Excerpt: Starlight (WORK IN PROGRESS)

They say that fairy-tales are supposed to start off with “once upon a time,” and end with the prince sweeping the maiden off to some mysterious land called “happily ever after.” I should know. Fantasy stories are something upon which I am somewhat well-educated. I do not mean to say that there is not a bit of pain to be found – the death of a parent, the loss of one’s truest love, or perhaps some great trial to assail the weary heroine.
However, for all these foul things, things find themselves to right and everything is resolved in a tidy and elegant way. Sorrow swept away, everything put back into its rightful place.
It simply does not happen. Pain lingers, sorrow tarries for a bit. Even if your heart and soul are bursting with joy beyond anything you have ever felt, there is still that twinge of suffering. It has faded, to be sure, but it will never disappear. Not completely.
At least, not in my case.
The last thing I want to do is paint some marred picture of how things were supposed to have gone compared to how they actually occurred. Perhaps, before the ones that penned this story that you most likely have read had ran off madly with their own dreams, they should have asked those who lived these events.
Namely, me. Or actually, us. My sister and I.
But now I’m allowing my words to overshoot my story’s beginning.
My tale is not exactly a fairy tale, per se. Mine is one that took place long before such stories as Cinderella or Snow White were imagined. Those were just stories, tales to lure the hearts of young maids and lads, similar to those trilled upon the harps of the poets of my time and place.
You may been one of those who will choose to take my narrative and devour it like the most succulent of treats. Or perhaps you will cast it aside without a second thought because of some trifling flaw or something that you don’t think is “right.” It does not matter. I have a cause, a passion, for the truth to be known. The real truth.
You may have heard some verison of my story in the past, or perhaps we are nothing more than strangers. Yet, by the end of my tale, you will know me as a friend and sister. And now we begin as those who came before once began their ballads, and tales....
Sing in me, Muse, of the princess of stars...of her sorrow, her loss, and her love....let the ballad begin.....