In the West, every yearly season looked just the same. If one did not count the days with a calendar, it would be almost impossible to discern January from March or September from June.
Adele, who had passed all her life since she remembered herself, in the Western Metropolis, the grand city of Westend, in the heart of mighty Posperius, still found recognising the differences of the months quite hard.
No one came to wake her that morning, which was unusual. They let her sleep as much as she wished. However, when she processed it on her mind, she seemed it justifiable and prospective. The previous day, she had demonstrated an excellent conduct to the suitor she had been presented.
Her grandmother, Azelia Aragon, the Lady of the West, had evidently been on a rather charitable mood, wanting to reward her for displaying the discipline of the West once more; grace, pudicity and virtue.
Of course, she meant the discipline to her. The grace only she defined. The pudicity of her own accord. The virtue that she determined.
The entire West, all three districts of the Twelve, bowed to a sixty year old cymose woman, who valued nothing but her giant ego. Whereas, she, Adele Gaèlle, the fifth daughter of King Dante the Second, was constrained against her will to do the same, and receive suitors the last two years, all chosen by the 'harridan'.
'When I am Queen, the first order I shall give will be for her decapitation.'
All day long, she was taught how to embroider, crochet, tat, sew, dance every dance there was, move gracefully and not like a newborn, half-blind ox -as the woman ordered by the 'harridan' to watch her signalised repeatedly, in order to teach her how to survive.
"If she wants me to survive, she must find me a swordsmanship tutor!" She remembered shouting, when she had firstly heard so.
She wasn't even permitted to be properly educated. She only knew lettering and reading.
Furthermore, she could not talk to the only friend she ever had, the illegitimate daughter of the castle's cook named Rose, for she was married and forbidden to do anything without her husband's permission and he was thrice her age.
Four months ago, Adele had turned fifteen years old and the only thing she wished was to celebrate it alone. Of course, her opinion did not matter at all. Almost every single highlord of the West, along with their sons obviously, had accumulated Westend, in order to celebrate with her, cajole the Lady of the West and -with some luck- succeed on the ideal match, the one between their son and the Princess, on if the royal heirs. That was what Adele had been since the moment she was born; an heir, a pawn in a vast board game where all the Great and Mighty Men gambled, dallied and rollicked with the lives of unwitting dummies.
All she ever desired was freedom; independence; autarky. She hated that the 'harridan' kept her in her castle just to create an obligation on her part. She also knew with utter certainty that she would help her ascend on the throne of the Twelve Kingdoms in the future. Naturally not because she was her grandchild not even because she thought she deserved it but simply because she needed someone in a high place to do her bidding. Who could be more suitable or ideal than the Crowned Monarch?
'I shall wait until my coronation. Then, she will count the rest of her life in minutes. I will not let her live for a single hour.'
She craved for education; learning how the world around her operated; its laws and science. She hated the inertia in which she lived for so many years. She wanted to be creative. But before everything else, she yearned to visit Raysun, the peerless Capital, the Metropolis of all the Twelve Kingdoms, to enter the palace and meet her father. Only then, would she complete of the hollow parts of her self.
She often dreamt about life in the Palace, the very centre of knowledge, science and arts. This was where everything started and ended. There, she would meet all the significant people of the Realm and, when she became Queen, she would summon men daily and converse, in order to learn and discover. She was quidnunc and she was looking forward to leaving the wilderness of the West and the 'harridan'.
She looked herself at the mirror. Her ginger hair had grown very long. Maybe she had to cut it off a little. Or maybe not. She liked their ken. They resembled a wild lion's mane. After brushing it, she decided to braid her wild locks into two or three plaits.
She went down to the dining room with no rush, not feeling particularly hungry. Merely, her female watcher and overseer would trouble her with lectures about nutrition and the worth of meals, had she noticed she had not eaten breakfast and this was something Adele wanted to avoid at all costs.
'Poppycock. Wacker.'
Just bringing those words up on her mind, resulted to her impending reproach oh her ears.
'Such words of worthless and affrontive vocabulary do not beseem to a progeny of Kings, to whose veins royal blood flows.'
Did any blood flow in her veins, though?