The Lost Gem (On Hold)

Ophelia

It was a little too much.

Or it was too too much.

Ophelia had no idea what sort of place she was in. All she remembered was coming around in the port of a city - in a sack of cinnamon. Her head throbbed, her sword was intact, her clothes were all there, but her feet were bare. She had sliced her way out of the sack and brushed off the cinnamon as best as she could from her robes, groggily stumbling and walking on her sore feet.

And then the surprises had begun.

It was January, but the place was so warm that she had had to abandon her cloak. Sneaking out of the port, she had no idea how she had got into, Ophelia had discovered that this place was not Idgard.

It simply was not.

Everybody was black haired here. And the skin complexions varied from milky hues to the darkest shade of rain clouds. Nobody spoke the Vedessan tongue - they had a language of their own. And they tried helping her, offering clothes - which were most unlike what she wore - and eatables. Though her stomach ached with hunger and she felt fatigued, she had declined those.

How could Ophelia take them? She had no currency!

That was only part of the reason she was as nettled as she was currently, trudging down the market lane of the city with the jostling crowds of sweet smelling women with flowers braided into their hairdos. Ophelia was feeling sick. Perhaps homesick. And she was, not without reason, confused.

Until last night, she had definitely been in Idgard. And had lied down to sleep, and had been thinking of going down to her parents' chambers just to see if they were discussing her. But before she could contemplate more on the idea, she had fallen into a deep, dreamless slumber - waking from which, she was here. Here, a place which she did not even know the name of.

Was that even last night?

She felt a time longer than twelve hours had elapsed in her unconscious state. The sun, of course, felt hotter than a January one, and her surroundings didn't seem winter-like.

And then those stupid bandits had accosted her. Apparently, they had wanted her ring, all her ornaments and her cloak. That was just as well, Ophelia had given them broken bones, hundreds of wounds they were free to lick and a lesson they wouldn't forget anytime too soon. But perhaps all her father would have had to comment on it was that she had taken longer for it than she should have.

The comment would be more than welcome, but where was he? Where was everybody? Where was she?!

Ophelia looked over the heads of the jostling crowd, and they seemed to grow bigger and bigger. Everybody was talking but she couldn't understand a word of it. Crushes of pretty girls passed her, and then battalions of potbellied, middle-aged men. Time and again, Ophelia wondered if she would attract more unwanted attention - a sword strapped to her belt, and her robes being nothing like theirs. If she was too old to feel that way, she didn't care at all - Ophelia wanted to be back with her parents - and it was silly, but that was the first thing one thought of when lost.

She walked on for a little more than half an hour, because stopping, with the rushing crowds at her back, was next to impossible. And then, as the hurried talks around her grew louder, she spotted a man staring at her. The "spotting" part had come easy to her, having a spy for a mother - but the spy being one like Alexandra, Ophelia's findings were more often than not, signals for trouble. Both her parents had a grave penchant for trouble.

But just the sight of this one made Ophelia's heart leap. He was blonde! Utterly blonde, his skin tone as pale as her, his eyes dark but there was no mistaking it - in the crowd of black haired masses, he was a blonde - and he was staring at her as though he couldn't believe his eyes.