Once

Chapter One

                                                                              Reila's Point of View

"Il était un fois, vivait une belle terre très loin. Les arbres étaient d'un vert luxuriant, l'herbe était magique et douce, les oiseaux chantaient des chansons douces sirènes chantaient á merveille pour que tout le monde l'entende, et récif gorgé inondé de la douce lueur du soliel. Les grillons chantaient et les cloches du matin sonnaient-¨

Then, in mid-sentence I had an abrupt intrusion of my younger brother calling me from a distance. Kaleb was saying, ̈ The mean man just tripped Ez!¨

He was holding that sentence in a sad pleading tone that could make just about anyone with a sense of mercy fall crying on their knees. Our Father had mercilessly told our mother to abandon us in the woods and leave us in a place to die. Instead, our sweet mother instead took us and gave us to her sister who was a sorceress.

She said to our aunt,¨ Keep these children alive please. One day they will be able to work for you.¨ So our aunt kept us, fed us, taught us to read and write, and how to do chores properly.

She called me 月亮孩子 Yuèliàng háizi, 星星的孩子 Xīngxīng de háizi,

̈moon child, ̈ my brother ¨child of the stars, ̈ and my sister儿童海洋和阳光 Értóng hǎiyáng hé yángguāng, ̈ child of the ocean and sun.¨ Although, she never explained why she called us by those names. For short, we call my sister Ez, my brother Kaleb, and me Reila.

We were told to never go into town without Aunt Kiranmalam or else we might get hurt. And that's exactly what happened. My siblings went into town on their own and one got hurt. All I could think about at the time is how furious our aunt was going to be about this. She HATED it whenever we took it upon ourselves to go into town and got hurt. It was mainly by that narcissistic man.

Nobody knew his name, but they didn't need to know that to know him well. There was almost no way of knowing what he was thinking without using any kind of truth spell or potion. He never spoke to anyone. It was said that he performed enchantments, "surgeries," and other horrifying, unimaginable things on the children he took. Either you were execrable or guileless if you lived and grew up in the village where the king's palace awaits.

There was never a way of us knowing what was to come. That is what we hate about this world. It's cruel, unforgiving, insolent and nomadic. It never stops. It keeps moving. If you don't learn to move with it, there is hardly any hope. It is the way things are and have always been.

That is what everyone has been forced to learn by Kiki Reiku anyways...