Castle of Whistlers

1: Disillusioned & Framed

The chilling wails of the wind shook her body, her feet teetered back and forth. She braced herself toward, pushing into the black iron gate, gasping as it opened with ease. "Where am I now?" She asked herself as she corrected out of her stumble. She released the gate, the only hesitant in her action coming from the whine of the metal hinges as it rested back in a closed position. 

"Hello? I beg to you to forgive my uninvited entrance. Please can someone show me to the nearest shelter-" She stopped talking to listen to the noise coming from within the castle. Music was playing loudly. She stopped, thinking to herself she must have almost interrupted a party of some sorts.

In her lowly lives position, society's constructs for rules or laws were never in her favor. Laws were written vague, with room for interpretation leading them to be easily manipulated by the party with more influence and wealth. It was easily in the realm for a commoner like herself to be enslaved for the simplest misstep. She dared not interrupt the party goers and threaten the wraith of a drunken lord.

Honor for the Romanian people was everything, but it could be stripped away faster than a hungry man to a dead animal's hide. The only people with any protection of power were royalty, lordships, or relatives of either, and they were almost already the only people wealthy enough to afford the taxes which came with being landowners.

Of course, not everyone here had much of a pure soul. Some were-as she remembered only her grandmother saying-devils and tax collectors. These were all but rumors to young Cornelia, whom had never stepped outside her sheltered life as a household maiden for a common lord (until recently). She never got a chance to see what a tax collector looked like, so it was hard for her own to confirm whether a person before her was a true devil or not. No dignified man under the King would venture to her rural village, the lord of her house had to travel to town and pay his fees, but her grandmother, a more traveled woman than Cornelia, revealed they looked like death, but took your coin too.

Freedom never lasted for a woman here in Romania, their land was one big cage where their unhappy souls were kept as pets. Cornelia Melillo was not one of the lucky few who had nice, loving families, or even decent owners, instead she got a man she knew by Euseo Regis, as wealthy as any man would need to be in her village. His house was a large country-side villa with stone brick walls and a fire always lit.

She realized as she stepped gingerly through the fog, that country side villa was nothing but a rock under a horse hove compared to the castle which towered before her now. She was eyeing the gatekeep building only a few feet away from her now, wondering why the gate keeper had left the gate unlocked and had not bothered to send her away by now.

Cornelia squirted her eyes and tried to make them focus, but she couldn't see the top floor with all the fog, much less the end of path in front of her. She still feared interrupting the party, but she was out of options and had been traveling all day. She had been lucky enough to hitch a ride with a travelling tradesmen that morning, but she was wise enough to sneak away from him before evening came and he stopped for the night. More wise advice from her grandmother, whom never knew Cornelia might need to heed it.

What she meant to do here tonight, was lie. She hoped to appeal to the head housekeeper to cook, and beg for mercy and hope they enslaved her into a life of hard work. At least she would have a roof would be over her head and maybe even an area to rest. The nights here were not welcoming  and she had been out here for four nights already.

Wild dogs howled outside the castle's perimeter, like they knew of her likely rejection, mockingly remaindering her she would be returned to their hungry mercy. She blinked, and right as she did, out of the corner of her eye someone begun to appear. Her eyes grew wide quickly as she searched the area in front of her again, but there was nothing in sight. She shivered as the wind as the wind nipped her skin and carried her hair wildly towards the castle. The same wind which had caused her to collide with the gate.