Princess Avalon of Honey Falls (currently incomplete)

Supper

In the dining hall, we crowd around the long table for supper. Seated around me, is my mother, Blair, Prince Phillip, and the most well-behaved fairy seated on a tall stack of books on toadstools and the evolution of moss.

The king, my father, is not present. He has been out of the picture ever since one of the gnomes decided to bite one of his fingers off. He threw his hands in the air, packed his bags, and left to the forest, and nothing we said would bring him back. 

I'm surprised I haven't already left the palace as well, because the gnomes and fairies are reaching my last nerve.

So mother rules the palace on her own. She is much older than she looks. She has aged like a glass of fine wine.

Blair got our mother's hair, and I got my blonde locks from our father. Blair is far prettier than me, and she has a passion to remind me of that every single day.

Now, from the head of the table, mother starts her tradition of asking everyone, "How was your day?"

Blair immediately shoots me a glare from across the table, over her cup of pink lemonade, and says, "I'll start. My day was as unproductive as it could possibly be. And that's because," she narrows her eyes at me, "someone, got in my way."

The urge to roll my eyes is so strong that it almost gets the better of me when I say, "Well, its not my fault all you do is put on makeup, talk to yourself in the mirror, sing to animals out the windows, and sneak out to see Phillip every night!" I glance at Phillip sitting next to Blair, who has sunk down in his chair, his plate untouched.

Blair kicks me underneath the table, "I do so many more things than those hobbies. You're just jealous of me."

Mother sets her glass down on the table, "Girls, stop fighting, you're scaring Fatima."

When I glance over at the poor fairy seated next to me, her hands are clutched against her chest, and she's shaking, eyes wary and flitting from me to Blair.

When I reach out my hand for her tiny fingers to hold, she squeaks and hops off her pile of books, and flutters dizzily out the open stained glass window.

A pile of fairy dust is left where she was sitting.

Mother sighs, holding her head in her hands, removing her crown, and setting it next to her now empty glass.

I avert her gaze when she raises her head to look at me, "Avalon, please go busy yourself outside while I talk to your sister. Phillip, you are welcome to leave."

Phillip robotically rises from his chair, pushes it in, kisses Blairs flaming red cheek, then walks through the dining hall entry, and to the front palace doors.

Mother waves her hand at me, "Outside, go."

"But I haven't finished dinner!" I protest.

"You've done enough. Go, now. Before I have the guards escort you." she points at the entry Philip walked through.

Huffing out an angry breath, I give Blair one last look but she has her head turned so I can't see her face.

-

Turning the opposite way Phillip went when I walk through the dining hall entry, I continue towards the doorway leading out to the garden.

I tightly close the door behind me, so no gnomes get in again, but my dress gets caught between the door and the stones.

Trying to not rip the fabric, I finally yank it free and march over the giant willow tree and heavily plant myself against its smooth bark.

Grumping and muttering to myself, with my arms crossed I watch two gnomes crawl out of their hole in the ground and snicker mischievously as they tiptoe over to the door I came out of.

Let me tell you what our gnomes look like: Imagine a smurf. Make the blue skin a regular peachy-pale skin color. Change the puffy white hat to a tall pointy blue hat and add pants with a belt and a coat. They are not actual garden gnomes that are made out of clay that can walk around. They have the likeness of a very very short human child, with white facial hair (beard and mustache), black buckled shoes, ten times the amount of deviousness, and happen to live in dirt.

I'll explain our fairies later.

I watch silently as one gnome hefts its comrade onto its shoulders, its pointy blue hat pressing against the top gnome's groin and it shrieks in pain as it reaches for the door handle.

Now, this door is probably six feet tall. Each gnome reaches almost one foot in height. The doorknob is halfway up the height of the door, so they wouldn't be able to reach it unless they had a third gnome.

As the gnomes struggle to reach the doorknob, I hear a grunt from over the cobblestone wall that separates our Honey Falls garden from Prince Phillips Moon Petals palaces garden.

I turn my attention from the gnomes when they tumble down when the top gnome slips, and scan the length of the wall.

As I'm about to get up to go herd the gnomes back to their hole, who are stumbling almost drunkenly around from the fall, I see a hand slap over the wall and barely contain a gasp.

The rest of the person's arm swings over and then a leg follows.

Soon after the whole body falls over the wall which is only five feet high, not much shorter than myself, and I watch as I recognize Phillip's younger brother, Prince Atlas pushing himself off the ground and brushing the grass and moss from his clothes. 

"Atlas?" I call.

His head shoots up, "Avalon?" his face furrowed.

Why is my love interest in our garden?

A/N: Dedicated to Rosie :)

Appreciated: Follows/Likes/Comments/Shares/Votes