Chapter 1

Chapter 1

In Shakespeare’s poem, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”, he speaks of his lover, whose beauty will continue to live on even after she dies merely through the words encrypted in his poem. In a similar light her letters were a testament to her very existence. She thrives in the words of her letters and her existence is eternal because of them. There are possibly hundreds of people who stumbled upon and read these letters of hers. Some people would have merely discarded them without so much as a peak into its contents, but for many whose curiosity had gotten the upper hand, they would at some point have been moved by her story and the beauty that existed despite the darkness.  The letters’ readers would have shuddered when they read about the scene of carnage that was evident all around her but they would have melted when they realized that love battles war greater than any soldier can.  I was fortunate to be one of the curious souls who had become so engrossed in her letters that they had begun to consume me. She was my heroine, not just some fictional character who became a figment of my imagination every time I read her words, but she was real to me, as real as any truthful story told straight from the heart. She had lived and she was loved and it was this love that made it possible for her to live a little longer.

Villains lay within. His inner villain may have destroyed his heart but she had caused his heart to beat again. She was the lyrics to his song, the strings to his guitar and the simplicity among the complexity of the war. She had labeled him a bête noire. In French a bête noire refers to someone who one particularly dislikes or one who annoys you. Dislike was too insignificant a descriptor to describe the strong resent, indifference and disgust that she had initially felt towards him.

One thing she had mentioned in the letters and that will remain with me forever is her metaphor of the carousel. She said she had felt like a kid being put on the merry-go-round not knowing what to expect as it swayed round and round. A lost, confused little child who felt a sense of unease as the carousel begun to turn and the faces of her parents disappeared.  Sheer fear eroded her every limb, but as soon as the carousel returned to the place from where it had begun to spin and the familiar faces of her parents were visible again that fear had turned into joy. So life is like that carousel forever turning but the ride becomes less scary when you see familiar faces. After her parents were reduced to mere ashes, the bête noire had become the familiar face that she clung to when she rode the carousel of her remaining life. Her every breath was tied to the bête noire and finding his face. He was her beacon of hope and the only light she would cling to amidst the darkness.

The ink may fade off the original letters or the photocopies made of these letters may take away from the authenticity of the original but she will always remain as authentic to me and real as the world we live in. Her story will pull at heartstrings and remind our main organ to beat yet again.

As per her letters it all began on a night much like tonight. The storm brewed like something a witch would cook up in her black cauldron. They say that when the thunder strikes like a lion roaring through the skies, the Gods are vexed with the residents.  The actual thunder storm would not do much harm to the residents of Begonia but Begonians remained unaware of the storm that was to befall upon them. A black cat crossing ones partway may bring with it bad luck but the King of a country called Rose might bring bad luck to even the black cats of Begonia.