Not Alone is the fantasy book that is the sequel to Alone In the Dark. It is going to be a series of three
books in all. That is if I get them all completed. The second one is mainly about
Fëllon Xrëeon’s (the main character from the first book, Alone In the Dark) daughter, Žashŧä. Yes, I know.
The name looks very fancy. Almost
too fancy. But I had fun creating
it. :)
Here is an expert from Not Alone.
Comment and tell me what you
think of it!
Angelina Zoe
Žashŧä leaned
her head back against a branch of the tree she was up in and sighed
deeply. She drew out a dagger hidden
from somewhere on her person and flipped it in her hand, muttering as she
did. “‘Princess’ don’t flip daggers in
their hands, Žashŧä dear,’” she mimicked her mother in a high
voice, making a sour face. “Well you
know what, Mother? This is one princess
who does!” She hurled the dagger with
all of might forward, hitting a tree in front of her. It hit it with a thunk and was rooted firmly there.
“What do you think of that,
Mother?” Žashŧä growled
as she pulled another dagger from her boots.
She flicked her wrist, still holding the blade in her hand, and licked
her lips. “When am I ever going get out
of Yilla and into the real world?” Žashŧä sighed,
hating the life she was living now. She
never wanted to be the princess’s daughter.
She wanted to be normal. A
normal, twenty-one year old elf. But
that was impossible, being the granddaughter of the king of Yilla. Everyone wanted to serve the granddaughter of
King Glandias, and no one would ever leave her alone. No one.
Not even her own mother.
Žashŧä made
another face as she thought about her mother.
Her father wasn’t bad, she admitted to herself. He didn’t raise her the way that the ancient elves
of Yilla had raised all of their children.
He did it the way he thought best.
And that is where her mother and father didn’t always agree on. Life
just isn’t fair, she thought to herself.
I’d rather be a villager, starving
and not having enough clothes than to be the Princess Aurïa’s daughter.
She flipped the dagger again in between her
fingers and hurled it right next to the blade she had thrown before. She needed a way to vent her anger, and this
wasn’t enough.
Suddenly, Žashŧä was aware
of another presence near her. “That’s one way
to let your anger out,” a voice from behind her echoed.
She turned around quickly,
drawing another dagger, and suddenly stopped when she recognized the elf. Sitting in front of her, twenty feet from the
ground, above in a tree, was her father, garbed in black. She sighed, relieved she didn't hit him accidentally, fueled by her anger.
“Father? What are you doing
here?” She asked, looking at him with
her quizzical blue eyes that still had anger behind them.
Fëllon adjusted himself on the
tree branch he was sitting on and gazed into Žashŧä’s
face. She knew that he was thinking she
looked so much like her mother. That
just made her sourer. “I've come here to
see you, my dear. Why else would I be
here?”
Žashŧä didn’t
meet his piercing black eyes and turned away from him, crossing her arms over
her chest. “Not a lot of people can
sneak up on me like that,” she mumbled, staring at the decorated handle of her
dagger. It had an intricate design of
two wolves under the three suns of the far away land Freelane.
“It is a gift of mine, sneaking
up on people. And it is much easier when
that person you are sneaking up on is angry or absorbed in troubling
thoughts.” For a split second, Fëllon
thought back to his adoptive father who taught him the meaning of stealth. But only for a second. “Žash, what’s bothering you?”
Žashŧä sighed
angrily. “Mother! Mother is what’s
bothering me! I can’t be with
her for more than a minute without her telling me what to do and what not to
do! You don’t know how annoying it
gets!” She brought her dangling legs up
and held them close to her chest.
“She is your mother,” Fëllon
commented, leaning back a little. “And
you owe her your respect.”
“You don’t understand, Father,”
Žashŧä whined, putting her hair behind her
pointed ears.
“Oh, yes I do. You should’ve seen your mother before you
were born. Even before we were married
she was giving me orders! Ordering me
around like a slave! Like I was her
personal bodyguard.” Fëllon lifted an
eyebrow and smiled. “Then again, I was
her personal bodyguard.”
Žashŧä gave him
a wary look and narrowed her eyes. “You are
just making that up.”
“No, I’m not. If you think she’s bossy now, it’s only
because she loves you so much.” Fëllon
paused for a moment and then went on.
“If she didn’t care about you, then do you think that she would worry
about your future? Or her wanting to
bring you up as mothers bring up daughters that will soon rule Yilla?”
Žashŧä’s
expression didn’t change at all. She
still held the dagger in her calloused hand and looked at it wistfully. “She wants me to stop sword fighting.” She then looked up at her father with
pleading eyes. “Father, you know how
much sword fighting means to me.”
Fëllon nodded slowly, looking at
her thoughtfully. “No one said that you
had to stop it if you didn’t want to.
Your mother just expressed her unhappiness with it. That is all.”
Putting her dagger away, Žashŧä unfolded
her legs and let them swing again. “I guess I
never thought of it that way.” She was
quiet for a while, pondering on what her father had just told her. “I, uh... guess I should go talk to mother.”
Fëllon nodded, a hint of a smile
on his handsome face. “That would be a
wise thing to do.”
Žashŧä shrugged
and stood up unsteadily on her thick branch, holding her arms out for
balance. “I guess the sooner the
better.” Then she quickly added, “But
I’m not going to repent. Just talk to
her.”
“You’d better be quick about
it. You know how your mother can worry.”
“Oh do I ever!” She jumped from the branch and clung onto
another one further down, doing that for each level of branches until she got
down to the ground. “Are you
coming?” She called up to her father.
“Yup, I’m coming!”
