Dear Diary,
Something is wrong. I can’t put my finger on it, but everything feels different right now. It is like the air isn’t the same. It holds a threatening vibe, like the clam before the storm. That is how it feels, like right before a storm when things smell different and everyone acts strange.

But it’s not a physical storm that is coming. It seems like it is going to be something far worse, something that even the worst natural disaster cannot compare too. Something bad is going to happen to me. I can feel it. It is like I am standing at the edge of a precipice and I am going to jump voluntarily or not.

I just wish I knew what was going to happen. If there was one moment in my life where I wished I could know the future it would be now. Is this jump going to be good or bad? Will I die or survive? Or will I die mentally and lose the control I hold over my own mind? Awfully dark questions for me to be asking, but I just have this unexplainable feeling that they will all be justified in good time, and good time is soon.

It is like waiting, waiting in the dark for the villain to arrive. Like a child on Christmas morning who cannot wait to go open their presents. Waiting, waiting for a loved one to return from war, not knowing if they are going to return alive or in a coffin.

It also happens to cause you to get a little paranoid. Every creek I hear, I think someone is coming for me. I know that seems crazy, but it’s true, it’s true. The air feels different.

But no matter how paranoid I am, I must retract my wings out tomorrow and dress like a princess. I must sit with my father and mother in the throne room listening to all the nobles come in with their petitions. Really, can’t they handle their problems themselves? We need to be listening to the people’s problems and fixing them, not the nobles. But unfortunately, with the large number of people to be seen and the time it takes me to get dressed in my royal attire I have to get up quite early. So I must retire for the night, dear one. I shall try to bring you along with me tomorrow. Even if I can’t write, knowing you are their will be a comfort in its self.

Your Paranoid Princess,
Alanea Leanne Loraina

Dear Diary,
I am so flustered I can think of anything to say, anything to write. It should not surprise me, but it does. I should not be hurt after all I said yesterday, but I am. How can a simple act hurt someone so much? How can a single kiss change someone’s entire future? I know I said that I did not love Andrew like I should, but I always thought he loved me. That he loved me beyond belief.

But it is clear, now, that he does not. I found him, behind the stables, making out with Katie-Lynn. She is another daphire, a friend of his from back home. I had always thought of her as a sweet girl. She seemed so nice when I met her, I never imaged that she would kiss my boyfriend behind my back. It hurts so much, especially since I had just let Andrew have my first kiss earlier that morning.

I cannot say I behaved as I should of when I saw Andrew with her. I yelled at him. Screamed, told him that I never wanted to see him again. That we were over, then I slapped him across the face and throw his engagement ring back at him. I shouldn’t have done that, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt like someone had stabbed a dagger in my heart. How could he do this to me?

I have taken on my normal reaction to pain, the quest for knowledge to fill my brain so that I will not have time to think of what hurts so bad. This time I am researching the history of all the wars on our country and trying to solve for myself the secrets behind them. It is a pointless task. I will never figure it out, but it will keep my mind busy.

But in researching war, I cannot realize why we have it. War is defined as a conflict carried on by a force of arms, as between nations or parties in a nation, or it defined this way, armed fighting, as a science, profession, activity, or art. War is described as an art. There will never be anything beautiful about war. It is not art, it cruel and horrible. It kills not only the brave soldiers who risk their life for a stupid cause, but also civilians who never asked to be involved and are just caught up in the fire of things.

And yet, we continue to have wars. Year after year, someone can never resist the urge to fight one for long. Life does not need to be about concurring and controlling. We need to live in peace with another. But I think some men like war, they want to go and fight and be seen as a hero in everyone’s eyes. But those men haven’t seen the realities of war. The pain it causes. The look in a mother’s eye when she hears her son is never going to return home. Her sobs at knowing he is dead. War is not a place where you can gain glory, the reality is, you are more likely to die on that field than to ever receive glory from it. And once you’re dead, you’ll realize war is not worth pain of having your loved ones deal with your death.

I know, that’s pretty deep for a fifteen year old right. Well, maybe I’m not fifteen mentally. Maybe there, I am an old grandmother. Speaking of grandmothers, I am going to visit mine soon. My grandmother is Agatha Steward, and she probably one of my favorite people in the whole world. Every time I see her she teaches me something new about Enchanterary. She is very good at it, and I enjoy learning.

I long to go to The Academy like my mother and father, but Father says it is not the place for me right now. I need to stay home and learn how to help Attilal rule, I need to provide heirs, and then maybe I can attend school. I am begging him to let me go for my sixteenth birthday. You never know, perhaps he will. But whenever I do go, I will be an enchantress like my mother and my grandmother, it will make them proud and I want too.

My ever silent friend, I love how you can distract me away from my original pain. Perhaps that is why I continue to write to you day after day after day. I must go now, princess stuff to attend too. But I will be back, you can count on it.

Your Friend,
Alanea Leanne Loraina

Dear Diary,

Another day, another boring meeting to attend, I know I said it was my duty and everything and that I was glad to do it, but after your fourth boring meeting of the day, you kind of forget that. So when number five came around I quickly snuck out and made my way to garden where my ultra delicious secret fiancé, Andrew, was waiting there for me.

You see, I have two fiancés. Andrew is my secret one that I love beyond belief. But Attilal has been picked out for me by my father. You see he is our head knight, and since I am the princess, we are supposed to marry. And I do love Attilal, just not in that manner. You see, I see him as more of an older brother like figure. He is a good ten years older than me, and always protected me and looked after me like an older brother should. He was my teacher in all things sword play and military, and a good one at that.

Andrew Ethan Langer, there are no words to describe what he means to me. He is my best friend. We met on my fourteenth birthday, after my engagement to Attilal had been announced. I was crying my eyes out in the barn when he came up to me. Little prick, didn’t listen to a word I said, and stayed by me, even when I commanded him to leave. And in turn he became my best friend, boyfriend, and finally fiancé, all in secret of course. If my father were ever to find out that I even considered the thought of marrying a man other than Attilal Lynite, I think he might disinherit me. No, stinking, joke.

But sometimes, I feel that Andrew does not mean enough to me to marry. We don’t kiss, not because he doesn’t want too, but because I don’t let him. I don’t know, something, just doesn’t seem right about the thought. It is like somewhere in my mind, it knows that Andrew is not the right one for me, and it is preparing me for when I meet him.

I am only fifteen, and Andrew barely sixteen. And even though we are engaged, I do not feel that either of us is old enough or mature enough to make such a decision as to who is going to be our life long partner, a decision that we are going to have to live with the rest of our very long lives.

I don’t know, sometimes I feel like Andrew is hiding something from me. A gleam in his eye when he says something, as if there is more to the sentence than what he lets on, like there is a hidden meaning I am never meant to find out. Am I wrong? I may never know. I always thought I was more to Andrew than a trophy girl, because of our secret relationship, but I am beginning to doubt it. And I don’t know why. He hasn’t given me any cause to; it is just I feel something is not right. I have this strange feeling that everyone’s lives are about to change soon, but I don’t know if it is for the better or for the worst, perhaps both.

Andrew asked me to dance last night at the ball, a tango it was, and in return got the evil eye from my father and Attilal. You see, Andrew is not even close to my rank. He is nothing but Attilal’s squire. Not even in the same time zone as my social class, if you care about things like that.

As Dr. Seuss so rightly put it, “A person’s a person no matter how small.” I don’t see how nobles and royals can think they are better than everyone else. They aren’t. We may have a little bit more money and hold a little higher position in society. But we aren’t better than them. If anything they are better than us. They do the work that we won’t, we sit lazily on our bums all day and they do the work that provides for our comfortable lifestyle.

The unspoken rule of society is “Never marry someone in a lower social class than you.” But that crazy! What if Mr. Right is not a Prince or a Head Knight what are you supposed to do? Forget about him, and the love you two share. No person in their right mind would do that. They would have to be brainwashed by society to ever even consider the thought. If Prince Charming came along, and he wasn’t a prince, I would still marry him.

I would even prefer it. It is not like I cannot take care of myself. I have money, and lots of it. I don’t need anything. All I want is someone who will love me in all of my moods. I am not Princess Alanea to him; I am Alanea, his Alanea, the angel of his heart. That is all I ever want to be to him, not a sovereign but a spouse, an equal in both heart and mind. That is what he would be to me.

And even though I value Andrew highly, I don’t think he thinks of me like this. I believe to him, I will always be the Princess and him the squire. I will never be the equal. I believe that I will, if anything, become subservient to him. Not his wife, but his property. But as a friend, I can value no one as highly, no one but you.

But my other option is Attilal. And what option is that. I do not know if he will treat me as a superior and follow me around like a puppy, doing willingly whatever I say. Or if he will, once he is King, see me as beneath him. I was his stair step up, and now I a step below, the Queen, second to his king.

Perhaps it is better, for a future Queen to never marry at all. I have read books about this queen on a different world, Elizabeth I, who did not marry, but ruled her country in her own right, and she is known greatly because of it. But, it is believed by all, that a woman cannot handle ruling alone. Our brains are too small to handle the strain of ruling a country or the knowledge required to rule. The men who hold this view, most of them anyway, I surpassed their education when I was twelve, and I am still gaining knowledge from lessons they will never have. Uneducated and unqualified I’m not, but female I am, and that is cause enough to not trust me with the reins of Wingspan.

Women are too flighty. They never stick with their decisions. They are ruled by their emotions. They must marry, and marry soon if their husbands ever have the hope of controlling them, and thinking for them. That is why my own marriage to Attilal has been set for shortly after my sixteenth birthday. So short a time for me to find true love, if fate does not step in, what will my life become?

It will be a never ending parade of balls and meetings, dinners and public appearances, a husband at my side who I don’t love like I should, a husband who will boss me around as if I am a slave. I will never get to make any of my own decisions when it comes to politics or Wingspan. Attilal will make them all and I will be expected to smile and nod my head and agree, even if I am screaming on the inside for him to do something else. I have to find a way out. I do not think I can live if this is my life.

I beg you, my dear beloved quiet friend, to pray that God sends fate to intervene soon, for if he does not, I do not know what I will become.

Your Own Beloved Friend,
Alanea Leanne Loraina

Letters From My Personal Hell

"The key to change...is to let go of fear."
-Rosanne Cash


Dear Diary,
I don’t know what in the world posed me to start writing. This diary has sat untouched on my desk since my fifteenth birthday almost a year ago. That is when my mother gave it to me and told me to fill it with my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my thoughts, to make it my best friend in a world where I have none.

My mother is a very smart woman, I love her so much. She is my best friend, Queen Alyssa Loraina of Wingspan. You see, that is what my mother meant when she said I have no friends. I am the Princess of Wingspan and so my father allows me to have very few friends, and the ones I do have I do not know if they are my friend because they like me or they like my title. I cannot confide in any of them.

So you, my silent new friend, will be the one I confide all my hopes and dreams in. You will hear of my fears and of my tears. Life is not just good. Life has the bad as well. I know what you are thinking. What does a princess know of the bad?

My life may seem picture perfect on the outside, but behind the closed doors of the Wind Castle, it is a completely different story. I do not know if my mother and my father were ever happy in their marriage, but for as long as I can remember they have fought and fought. My father is violent, and he hits my mother. I have heard the horrid things that he said to her. And even though they are married, I know he rapes her all the time. My mother despises him. I know she would never willingly have sex with him. My poor mother, I do not know the causes behind all of this, but I am almost certain it have to do with a man named, Doomanjo.

I do not know who he is, or how he connects to my mother or my father. I have only seen him a few times in my life, the last being the day my baby brother, Alex, died. But that is a story for a different date. My mother and I have never really gotten over it. I suppose it would be hard on any mother to watch her child die. But I do not think that I would go into the deep depression that surrounded her for years; if one of my children were to die…well…I can always have more, right?

I do not know why it seems that those whom people think have everything often don’t. In fact, while everyone thinks royals have an easy life, we have it harder than everyone else. Every person in Wingspan, every one of them, from the highest duke to the person who lives on the streets can claim at least one thing of their own, freedom, the freedom to choose what they can and cannot, what they will and will not, do.

I do not have that freedom. I am a slave. Not in the sense of being bought and sold, but I am owned. I am not my own. I am owned by my country. I am bound to do what is best for it, even if it means sacrificing my own happiness. I am a princess and it is my duty. I wonder if my people realize the sacrifices I make day after day to insure their comfort and happiness. I doubt it, but does that mean I will start serving myself? Never, I am a princess; it is an honor to put my country above myself.

There is one and only one instance in which I would defy the system of my world. True love, I know what you’re thinking. How cliché, right? I suppose I agree, but if it is as wonderful as everyone says it is, don’t you think it would be worth fighting for? I do. I honestly hope I can find him. I hope he is waiting out there for me, waiting, hoping to find me too. He will be my knight in shining armor, and I will be his princess.

I will know he is the one the moment I see him. When I look into his eyes, something will click and I will see stars, fireworks. It will be electric, and I will know that I cannot live without him. He will be kind hearted, and above all he will not be part of my world. I don’t want to marry a royal. I want someone who understands me not who understands the government. All I want is someone who really loves me with all of his heart. I long for him every day. I can only hope he is longing for me as much as I am longing for him.

I suppose I must tear myself away from you, my ever silent friend. Not because I want too, never because I want too. But because I have too, I have a Privy Council meeting I must attend. My father says that I must learn how these meetings work, because I am going to have to attend them when I rule the kingdom, even if I am a useless girl. Then, I have a wardrobe meeting with Jimmi, and a state dinner after that followed by a royal ball. Fifteen and I work harder than most adults in my kingdom. But then again, it is my honor to do so. After all, I am their princess, their own beloved, Princess Alanea of Wingspan.

Your Most Trusted Friend,
Alanea Leanne Loraina