Recklessly Yours || موغلان

Nine

Please do vote, comment and share this story on your profile with your followers :)

It has been a week since the 'Big Announcement'. The whole world was now aware that the Crown Prince of Mughlaan was going to marry a 'nobody' and everyone had taken it upon themselves to troll Layla Baig incessantly. They had a harsh comment about anything and everything related to her. They criticised her for her weight, her height, her skin tone, her hair, her accent, her education. They basically bashed her with hate all over the internet. The tabloids were loving every single minute of it.

Before all this happened, Layla never thought that she was not thin enough or that she was only 165 cms tall, she never noticed that her hair was not very voluminous or that she was not pale. And she always believed that Economics was a great field to study and work in. But apparently, she should have thought about all this.

His Highness, Prince Mustafa had not contacted her even once in the past week. However, Her Majesty regularly called and checked up on her and had asked her to visit the palace today for lunch.

Layla was scrolling through Instagram as was her morning routine after checking the news.  It was not a healthy habit but she did it anyway. Ever since the announcement whenever she opened it all she saw was hate and abuse. Her account was private but her follow requests were hitting the roof, there were close to forty thousand requests on her account. She only had 1.1k followers.

An account called @princemustafaislove posted a picture of hers which was from her final year at school, nearly 4 years old and was criticising her choice of clothing and how she was such a bad fit for the Crown Prince and that he deserved better. In that picture she was wearing a lose t-shirt and skinny jeans, the colour of both the piece of clothing was contrasting each other horribly but that did not matter to a seventeen-year old Layla who was smiling widely at the camera. The comments under that post were horrifying. Many people were accusing her of being a 'fame whore', who only wanted to get married to their Prince for the title. A few were fat shaming her. It was true that Layla was not thin by any means but she could also not be considered as someone who was obese. She had a small tummy and she was okay with it.

Layla knew that the smart thing to do was to ignore all this and avoid looking at it but she just could not stop scrolling through it. After seeing some more hateful posts and comments she put her phone down and went to the bathroom to freshen up. She could feel tears falling from her eyes.

'I have to be strong. I cannot let them get to me.' She kept repeating this mantra in her head while getting ready. She took out a white cotton shirt and faded blue jeans, it was the right amount of formal she was going for. She also wore back heels which she usually didn't but after seeing people judge her height, she thought she should start wearing them. She put on a gold chain with a flower pendant and gold hoop earrings. And took a black sling handbag to complete her look.

Since it was summertime, she kept her make up minimal. Black mascara, pink blush and nude brown lipstick was her go to make up look. Today, however, she used a concealer to cover up two spots on her left cheek.

Her aunt called her downstairs. All her family members were downstairs for breakfast.

"Is that what you will be wearing for your lunch with Her Majesty, the Queen?" Amina asked Layla.

"Yes, why? Is there a problem?" Layla asked her, anxiously looking at her clothes. She took her time in deciding her outfit today. She wanted to look pretty and presentable.

"Nothing. I just thought maybe you should wear kurta and salwar, something ethnic. The women of the royal family always dress up in the most beautiful traditional dresses with scarves on their head." Amina said.