• Ch. 1

    "Move it." He said, as he pushed me down to the ground. I fell.
    I rubbed my knee, where the skin peeled off and bled. I said nothing.
    THey snickered. "Look at Princess. SO ugly and vain. She won't cry even if she's hurt."
    I still said nothing. Instead, I grabbed a pile of sand inside my palm and ran the soft grains into my other palm. It flowed through my hand like droplets of water.
    They flinched. "She- She's being weird again, using her power!"
    As they spoke the word 'weird', I looked up to their face with a wide stare. I still said nothing like a child that didn't know how to speak.
    As I sat there, the sand behind me rose, like a tidal wave. The girls screamed, the guys cursed out colourful words at me. I still sat there, watching them as they ran away from me.
    I cast my eyes down, and muttered. "Idiots."
    The sand settled back into my palms which I spread over my wound. I sighed with relief as the grains of sand shimmered in the hot beaming sunlight and healed my pain and wound.
    I was the age of 5. I once had a dream of helping out my citizens, like the Great King that once lived upon our land. He managed to turn the center of this desert into a rainforest, giving us food, water and other supplies to live on throughout the generations.
    But only my title was a princess. Evern though I was legally, officially a princess of this piece of land, I was not allowed to be anywhere near my brothers and sisters inside the palace. Not because I was the youngest of the family. Not beacuse my mental development was poor. Not even because I had this power. It was common for the royal families to have one of the power of the six elements.
    Simply because I was ugly to their eyes.
    My parents, the king and queen of Zanik, abandoned me. Thinking me as a disgrace to our family, or rather to say, their family, they cast me away. THey didn't, at first. They thought I would become beaufitul as I aged, like all my siblings and the past royal families.
    I became more gruesome to their eyes as the days went by.
    At the age of 6, my parents had no affection for me. All I was to them was a mere object that lived with them for 6 years, and is now going into the garbage pit, to be burned out of their memories, pretending I never existed.
    The society knew of this tower, and knew of the princess that lived in the top floor of the lonely thing. I was mentioned in the children's bedtime stories. How I will climb down the tower at night and take them away, from their cozy bed, and boil them for me to become beautiful. All fake stories to scare them to sleep. I found this not offending, but rather interesting. They will talk about me, insult me, abandon me. And yet, they told of me to their children, let them recognize my existence.
    But I never said my life was miserable. On the contrary, I wouldn't live anywhere else than this lonesome, tall tower with Old Maggie.
    Old Maggie was my like own mother, my teacher and most of all, my valuable friend. She was the only one I could trust in this world, and the only one I loved. She raised me like I was her own child, for she was abandoned by the society as well. She taught me things I would've never learned in the palace, such as sorcery and what the world was really like. She taught me love, and she taught me what friendship was.
    Now at the age of 16, I climbed the tall tower once again tonight. With a tall candle in my hand, I knocked on Maggie's door.
    "Could it be you, my darling?" came the voice I have become to love.
    "Yes, Maggie. It is I." I cooed as I opened the door.
    "What have you brought me tonight?" she asked me, showing me her kind smile.
    "The cabbages were on sale tonight, Maggie. I thought we could use them to make some Insectide for the garden snails."
    "Ah, yes. The garden snails." she grunted. "How troublesome they can get. Munching away on those herbs we worked so hard for the last 15 years to grow."
    I smiled softly. "I have done nothing, Maggie. It has always been you who did everything for the garden."
    "Nonsense!" she exclaimed. "Who was the one to look after them when it was thundering outside, so the mute plants can stay as the mute plants instead of the roaring plants?"
    I just replied with a smile. "Have you had your rest today, Maggie?"
    "I have, dear child. Thank you for the concern." She said. "But I am not of age yet to be moping around in the room all the time, leaving everything to you. I still have a lot to teach you, of course."
    I kissed her wrinkled cheek then stroked her soft white hair. "How do you keep your hair so smooth and strong? You must tell me one day, fo rmy hair is long but weak and fragile."
    She sighed and stroked my own hair. "My poor girl." She crocked. "If only you weren't kicked out of the palace, you wouldn't have to live with this old thing."
    I frowned. "Is something wrong, Maggie?"
    She sighed again and shook her head. I stared at her. "Maggie?"
    "You must've heard it by now." She looked at me with her strangely bright eyes. "A prince from another country far away is coming to marry one of the princesses."
    "What are you trying to say?"
    "Maybe if you weren't kicked out..." she sighed again. "Maybe you could've been the one chosen to marry the prince. Maybe you would've had someone other than me..."
    "Maggie!" I said sharply. "Don't say such a thing. I don't want to marry a stupid prince anyways. He's probably dull and stupid and boring."
    "Yes, but... He is still a prince." She sighed again and again.
    I snorted. "I doubt I would've married him anyways. I'm the youngest after all."
    Then I saw a tear rolling down her face. I took a step back because I was so surprised but quickly regained myself and touched her shoulder very lightly. "Maggie?"
    Her shoulders moved up and down as she sobbed. "Only if they were more merciful... You are beautiful to me, my dear... Beautiful..."
    I kneeled down and took her face gently into my hands. "It is not because they have no mercy." I said. "But because they don't love me. If they truly loved me like you did, they wouldn't have seen the monster they saw." I smiled. "I do not need a prince to marry nor do I need people that doesn't want me. The only person I want to be with is you."
    "But my time is soon, my child. Look how old and weathered I am." she said with quiet sobs. "What then? Who will you be with then?"
    "Maggie!" I said sharply. "Don't say such a thing! You will live forever more until I come to an age to die."
    I hugged her tightly. She felt so small inside my embrace. "So don't say such things like you're about to go away." I whispered, holding back my own tears as she sobbed.