A'lurejah: The Fae Princess

There are several people to whom  wish to dedicate this book, however, I felt like only a few should be mentioned, the most important ones. The ones who I have chosen have been with me through thick and thin, water and fire, and I am most indebted to them for their friendship and compassion over the years. First off, I wish to dedicate this book to my very best friend of all time, Vanessa. You have shown me the most incredible compassion, loyalty, honesty and integrity over the years that you have known me! I wish to convey my absolute gratitude to you and how much of an absolute pleasure being your friend has been over these years!  Secondly, I wish to convey my gratitude and everlasting friendship to my very own Taemeluch, from where A’lurejah’s Taym’luck comes from. Taemeluch, you were there to shed light in my darkest days and I cannot tell you what your friendship meant to me during the hours when I felt the darkness would take hold and never let me go. I hope that, if you ever read this, you will feel my warmth and love towards you as one of my dearest friends. Thirdly, to my family, especially my granddad who was my greatest supporter. We have had tremendous and sometimes tumultuous days, we have had dark days and we have had joyous days and through it all, we have always had each other.  I am eternally grateful for all that you have taught me, for all that we have been through together, for all of the tears and all of the laughter! I love you all fiercely and loyally until the end. As an obvious but not so obvious last but certainly not least, I wish to thank everyone who helped make this book become a reality! The editors, the authors, everyone and anyone who ever read bits and pieces and acted as my muse throughout the many, various writing stages! I owe each and everyone of you a great appreciation for everything! Thank each and everyone of you for being a part of my life, and for being such huge fans and supporters of me in every season! I love you all equally, and with all of my heart!  Dear Reader,  Up until very recently, my life’s ambition was to survive to see another day, however recent events in my life have reawoken a spark in my heart that I thought was long dead and lost. This spark reawoke dreams, among those dreams dwelt a desire to finish and publish this book which God Almighty guided me in writing. My life has been far from easy; I grew up in a dysfunctional home. While my family is far from broken, we are also far from perfect. I am only just beginning to understand what a tremendous blessing it has been to have been raised by both of my parents. Imperfect as they were / are, they did their very best to show the love they have for each one of us, and to provide the best home possible. I am waking up and realizing how many people come from broken homes, with only one parent, and it honestly breaks my heart.  Through my many hardships in both, childhood and adulthood, I found reading to be an amiable escape from reality, though, later on, I realized how much more amiable writing was as an escape. It started off simple, a bookworm, then moved to writing journals, and then to writing small unfinished stories. I found that I could create characters that told my story, without actually telling my story. I found that I could fashion characters that resembled me in character traits or personality and in these stories I could greatly exaggerate or magnify my story within theirs and express all of my feelings and emotions that I kept bottled up inside without spilling precious secrets. Never in all the years I was writing did I actually think that I would end up here, about to publish a book for the public to read! How blessed am I that the Lord chose me to write such a compelling and beautiful start to a story about a girl who is broken beyond belief and still rises from the ashes and becomes beautiful and strong. The inspiration for this book came from childhood memories of how I thought about God and the Garden of Eden. I remember thinking that God sounded an awful lot like magic as a child, and in my mind, it was similar, but not the witchcraft like magic that we see today.  This was more of a natural magic, a magic that allowed man and plant to communicate together, to be able to compel the earth to grow how it needed to grow, to be able to speak with animals and have them help man with various chores around the garden. I used to think that all of the things in the Bible were magic too, the burning bush, the pillar of fire, the woman who was turned to salt. I romanticized the idea that God wanted us to live in harmony with nature and with himself as it was in the Garden of Eden, and my imagination took hold of me and ran away from there. It is my deepest desire that, throughout this book and others to come, you would feel much less alone in whatever storm you are weathering in whatever season of your life you read this. It is my prayer that you would find healing and joy in every page you read, and that this book might fill you with the hope of things yet to come. I pray that the Lord touches your heart deeply and comforts you and brings a light into your life.  In Christ’s Love and Enduring Promise, Kristi Hawes.