Tales of Aranth: The Girl and The General

Prologue

The book is on hiatus, not abandoned, it will be back after His Witch is finished.

My mother was an overprotective one. I was never allowed to perform any dangerous or simply tiring activity. Dangerous meant, for example, a school trip to the mountains. Not climbing, just hiking, with other 10 years old kids. They mocked me for weeks for not coming with them.

My father tried to oppose her, so my mother divorced him and accused him of trying to kill me. Sometimes I regretted that he didn’t fight for custody over me. But he was always for me when I needed him and we had a strong relationship. I was truly happy for him when he decided to remarry because I wanted him to be happy and his new fiance was a great girl. I envied their future children.

I suppose it was due to my mothers’ behavior towards me, I grew up weak, baffled, and easy to intimidate. Some of my classmates took advantage of the fact that I was unable to defend myself, but it's nothing to speak about. It's on them and their conscience.

My mother met a Gypsy while pregnant with me. The Gypsy told her that my hobby will kill me. Somehow, Mom believed it and it affected my life strongly. Maybe that was the reason why I got so hooked on books. Mother was happy, what could happen to an avid reader? A papercut? Bad eyesight? Spine problems? Nah, I read in an app, that way I could always have thousands of books with me.

I especially liked the novels with strong heroines. Probably because I was weak and while reading I could imagine I'm strong and beautiful and can achieve whatever I want. Like The Tales of Aranth. It was my favorite novel, with so many plot twists, magic, stunning heroes, thrilling battles, and besides all of that, a deep and touching love story. I read it at least three times.

I was 19, but my love life was nonexistent and I wondered how it would be to be loved so deeply and passionately, that it hurts. And to love somebody this way. I often thought about it lying on my narrow bed and falling asleep. But each morning I woke up as plain and ordinary Mia Wells. Tall, thin, with dull brown hair hanging to my waist and yearning for a haircut and pale complexion, nothing special. Not ugly, but not pretty as well. The only thing I liked about myself was my eyes, expressive and bright blue.

It was a really hot July, in 2 months I was going to move out and start studying. I was interested in management and logistics, luckily for me, being not a very social person resulted in excellent grades, so I could choose wherever I wanted to study and even obtain a scholarship. I chose an esteemed university about 200 miles from home and got accepted. I was happy, hoping my life will change for the better.

Mom wasn’t happy with me choosing to be away from her. She tried to make me feel miserable about abandoning her. She even threatened to cut off my allowance. But there came my dad and declared that he will cover my expenses during my study. That gave me a confidence boost. I knew I had to cut my mother off if I ever wanted to get a life and become a strong, independent person.

I wanted to be as independent as possible, so I applied for the scholarship. I prepared all the documents and went to the post office. I could have taken a bus, but the weather screamed to me “take a walk, enjoy the sun”. Get some suntan. So I walked, feeling so thrilled because I was going to fulfill my dream. Almost like in a movie, when the character is about to succeed and there is joyful music playing, the sun is shining and birds are singing.

I waited on a zebra crossing and pulled out my mobile to read the latest comments under The Tales of Aranth. I was recently engaged in an interesting discussion about the relationship between the 2 main characters. I thought that was a purely romantic relationship, but my opponent cited it as an example of Stockholm syndrome. No way, Alarana wanted to be with Gravian because he was the man she loved, any other reason was simply ridiculous. And I was going to prove it. Yes, the online version of me was quite different from me in real life. Fierce and outspoken. Was I compensating something?

I started scrolling to find the latest comments when I heard the sound signal informing me that the light changed. I stepped into traffic with my eyes glued to my smartphone.

Suddenly I heard the horrible sound of hard braking, some people screaming and excruciating pain flashing through my body. And there was nothing more, everything faded to black.