Nalkia

Chapter 1: The not-so-imaginary friend.

In a far away land that you will never see or go, there was a castle filled with people.
There, lived every kind of person you could imagine! The tall, the short, the old, the young and everything in between.

It was lively and yet it was lifeless.
It was cheerful and yet it was gloomy.
It was grey.

What? Were you expecting your typical lighthearted, fantasy castle?
Well, I'm afraid Nalkia isn't your typical lighthearted fantasy world.

But in this grey and melancholy place, there was a little girl filled with color. Her name was Alice.

Alice was only seven years old, but she liked to think she was just as clever as all the grown-ups in the palace!
In fact, she didn't think the grown-ups were very clever at all! Alice had been told that the whispers she heard at night were just her imagination, but she knew better.
She knew that her imaginary friend wasn't just imaginary, and that the story's he told her at night, when everyone else had gone to sleep, weren't just stories.

She had tried to explain all this to her parents, but they always told her the same thing.
"There can't be a little boy who whispers to you and tells you stories in the night, because if you can't see him, where could he possibly be?"
When Alice had put some thought into where her not-so-imaginary friend could live, she thought that the answer was quite obvious. He must live in the walls!

The walls you see, at Nalkia castle, always seemed odd to Alice.
If she knocked on them, she always got a knock back.
Alice sometimes placed food near the hole that was next to her bed and in the morning, when she woke up, it was always gone!

She had tried to explain all this to her parents, but they always told her the same thing.
"You shouldn't put food near the hole that's next to your bed because mice will take it. Your imaginary friend isn't taking the food, the mice are"
But Alice knew better.

One time, at night, when everyone else had gone to sleep, Alice heard the familiar voice of a little boy in the odd walls of the Nalkia castle. However, this bedtime story was different to the others he'd told her. This story wasn't happy and it didn't make her laugh like they usually did.
This story was sad. Very sad. Depressing.
This story made her cry.

It was a story of blood and death. Of pain and suffering.
The main character in the story was called Ethan. Alice liked that character.
But in the story, nothing seemed to go right for him. All his friends and family were very sick and he was almost starving to death. He didn't even have a home. He traveled to the biggest castle in the land to find the antidote for the ones he loved but they just shunned him away.
Ethan asked and asked but the king and queen wouldn't help him.

Alice didn't think her parents, the king and queen of the castle she lived in, were anything like that! She thought that if Ethan came to her palace instead, then he could've gotten the antidote and everyone could have lived happily ever after!
But of cause, the story wasn't real. It was just something that her friend in the walls had made up. Or so she thought.

To Alice, nothing as bad as what happened in the story could ever happen in real life! No way!
But she knew nothing of the terrors outside of the palace. Nothing of the evil and darkness and black magic that was out there, in the awful world of Nalkia!

Just then, something extremely unexpected happened.
Something that easily snapped her out of her thoughts.
Something Alice had never thought would ever happen.
Something so eye-opening and unpredictable, that Alice never thought it was even possible for such a thing to happen.
But it did.
Her not-so-imaginary friend, who whispered to her through the walls and told her stories in the night, when nobody else was awake, her best friend she had ever had...

Was crying...

A/n/
Thank you all for reading the first chapter of Nalkia! I have always been a big reader but I have never really written anything other than for school! I'm sorry if this chapter was a little bit on the short side, I just thought that the ending was a good place to leave off of. If you have any suggestions for my story please don't hesitate to tell me them. I will be sure to take them into consideration. If you did like this chapter, remember to vote and follow me! If you didn't like it, please tell me why and give me constructive criticism in the comments.
Good job for getting through this really long authors notes and please tune in to the next chapter of my story: Nalkia!