Chapter Text
The sun found its way through the window and onto the already empty bed. The Welch’s house – a small wooden house that looked more like a shack – was the first spot in the meadow to be illuminated by the sunlight every morning. It was just one of the advantages of living in the Magical Realm: let nature guide you. Let it show you when it’s time to wake up and go to bed. Even when living in such a paradise meant living exiled.
The world had been divided into two kinds of people a long, long time ago: the magical creatures – the so-called Moors – and the ordinary human beings. The latter being considered too good, too superior to get close to the savage, wild, unknown creatures that lived far, far away from the King’s land. Therefore the Moors had been isolated in a Magical Realm, forbidden to humans. No limits should ever be crossed, for either of them. There was a name for that: Treaty of Peace. The Kings of both realms had made that treaty years ago, in order to keep the order and peace for both of their people. And nobody had ever tried to break it.
The Magical Realm was located on the right-hand side of the river, and comprised of the smallest portion of land, even though it was home to countless creatures and hid more wealth than the King’s Land ever could. And most of the creatures still considered themselves free. Free to swim, free to walk around their side of the land, free to explore the places that belonged to them, free to watch, free to observe. And the most gifted of the creatures, who had been blessed with a pair of huge, strong wings, they could even fly.
Florence Welch was one of those creatures. She didn’t feel exactly gifted, though, most of the time. She could fly around the limits of the Realm and have fun doing magic with her little sister, but there was a price to pay, and the price was high.
She was lying down on a high thick branch, playing around with flowers. When you have a lot of free time in your hands, you have to be creative and find things to do to keep yourself busy, and Florence was really good at coming up with new ideas. Her current favourite activity was breaking a few thin branches just so she could fix them all over again, making flowers bloom out of nowhere and them watching their petals fall out and fade away into the air. She also liked mimicking the birds’ singing, sometimes. Flying above the lake was another activity she loved dearly, and she even risked swimming every now and then – she was really good at it; she would keep her wings pressed against her back so she could swim faster than all the little mermaids that lived in the lake.
Having a creative mind, however, didn’t stop her from getting bored from time to time. She was only seventeen years old and there were more things she wanted to do, different things she wanted to discover. Falling in love, for example, was something she couldn’t wait to experience. She had heard about it, she knew it existed, but she wanted to feel it. Until she lived it, it was nothing but a myth to her, and she was starting to get slightly tired of just hearing about things that she would never be able to understand.
She heard a light giggle coming from under the tree and she promptly stopped doing her little tricks with the flowers and snapped her head towards the sound, only to find a rather amused Grace staring back up at her.
“What?” Florence asked, frowning.
“You climbed this tree again, did you not?” Grace answered with another question. Florence didn’t even bother to reply; she just shrugged and sat up on the branch, straightening her back and her massive brownish wings.
Grace laughed to herself and flew up to where her sister was, sitting beside her. Grace’s wings were smaller and a little lighter than her sister’s, but were just as strong.
“You are aware that you have wings, right?” Grace teased. “You can just fly and land on whatever branch you want, Flossie. It’s a lot easier.”
Florence rolled her eyes. “But climbing trees is fun and landing on branches is not.”
Grace nodded, defeated. “Alright. You’re complicated. But what are we going to do today?”
Grace’s voice was full of excitement and Florence felt a little sorry for not being able to respond with the same enthusiasm. She had been feeling particularly frustrated and a little discouraged in the past days. Maybe it had something to do with her father’s death – which had occurred only a couple of months ago. She sighed and brushed her fringe away from her eyes.
“You decide,” she said, finally.
Grace promptly jumped off the branch and opened her wings mid-air. Florence laughed at her sister’s small show. “We can fly above the river and play with the mermaids first, and after that we can see which one of us can reach the mountains faster?”
Florence bit her bottom lip to suppress a smile. “Only if we fly above the clouds after that.”
Grace giggled. “Sounds like a perfect plan!”
==
The sun reached the West side of the kingdom, where the King’s castle was located, later in the morning. So when the light came into her room, Isabella was already awake, sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed in only her nightdress.
Isabella Summers lived on the left-hand side of the river. She was born in the richest, more honorable and more important royal family of that kingdom. But she had never felt like it was something she should be proud of, or something that made her special or different, even though that’s how everyone treated her, regardless. But being born in a royal family didn’t bring anything good to her life. It had given her money and luxury, but had taken away from her what she needed the most: company and affection.
She let out a long, heavy sigh and stood up, walking to the large window of her room. She looked out at the landscape beyond the kingdom’s limits, she stared longingly at the land she would never put her feet to, at all the trees she would never touch, all the beautiful things she could only imagine, for her eyes would never be able to witness them. Isabella had always been told to stay away from the other side of the river, to never cross the limits and to respect her father’s orders. And although she had never been exactly good at following orders and accepting whatever people told her, she had managed to do as her father commanded for the last twenty-three years of her life.
She had, however, always had in mind that the only reason her parents acted like that was because, deep down, they were afraid. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of what they couldn’t understand. Afraid that in the end, the so called “wild, inferior creatures” could be stronger than every cannon, every sword and bomb, and also more powerful than all of their armies together. And fear had made them isolate themselves inside that castle, forcing her to grow up alone, surrounded by only her parents and servants, and occasionally spending time with other royal families when their castle was hosting a ball. Forcing her to spend the days in her room, reading, playing piano, and secretly making small wooden sculptures, pretending to be someone she didn’t feel she deserved to be.
A knock on the door disturbed her thoughts and three servants entered her room, already picking dresses and corsets, and murmuring things that Isabella couldn’t understand, for her mind was elsewhere, far away from that room.
She couldn’t wait for it to be nighttime. For her parents to be asleep in their chamber, for the guards to be distracted and sleepy, so that she could sneak out of her room and tiptoe to a secret door she had found when she was just a little girl – and thank God she was still small enough to crawl through it – and run. She would sit by the river and watch the small magical creatures that lived there, the only ones that couldn’t be insolated to the other side. Just so she could watch them swim and fly a few centimeters above the water and greet her with their small hands. Those small creatures that weren’t exactly fish nor humans, and that could perfectly fit into Isa’s small hands. They were fragile, so beautiful, so fascinating. Their soft, sweet voice singing lovely melodies as they swam freely, doing a little dance just to amuse Isabella.
Those small creatures were the only contact with the other realm Isabella had always had. Those creatures were one of the few companies she had had growing up. And, somehow, she felt they were the promise that, someday, perhaps, she would be as free as they were. Or so she wished.