Where It All Began

In my life, I have experienced two major fires. One killed my family and the other destroyed my hope. I'm having a difficult time deciding which is worse. I loved my family with everything I had, but my hope was the only reason I continued to live after they were gone. Now I have nothing and I'm not sure what to do next. The first fire, the one that killed my entire family along with everybody I have ever known or cared about, was when I realized how dangerous the world, and the people in it, could be. All I could see the moment the fire started, was the bright red flames shooting out of the castle windows followed by smoke and ashes. I could only smell death coming from the place I had called home. More than ten thousand people were gone. I had everything and then nothing. I had no home anymore. It was destroyed. I was the only member left of the royal family of the small country no one on Earth knew about anymore. This is something I would expect from him. From that monster. He knew this would destroy me. I knew this was going to happen. I should not have left the castle. How could he do that? How could I let this happen? Growing up, I was always told to ‘expect the unexpected’. I truly never understood how it was even possible. How can someone expect something unexpected? The definition of the word is ‘not expected or regarded as likely to happen’, so anything unexpected is considered unexpected for a very good reason. Maybe the word has a meaning I do not yet understand. Maybe the universe is still waiting for the right time to let me in on its little secret. My mother, Queen Aaliyah, was a woman of power. She was respected by my people and she was the most important person in the world, even though very few people knew it. She was the most beautiful woman to have walked this Earth. She was the kindest as well, but if someone even spoke a single word about harming her children, they would not live to see the next day. She had two daughters. My sister, Harper, and I, Athena. She would always tell us how special we were and she would always tell me how I was going to be the change, whatever that meant. I always thought it was something mothers were supposed to say to their children. Out of the two of us, Harper, my sister, was the pretty one. She was smart too. By the time she was six, she had read almost every book in the royal library and she knew seven languages by the time she was eight. She was a model student. Always pay attention to the teachers and always answer questions correctly the first time. She finished all of her schooling when she was ten. She would have been done with it sooner, but our father would not allow it. He hated that she was smarter than everyone else. He had always told her she was too smart for her own good. He never meant it as a warning, it was always a threat. My sister did not die in the fire like everyone else. Her death was much more complicated than a simple fire. My father was an evil man. While my mother loved him with all her heart, my father married her for power and the money that came with it. I despised him. He was cruel and abusive. He would drink all of the time and only talk to my sister and me to make us feel worthless and he always succeeded. He would make us look him in the eyes as he beat us. I hate that I have the same eyes as him. Green is like venom. I even tried poking my own eyes out once, but my sister stopped me. My father was a fake and my mother never saw his cruelty. I made sure of it. It would only hurt her more. I know it may sound harsh, but I am not one bit unhappy with his death. I am not as pretty as my sister was, but I would not say I am unpleasant to look at. I am seventeen years old. As the youngest of my mother’s two children, less was expected of me. I was not the one who was supposed to be queen after my mother. My sister was preparing to be queen her whole life. I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. I had no big responsibilities. I was pretty much free and, for that very reason, my sister stopped speaking to me for quite some time. She was angry with me, because I was allowed to have fun and she was not. It broke my heart when I figured out she was no longer speaking to me, but I understood the reason behind it. I know she loved me as I loved her, she was just upset. She did not have any control over her own life like I did. The second fire was, in some ways, much worse than the first. It took every piece of the very limited supply of hope I had left. It was my only means of happiness after my family died. It took away my books. Yes, books. They were the last pieces of my mother and sister I had left. Every single book destroyed in that fire was a book they each had read and spent hours talking to me about. Some may say I am being dramatic, but they do not know what it is like losing everyone they have ever cared about and only having small, seemingly unimportant things to remember them by. The story of how I got to the second fire is probably why you are all here, so I guess I should tell you. After I had seen the destruction the fire had created, I ran. I had to leave. I had to create a new identity. I have heard of far-away lands where giant cities are filled with millions of people. Where either everyone knew you or nobody did. One of those cities is exactly where I needed to hide. I needed to be someone no one knew. I needed to be somewhere he could not find me. If he found out I was still alive, he would not stop looking for me until I was six feet under. I had heard of a city called New York. We had a hundred people leave the country once a year to check on the world. They would bring back pictures of every place they visited and as much information as they could gather. They would bring my sister and I the newest fashion if we ever left home. My sister read every piece of information they brought back about the modern world in her teenage years. Back when she still talked to me, she would tell me about everything she learned. She would always tell me which cities were her favorites and which cities she thought should burn to the ground. Her favorite city of all was the city of New York. Hundreds of years ago, the whole world knew of my country's existence. We were at peace with the world until the war that wiped out three quarters of our population. Our king at the time decided it was time for us to hide. We made them all believe we were all killed. We made them think our country did not exist anymore. Soon the world forgot about us and we were only talked about in myths and legends. They talked about us as if we were not an entire country. They referred to it as a city lost under the sea, which is not true at all. The city of Atlantis.