Rise of the Fallen Princess (Ahmanet - The Mummy)

Chapter 5 - Pains from the Past

It was a rather warm early evening in the middle of summer in the small village of Soulaires, in the French countryside. Going out onto the garden terrace of their house, Isabelle Parrish then noticed her son, Mathias, then 10 years old, sitting alone on the swing at the bottom of the garden, and looking sad.

Isabelle came to see him and actually saw traces of tears on his cheeks while the child remained gloomy, staring into space and seeming more alone than ever. Saddened to see her son like this, Isabelle came to sit beside him, wrapping her arm around his shoulder to comfort him.

_"Still children who bothered you at school, right?" she asked, but knowing in advance that it was that, knowing that look.

Mathias nodded slowly and revealed in his hands a sheet of paper torn into several pieces and which seemed to be the text of a fantastic story he had imagined and started to write.

_"They took the sheet from me and tore it mockingly, I couldn't do anything, I was alone." replied Mathias with a lump in his throat with sadness but also with anger. "I hate them all!"

Isabelle listened to him and was sorry to hear that, taking her son against her to hug him and try to console him a little. She knew the shy and reserved character of Mathias, and also his passion for fantasy and monsters, which had often led to mockery from other children in all the schools he went to.

_"Why are they doing this to me, mom?" Mathias asked then, news beading in his eyes as he looked at her. "What's wrong with me?"

_"Nothing, Mathias. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you." her mother then said with support and love. "You are as you are, my son whom I love and will never stop loving. They try to lower you lower than they are because deep down they are unable to accept themselves. You, on the contrary, have a sincere, generous heart, mixed with an imaginative and dreamy spirit. You know where you want to chart your course and that's the main thing, and above all never let anyone decide for you. You have a choice. You are the master of your own life."

Mathias listened to these words filled with love and support that his mother said to him and found a semblance of a smile on the corner of his lips.

_"So please don't ever say you're not normal again, because it makes me sad." Isabella added. "Stay who you chose to be."

_"I... I promise, excuse me mum." replied Mathias, snuggling up against her in an embrace full of tenderness. "I promise you. You will be proud of me."

_"I already am, sweetlove... I already am..."

While his mother's voice faded into the distance and the vision of him as a child and his mother disappeared in a veil of light, Mathias, back to the present moment, emerged with difficulty from a heavy torpor.

The first thing he saw as he awoke and his blurry vision recovered was a black and white ceiling like a checkerboard, lit by neon lights. His whole body was numb, he could feel it. Looking around, he saw that he was lying in a single bed, covered with a white sheet, in a modestly sized room that strongly resembled a hospital room. He also saw that his injured thigh had been completely bandaged and healed, even if he still felt some residual pain, and that an intravenous was hooked up to one of his arms to readjust the amount of blood he had lost. A small transparent oxygen mask, connected to a canister next to the bed, covered the lower part of his face. His clothes he was wearing were on a chair nearby and he was dressed in a hospital patient shirt.

Where am I, was the first question he asked himself internally? And also, why had he dreamed of this childhood memory with his mother? He remembered that moment vividly, and a year later his parents would both die in a car crash.