The Royals of Glacia

Chapter One

When Astrid Arthur tried to tell her story, she never quite knew where to start. There was the day she was born, but she couldn't tell the honest story because she didn't remember any of it. She didn't even remember what her parents looked like. She hadn't seen them since she was two.

Astrid had lived with her uncle since then. They weren't necessarily happy or close. In fact, they barely even saw each other. She wanted to pretend that he was her real parent at first. She learned how to read from him, but that joy didn't last. He made it obvious to her that he wasn't her father. He spent his time out partying and getting drunk, though she didn't realize that when she was younger. It seemed like he was out at work or busy with his friends.

The day that she started school was what she considered a good starting point. She thought of it as the day that everything started going wrong, though it started going wrong a long time before then. She thought she had been a reasonably happy child. She had the uncanny ability to walk around the house and find adventure in the weirdest places: running around furniture, acting like she was being chased by something, pretending she was a secret spy and needed to save the world. She could push away that creeping sadness, even though it haunted her nightmares. When she stepped foot in the school, reality hit her like a brick and her dreams crumbled away. It was when she knew that fantasy didn't coexist with reality.

It wasn't that her school was particularly bad, either. It was simply where she was reminded that fairytales aren't real, and it stung her. She once clung to the stories that people would tell her at night, some vague memory of her parents telling her those stories with the happy endings, but they weren't real. The real world was cruel and unforgiving.

She had to wake up ridiculously early every single day just to hitch a ride on the airtrain. Her uncle typically was either still gone from the night before or passed out on the sofa each morning; he wasn't a safe option to give a ride. Who knows what danger that could put her in? He could barely steer a carriage when he was sober. She never ate breakfast because she hadn't learned how to work the "cooking things", as she called them, and Uncle Selian would be mad for doing something like that without his permission. The passengers on the airtrain never paid much attention to her. A few stared on occasion because they couldn't seem to wrap their minds around the idea of a little girl riding the airtrain to school. They didn't understand what she was going through, and she was sure that they'd never truly care, so she sat back to gaze out the window. As the world flew by her, she could daydream again. It gave her a passage back into the stories that she so desperately missed.

The city Typherville used to be beautiful. It still is beautiful, don't get mistaken, but in a very different way. There are pictures where there used to be trees that stretched out for miles and rocky trails that citizens could explore in the colder seasons. The roads were brick and the buildings were old-fashioned, frozen in the past. In the square, structures were made of stone and the pathways lined with torches. Astrid had vague memories of walking around with her parents before they passed. She wore her favorite blue dress that twirled as she danced. Now, all of that was being torn down, and she would lose another connection to them. The brick roads were being stripped up and replaced with metal. They hadn't gotten to them all yet, though, and Astrid was grateful. They were starting in the center of town and working their way out.

The airtrains rode on a track around the top of the old buildings, but the new buildings looked like they were from the distant future. They were built with mirrored silver glass with shapes that shouldn't be possible. Some of the airtrain tracks spiraled around them and the people inside could be seen, some working hard to make the city better, others hardly working. It was peaceful being that far above ground. With how fast the airtrains went, it felt and looked like the passengers were flying.