challenge you, Prince Griffon, to a manly strut contest."
Griffon struggled to keep his face straight. "I, Prince Griffon, accept your challenge, Jack the ma-" Grif's voice cracked and he felt a grin breaking through. "Jack the magnificent. What are the terms?"
"Loser has to… has to… admit to the other's superiority and… and the winner gets to throw water in their face. Henry will judge."
"Deal. When and where?"
"Here and now. Ready? Go!"
Grif and Jack began to walk around in circles, puffing out their chests and looking as manly as possible, while Henry keeled over in laughter and just barely missed knocking over the water table. Instead, he tripped over his own feet and ended up sprawled on the ground. Jack and Griffon stopped walking and laughed at their friend, who was sheepishly picking himself up.
Suddenly Grif and Jack stopped laughing, staring at something behind Henry. He turned and gasped. A blonde-haired beauty was staring right back at them, an eyebrow raised above a delicate sneer. She was wearing a long flowing dress, boots, and, strangely enough, gloves.
Jack, of course, was the first one to recover. "Excuse me, milady." He bowed elaborately. "Pray tell, what is a young maiden such as yourself doing in such a place?" He waved his hand through the air emphatically. "I do hope that our… contest has not offended you."
"No, actually, it was rather amusing." She grinned. "I think it was a tie."
"What… what are you doing here?" Grif finally sputtered, oh-so-tactfully. A girl in the Stadium!
The girl's face changed abruptly. Her lips tightened from a smile to a look of annoyance and the affable air about her dissolved. "Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be here?"
"Well, no, I wasn't." The Prince was taken aback by her anger. "Wait… yes, I was. The Stadium is off-limits to females except during public events."
She gave a little huff, but whatever she was going to say was cut off by the second female voice of the afternoon.
"Arna! What do you think you are doing?" Another girl hurried towards them, encumbered by a much larger skirt than the first girl's. She dropped a quick curtsy then grabbed her friend's arm, beginning to pull her away. "We need to get out of here!"
The first girl turned her smoldering look on the second. "Why?" She snapped with more vehemence than was necessary.
The second girl wasn't phased, instead looking over at the three fencers with amusement, as if trying to identify the receiver of her friend's wrath. "Because we're not supposed to be here, and the guards saw me, so if you don't want to be dragged out, in front of all these nice gentlemen, then I suggest we leave immediately."
The first girl looked around quickly, her gaze settling on the three burly men leaving the entrance and searching through the crowds. "WHY can NOTHING go right on this trip?" She whined loudly and followed her friend, leaving three very confused people behind.
A moment later, Jack turned around. "So, who won?" Grif tripped him.
A few minutes later, Sophie and Arna managed to squeeze out the door and collect their horses from the conveniently placed stables next to the Stadium. As soon as they were safely away, they slowed their horses to a walk and Sophie turned toward her friend.
"I can't wait to hear this one." She said, laughing. "Who were they?"
"Jack the magnificent," Arna laughed, "Henry, and… Prince Griffon."
Sophie winced. "Of course. It just had to be a prince. A knight would have been ok. Even the son of a Lord. But a Prince. You know, you have a veritable talent for getting yourself into these sorts of situations. We are going to meet him at dinner, and he's going to do something like choke on his soup and then everyone will know that we were at the Stadium and your father will send us home and we'll have to endure another two week trip of doom."
Arna blinked. "You are such a pessimist. I doubt that the prince is going to choke and just suddenly blurt out 'Princess Arnalia and Lady Sophile were at the Stadium!'. Then again, judging on what I've seen of him so far, he may very well do just that."
Sophie, forgetting her tirade, grinned. "Exactly what was he doing?"
"They were having a manly strut contest." Arna snorted. "It was ridiculous. I heard someone yell 'Jack the Magnificent' and went to see what it was. I assumed you were right behind me. Anyway, while you were off attracting the guard's attention, the Prince suggested that just because I was female I shouldn't have been there."
"Well, you shouldn't have been there. It's against the law. You really aught to know that, seeing as it is you apparently know everything about the Stadium. And what were you going to do in there anyway? Join in the Fencing Competition?" Sophie said pointedly.
"No. I don't do fencing." Arna glanced down at her gloved hands, hands she hadn't really seen bare since her 16th birthday, over a year ago. "You know that." She said quietly.
She had Pulcherima Dormins, or the Sleeping Beauty curse. It was in her father's side of the family. Her sister had gone through it too, but hers was a milder case and when she had accidentally pricked her finger had only been asleep for 100 hours before waking up, fully cured. Arna had the full-on curse, and her father had insisted that she wear gloves all the time until she found her true love. Then she would have to prick her finger and he would have to kiss her. It was a terribly complicated process. But it probably meant that she would be wearing gloves till the day she died.
They were silent for a while. Sophie knew how much her friend resented her disease, and hadn't meant to mention it. She was horribly lucky to have found her own true love. There was some depressing statistic about how many people ended up with people they didn't really like. Sophie didn't like to think about it.
Arna finally broke the silence as they were nearing the palace. "Do you think dinner's going to be soon?"
Sophie's head snapped up, she had been daydreaming about seeing Evan again, again. "What?"
"You were daydreaming about him again, weren't you?" Arnalia's smile had returned and she giggled. "You have no idea what you look like when you do that."
Sophie huffed a bit. "Well, I don't make fun of you when you do that."
"But I don't daydream."
"Well, maybe you should."
Arna snorted at the lame comeback and caught sight of the palace gates. "Come on, let's race!" She said, excitedly.
"No thanks." Sophie said quickly.
"Why not?"
"Because you are an awful loser and an even worse winner." Sophie said evenly.
"I am not!"
"You are too. Whenever you win, you go on about it for days, and when you lose you get angry and leave in a huff."
"Name one time that has ever happened!"
"Ok, the time I beat you at chess at that inn 4 days ago."
"My head hurt and I wanted to go lie down."
"Um-hmm. And what about last week when you won at cards 8 times in a row and wouldn't stop talking about it, practically until I fell asleep. And, for all I know, you might have still been talking."
"That was because you were being a sore loser and you were trying to drop the subject."
"I was tired."
"Um-hmm." Arna copied her friend jokingly.
"Hey!" Sophie exclaimed, startling the guards on either side of the palace gates. They recognized the two of them and waved them through, slamming the gate back down behind them. Arna shivered.
"This place is such a fortress! What are they afraid of? Ever since the founding of the Union of Kingdoms there hasn't been a real attack by anyone stronger than that rebel group, almost a hundred years ago. And they were almost 100 miles from the palace, not even in the same country." Their horses' feet made that lovely ringing sound against the cobblestones as they slowed and neared the stables.
"Perhaps it's just always been this way. The Union's only been around for 200 years. Even the palace at home has arrow slits all over the place." Sophie shrugged.
"Yes, but those offer lighting in dark passageways. They're decorative." The two girls dismounted and handed their horses to the grooms then walked through the gardens toward the palace's side entrance. "And just look at this garden. A few roses and a bench or two. I mean, really! Where's the beauty, the mystery, the romance?"
"I thought you weren't interested in romance." Sophie teased.
"Did I ever say that? All I said was that I'm not romantically interested in anyone right now. And I would do anything to get these dratted gloves off." She glared reproachfully at her hands. "Even fall in love."
Sophie rolled her eyes. "You say it like it's a bad thing."
"From what I can tell, it is." Arna looked at her friend pointedly. "I wonder how many of your vocal cords you've snapped from all your crying, screaming, moaning, dramatic gasping, etc… It just all seems much too dramatic."
"As if you aren't a dramatic person! It'd be right up your alley."
"I am not a dramatic person!" Arna practically stomped her foot.
They had reached the palace and entered the marble side hall. They stopped, not knowing which way to go. Arna spotted a maid, walking down another hall.
"Excuse me, maid!" She adopted her princess voice, letting it carry down the echoing hall without a hint of a yell. "I am the Princess Arnalia, and this is the Lady Sophile. We would be much obliged if you would direct us toward our suites."
The maid looked half-terrified, faced so suddenly with two nobles. She curtseyed quickly and set down the bag of laundry she had been carrying. "This way, my lady, your highness."
"No, no, that's alright, we'll just take directions." Arna smiled comfortingly down at the girl, wondering underneath her façade why it was always female servants who were scurrying down hallways.
The maid looked even more frightened. She didn't actually know the way to those particular rooms, just the location of the guest quarters. She had actually been hoping to run into someone else who would know. So she had only one option. She would have to give extremely complicated directions. That way, when the ladies got lost, they would think they had taken a wrong turn. She felt a bit guilty.
"Of course, your Highness. Simply take the first left down here, then go up the first set of stairs you see. At the top, go forward until you have passed a hallway and a statue of the Red Knight. Take the first right, then your first left, then another left…"
A minute later, Arna thanked the maid profusely and walked down the hallway. In truth, all she remembered was the first left. After that… she was hoping she would run into another servant.
As soon as they were out of hearing distance, Sophie grinned. "Not dramatic, eh?"
"What?" Arna said intelligently, herself again.
"In a moment you go from gracious lady to… well… you. I hardly consider that a lack of drama. I told you romance would agree with you."
Arna rolled her eyes. "Ok, A) That was me being a Princess, I have to do it everyday, that doesn't count and B) The whole drama thing doesn't prove anything. I have to find someone I love first."
Sophie shrugged. "Whatever."
"Will you stop saying that?" Arna said reproachfully.
Sophie just laughed.
About 10 minutes later they were hopelessly lost. Not only was the area they were in apparently devoid of servants, or rather anyone at all. Well, no one besides a few portraits and what Sophie swore was a rat, but Arna thought was just a shadow. Finally, Sophie just stopped, stomping her foot.
"This is getting ridiculous!" She reached into her dress and drew out a necklace. It was red and heart-shaped. Arna rolled her eyes at her friend's sigh. "I never thought that I would need this."
"What is it?" Arna regretted her question almost immediately as her friend smiled even more gushingly.
"Evan gave it to me." Arna held back a sarcastic statement at Sophie's tone. "It has a finding spell on it."
"So that if you ever get lost you can find your way back to him?" Arna couldn't help it.
"How did you know?" Sophie said sincerely.
"Just get us out of here!" Arna whined.
"Fine." Sophie closed her eyes and held the necklace up. It floated in the air and pointed right.
Arna was surprised. "No magic word or anything? Not even a stupid dance!"
Sophie laughed. "That kind of magic has been out of fashion for centuries."
Within half an hour they had reached their respective rooms, and Sophie flopped down once more on her bed, massaging her sore feet. She could have stayed there forever, but much too soon there was a knock at the door. Sophie got up grudgingly, praying that it wasn't Arna with another scheme that would require a half-hour hike through a marble-floored castle. Luckily for her, however, it was only a maid.
"I was sent to get you ready for dinner milady." She said, curtseying. When she looked up, Sophie was relieved to see that she wasn't the same one who had given them directions.
"Of course, dinner." Sophie said wryly. Perfect timing.