Starting Anew

“Strange vehicles moved around. I managed to figure out that this was some kind of transportation people used. I wasn't sure if this was a violent, insane or a confused land. 

I had been cast out from the world of love. I had sinned. I intended harm. The dark arts always drew me and I always wanted to be the most powerful being in the land. I kept my pursuit hidden from everyone. However, my yearning came to light as the darkness in me propelled me to sin. I let go of my royal duties one by one, and started defending myself. Someone who had been honest started to lie about everything. Small lies. Inconsequential lies. I knew what others wanted to hear and I would tell them what they wanted to hear.

I was the princess of the land, but I was not royal. The queen had found me, as a child, on the street in my ragged clothes, looking for work. I was not abandoned, but I was determined to make something of myself. I wanted purpose. The Queen who was also the kindest sorceress in the land, saw something in me that I never saw. For reasons I never understood the queen took me in.. She picked me up from the streets that day, took me  to the palace and fed me. She even gave me a tour. When it got late, she sent me home with some food, clothes and coins. Before I left, she offered me a job. “You will be my special aide.” She said. As a little girl, I thought it was a question and I heartily agreed. 

I started going every day. What was said about the palace was far from the truth. It was just heaven. It was full of love and wonder. The queen lived her life humbly and with responsibility towards the people, serving with the abilities she had gifted by the Gods. Serving people was her purpose she said. She appeared as a queen because it was necessary for people to see hope. She had no attachment to the throne. I used to wonder, because she never did behave like a queen. She adorned and dressed like one. She said it was necessary for the responsibility she carried. It was important for people who viewed her. They needed to see hope in her, she said, and if she looked down, people would not find hope. I found it strange, and realised that all this was necessary. People saw hope in her because of the way she was. What seemed inconsequential on the surface was deeply purposeful. There was deep meaning behind it. 

I grew in the queen’s love. She introduced me to life and to myself. While she was showing me what happiness meant, I was looking at the recognition, the adoration, the gratitude she had of people. I wanted that power. She always said that I was her first child. I got consumed by the want of power and wanted to be in her place one day instead of being grateful for the position I enjoyed and serving my duty. I obsessed about how I would take over one day. In my wish to take over, I did not realise that I was wishing her gone. I imagined her life to be mine. All she had would be mine. I saw the kingdom as my inheritance. 

I set out to serve the people in the land. Seeing how I could be of help. The sorceress taught me magic, and told me that love was the key. If I had love in my heart, magic would be available to me. I was soaked in love and wonder. I saw all possibilities, for myself and for others. When I wished good onto others, it would happen, by magic. A sinister side had grown meanwhile, and I wanted more. The gratitude of people made my ego blossom and eventually, it consumed me. I wanted wealth and power. I knew it was wrong to be selfish, and in the guilt of being selfish I sacrificed. My selfishness became greed, and greed fed the darkness. One day, I stole the wealth for myself. I kept it in my house and told my family that I was rewarded.  I was found out. The sorceress brought my betrayal to light. She warned me. She said I had to change to be in the land of love. I had to confess my true intentions and I had to be pure hearted. She would always love me, she said, but she had a duty to people and to the world. She could not be a part of something that was wrong. If it was her dearest daughter who stood in the wrong, then the queen would stand against her, for she served the higher good. It was her most profound and highest duty to life. The court shunned me. Darkness had consumed me, and I could see that I had taken a wrong turn. I had been relentless in the pursuit of power, but I did not realize that devastation, pain and hurt it would bring. I would seek to dethrone the very queen I loved and adored, the queen whose love I will never understand. 

The love the queen had shown me and the help that I had rendered had seared my heart. While I was consumed by darkness I could see the futility of it. I had walked too far away to let it go. I could not let it go. A kingdom in which I was recognised as a princess, the land of love that I had grown to call my home, the soil in which my roots lay, I infused the darkness in it. Trying to harm myself, trying to harm the soil and the others who tended to it. The darkness had turned my mind almost against my own will. I had been seduced, I wanted to be seduced. 

I was cast out, and I walked out. My heart said that it was the right thing to do. The world of love was gone and I was left to be with the people I thought I would rule. I was amongst the common. The new land was confusing. I was camouflaged as a common. Technology was superior but the commons did not know how to use it. In the world where there were global calamities, they were bothered about the petty. They were busy, always busy. So much seemed to be happening, but very little was getting done. On one side of the world, the wealthy were throwing away the excess while on the other side of the world millions died of hunger. People fought for petty reasons. It was about what is yours and what was mine. They failed to see the simple fact that everything was “ours”. I was from this world when the queen found me. I was back into this world.” - The Princess

She did not know how to continue to write her story any more. Her soul was corrupted and she wanted to fall into the ways of crime. She knew she had to follow the path of the good. It was her penance. She was told that she would remember her past as a reminder but she could never use anything she had lived. She had to start anew. If she was on the righteous path, a special guide would guide her. If she strayed and gave into the darkness her life would end and her existence would be wiped out. Her family was oblivious of what had transpired. To her this seemed the same… but seemed new as well.