*Author climbs over the edge of the world, dragging a struggling computer behind her...* I have been out of the loop for way too long. I told myself I'd take the holidays off of writing The Guardian, but the day I was going to sit down and start this chapter, my motherboard went "BOOM" and my computer spent the next 27 days in computer ICU being rebuilt. If it makes you guys feel any better, I felt far more miserable without my computer than you did without an update! I did manage to post my little Christmas one-shot before everything went kaboom, so everyone can go and check that out after they finish with this chapter. There also are a few corrections to previous chapters, but they really aren't too big of a deal. Feel welcome to re-read the story if you feel so inclined! ;)
For those of you who need a quick recap, Leona/Dareena has just left her home, against most of her family's will, to take on a musical apprenticeship in Narnia.
Disclaimer: I am merely borrowing C. S. Lewis' charming characters and world, and will eventually return them. The only thing that is mine is the plot.
Disclaimer 2: If this story in any way resembles any other fanfiction it is by complete accident, as I go out of my way to avoid reading fanfictions that resemble mine until mine are completed. My apologies to any other great minds.
Author's note: This story is set pre-, during- and post- The Last Battle. I am a first time fanfiction writer and any reviews are appreciated.
Chapter Twenty-One: Leona's Story: To Walk Through Fire and Death.
The morning air was brisk as Dareena walked steadily towards the mountain pass from Archenland into Narnia. She was grateful that the weather was still good enough for traveling. Even though it was only four days until Christmas, the snow on the ground was sparse and though she expected larger snow drifts once she got higher up the mountains the pass was still reasonably clear. The true winter snows wouldn't start for another week or two. It was cold though, and she was glad she had thick gloves on and warm winter clothes and boots.
It was nearly midday when she finally decided to stop for a meal and some rest. She was looking around for a sheltered spot to settle down for lunch when the earth shook beneath her feet hard enough to send her awkwardly tumbling to the ground. She could hear a strange groaning as though the forest floor was moaning aloud in pain. Birds rose in startled flocks to the sky.
She lay on the ground where she fell for a few moments to make sure that the earthquake had stopped, and then shakily rose to her feet, trying to catch her breath from the fall. There had been earth tremors before that she could remember, but never one this severe. She carefully tested all her limbs to make sure that everything still worked. She was pretty certain that she'd just had the wind knocked out of her until she tried to put all her weight on her left ankle and it gave sharp little spasms in reply. Restraining the impulse to scream in frustration she pulled her boot and sock off and started to examine her ankle. She could tell by the mild level of pain that it wasn't broken or even sprained, but it still throbbed and looked like it would bruise. She must have hit it on a rock when she fell and didn't realize it until she tried to put her weight on it. The injury wasn't disabling or even more than irritating, but she knew it would slow her down a little.
So much for meeting Illone at the Shuddering Woods early, Dareena thought. I know that he was planning on leaving for Cair Paravel at least two days before Christmas so he would be back in time for the holiday festivities. Well, at least I won't miss him; I just won't get there early.
Her original plan was to meet the Narnian court bard at his relatives' house near the Shuddering Wood by midday tomorrow, but if she had to favor her ankle until it stopped hurting, she wouldn't get there until nearly dark.
After a cold lunch spent icing her ankle in a snow drift, Dareena was off again. She had to go west for a few miles to reach the pass into Narnia. The official pass was guarded by either Narnian or Archenlander soldiers, (the two countries took turns yearly watching the pass) but was still prone to the occasional bandit attack. There were rumors of other, secret passes through the mountain chain that separated the two countries, but if they were more than rumors only the fauns and other woodland residents knew about them.
She had just reached the top of the pass by dark and spent a rather cold night, with only a small fire in a secluded cave for comfort. The cave was a regular rest stop for travelers, but Dareena had it to herself that night. Few people would be traveling this close to the winter snows.
Dareena's dreams were troubled that night. She kept waking up with a feeling like she had forgotten something important or something had happened that she didn't know about. She put it down to having spent her first night in the wild by herself, and kept rolling over under her cloak and going back to sleep.
When she finally woke completely the next morning she felt highly ill-rested and decidedly cranky, but at least her ankle gave her no more problems and seemed completely healed. She couldn't wait to sleep in a bed again, or at least be somewhere warm! Knowing that she would get no warmer by staying under her cloak, but not particularly wanting to leave her warm-ish little nest, she got up, had a cold breakfast and got started.
She hadn't gotten as far as she had wished the day before and was determined to make up at least part of the time that day. She had gotten to within an hour or so of where she was suppose to meet Illone and was starting to look for landmarks that she had been told about, when a large, twittering sparrow flew up to her and started circling her head.
"Cheep! Are you Dareena, daughter of Norrin? Cheep!" the, obviously talking, Bird said.
Dareena started a bit. There were very few talking animals in Archenland, and she had never encountered a Talking Bird before at any of the revels she had attended that had Narnian guests.
"Yes," Dareena replied cautiously, trying to keep her eye on the sparrow, who kept circling her head and flying back and forth quickly enough to nearly make her sick.
"You must go home at once!" the Bird said. "Something terrible has happened! All the birds on the border have been sent off to try and find you!"
"What?" Dareena asked in confusion. "Something terrible? What in the name of Aslan are you talking about?"
"I don't know what happened," the bird said, still circling madly. "All I was told was that I needed to try and find the human daughter of a man named Norrin and tell her to return home at once, for something terrible has happened."
At first Dareena was angry, thinking that this was too co-incidental. If this was a wild goose chase that someone at home had started as a way of changing her mind about going to Narnia, she would never speak to any of them again! But the anger cooled and worry replaced it as she realized that, much as her family loved her, they would not have the resources to command the entire Narnian Talking Bird population to find her. Her mind started whirling faster and faster as she started realizing that this could not be a prank.
"Feddy," Dareena breathed in terror. Something must have happened to her pregnant sister! Could Fedara have gone into early labor? Dareena could think of nothing else that could have happened that could possibly be termed as 'terrible.'
She turned and started quickly walking south, back towards Archenland, her meeting with Illone forgotten. This opportunity for a musical apprenticeship was likely never to come again, but it wasn't worth the cost if it meant that she was not there when her family needed her!
She traveled as quickly as she could, running when the worry and fear in her mind grew overpowering, walking quickly when the ground grew too hazardous for running. She stopped for the night only when the light was completely gone and she risked walking over the side of a cliff in the dark.
Morning was similar to the evening before with Dareena running until she couldn't run anymore, then walking as fast as her tired legs could carry her. As she got nearer and nearer to home she became more and more worried. Was Feddy alright? Was one of the other family members hurt? What on earth was going on?
She finally turned round a large hill and could see the wooded mountain that the house was built into. Still distant, but clear enough to make out, she saw the blackened ruins of the kitchen with many more people than there should have been moving around the house. Her heart stilled and she slowed to a stop in utter shock. She would have gasped out her older sister's name in fear again, but now she wasn't sure that Feddy was the cause of her being called back to Archenland.
Dareena made her feet move forward and though her steps started out slow and weak-kneed from shock they quickly turned into a staggering run. Her lungs burned not only from the exertion and cold but from the smell of smoke, fire and destruction. Some of the trees nearest to the house showed signs of fire and there were blackened streaks along the forest floor heading into the forest from the direction of the house. She finally raced into the fire-ravaged clearing in front of the house and started calling out names, looking through the faces of the people in the yard, trying desperately to find a member of the family to ask what was going on. She recognized some of the faces in the yard as villagers from the nearest town, but no one was looking her in the eye.
"Mama! Papa! Frank!" Dareena kept calling out the names of her family but no reply came back. She could hear her name being called by someone she vaguely recognized but she paid no attention to it. She needed to find her family. She started pushing her way past people, trying to get closer to the house, but she finally tripped over a burned piece of wood and fell to the ground. She started to rise to her feet but saw something between the legs of the people in front of her and stilled. Eight shrouded forms lay under the trees on the other side of the clearing.
Dareena couldn't seem to move. She couldn't take her eyes off of the bodies laying in a grim row in the shade of the big rowan tree. Her mind shut down, and first her hands started to shake, then her whole body followed. Fear and terror filled her mind and she started to stagger to her feet and run towards the blanket covered forms that couldn't be her family, just couldn't!
"No," she muttered. "No, no, nonononononono!"
The voice still calling her name from behind her was closer now, and wrapped arms around her to keep her from going any closer to the bodies.
"Dareena, no! You don't want to see them!" The voice and arms belonged to the town mayor, Forten.
"No," Dareena cried, not truly understanding his words, just that she was being held back and that she needed to go to them.
Forten gave her a little shake, then a harder one when the first made no impression. "Dareena, listen to me! Listen to me! Focus on me!" He finally forced her around to face him and made her look him in the face.
Dareena was shaking so hard she could barely stand and her teeth were chattering together. She seemed to pull herself together a little and said, "W-what h-happened?"
Forten sighed and with five words Dareena's world came crashing down.
"There was a terrible fire."
Forten finally got Dareena away to the other side of the clearing and sat her down on a bench that was somehow undamaged. She was still shaking uncontrollably and he had someone bring her something to drink. She managed to swallow a few mouthfuls of strong dwarfish whiskey before the reality of how her family must have died came to her and she staggered over to the nearest bush and started vomiting. Even after she stopped bringing up the whiskey the dry heaves kept her bent over the bush for a while before she sat down. This unpleasant business did serve to break her out of her shock to the point where she could think and reason again.
"I'm sure you have hundreds of questions," Forten said, leading her back to the bench and giving her some water to rinse her mouth with.
Dareena nodded shakily. "Are they all...?" She couldn't quite bring herself to say the word 'dead'.
Forten nodded sadly. Dareena felt her stomach heave but fought down the urge to bury her head into the bush again. Now was not the time to panic, she needed to figure out what happened and what she needed to do next.
"What happened?" she asked. "I can see that there was a bad fire in the kitchen, but why didn't they escape out the back passage?"
"I'm not quite sure of all the details," Forten told her. "The fire happened either late the day you left or early the next morning. As for why they didn't leave out the back, there was an earthquake the day before yesterday, which apparently collapsed several of the tunnels in the mountain. Frank came into town later that day and asked for some help to clear the tunnels that your family used. We told him that we could send over some help in a couple of days since it didn't seem urgent and we had several completely collapsed houses in the village. Frank said that waiting a few days would be fine, that it was only the back entryway that was completely filled in. Frank's visit was also how we knew where to find you. He told a few of his friends that you had left for Narnia to become a bard."
It made a chilling kind of sense. If only the rarely used back passageway was collapsed, then Frank would certainly consider people without a home having a higher priority. He couldn't have known that less than a day later the only other exit would become an inferno.
She didn't want to ask her next question, but she knew that if she didn't it would prey on her for the rest of her life. "How did the fire start?"
Forten sighed. "I don't know. It started in the kitchen and traveled to all the rooms, but it could have been an improperly banked fire in the kitchen. I didn't get here until the fire was entirely put out."
"Could someone have done this?" Dareena asked, thinking of the bandits that had burned another home only a month before.
"I don't know," Forten said. "By the time I got here, any tracks were long erased by the neighbors who saw the smoke and came to help put the fire out. It's possible, but unless someone admits to setting the fire, we may never know."
That wasn't the answer Dareena was hoping for. Now she regretted asking, since the uncertainty of knowing whether or not her family's deaths were an accident or murder would likely drive her mad.
A soot-streaked man came running up to Forten and started whispering in his ear. Dareena didn't even bother trying to hear what was being said, it simply didn't seem worth it. Forten turned to her and said, "I have to go and deal with something. I can't tell you what to do, but I wouldn't suggest looking at the bodies. Fire isn't a pretty way to die."
Forten hurried off with the other man and Dareena got to her feet and moved off towards the remnants of her home. Her feet took her to the blackened kitchen and she looked around. There were a few wooden supports still standing, but the roof had collapsed and everything in the kitchen was destroyed. She stepped on a fallen plate and it broke beneath her, adding another aspect of the destruction. She climbed over what was left of the kitchen table and started going through the caves. Little shafts of light came through from the kitchen but did nothing to dispel the darkness shrouding the rest of the series of caves that she had called home all of her life. She only got a few feet before realizing that without the hearth fires in every room, she would need some kind of light.
Numbly she left the kitchen and went to a small fire pit that the fire crew had left burning for heat and lit a small torch. Heading back into the caves, she went from room to room looking at the destruction, trying with all her might not to think about how each member of her family must have died there. She wondered why the fire had spread into the rest of the house since the walls were stone, but realized as her foot got tangled in a scrap of tapestry what the reason must be. The stone walls may not be able to burn, but the woven tapestries covering them would; as would the thick rugs, wooden furnishings, the raw wool in the work rooms and common areas. She comforted herself with the hope that the smoke may have killed her family before the actual fire. Her eyes fell on the charred and overturned cradle in the corner of the living room and everything suddenly became very real.
"Oh, Aslan," she thought. "They really are dead." She crumpled to the stone floor next to the cradle and started to sob. She wanted to scream out her pain but couldn't get the noise past the lump that swelled her throat. Tears fell unheeded down her cheeks until she could barely see past them. She reached out and tried to pull the heavy cradle to her, if only for something to hold. She couldn't get her arms around it, but the movement knocked free a small cloth doll, miraculously untouched amid all the damage. She recognized that little doll; she had made it for her niece when the baby had been born.
The tears that had slowed, started up again harder than ever until she could barely breathe. Oh, her niece! That wonderful, mischievous little baby, now gone forever. Fedara's unborn twins, dead before they had even lived to see the sun. Dareena's older sisters, ever annoying her with their twin idiosyncrasies of finishing each other's sentences and sometimes seeming as though they were one person instead of two. Fencara's husband who Dareena could remember running around the house like an idiot at his daughter's birth. Her mother, Asheena, beautiful and proud, always loving and affectionate when any of her children needed her. Norrin, calm and strong like an oak tree, always there when things got bad, ready to make everything seem less overwhelming with just a hug. Her Papa wouldn't be able to help her anymore. Franquea, sweet and giggly, always playing jokes until her victim would chase her around the house in frustration. Then there was Frank... Dareena had always been closest to her brother, both of them almost outsiders in the family, he as the only boy and she as the only one without a twin. He would never talk her into adventures again, or beg her for just another snack before dinner. None of them would.
They were all gone, all dead. They had left her behind.
Deep in her misery, Dareena didn't hear the footsteps behind her until Forten was at her side. She almost started when he knelt down beside her and held her close as she kept on sobbing. She couldn't seem to stop the tears that closed up her throat and made her gasp for breath.
Forten let her cry for a few minutes more, then said, "I know you need to cry, but I need your help right now. Fedara's husband has arrived and he saw the bodies, like you did. But, he's gone completely mad with grief and we can't get him to let go of his wife's body. We're afraid he's going to hurt himself if we can't get him calmed down. He won't listen to any of us, and he fights if we try and touch him or her."
Dareena tried to pull herself together and when her tears finally stilled Forten helped her to her feet and took her outside. There was a small crowd around the bodies and Forten pushed his way past the watching people so that Dareena could see what was going on. Fedara's husband had left to escort his mother from the capital city of Anvard to the family house so that Fedara could have her mother-in-law as well as her mother there for the birth of the twins. He had not been home when the fire had happened, but he was here now.
Dareena took in the sad sight of her brother-in-law holding one of the still, shrouded bodies to his chest and rocking it back and forth. She could tell it was Fedara's body because of the large pregnant lump that the sheet covering her outlined. He was making an odd keening noise like an animal in its last death throes and would not look at anyone. Dareena slowly walked towards the man, who gripped the body tighter when he comprehended her approach.
"Maton?" she said softly, trying to get through to him enough for him to listen to her. "It's me, Dareena." She slowly put her hand on his shoulder and he stiffened, but then relaxed when she did nothing further. "She's dead, Maton. Put her down. You aren't helping her like this. You need to put her down."
Maton turned haunted, bloodshot eyes to meet hers. "I don't understand? Why did this happen?" The words were so full of confusion and pain that Dareena started crying again.
"I don't know why." Dareena could barely force the words out. "I wasn't here for them either."
"I didn't even get to say goodbye," Maton whispered.
Dareena bit her lower lip so hard it started to bleed. "Neither did I," she said, almost to herself.
Maton continued to weep, but slowly loosened his grip on his wife's body and let Forten take it from him. As soon as the body was out of sight, he seemed to crumple, and other hands came and lifted him to his feet and led him away. Dareena remained kneeling on the cold ground. She just wanted to find a secluded place to lie down and cry herself to sleep and pray that she would never wake up.
But, she did wake the next morning, to her disappointment. One of the villagers had found her leaning against a tree fast asleep from exhaustion and grief and had taken her to the nearest neighbor's house. At first she was highly confused by the strange surrounding's, but then the events that had destroyed her world came back to her and she closed her eyes again and just wished that she had died with her family. Before she could work herself up the neighbor saw that she was awake and spent the next hour fussing over her, making her take a hot bath and giving her clean clothes. Dareena basked in the normality of the situation and just let her mind focus on the now rather than the past or the future. She knew that that was the only way she would be able to get through the coming trials without going insane.
After she'd gotten cleaned up and had eaten, Dareena headed back to her ruined home. The bodies were still laying in the shade, but she knew that they needed to be buried and soon. She stood staring at the shrouded forms before her, hands itching to pull away the coverings and see the beloved faces one last time, but her mind kept her hands at her sides, knowing that if she saw them her mind would never forget the sight of what fire does to flesh.
Forten came to stand by her side. She noticed that he looked absolutely exhausted and she wondered if he had slept since he had found out about the fire or if he was simply as overwhelmed by the tragedy as she was.
"We weren't sure if the Narnian birds would find you in time," Forten said. "So I made plans to bury them on the other side of the clearing. Unless you would rather have them buried in the town graveyard?"
"No," she said. "Here is fine. They would be together."
Forten put his hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "I'll take care of everything, unless you want to do it yourself?"
"No, you had better handle it," Dareena said. "I wouldn't know what to do."
True to his word Forten handled all the details of the burial. As the frozen earth that had been laboriously cleared to form the graves fell back over the bodies of the only people on this earth that were her kin Dareena realized that she was alone. She had no home, no family, no extended family that she could cast herself upon and nothing to offer any stranger other than her talent at caring for a home. She had missed her opportunity to apprentice in Narnia when she had failed to rendezvous with Illone. She had nowhere to go.
Seeming to read her mind, Forten said, "We will find someplace for you to stay. There will be room in some home for another pair of hands. You won't starve."
Somehow those words didn't comfort her. As each member of the neighboring village came to give her their sympathies she started to get angry. Her family had never had a very good relationship with the townspeople. Most of them were pure-blooded Archenlanders and had always looked down on Asheena for her Calormen father. Dareena had grown up listening to the taunt of 'half-breed' being thrown at her mother whenever she went into town. Sick of being treated like a second- or even third-class citizen, Asheena simply stopped coming into town and would send her husband in for supplies. Norrin and the more Northern-looking of the children, like Frank, were tolerated, but since Dareena favored the Calormen side of her family, she never had any real friends among the townsfolk, simply polite acquaintances. As each haughty matron gave her cheek a pitying kiss the anger burned hotter until it nearly rivaled the inferno that killed her family. She kept her composure on a tight hold. She had to face the fact that she had nowhere else to go. She couldn't afford to alienate these people.
She was wandering around the clearing trying to eat some of the food that the villagers brought for the funeral feast, when her belief that she didn't have anywhere else to go was challenged.
The two gossiping women had not seen her. One was Forten's wife and the other was the wife of the local blacksmith.
"Such a tragedy," one of them said. "All of them dying at once! And those poor babies!"
"True," Forten's wife replied. "No child deserves to die like that. But, perhaps it's for the best this way. At least it killed them all instead of leaving more orphans to be a burden on the rest of us."
"Hana, how can you say such a thing?" the other woman gasped.
Hana gave a soft snort. "Oh, you can afford to be so high and noble! You aren't the one saddled with this tragedy's leftovers. Forten told me that we were going to be taking on the girl, Diddi or whatever her name is. I told him that I would not have that kind of a person in my house, influencing my children, but he got positively sharp with me and said that I didn't have a choice."
Dareena stilled completely except for her shaking hands. She longed to wrap her fingers around that slender neck and start to twist. The only thing holding her back was the knowledge that she wouldn't have enough time to kill the hag before someone would pull her off. She straightened her spine. She did have a choice. She didn't care if it was hard, she would find somewhere else to go, even if she had to travel to the ends of the earth to find someplace where she would be more than simply tolerated.
Marching straight up to the two women, she smiled sweetly at Hana and then slapped her across the face as hard as she could! Everyone in the clearing stilled at the sound and turned to look at the confrontation.
"Thank you for your kind offer of employment," Dareena said, her voice dripping with sarcasm and fury. "But I'm afraid you will find that it won't be necessary. I would sooner starve in an alley somewhere than take so much as a crust of bread from a sanctimonious witch like you!"
Dareena gave a little laugh. "I do suppose I should thank you, you at least waited until my family was completely buried before dragging their memory through the mud."
Turning on her heel, Dareena walked up to Forten who stood utterly shocked by this chain of events. "Thank you," she said, in a completely different and truly sincere tone. "You helped me when no one else would. Would you do me one more favor? Make sure that the graves aren't troubled?"
Forten nodded, still stunned silent.
Walking through the still and silent crowd, she went to the ruins of her family kitchen and picked up the still unopened pack that she had taken with her when she left only three days before and started off up the path to the road. She didn't care where she went as long as she didn't stay there.
No one followed her.
Anger was a fine stimulant, but it wore off quickly. She had gotten as far as the road that led all the way to Cair Paravel in the North, to the city of Tashbaan in Calormen to the South before she stopped and looked around her. It was one thing to say that she would rather starve, but another thing for it to be real. The winter snows were coming quickly and she needed to find someplace to live. The pain crashed down on her along with guilt. Why was she worrying about someplace to live? Her family didn't have that option.
A clump of snow fell from the tree she was sitting beneath into the back of her dress sending cold snow down her spine. Startled, she jumped to her feet and did an ungainly dance, trying to get the snow out. At any rate, she needed to make a decision. She couldn't stay at the crossroads forever.
It was down to one simple question: left or right? Right would take her to Calormen and her grandfather's people. She knew no one there, but with a country so large someone must need a willing pair of hands. She shook her head. Calormen was also the only country that had slaves. A young woman traveling alone would have to be very lucky to travel more than a few miles into the country before being snatched up and forced into bondage.
"Narnia it is, then" she thought dismally. She would go to Cair Paravel and see if Illone would still take her on. If he didn't, she would find some sort of employment, or, at the very least, an alley out of the elements in which to sleep. Anything was better than staying in Archenland. Picking up her pack again, she set off.
Cair Paravel. The capital city of the country of Narnia. It had taken Dareena six days to reach it. The winter snows had arrived early on the day after the funeral making the pass downright treacherous and slowing her progress to a crawl.
She was glad that she had decided where she was going, because achieving that goal seemed to be the only thing that kept her from curling up in a snowdrift and sleeping her way into death to join her family.
The worst part of the journey was that she traveled alone, with no one to talk with and nothing to occupy her mind but thoughts of everyone she had lost. Memories of her family warred with vivid nightmares of flames and screams. Each night she would lie down and imagine what that final night must have been like. The fear, the flames, the smoke... Falling snow would hit her face as she walked and mingle with the tears that never seemed to truly stop. Her melancholy thoughts fed on one another until she could barely think. The grief would slow her steps to a stop in the snow, until the cold and self-preservation drove her on.
The road was more passable once she was closer to the capital, but the snow was still up to her knees in places.
She came through the city gates into a bustle of people. The noise of conversation grated on her ears after six days of hearing no human noise other than her own sobs. She slowly started walking down the streets staring blank-eyed at all the people and the buildings around her. She had never been to any place bigger than the small village outside her home and knew that if she hadn't been so physically and emotionally numb she would be gaping in awe at the city before her.
She looked more closely at the people, who had started to notice her as well. With a sinking heart she saw mother's pull their children closer to their sides at the sight of her, and people passing giving her wary looks. Was Narnia going to be no better than Archenland? Was she going to be mistrusted and feared no matter where she went simply because she looked like a Calormene?
She didn't realize that the fear and distrust on the Narnian's faces was not from her darker hair and coloring, but from her appearance. She had been traveling for six days with few stops for anything other than sleep. Her eyes were bloodshot from weeping and the hopelessness and despair that had haunted her was reflected in her features. She looked desperate and hardened and it was no wonder that people pulled away.
She turned a corner and saw the great castle ahead. Built into the side of a tall cliff, the castle shone in the setting sun. Dareena stared up at it in a sort of numb relief and yet at the same time, dread and fear. Relief because she had made it this far. She was a little surprised at the fear that she felt. Why should she be afraid? This was what she'd always wanted! Then with a sickening lurch of her stomach she realized that she was wrong. This wasn't what she always wanted. Her singing was something she did with her family. She had learned to sing at her mother's knee. She enjoyed singing as a performer, but she sang best at home with the people that she loved.
Dareena looked up at the castle and murmured to herself, "I can't do this."
TBC...
Author's notes for chapter #1: Okay, I really want to know what people think about this chapter. Was it overdone? Not realistic? Please review and let me know.