Arcade valley is a small village in Scotland , with barely two thousand people, is a beautiful paradise covered with lavender mostly . The village has four entrances and exits with arcades ,that's how it got the name Arcade valley. The village is surrounded with seven mountains , waterfalls and the eastern end is connected with the sea.The famers in the village are mostly lavender cultivators who exports or sell these lavenders to the mainland people for making perfumes and the rest either does cattle farming or grows grains and spices.The village comes alive early in the morning with the milkman delivering milk at every door and the village will be covered with the scent of freshly baked breads, pound cakes and some part of it will be covered with the scent of bloomed Lavender. People from the mainlands need to travel for one day and night to reach Arcade valley.
This is where Julia Ighor lives with her family. Julia is famous for her long golden locks and her grassy green eyes in her village . Basically Scots are know for their red hair and brownish blue eye color but she was different because,her great grandfather was from Norway , during the great conquest he met her great grandmother ,fell in love with her and got settled in Scotland, he was tall ,with golden hair and grassy green eyes and his traits are transferred to her in the family. Most men in the town were in love with her and they try hard to get her attention, she was one among the fine beauties in that town. Her father Peter is a trader and a lavender farmer too... He goes to the mainlands with the lavenders that he has cultivated to sell them ,then with that money he'll bring back cartons of wheat, maize, pepper, and many spices along with vegetables to sell it in the village market. He reseverves a carton full of everything that he has purchased from the mainland for his family.
And her mother Emily is a home maker , but she also helps Peter in the field and her cakes are famous in the village. Julia's has a lil sister , she is Claire ,with brown eyes ,red hair and a pale white skin, she's a beauty of her own ,but lives with an ultimate goal of making home with a finest man in the village.
Julia's day starts with her fetching bread and cheese from her neighborhood ,
"Two cents are left with Katherine"Julia informed her mother.
"Okay then remind me of that tomorrow" Emily replied.
Then after having breakfast Julia will be on her way to learn embroidery design with her sister Claire to the arcade valley's best embroidery designer Ms. Vinona Vinget, she's an old lady who was a beauty during her time, nothing more about her is known to none of her students except her cousin sister's daughter Mareen , who takes the embroidery classes with Julia and Claire and is friends with them. They enjoy doing embroidery designs,
"Is that a cat?" Julia made fun of Mareens's embroidery.
"No it's a rat!!" Exclaimed Mareen bursting into laughter.
"Would you girls please shut up, Mrs. Vinget is gonna fire us!" Claire whispered by rolling her eyes.
But Julia and Mareen couldn't control their laughter, which made Mrs Vinget give them a firm stare , and suddenly,they got back to their work.
After the class, Claire and Julia will get back home to help their mother with the households. And their mother will be waiting for them with freshly baked cakes for her girls.
"How did it go?" Mother asked the girls. "Went well " Julia replied looking at Claire ,Claire raised her eyebrows in disgust and then both laughed out.
Julia always wanted more, so she'll visit her grandmother, who lives three houses away from them mostly and stay back there during weekends to learn how to read and write. Her grandmother Emilia have a wonderful collection of books that was given to her by her father, who used those to learn English. Julia believed in things that other people in the village didn't believe in , like existence of land beyond the sea, there's something beyond these stars , and more. She loves meeting people who comes from the mainlands, and also believes that she can travel the world through the eyes of others, and she is passionate about pen pal ,which she read about in one among the books in their library. She spends her free hours climbing the mountain, and roaming around the waterfall. And she also has the crazy habit of counting stars at night.
"We're missing forty stars today" Julia said to herself before entering inside her house one night.
Julia has also learned horse riding and fishing from her father , while her sister was busy making new embroidery designs of her own and learning new recipes from her mother. Because Claire believed that learning how to manage house would help her get the finest men in the village and that's what they've told but Julia never believed in that.
There is a small library in the village with the collection of more than thousand five hundred books of different genres. And Julia is friends with the librarian Vincent, he's a tall black man with a sharp handsome face who is around near or around twenty four , he used to be a strict one around everyone except Julia , he even reseverves the best books for Julia , people say that he has a soft corner for her but they don't care about what people say, they've done many expeditions together through books and she brings him her mother's best cakes in return.
Julia chooses her friends wisely and only had Mareen, Claire and Vincent as her best.
Every Saturday Julia's father goes to the mainland to fetch spices and vegetables for the family and twice in a month for the village market. He returns from the mainland with a carton full of spices and vegetables, Julia used to helped her father in unloading
"Careful, it's a bit heavy!" Peter warned Julia.
Julia passed him a smile and took the cartons to the store house,but today something caught her attention, it was the small inscription stating the name and place from where the load was exported, but the handwriting caught her attention than the details.
She was elated by seeing such a beautiful hand script and fell in love with the imaginary owner of the script. So she took the address with her and the next weekend while visiting her grandma she wrote a letter to the address that she got from the carton. The next day she took money from her grandma ,to buy pound cake and went directly to post the letter at their village postal service and posted it.
Four months passed since her first ever letter to the pen pal who's a mystery human with a great hand writting . She was tired of waiting, but had some hope somewhere within ,so she goes to the post office in search of reply letter like she did for the past four months and like always she was disappointed. Another month passed , today she made up her mind to not to go to the post office in search of the reply letter ever, if she didn't find it today.
The lazy post master upon seeing her slowly went near the tied bundle of letters that have been delivered today morning, to untie and look up if something have come up. Julia was sad and had no hope once he completed the half , she stood up and started walking out in disappointment. But suddenly post master called her name out "Julia Ighor" , something that flushed right from Julia's toes till her head ,that made her jump and run towards the post master and grabbed the letter from his hand and saw the writer's address
"Mystery fellow Human
Clark's Plane ,
Western town,
Romania."
Terrified post master looked at her till she disappeared from his sight and exclaimed"Crazy that one!!!".
She ran towards her favourite spot which was in mountain near waterfall, to know what her mystery human has to talk about.
