Where Am I *Part 2*

The heaviness of her eyelids seemed to overpower her ability to keep them open. She was overcome with one last wave of pain and she passed out unconscious once again.When next she awoke, she was in a large room laying in a bed, under a soft fur blanket. She sat up, surveyed the room frantically,trying to remember what had happened before. She saw no Royal Guards or the man that seemed to be helping her, only a wall made up of wooden shelves with thick, leather bound books.

Some of the shelves were in her line of vision. With snifters and containers with various powders and ingredients. It looked like she was inside of  a healers bedchamber. Her sudden movements made her head feel like it was splitting open.

 How did she get here? And how long had she been knocked out? What had knocked her out? The last thing she remembered was speaking with her mother in the Royal Dining room, in castle MeadowBrook. Her mother had been late to supper, as was her usual habit.

Always insisting on taking care of her Royal Garden herself.  

Her mother spoke fondly about her father, the true King of Zuff, who gave her a single orchid plant as a token of his undying, and rare love at the beginning of their courtship. Bihadlly had kept it all these years, having planted it in her private garden beside her bedchamber when he had passed in battle. Now nineteen years later she had a vibrant, thriving Orchid garden derived from that plant. She was always reminded of his love for her and their daughter. From time to time Flossina would catch her mother there, sitting on a stone bench,alone.

Talking to the wind, or just silently crying. She knew her mother was still in love with her father. It always saddened her to see her mother so vulnerable and grief-stricken. Flossina had never been in love, and didn't know if she truly wanted to be. The stories her mother had told her about her father were passionate and intense.

She sounded so carefree and happy when she spoke of him, and their time together. But seeing her mother now, heart-broken,melancholy, a completely different woman. She didn’t know if she had the same strength to go on if she were put in that very same position. Her mother had to  marry someone to solidify her Kingdom while the love of her life, now dead from war’s baby grew in her belly. She had quickly strategized a plan that benefitted herself and her people.

She married a man, but had never loved him. Flossina was aware that her stepfather knew her mother would never hold him in that same regard as her father, but she always showed him respect, kindness, and wifely admiration. To the Kingdom they were a united front. Her mother was a strong Queen and she could only hope she would follow in her footsteps when, or even if it ever became her turn. She had never understood her mother, even after her great love was gone she never took another man to her bed, not even her stepfather.

Her mother was a genuinely good person, and a wonderful Ruler. She and her mother had been washing their hands in the small stone fountain situated beside the large Oak dining table laden with food, when her stepfather came in with his entourage, bearing news from the neighboring Kingdom about their Prince, who would soon become King and was in search of a Princess to be his bride to fortify his reign inside of his Kingdom. She tried to ignore it all. She knew what her stepfather was up to. He always tried to hide it under the guise of caring stepfather and of wanting to be an ‘unconventional’ King.

Flossina didn’t buy it. She wouldn't marry a complete stranger and be shipped off somewhere else because he didn’t want to give up what was rightfully hers in the first place...