Princess of Pandoria (Editing)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After less than a week had passed I was exhausted. Maids sent by my mother practically dragged me out of bed every morning long before dawn and dumped my semi-unconscious body into a tub of freezing cold water. That always wakes me up and by the time they finished scrubbing me, I had already gone through all the possible arguments to stop such treatment in my head and decided that none of them are good enough. I was perfectly able to clean and dress myself, but my mother insisted that it wasn’t ‘proper’. After I was pulled out of the tub I was dried so fast I didn’t even realize what was happening, I was stuffed into a ‘proper’ gown, my hair was done in a ‘proper’ style, and I was forced to wear a ‘proper’ veil in accordance to the law. Needless to say the word ‘proper’ made me feel like pulling my hair out and screaming after several days of this but, it wouldn’t be ‘proper’.

My mother always insisted that I had breakfast with her and though she didn’t say it, I knew it was to gauge my learning from the day before. She had kept her word on not supervising my lessons but I knew that if my learning was not satisfactory, she would have had no problem in breaking our agreement.

So far, the Lady General showed no signs of wanting to interfere with my lessons, but she made up for it in any and all dress-fittings I had. In those, she was in complete control and unless I wanted a battle royal, I was going to keep my mouth shut. Even if I thought those two shades of pink definitely did not go together.

Don’t even get me started on the color pink. My mother was obsessed with it! It was everywhere! The clothes I was forced into, the dresses I was being fitted for, the porcelain we used, even most of the food we had at breakfast was pink! I didn’t remember what dreams I had but I was sure they were about me getting chased by pink monsters trying to teach me how to sit and eat and talk and act ‘properly’. When I was awake it wasn’t much better, except I wasn’t being chased by pink monsters.

The reason for such an intensive schedule was that we had about half a year for me to learn what would normally take at least six years, at least according to the Lady General. Luckily, I was a quick learner.

We had such a limited time was because the Season started six months from now.

The Season was the period of time when the majority of the court balls and events occurred. On September Third, a giant ball was held at the palace as the official Opening of the Season. At this ball, anyone at court who had turned sixteen since the start of last year’s Season was to be officially presented. Any and every one presented at the Season is considered fair game for marriage. The officials overseeing the Season were very picky about people not being presented until they were sixteen. Even if you turned sixteen the day after the Season started, you still wouldn't be presented until the next Season.

In case you haven’t noticed by now, my country had some very strange laws. But it wasn’t really a country so much as a large city.

The city-kingdom of Pandoria was on the bank of the River Aquarion. At that point in the river there was a two mile bend where the river formed a ‘U’ shape; in this bend rested Pandoria. On the other side of the river, which was about two miles across, thick jungles covered the land and reach to the very edge of the river. There was no place to dock a boat on that side and it was completely unexplored.

Pandoria itself rested on a cliff overlooking the river with a thin, steep road zigzagging down the cliff face to a rather small but protected cove. The only ships found here were small, and used for providing the city markets with a steady supply of fresh fish.

To the west, the land followed a gradual slope down for the first ten miles or so, and the land was covered in farms. The river was parallel to itself there, and west is the only land not covered in the thick jungle found everywhere else. After the first ten miles, the farmland came to an abrupt stop in a perfectly straight line across the plain. People rarely crossed this point and the other side of this invisible barrier was always hard to see, just like the way the road in the distance shimmers on a hot day. After another ten miles, the forest started abruptly, and the land between the two parts of the river began to widen and split away from each other.