New Beginnings
Part of collection of short stories that may or may not revolve around the same characters.
The girl woke up confused. Confused, and very tired.
She yawned and groggily hauled herself off the ground, inspecting her clothes and frowning at the dirt beneath her nails. There was a reason she never joined the group of young, rambunctious, starry-eyed children in their so-called “expeditions” deep in the forest — she hated getting dirty. There was no way to get the feeling of dirt and grime off without a good bath.
How, she thought, taking in the trees with deep violet leaves and glistening black branches that spiraled high into the clouds, did I end up here?
And with a jolt, she realized that not only did she not remember how she ended up (presumably) in the middle of a forest, she didn’t remember anything. Not her own name, or her age, or anything about her family — if she even had one, she thought grimly.
It seemed to be sometime around midday, and she was hungry. Closing her eyes and praying that one of the divine would be kind to her, she chose a random direction and started to walk in hopes that she would find a village or town where she could seek food. She walked until she found a pathway that seemed to lead to nowhere, worn down by the trotting hooves of horses and the twinkling, multicolored wagons of merchants that clinked with precious jewels and trinkets alike.
Well, she thought, this doesn’t seem very promising.
So she followed the path.
Fortunately, she did not regret that decision. It wasn’t a village or town that she found. It was an entire kingdom — and a grand one at that. Its spotless stone walls rose tall into the sky, and she saw a fleeting glimpse of the shrouded movement of the archers that lined it, bows and arrows ready in the event that a threat was discovered. If she didn’t know how much of a waste it would be, she would say that the walls looked gilded, glowing gold in the gentle light of the lucent afternoon sun.
It was one of these archers that spotted her and called to one of the guards stationed at the entrance — a proud, magnificent archway.
“Does it make you a bad person if you’re only kind because you have to be?”
The boy, humming to himself just a moment ago while rummaging through the dusty wooden drawers of the supply closet, paused, and turned his head curiously towards his sister. “What do you mean?”
She did not respond as she closed the leather-bound book she had been flipping through. Her brother watched as she dragged over a stool, pulling herself carefully on top of it and setting the book back down on the dusty shelf. The girl considered the shelf for a moment before turning back to her brother, hopping down from the stool with a soft breath. As the boy closed a drawer and reached to open another, she curled her hands into fists and spoke again. “Do you — “ she hesitated “ — think that I’m nice?”
“Of course,” said the boy, focused on unfolding a piece of yellowed parchment.
“Okay,” she said simply as a chill crept into her bones and she sat down cross-legged on the cold floor. “That’s good.”
He paused and looked down at her, setting the parchment down. “You’re acting weird. It’s making me worried. Why are you asking me if you’re nice? And what did you say before? About being kind because you had to be?”
Truly, what had she been thinking when she asked that? So often, meaningless words tumbled out of her mouth and no one knew what to make of them. Her brother was the only one who tried to understand her, and so instead of banishing them from her fickle memory, she turned the words over and over again in her head before she finally had the courage to say them out loud. And once she started, she couldn’t stop, her voice growing more and more shaky. “Sometimes, I only do things because I know I have to — and everyone does that, right? But I only helped him because I’m supposed to help anyone I see. And when I say I love helping people, I can’t tell if I’m lying, or if I really mean it . . . A lot of times, I don’t even know if I’m lying or not.”
