The Sleeping Girl

Prologue: 500 years ago

The cool wetness of the moss beneath my feet feels blissful; we have been walking on much harsher lands for an extraordinarily long time. I am incredibly nervous, yet at the same time content. I know the world shall be very different when I awaken. Five hundred years from now, I shall open my eyes to gaze upon a land that is completely new. Many a time I have tried to imagine, tried to prepare myself for what is to come, but I find that I cannot.

Tegan, the Girl before me, has told me what life was like for her when she was growing up. She went to sleep when ideas of civilization were still new, and people lived in small isolated villages, apart from anyone else. I remember telling her of great castles, bustling marketplaces, exotic foreigners from far off lands. I recall how at first she did not believe me. In fact, a week later I am still seeing her eyes wide as a newborn babe, drinking in the changes of the world in which we live in. That will happen to me. I know there is nothing I can do to ready myself, nothing to do to prepare for the future. I shall just have to try to adapt once I awaken.

"Are you ready?" asks Tegan, as we come to a halt in the mossy clearing. The clearing that she woke up in. The clearing that I will go to sleep in.

I nod bravely, although my insides are churning. I am about to sleep for five hundred years. Five hundred years. Five hundred. 'Tis more than my sixteen year old brain can process at the moment. "Ready as I'll ever be, I suppose," I reply.

"It's not hard," says Tegan, perhaps sensing my churning mind and trying to comfort me. "Peaceful, actually. It simply feels like another night sleep, as though you are under for no longer than six hours."

"I'm not worried about that," I say truthfully. "I'm worried about not knowing anyone. When I awaken, you will be dead. My brother will be dead. Mother and Father will be dead. Everyone that I know will be dead. And the world as I know it will be gone. I know not what will happen, what will be going on once I awaken. And nobody I know will be there to guide me, to lend a helping hand, to make me fit in. I shall be all alone in a world vastly different than this one. That is what scares me."

"You will still have the society," Tegan replies, confidently. "We have been around for thousands of years. You are not the first girl to do this. Why, imagine how the very first Girl must have felt! There have been five of us before you, there will be many more after. It will be alright. There will be others to guide you, to make you feel at ease. You will never be alone as long as our society is here, and trust me when I say that it will be sticking around for far longer than you will even be alive. And furthermore, you know why you must do this, why it must be so. 'Tis our destiny."

I nod, sighing. Closing my eyes, I can recall the first time I had really grasped the concept of who I am, the Sleeping Girl. I was sitting cross legged on the floor of our house, Mother brushing my hair. 

"Mother," I said. "Why is it that I haven't been able to see the body of Abel when all of you have? I did not know him well. I would be able to handle it. In fact, I am sure that Ailie was more upset by it than I would be."

Mother sighed. "Abel was killed by sprites, Keela," she said, stating what I already knew. "We think... well really we just want to protect you. You will have so much to do with them, experience so much pain in the future, that we just want to shelter you now. You deserve a happy childhood."

"What do you mean experience so much pain?" I asked. "You mean because I am to be the next Sleeping Girl? I rather think not, you know? I will be asleep while you all are taking the Earth's energy from me."

Mother shook her head. She placed her hand on my stomach, where my mark was. The Sleeping Girl is marked from birth. My mark was on my stomach. It was a golden jasmine flower design, with a few blossoms circling a large flower, and an intricate weaving of vines. It showed who I was, my destiny.