The Caged Princess(Book 1)

Chapter - 6

The next week ,to Nadia, felt like a blur. It was the same pattern everyday.

She was extra careful and avoided Olivia at all cost. Sometimes she could see from her hindsight Olivia was burning holes at her side of the head but she said nothing. Other times their eyes would meet and Olivia would flinch and fuss over something else entirely.

It was happening to a point, that if anyone paid close attention, they would notice how strange she was acting. Nadia couldn't figure out this girl, if she wanted to harass her she should have done that already and if Nadia was too boring and uninteresting to be bothered with, why the silent stare?

She once caught Olivia laughing with Eva and Emi and it infuriated her further. Her intentions were clear , Nadia had been right all along. She was half expecting everyone in class to eye her differently once Olivia spread things about her, but to her surprise, nothing changed. Nadia was still transparent to her classmates.

Nadia was certain, the Olivia she had been on that day was someone else entirely, she had donned on a mask of polite interest only to mock her. They never had anything to do with each other and they never really will. Their lives would not intersect ever again.

She behaved like Nadia didn't exist not unlike every one else did in the school. It worked for Nadia. For all her spite and rage, the thought of confrontation only bought unease to her. Also it would make a big deal out of nothing.

Now that Nadia didn't have to worry about her events at school anymore, she solely focused on her treasure again. Her shiny beautiful rock that somehow she had started believing was her own to keep.

She had discarded the thought of ever handing it to someone else. She had found it and she intended to keep it. Initially she went to the burnt clearing in the woods multiple times to see if someone would turn up inquiring about it , but no one ever did.

No one bothered coming to the place, since the explosion the spot lay untouched as it always was but it wasn't her special place anymore. Whatever magic it held, whatever spell that bound Nadia to its beauty and made her want to keep visiting the place had been shattered.

Nadia felt like she had lost something very dear to her. She lamented for a while but there was no one she could hold accountable for it and it would never return, so she stopped going to the clearing all together. Going there only reminded her of what she had lost.

Her life had started becoming normal.

The rock may not be something of much value to an ordinary person but to Nadia who didn't have much to look forward to anyway, she was amazed by it greatly. She often sat there silently and wondered if she would ever find out the source of the explosion or where the stone came from.

The stone itself had not changed at all. It remained as glowing as ever and as weightless as ever. But the temperature of the stone was no longer cold or even cool to touch. It was warm now.

She kept the stone on herself at all times. Not wanting to be apart from it for some strange reason. She never let anyone see it either. She was convinced now that she was the only one who could see how exceptional the rock really was.

The thought that maybe today, the rock will do something new now, the thought alone was enough to give her strength to go from day to day. The undeniable fact that it had gone from ice cold to warm enough to touch in a matter of days was exciting. So she kept it with her, everywhere she went.

She also assumed that, day dreaming about the magical origin of the rock made her so exhausted that she had trouble keeping her eyes open for more than a couple of hours. No matter how much sleep she got at night, she still dozed off in classes and she dozed off as soon as she went back home as well. She felt weared out almost all the time now. Was it because she was using her brain too much?