Wayward (Prince Arthur x Oc)

Chapter 1: In which someone almost die

Princess Harriet was one of the lesser know princesses on Fairy tale island, being the middle child in-between two far more popular siblings. Not that it had bothered her to much, it had made fleeing from the clutches of royalty much easier. If she was known for anything, it would be her adverseness towards being in the spotlight, or her book-smart tendencies, so it had surprised no one when she had decided to move out to the country and basically become a hermit. It had taken a few long discussions with her parents, but after a while they relented, simply instructed her to keep in contact via mail, and then she went.

There had of course been others that fought back besides her parents, like her older sister, but it had been a long time since Harriet had taken her thoughts on anything too seriously. The only thing her sister wanted was to baby her, and Harriet for one was sick of being babied.

On the other side of the spectrum was her little brother who frankly couldn't care less about what she did and was basically not involved at all in the moving away discussion. Harriet wasn't to fond of her brother either, so the feeling was mutual.

Regardless, even after almost two years had passed she still got letters from both her parents, and one from her sister, that was almost always about the same thing. Worry, a bunch of worry.

Worry that was not needed. Yes, she was doing fine. Yes, she didn't need to get an allowance anymore. No, she was not dead or dying.

She had spent almost two years in the hut in the middle of the forrest at this point, and she was just, fine. She knew at this point how to make money by herself, after learning to make small potions, charms, and spells and the like. She was of course by no means a witch or spell-caster, but she had studied magic long before becoming a hermit so she was hardly incompetent. There was plenty of magic one could master even without naturally being born with it, at least if you knew where to look.

Every week the nearby town would have vendors set up their stalls for potential customers and there she would also be, not as a princess, but as Miss Edda, the young magician.

It was fine, or well, it had been. A few weeks ago, to her sight dismay, it seemed like people had after all this time started to notice the missing royalty, and so the kingdom was informed of the princess departing.

"Secret princess hiding in your town?" The tabloids that Edda would see on her way to set up her stall had started to read soon enough after that. She would grimace a bit at the paper, she had been hoping, well expecting, for no one to care about that one princess taking her leave, but now the news were all over the place.

Funny enough it seemed like they really had to dig to find any even remotely recent paintings of her to use, because the pictures they eventually ended up using was painted over ten years ago. She wasn't very fond of being painted, and people were normally not so fond of painting her either.

This day when she had been at the town no one would shut up about the missing princess, where were she? What was she doing? Why was no one with her? How had her looks significantly changed since her last portrait had been painted?

The questions went on and on, and sitting at her table during the had been like having the letters from the royal family recited at her on loop all around her. Which grated her nerves like nothing else. It was hard to say which question bugged her the most, the fact that they all still generally had the assumption that she was some halfwit who shouldn't be allowed to roam around without a handler certainly was something that made her wanna scream. In contrast to that the questions about her appearance was almost comical. Outside of the fact that she was outside of the castle, there was no regard of her magical accomplishments or even what sort of magic she was doing, almost like everyone immediately forgot about that smidge of info, but oh boy was her appearance of great importance, apparently. Though she supposed it made a twisted sort of sense.