The Princess in Chains

Yazmin

There once was a girl with a purple eye and a brown eye. She would have been beautiful people said if only it weren't for her flaw. That is why her parents left her at the doorstep of strangers. She was almost good enough. She was almost perfect. But she wasn't enough. They left her in a cradle of blankets with a slip of paper that only had one word written on it. Yazmin.

That is the story of how I came to be.

My name was the only thing I had from my real parents. The ones I never met.

My knuckles burn as I scrub the clothes against the rock. My fingers are an angry red. The current of the river is slow this time in the year. I've been here for three hours I have to do my laundry and also the clothes of my three brothers.

Iru my oldest brother who is twenty years old and a low class soldier. Rune who is seventeen and is also a soldier but is very skilled and has been going up on his rank. He is the hope of the family. And Zacheo who is fifteen he has a passion for painting.

Iru and Rune's clothes are always filthy with a smell of sour sweat. While Zacheo's is stained with paint. Even those stains look like a masterpiece. Their is also a faint smell of herbs on his clothes.

I wince as my knuckles start to bleed. I finish with the last stack of clothes and load it onto the tub. I lift the heavy tub onto my shoulder and begin to trek across the rocky path.

I reach the small town I live in. I am still not used to the stares people shoot at me. I duck my head and quicken my pace. I hate being almost perfect. My purple eye is unsettling for many people.

I open the door to the small house. Two pairs of dark brown eyes turn to look at me. Iru and Rune. "You got out early of training today?" I ask as I set the tub full of clothes on the floor.

"Yeah." Iru says not looking up from his sword that he constantly is sharpening. He lifts it up to inspect it. It glistens in the poor sun light.

I pick up the tub walking out the back door to the small yard in the back. I begin to hang the clothes to dry. "It looks like you had a hard day. Let me help."

Rune begins hanging clothes along my side. I smile "Thanks Rune."

"Anytime Yaz."

My heart swells. He is the only one that has a nickname for me.

With Rune's help I finish quickly and we go back inside.

Zacheo is just entering the front door. He sets the stacks of paintings on the floor. "How was business today?" Iru asks nonchalantly. He wasn't very happy when he first found out that Zacheo wasn't planning on becoming a soldier. Selling paintings didn't give much profit.

"I managed to sell a painting today." Zacheo says with a giddy smile. I realize that there is more to the story.

"Which one did you sell?" I ask. I go to the kitchen pulling out some bowls. Mother made vegetable soup with some undefinable meat.

"The one with the girl on the edge of the cliff with the sunset." He says his smile is uncontainable.

"The one where it looks like she's falling?" I pour the soup into the bowls.

"Yeah that one." Zacheo says sitting at the table.

"Oh dammit!" I say laughing. "I was hoping you wouldn't sell that one. It was one of my favorites. I wanted to hang it in my bedroom."

"You mean our bedroom." Rune says. We only have two rooms one for mother and father and another for me and my brothers.

I roll my eyes as I set the bowls on the table. I sit down on the table and take a sip at the soup. "Why would you even want to hang it up anyway?" Zacheo asks impatiently I know he wants to say something else but he wants me to pull it out of him.