Euthalia

Prologue

If anybody told you that life for a nineteen year old with a love for libraries and history can be a tedious affair, that somebody could never have been more wrong. I am living proof. It all began, it seems, at my birth when through eyes misty with joy and relief, my mother saw a blue mark in the shape of a moon just below my left shoulder. She was assured that it was a normal birthmark and never gave it a second thought. As I grew up I too became intrigued by my “extraordinary” mark. As a child I would imagine it held secrets, vast and wondrous. I clung to them like bees to honey in the hope that I was somehow different from the others. I would climb on chairs and jump, praying that I would remain suspended in the air. I would close my eyes tightly and picture myself someplace else, imagining the breeze on my face as I travelled to my magical destination only to find myself sitting in my room. I would make up stories of a princess who would come to take me away to my kingdom in a fairy land. Those around me, adults especially, would openly encourage me while behind my back they smiled that all-so-kowing smile. She’ll get over it, it’s just a phase. They’d say. I heard them even though they thought I didn’t. My Jenna is always singing on tables, thinking she’s on stage! I would scoff at her ridiculous remarks. Her Jenna, I could bet, didn’t have a blue birthmark in the shape of a moon. But it was useless. I frequently asked my mother about it. Time passed and she still could not give me any answers, any suitable ones at least. When my innocence faded with the comings and goings of the world, I abandoned all hope of ever being “special” and I came to acept the mark as a “peculiar” if not downright strange characteristic of my body. Dull perhaps, but still strange.

I would never have dreamt, not in all my wildest dreams what that mark would get me through. I find it difficult even now. It’s hard to believe something after a childhood’s worth of denials and crushed hopes that such a thing can occur. It all goes to show how little we know of the vast expanse that exists out there and how much we should constrain our arrogance in the face of an innocent belief that fantastical phenomena are possible and that extraordinary worlds are closer to us than we think...

This is my story. Whether it is true or not is up to you, I suppose, to decide. And to all those who will scoff after reading this, I tell them to close their eyes and to strain themselves so they might perhaps hear their name being echoed somewhere. For this is how it all started, after my resignation that my dull blue mark could ever mean anything as fantastical as I had often prayed it would be when I was young just before I fell asleep.

Read the rest on www.euthalialuv.webs.com