The Far Realm Chronicles Anthology

by Annette Archer

  On the outside handle a simple wooden hanger hung. On the hanger was a beautiful blue dress.

  Carissa gasped. The fabric of it wasn’t a bright blue, but a more muted and subtle hue, like the color of her own eyes. It was hard to tell what it would look like on someone hanging as it was on its little bar, but it had a square neckline and she thought immediately of how that wouldn’t force her breasts up into people’s faces all the time.

  A small gasp escaped her lips. Was this dress for her? Could it be? She lifted it up in shaking hands and saw it was voluminous. Obviously not meant for a little stick of a girl like her sisters. Obviously, she allowed herself to believe, it was meant for her.

  She hurried with it into her rooms, closing her door tightly. Hurriedly, she took her old dress off, breathing in a deep breath as her larger frame was finally free. In her haste she ripped one of the seams on the yellow dress. She bit her lip, worried now that the dress wasn’t actually for her, that it wouldn’t fit, that she would have to go back to one of her other dresses that fit her just as poorly as the one she had just ripped.

  No way to know without trying. This day had turned into a day to be bold. She nodded to herself now and found how the dress opened at the back for her to step into. It slid up her sides easily and settled over her shoulders with short sleeves that puffed a bit. Reaching behind herself, straining to reach that far, she did the back up again. Then she stood there, breathing, feeling the way the dress fit her perfectly.

  There was a single mirror in the corner of her room that she hardly ever used. She stood in front of it now, amazed at what she saw. She was…no, she couldn’t even think it. But there it was.

  She was pretty.

  The dress was perfect for her. It flattered her figure without hiding it, her arms and her waist and all of her body that she had been embarrassed by for so long. It was like she was a different person. Or, more properly, that she had been set free of her old bonds.

  Free? What did that even mean.

  She smiled at her reflection. She was finding out the meaning of that word today, to be sure. Was this a turning point in her life? No longer the hidden treasure of her father’s Kingdom. Now she would be recognized for her efforts and given the respect she deserved.

  That thought seemed so foreign to her she had to repeat the words to herself. Respected. Her? Not likely. She was who she was. The unknown High Princess of Sharimul.

  A strong tap pinged out against her window. She turned to the noise, startled, and saw nothing at all. The evening sun was shining more of its light than usual into her rooms, lighting up the barren space, but that was all. Until it happened again. And again.

  What in the world?

  She went to her windows, not sure if she could handle any more surprises today, and as she got closer she saw a dark object fly up against the glass.

  TAP. A rock. Someone was throwing rocks against her window.

  Curious, she undid the metal latch and pushed the window frame open wide. The view below of the gardens and the back steps and the hedge maze were just as she remembered them from earlier when she had dared to go out in front of people to save her father from a disastrous treaty of his own design.

  Smiling up at her, his thick dark hair falling across his forehead, Philimor raised a hand in greeting. “Hello, Princess. I was unsure of the rules regarding visitors in your father’s Kingdom to his daughter’s rooms, else I would have come in with the dress I left you.”

  The dress. She ran her hand down the smooth fabric that accentuated her breasts and the curves of her hips without making it obvious that she was a hefty girl.

  “You left me this?” she called down to him. She immediately put her hand up over her mouth, worried that someone would hear her taking to a boy from the balcony of her window.

  “Yes,” Philimor admitted to her with another smile. “I left it for you. I thought someone of your obvious intelligence and cunning should have a dress that showed the world just how beautiful she was.”

  Carissa’s cheeks heated under the touch of his words. “That is very kind of you, sir.”

  “Please, call me Philimor.” He made a little bow to her and then he winked.

  Things like this happened all the time in the stories she liked to read. They just never happened to her. She would understand it if Philimor had been at either of her sisters’ windows, but hers? She just didn’t know what to say.

  The seconds dragged out longer and Carissa was worried that she had missed some important thing that she was supposed to say to him when he cleared his throat against his cupped fist. “Well. I should go.”

  She sighed out a breath. Here was the most intimate moment of her life so far, and she had spoiled it somehow. “Please, stay? For a little while?”

  “Alas, I can not.” And there was the ending she had expected.

  Yet, he didn’t leave.

  “I would like to see you, and speak with you more,” he said instead. “Perhaps tomorrow? For lunch?”

  “Lunch?” She was aware of how stupid she sounded just repeating his words, but her tongue had seemed to stop working.

  “Yes. Lunch. You do eat, don’t you?”

  His words should have seemed mocking. Instead, she started to laugh. He joined her.

  It felt wonderful.

  To be continued....