Arcadian Huntress ⚢

Chapter II Delian Goddess

Years ago, I was once a girl who lived in my father's protection. Living with a huge family, and born a girl, it was hard to get attention. The kingdom, and even my parents were too busy noticing the eldest ones. After my formative years, entering womanhood was like walking on a tight rope. You have to learn how to balance while carrying various of responsibilities, and you have to smile while doing it. 

If you fall, you fall from favor and from grace.

As a princess and a daughter, I learned what's expected of me. I had debts to be paid to my father. My sole purpose was to be wed off to some rich royal or merchant so as to expand my father's influence and riches. And once I am a wife, my sole duty was to take care of my husband and bear him children.

The future looked leaked. I want something more than that. I want something my brothers could have. I want to learn how to fight. I want an adventure. Visit the cities, live in the great wilds. It would be excellent if my father would understand me. But it was too much to ask it of him. So I attended my lessons and responsibilities dutifully in hopes that I can have an open communication with him and have him listen to my concerns.

I may be a princess in birth, I may have both parents alive, but I neither have a close relationship with them. My nursemaids and handmaidens would often take care of me. They would be the ones to groom me and teach me all I should know. It was part of my routine. Unknown to them, I would study to be more advanced than what they are teaching me in my free time. Of course, I had to do it in utmost secrecy.

I would run to the small library as fast as my feet could take me. Then I yanked the door shut and locked it. I could see a massive bookshelf from floor to ceiling. The stand was packed full of parchments and bound books. I would spend nearly half an hour examining the wares.

Finally, I would pick a small tome that seemed to contain a number of stories about wars and heroes and adventures at sea―the sort of thing I liked. I laid the book down on the counter and read.

There were also times when my mother, Queen Nonakris, would catch me, in activities I was not allowed to indulge in. If it was my father or anyone else, they would scold me on the spot.

At first, I thought I was getting in trouble too but she encouraged me with a warm smile. "An excellent choice, dear. May I make a recommendation?" 

She would hunt for a moment through a shelf, and then laid a slightly larger, leather-bound book beside it. 

"This is a compilation of the best stories told by local bards over the past five years. It has lots of swordplay and sorcery and the doings of the gods. There are also stories about heroines that I feel would be much more enjoyable."

"Girls can be heroes too?"

"My dear," she whispered, as though she shared to me the biggest secret of all. "There are stories out there about demigoddesses, nymphs who evaded danger, and princesses who saved their own kingdoms. But people tend to hide stories like that."