Watching Ella

Chapter One

Once upon a time in the kingdom of Cine, there was a Cinderella.

But the story and the girl were not all that you may recall. The good contained bad as much as the bad contained good. Although I suppose it is all irrelevant in the end; she became an icon, a legend, someone the people needed her to be. But let's remember her in her true form of which she first came into the world: wild, free, and unbound.

Before all the trouble began in this faraway kingdom, Ella had a childhood like people do. She and her family lived on the cliffs of Pyre surrounded by thick ancient forests and green rolling meadows. Under the constant affection from her two elder brothers and loving parents her spirit bloomed. Running wild, she basked in all the wondrous freedom her childhood allowed.

Yet out of everything, she loved most of all her home late at night. The rickety cottage sat away from the village on their small farm where the winds would howl off the tepid seas. She'd sit around the fading firelight with her mother and two brothers worn-out from the hard labors of the day. Her father would tell them fantastical tales of heroes braving all odds to defeat evil and protect the innocent.

"Does the prince come and save her?" she would ask her father.

"He does; he gallops on his white steed through fields and valleys and rivers. Then he destroys the evil sorcerer and saves her..."

"And they live happily ever after."

"Yes, Ella. They live happily ever after."

She'd fall asleep with dreams of shining white knights and magnificent exotic wonders twirling around her head. When Ella rose, she would run off into the woods to pretend that she was saving the world. This is where he met her. And their lives changed forever.

"Ella!" her brother, Charles, shouted after her from the edge of the woods as she abandoned him. She couldn't turn back. She had almost caught her frog. He wasn't getting away this time. The green frog jumped onto an aspen tree. She pounced after it, but missed. It disappeared under abundant ferns.

"Here froggy, froggy," she chanted as she searched for the frog in the mossy undergrowth. Her mother was sure to be upset at the deepening stains sinking into her dress, but she could care less about the state of her clothing or the twigs tangled in her long braids. Her unkempt appearance never bothered her. Her focus was on the quest.

She was even oblivious to the fairy watching her from a nearby oak. He'd been napping in its leafy branches when he'd noticed her stumbling into his humble glen. On any normal occasion the fairy would have been furious at the interruption. He would have played a trick on such an intruder, but he had had a scrumptious lunch of morel mushrooms and therefore could not be in a more pleasant mood.

"Ah, fair Artemis," he called teasingly to the child, "Your beauty has startled me."

Her eyes scanned the woody foliage in front of her before looking up in curious amazement to my unearthly green eyes and his eccentric appearance.

"Who are you? What are you doing in my woods?" she asked him.

Her bravery piped his interest, so answering he indulged her, "Why I am so named Robin. And who are you so few of years to claim these woods as yours?"

"I am Eleanor Rossi. I'm 11 years old. And I live just over the hill," she told this strange foreign man. What a trusting child, he thought. He jumped in one stride from the tree to loom over her. He studied her then laughed.

"You're a very weird man," she scolded him.

"Since I am not a man, I shall not take offense," Robin explained, "You see little girl, I am a fairy and a rather powerful one at that. And you, little one, have trespassed upon my woods."