Red

02. The Taking

PLEASE DON'T SKIP THE PREFACE! if you do, you will be lost. thank you!

have you missed me? i've been gone awhile but i am back. this dark, romantic story came to me in a dream. enjoy (:

~~~~

By mid-morning, my body had already exhausted all energy and had succumbed to a sluggish being that wanted nothing but to fall into my bed and sleep the day away. The near thought of it gave me the smallest drop of hope, but I knew it was too good to be true on this peculiar day. Today was the day of my coronation, and the day of my eighteenth birthday. I had already been plucked and tugged and pulled into thousands of different extravagant dresses, each a different color or style. It was as if to my maids I was just a human-size doll to fixate into the most beautiful thing they could ever create in hours time.

The dress that ended up getting picked for me was a blue gown with a slim bodice, fitting all too well around my delicate curves and features. My attendants had told me it suited my eyes, which matched the blue hue of the long dress almost perfectly. After my gown was adjusted to fit my body perfectly, they began to work feverishly at my hair to try and tame the brown ringlets atop my head. A gift from my mother, along with my eyes, they had said. It was nearly impossible to work with, at least with my servants. I usually went about my day either tying my hair up or taming the ringlets into a decent braid down my back. My hands could never create such exquisite and detailed hairstyles like my handmaidens could.

     "Stop fidgeting!" My eldest handmaiden, and the crankiest, smacked away my hand that had gone absently towards my hair. She hadn't yet finished the style and didn't want it touched even once. It was a habit of mine though to tuck any stray hairs behind my ear, and currently my locks were everywhere.

     "I'm sorry, I can't help it Diana." I puff, drawing my bottom lip in between my teeth. "This coronation is stressing me out."

     Diana comes around to my front and finally takes the hair out of my face and places it into its spot on top of my head. Her gray hair was tucked tightly beneath a brown band of fabric, giving her aging face a more youthful look. She had been my mother's maid, and when I was just a babe she had been passed on to me. "I know, but just wait until you're wedding day, and then you will truly see how stressful life for a princess can be. Your mother took forever to finally look decent enough to partake in her wedding."

     "If I ever get married." I was supposed to begin being courted at sixteen, but I was terrified of any man ever marrying me and having to see the wicked and gut-churning marks on my entire back. The strange black birth marks that looked like a tattoo have been on my skin ever since I could remember, and they looked like an ancient dead language that no dusty or withered book from the library could translate. Because of the marks and the off-putting look to them, my father has been postponing my courtship to a prince ever since. I wondered now that I was having my coronation that would change, and I would be forced to dance with sweaty foreign older men with a dazzling crown atop their head and fear they would run away as soon as our wedding night became upon us and they had to see the marks on my back.

     There hasn't been any princes of other countries born around the time I was, so chances of a fine marriage were one to nothing, even if they found my markings to be okay. They were all either already married or of older age. I resented the idea of marrying an older man strongly, but I knew of that is what I had to do for my country, I would. Even if I would hate every second of that miserable life, I would do it. There was nothing in this world that mattered more to me than protecting the things I loved.

Diana returns to her spot behind me, and I watch her finish my hair in the mirror before us. Once she finishes, she has another one of my servants help with my makeup, and they begin to douse my face with a plentiful amount of products.