Remember How I Love You (Sequel to 'Through Fire and Water')

Plain Old Ana

Ana's P.O.V.

When I was a little kid, even when I was a

big kid actually, I dreamed of being an adventurer, a hero from a great story.

Aragorn used to tell me all sorts of stories before I went to bed, stories

about heroes who slayed a dragon and saved a damsel; stories about honorable

thieves who fought to save kings and were knighted; he would tell me of men who

fought their way through hordes of beasts and of elves who could take down

whole legions of bad guys with just one cleverly shot arrow.

I would sit by the fire, wonder sparkling

in my eyes as I hung on his every word and saw it in my mind as though I were

there. And I wanted to be like those people, I wanted to be like those fierce

female warriors who showed up every man around or like the heroes who turned up

and saved the day before disappearing off into the mist and into legends. I

wanted adventure.

And so I worked hard to be like those

people. I trained with every weapon I could get my hands on and I slew

imaginary beasts and evils so that the day I was allowed to do so for real I

would be ready for it.

I thought I had become what I always

dreamt. I helped save the world and afterwards I travelled the country adventuring

everywhere I went. I thought I really was like the people from the stories. But

then life happened. I got married, I had children, I settled down. And I love

that life, I do, but all these years I've been living in happy domesticity I've

been telling myself I'm still that adventurer, I still have it in me to be a

warrior. But if I really was made of the things stories are made of then I

wouldn't still be stuck. I would have broken free several hours ago, climbed

out of this crack in the earth and be halfway home, completely ignoring my

injuries.

My favourite story as a child was that of

the elf maid Seldanna, or Anna for short. Seldanna would not let men tell her

she was not as strong as them, she would not let them treat her as an inferior.

Her story took her through forests, over mountains and even into a few lakes.

She battled trolls, spiders, wild beasts and even a dragon. And at the climax

of the story our hero finds herself trapped in a pit with a snarling, wild beast

and nothing to defend herself with. She gets hurt by the beast, badly, but she

kills it using her bare hands and her own intellect. She climbs from the pit