Prologue

Prologue

 

 

 

                I was born Kristina Anne Melrose, but now I am just Risten.  Once upon a time, I was an ordinary girl.

 

                Ever since I was about three, I lived with some “family friends”, because my parents were both traveling scientists and they were always off doing some sort of research.  My father was mainly a psychologist, and my mother a botanist slash zoologist.  Combined, I think they had every possible occupation ending with --ist after their names.  I had no brothers or sisters, so I was pretty much alone.  My neighbors and--cough--guardians, the Monaghans, hate me.  Or at least I think they do.  Likewise, I don’t really like them.  They’re staunch atheists.  I have to run away every Sunday to go to Mass, and then deal with the Monaghans’ BS when I get back.  Every.  Sunday.   Well, everyday, actually.  After thirteen years of living with them, I still refuse to call this place home.  This would never be home for me.  In fact, I didn’t think planet Earth would ever be home for me. 

 

It humors me now, how I used to think like that"as if I always knew.

 

                The Monaghans had a nineteen year old son, Paul.  He tried to side with me sometimes.  It wasn’t so bad when we were younger, but now that we’re older it just got worse and worse.  The creepy looks he gave me or the way he went all red whenever he talked with or accidentally bumped into me made me extremely uncomfortable.  I tried to stay away from him as much as I could.

 

                Growing up on the Monaghan’s country-ish property wouldn’t have been so bad if my parents had been here with me.  If all the animals didn’t hate me.  If I hadn’t felt so lonely all the time.

 

                I endured thirteen years of this.  Thirteen years of not belonging anywhere, and feeling like a worthless, useless nothing.  Always having to run away to get what I wanted, never being loved or cared about by anybody but God.

 

                A month after my sixteenth birthday, Diana (Mrs. Monaghan) received a phone call from my dad’s agent saying that both my parents had died at sea. 

 

I wasn’t as sad as I thought I would be.  I wasn’t as sad as I should’ve been.  It never occurred to me that they cared about me.  After all, neither of them had even spoken to their little “Kristie” since she broke her arm when she was ten.  They didn’t help me learn to ride a bike.  My mom didn’t slip a cute note into my lunch on the first day of school.  Actually, I didn’t even go to school.  My parents thought public schools were degrading.  So I homeschooled myself.  Mom wasn’t there when I had my first period.  Dad wasn’t there to teach me how to drive, so Paul the freak did.  Neither of them could give me advice when I had a crush on the paperboy.  (My interest in him didn’t last too long.  A week after it started, I found out that he had committed suicide using a method that was very…gruesome…)

 

                Hmph.  Some parents.

 

                Now they were dead, lost somewhere in the depths of the sea to rot and decay amongst the fishies.  I prayed for their souls, but not much else.

 

                The days were slow and just as boring and worthless after that.  To be honest, nothing had really changed.

 

                Paul found me sitting on the tire swing out back one lazy September afternoon.  Lately I had been doing a better-than-usual job of avoiding him.  I hadn’t said anything to him in weeks. 

 

Talking to him privately about something--anything--was definitely not on my list of things to do this summer. 

 

I fidgeted in my seat with a less-than-obvious sigh of distress.

 

                “Hey.”  he says, a short and wimpy looking figure in front of me.  He had very short, brown hair shaved closer on the sides.  To make him look tougher, I imagine, he has a ring on his eyebrow, several earrings on his left ear, and a gauge in the lobe of his right.  I always thought those things looked trashy and gross.  He even has a funky, (not to mention poorly-done) skull and crossbones tattoo on the underside of his left forearm.  Combine them with his bright orange t-shirt, ripped jeans, worn-out sneakers, and yellow-green eyes; Paul pretty much fits my definition of ridiculous.

 

                “Hey.”  I say, as plainly as I can.

 

                “Thinking about your parents?”  he continues, kicking a rock on the ground with the toe of his shoe and watching it skid across the dirt.  I snort in a way I didn’t mean to (or did I?), either meaning that’s none of your business or hell no.

 

                “No.  I don’t think about them.”  I say.  Was that a lie?

 

                He looks back up at me.  “Really?”

 

                I stand up, dusting my backside off with my hand.  “You know, I don’t want to talk about this.  Let alone with you.”  I shove my way past him, but he grabs my arm.  All of my insides pinch and I suddenly feel like hurling.  He forces me to look at him.

 

                “I’m just trying to help.  You’ve been like this all summer.”

 

                “I’ve always been like this.  It just comes with being lonely all the time.”  Crap.  I didn’t want to say that.  Way to go, Risten.

 

                Paul’s puke-color eyes search my brown ones, as if he’ll find some way to make me feel better in there.  He won’t.

 

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”  he said.

 

                I wrench my arm from his hand.  “Leave me alone.  I’m fine.”

 

                He pulls me close again, and I knew he was about to try and kiss me.  My right fist slammed into his jawbone, much harder that I thought I was capable of.  I was pleasantly surprised.

 

                He staggered back, cupping his jaw with his hand.  Tears puddle in his eyes as the pain smarts.  “Kristina…”  he whispers, as if I should feel sorry for what I just did.

 

                Then I ran away.  Not because I was scared or because I felt guilty.  I just needed to run.  I needed the air slapping against my face, the wind blowing through my hair and lashing at my skin.  The sunshine warming my cheeks.  My boots thunked against the ground and crushed through the tall grass.  I leaped over the fence and into the woods.  I ran and ran and ran, deeper and deeper and deeper into the woods.  I didn’t know where I was going, but I followed my instincts and weaved through the trees.

 

                The sun had begun to set, and I realized that I had to stop.  There was no way possible that Paul could still be following me"if he even did follow me.  Hopefully he didn’t.  I collapsed against a tree.  I was breathing heavily, my side ached, and my feet were throbbing in my boots.  My hair was sweaty and everywhere.  My shirt and jeans were stuck to my skin.  I sat like that for a few minutes to catch my breath.

 

                I looked up, but couldn’t see much of the dark reddish-orange sky.  Huge bunches of leaves that clung to tree branches loomed like clouds far above me.  They whispered as the wind rustled through them.  It was almost as if they were whispering to me.  A secret.  A foresight.

 

                There was no other sound but that.  No birds, no animals at all.  Besides the trees, the forest was silent.  How odd.

 

                Somehow I felt like I belonged there, in the forest.  I felt safe.

 

                The twilight deepened into night, and I decided that I would stay here.  It was peaceful and quiet, and best of all, no Monaghans.  The world couldn’t affect me here.  This is where I would sleep tonight. 

 

I laid my cheek against a moss-covered rock and made myself comfy, using my hoodie as a blanket.  My body seemed to fit perfectly in the curves of a tree’s roots.  I closed my eyes and took deep breaths to make myself sleepy.  First I smelt the musky, earthy scent of the rock.  Then a wild sort of peppery smell from the tree.  Then my favorite; the crisp, clean scent of the night air.

 

                And I fell asleep.

 

                It was that night that I had my first nightmare.  The night when everything really changed.

 

~*~

 

I woke screaming, in a dark, silent forest.  What the hell?  I thought over and over, cringing every time I thought hell.  I had never had a dream like that before.  It almost felt real.  I couldn’t remember everything that happened in it, but I do remember the fire spewing from my hands, a black shadow, some creepy woman, and…and… a really hot guy with black hair and bright blue eyes.  I seem to have a weakness for guys with dark hair.  Paper-boy had dark hair.  But he was nowhere near as gorgeous as this guy from my dream. 

 

                Then the dream had changed.  There was a castle, and another cute guy"I think he was a prince.  He was having a party"a ball, I think, and he drank wine from a glass.  He got very sick.  It had to have been poison.

 

                It was then that I woke up screaming.  Why?  I have no idea.  I can’t remember what happened in the dream after the prince got sick. 

 

I think I was in pain, but I just couldn’t remember.

 

                I stood up and dusted myself off.  Even in the dark, I could tell that the forest around me was different.  This was not the same forest that I fell asleep in.  It couldn’t be.  It didn’t look earthly.  I started to wander around, searching for answers.

 

The sun had risen when I finally emerged from the trees, and I saw a village.  This place was so lost in time.  There were small, almost medieval-style houses, and women in dresses and aprons carrying on with their early morning chores.  Scruffy-looking children were clinging to their skirts.  I didn’t see any men.

 

Then, I saw a little ball of blue light hovering in the air in front of me.  At first, I thought it was some sort of bug, so I swatted at it.  Then it talked.  It was male.

               

“Watch it!”  the ball of light said.  I was so shocked that I nearly fell backwards over a fence.  Ball of light laughed at me.  I took a wild guess that he was a fairy or some similar creature.  The fact that I was no longer on Earth didn’t hit me as hard as someone might expect it to.

 

I stared at the fairy.  I couldn’t see a little person in the light, but it talked.  It was probably looking back at me.

 

Then it laughed again.  “Can I help you, Otherkind?”

 

He went on to explain that I was now in Ancantha, the Land of Forests.  I, Kristina Anne Melrose, was one of a special race called the Otherkind.  An Otherkind was a human from Earth who, by chance, is reincarnated into Ancantha--body and soul.  He said that it was still a hazy process; he didn’t know all the details.

 

I was fascinated.  What intrigued me even more than this fantasy world was the fact that I may never have to go back to the Monaghans.  I couldn’t hide my grin, but I also couldn’t help but think of what sort of dangers might be here.  I had read a lot of books.  Where there were fairies and magic, there were bad fairies and bad magic.

 

I decided to tell ball of light about my nightmare.  He didn’t quite know how to explain it (did I catch some uncertainty in his voice?), but he did mention that the boy I described reminded him a lot of Derek, apparently some dude who lives alone in the eastern forest, Kellereth. 

 

Derek.  I wished that I had a pen so I could scribble that name on the back of my hand or something.  Ball of light said he had to go (again, why is there such a strangeness to his tone?), so I said goodbye.  He disappeared up into the trees, sending a shower of sparkly blue dust over me.  Pixie dust.  Definitely a fairy.  I wonder if maybe he was sent to me like that person who is there to greet you after an airplane trip.  Interesting.

 

Now what was I supposed to do?  Well, I was excited to explore.  I went into the village.  Did I expect to just fit right in?  All the people were staring at me.  And they had every reason to.  I was wearing a Tokio Hotel t-shirt, a plaid hoodie, jeans, and Ugg boots.  I stuck out like a parrot in a swarm of doves.

 

I tried to ignore everyone else as I made my way through and around the buildings.  I wandered around in the outlaying forest until I reached a small waterfall.  There I met a girl from the village named Spiri.  She was my age and I liked her (besides, she didn’t look at me like I was some sort of alien), so I ended up telling her about the nightmare I had.  She laughed and said that the Otherkind usually had weird dreams like that for a while after they arrive.  She also said that the boy I described reminded her of Derek.  I couldn’t wait to meet him.

 

Wait, it was just a dream.  That probably wasn’t even him.

 

The days passed, and I got used to life in Ancantha--sort of.  I stayed near the village of Koto just to be safe.  I found an abandoned house not too far from Spiri’s, so I lived there.  I bought food, clothes, and other necessities with money that Spiri was able to scrounge up for me.  She and I became good friends.

 

 I fell in love with the peace of the forest and I had all the free time in the world to paint or read or write poetry or do whatever the heck I wanted to do.  Instead of at the Monaghan’s, where I mostly did chores and homework.  Heck with that.  This was the life.

 

Best of all, I would see Derek sometimes.  Yes, I met him.  Well, not really.  But yes, he was definitely the guy from my dream.  I could never seem to work up the courage to talk to him, let alone even walk past him.  He was so beautiful and perfect.  So I would just watch him.  Most of the time he would come to the village square to buy groceries.  I’ve caught on to the fact that the villagers dislike him, for whatever reason.  It isn’t hard to tell.  They always have degrading scowls on their faces when they talk or even look at him, especially Jeorge, the owner of the general store.  The women and children seem to be afraid of Derek, scattering whenever he walks by.  Rude. 

 

Still, Derek is perfectly polite, smiles, and says “hello” or “good morning” to everyone he passes.  I wonder what could make people dislike such a great guy.  But maybe I don’t know much about him.  He could be some sort of pedophile for all I know.

 

Nah.  I’m not stupid.   I can see that he’s not the type.

 

I also can’t help but notice that there is a solemnity, a sort of sadness in Derek’s eyes and hiding behind his smiles.  I know that I’m in love with him.  Damn…I just wish I could find some excuse to walk up to him and say hi.

 

Jeez.  I’m so pathetic.

 

That makes me think of my nightmares.  Although life in Ancantha is awesome, these nightmares are not.  I can’t ignore them.  It’s been a week and I’ve had one every night.  They keep getting worse, little by little; more intricate, more detailed.  Even scary.  In last night’s episode, it looked as if I killed Derek, but I’m not completely sure.  I shudder every time I think of it.

 

One day, a group of soldiers came to Koto.  Judging by the way the women cried and the children laughed, I assumed they were the husbands and fathers returning home from war. 

 

War.  I knew that was coming.

 

I watched and listened from a distance as a soldier told his wife--Spiri’s mother--that the Prince had fallen dreadfully ill after the Autumn Ball.  My heart sank along with Spiri’s mother’s knees.  I saw Spiri trying to comfort her mother, but the woman turned on her fiercely.

 

“Spiri!”  she shrieked, holding the girl’s shoulders, “That girl that you’ve spoken of, the one with the nightmares…she has cursed our prince!”

 

Spiri was stunned.  “No, mother!  Risten is just an Otherkind; she couldn’t have had anything to do with this!  She’s been here in Koto all this time!”

 

“Her dreams must be prophetic then.”  said another woman from the crowd.  “She can’t be trusted.  Remember the last time a witch came to our village?”  The woman grabbed at her graying hair and shook her head, distraught.  “Too much blood!”

 

Spiri’s expression was traumatized.  “Stop!  None of you know Risten like I do.  She’s not a witch!”

 

“But she must be.”  said the woman.  “We can’t risk this…our village cannot suffer any more.  We’ve lost too much.”

 

“Spiri, you may never see that girl again.”  said her mother firmly.  Spiri stomped her foot in protest.

 

“B-but mother!”

 

“Spiri!”  growled her father.  Spiri buried her face in her hands and cried.  A cute-faced young man took her by the shoulders and led her away from the crowd.  That must have been Aaron, her betrothed.  She talked about him a lot.  The fierceness in his eyes dared anyone to say or do anything to Spiri.  For a split second I envied that sort of possessiveness that he had for her.

 

I turned and ran back into the forest, nearly stumbling over everything in my path.  Tears stung my eyes from losing Spiri’s friendship, the villagers’ kindness, and being branded a witch all within five minutes.  And lingering in the back of my mind was him.  He had to have something to do with all this.  With me.

 

 I never cried.  I guess everything was changing.

 

I was alone now.  Miserably alone in this strange new world.  And this, this was only the beginning of my story.

 

Does Derek feel this way too?  Lost?  And lonely?

Reviews

[Victorious]

Dear Aianarie,

I understand this is a prologue and therefore I didn't expect too much detail here. However, I'm going to have to agree with Daydreamer54 and say it all seems so rushed. It's like pressing the forward button on a remote control in some areas. I'll go over it piece by piece.

"Growing up on the Monaghan’s country-ish property wouldn’t have been so bad if my parents had been here with me. If all the animals didn’t hate me. If I hadn’t felt so lonely all the time." The phrase "if all the animals didn't hate me" was a tad random and brief. Who is she calling animals?


In the areas of characterization, you have mostly told where there were times you could just show. For example, here,

"He had very short, brown hair shaved closer on the sides. To make him look tougher, I imagine, he has a ring on his eyebrow, several earrings on his left ear, and a gauge in the lobe of his right. I always thought those things looked trashy and gross." Paul having a ring on his eyebrows....were they thin or thick, bushy or trimmed. When you talk of his ears, you can describe the hair seeing as they are very close.

You should make sure to establish a point of view. In this sentence you seem to have switched, "ears puddle in his eyes as the pain smarts," hopping over to Paul's point of view.

For a human girl, she sure did take in everything quite quickly. Like, I have left earth and I am totally okay with that. Maybe instead of saying that Risten's days were uneventful, you could put in that she studied mythical creatures to mentally escape her dull life or that her family friends had a library and she went there all the time especially since she was home-schooled. Add some flavor to Risten's personality is what I'm saying. She seems so unemotional and uncaring, lol. I mean if that's her personality, I guess you can run with it.

Instead of having Risten meet the little blue thing that just explains everything. Why not have her meet Spiri first? She sounded way more interesting. You could have allowed them to meet and tell her about the dream. It would spread and then you have some action going.

Distribute information slowly and over time otherwise you end up "info dumping." How would other creatures know that Risten is from earth? Is it just her clothes, a glow on her skin, her look. How does she look? How does she look to the people she has now met. I mean you have switched worlds. That sounds scary to the average person no matter how much they really hate their lives. It's still a strange transaction. Maybe describe it. I get that her previous world was not interesting, but at least make it interesting to the reader.

You could elaborate on her view of earth since she seems to have "prophetic" abilities. Her view could be different. She could see the life of trees or the touch a breeze or perhaps she could have foretold the death of her parents which gives her a somber attitude about her life. And was it truly necessary to involve religion? Not saying that's a bad thing, but if it does not further the plot, it is unnecessary.

And Derek.....He is just so brief and has no lines and I don't understand his character not one bit. Maybe I have to read it some more. Derek feeling all alone? I can't really sympathize with him cause both Risten and I are clueless as to why he's outkasted, but it appears Risten is too. I just felt this line should have been your premise, "I was alone now. Miserably alone in this strange new world. And this, this was only the beginning of my story," and put a little earlier. I mean she was all alone on earth and now she's all alone here.

It feels like a story than just a novel opening. Anyways, though, I did like Paul as he crushed on Risten. It was cute and unique cause usually a guy like that is forceful and mean, but you have portrayed him to be timid and shy. I liked Spiri. I wanted to hear more about her. This reminds me of Inuyasha, lol. I liked the simile of being a parrot, really clever. I mean there were some areas that were interesting. The world you presented is interesting, but I would like to see than just read it.

Sincerely Livana Lowell (LL)

God bless

[Daydreamer54]

i liked it! but I beliebve at the parts where you told us who said what, you should show us instead, like write them having the actually conversation.

[ravenjess]

i agree with everyone fast but AWESOME.

[kathrina]

Nice beginning. :) But don't you think it's going too fast? It was kind of confusing for me to understand what was happening at first, until I read it again.
Anyway, I'll go read the rest now. :)

[Bridget Murphy]

Amazing, I love this its the perfect begining, I can't wait to read more, post the first chapter as soon as possible.!!!:D