She was a magnificent girl. She would dance with the stars and sing with the birds. She had the voice of an angel and the grace of a swan. She also had a wonderful imagination. Her stories could bring you to places more wonderful and magical than anybody else could ever dream of. She kept a journal full of them. Every story was completely unique and even more enthralling than the one before it. But reading one of her stories did not even compare to hearing her tell one. Children and adults alike would beg her to tell them a story, and she never refused.
Her name was Lorelei. It was easy to see that when she grew, all the boys were in love with her beauty and charm, but she never would give one more then an innocent smile. There was only one boy for her. His name was Ubel. They were childhood sweethearts, madly in love as soon as they laid eyes upon one another at the tender age of three. Or, to be more accurate, Lorelei fell in love at the tender age of three. Love is the last thing on the minds of most three year old boys. But she persisted and he soon loved her more than anyone else on earth. They stayed with each other all their lives and were married by 17. They didn't have anything but each other, but that was more than enough to keep them happy forever, but sometimes forever isn't long enough.
Lorelei was soon pregnant with a baby girl. Ubel had never been happier. He felt he would burst with joy. He watched her stomach grow bigger and bigger over the course of the next nine months. He couldn't wait, a daughter, his daughter, their daughter...His life was completely perfect...how naive he was.
The day finally arrived, the day their daughter was to be born. Lorelei grasped his hand tightly as she struggled through the child birth. He watched the doctor's brow wrinkle. Something was wrong, he could tell. There was too much blood. There seemed to be pools of it everywhere. The room began to spin as her grip on his hand grew weaker and weaker. The tiny, wrinkled little child finally came out, filling the room with crying and screaming.
Lorelei held the tiny baby in her arms and said to her with tears of joy in her eyes, "My daughter, my beautiful, beautiful daughter." She could feel her body growing weaker and weaker. She finally had everything she had always wanted, but it was just too late. She whispered to her newly born daughter, "Your name shall be Algoma, valley of flowers" She kissed her baby softly upon her cheek. "I will always love you, always." Her head fell back upon the pillow and her eyes fell closed, as she let her soul escape her body and drift upwards.
Ubel died that day, or at least his heart did. He became cold and distant, completely resenting Algoma. In his mind it was her fault the love of his life had been taken from him. The only thing that could bring him out of his permanent depression was alcohol. Everynight he would go out to the bar and come back early the next morning. Sometimes he didn't come back for days. These were days that Algoma prayed for.
Her father was a very violent drunks and the fact that he hated and resented her with every fiber of his being did not help the situation in the least. Her back was full of scars resulting from previous bouts of drunken rage. She grew up with this abuse and had learned to take it. Putting upa fight only made it worse. The only thing to do was to run and hide whenever he came home.
The only times she ever felt truely happy, was when she was by herself in her small, little room. She would sit by her windows for hours, just staring at the stars and dreaming.
She had her mother's imagination. For hours she would sit at her window and dissapear into a land full of mermaids and pirates and fairies. She would dream of just flying out her window and into the night sky, of flying far, far away to a land that was completely foreign to anything she had ever known...but it was just a dream.
One night, just like any other night, she sat at her window gazing up at the night stars. There was one star in particular on this night though that happened to catch her eye. It wouldn't seem any different from any of the other stars to anybody else, but something about it just seemed to stand out to her.
She stared at it intently, studying the small, twinkling dot in the vast night sky above her. Without ever moving her eyes from the star, she whispered,
"I wish I may, I wish I might, grant this wish I wish tonight...Please, oh please take me away from here, anywhere…"
She closed her eyes and concentrated hard on her wish. When she opend her eyes again, she tried looking for the star again, but for some reason, she couldn't find it.
She jumped when she heard the front door swing open. Her heart began beating faster and faster as she heard her father calling her name.