The setting is fantasy, depicting a time similar to the Medieval era in some aspects but also a completely fabricated world in others. Apologies for any grammatical errors; did try my best! Story is just a bit of fun - hope you enjoy.
Eight years ago
Ysabel yawned as boredom and restlessness settled in and her carelessness almost cost her a broken neck. Quickly securing her grip around the solid tree branch again, she tentatively peered down...and down. How had she managed to crawl up such a towering tree in the first place with her aching fear of heights? Well, from the events of this afternoon it would seem that that was what self-preservation did for you - it made you brave, albeit transiently.
The sound of shuffling, approaching footsteps below made hands tighten. It would be Rat Face or Three Chins. Or another of her tormentors. All she wanted in that very moment was to grow a back bone. But at eight, that was a relatively tricky wish to aim for. The memories of a happier time she often clung to in such moments, of a time when her family had all lived in the distant Kingdom of Naru, filtered through her mind as she strove to calm herself.
Just why father had brought them back to his childhood village in the cursed Kingdom of Sydnam, she would never understand. He was a physician; he could work anywhere he chose and yet he had dragged them all here and she hated living in this Kingdom with its prejudiced people and their cruel natures!
Even more so, she hated the way they treated her mother, for as a native Naru female she was treated abhorrently and each day Ysabel watched her beautiful and light-hearted mother withdraw further into herself. The fact that her mother also happened to be soft hearted, too, meant that the one thing she hated more than the ill-treatment was confrontation of any sort and so she had learned how to act unaffected and withhold the truth of abuse and internal suffering from her husband, who she was certain would overreact thereby causing graver problems with his proud nature and over-protective manner.
Of course, father was fully aware that his Naru wife had been initially ill-received in his village and he had made his displeasure of this well known but then, which of the men and women from this small locale would ever openly heckle and abuse her in front of him - a man from one of the founding and most respected families in the village? Not one - especially when they knew the cures to their sicknesses and ills were contingent upon his services. No, they just did it covertly behind his back.
And now that Ysabel's brother Lukas had left home to study in the city, things were almost unbearable.
Hearing nothing more, Ysabel determined hopefully that it must have been a forest beast and breathed a sigh of relief though she couldn't summon the courage to climb down just and at this rate she would be up here all day! And who would know to look for her here? Her father knew how she shied away from heights and her mother had always told her not to venture this far out -- and nobody was about to protect mama at home, she thought feverishly! She began to get worked up despite the fact that it was broad daylight and the belligerent boys of the village had more sense than to ambush their home in full sight. For despite the logic, the thoughts became magnified in her childish mind and she started to weep quick, hot tears, cursing herself for her cowardice.
"Are you stuck up there or just passing the day?" the male voice made her start hard but effectively halted her tears.
"Go away!" she cried out, not quite recognising the voice as belonging to any of her usual tormentors, fear making her slightly bold. "Go away or I shall get my father to thrash you! Then you will learn once and for all to leave me and my mama alone!"
She heard a brief, impatient curse before, "I don't know who you think I am, but you've clearly got the wrong person...are you stuck up there or not?" the voice was laced with impatience now where before there had been only wry humour.
Ysabel finally peered down, dizzy with the effort and with her fear and her eyes snapped shut at the sight of the Sydnam boy so similar to the boys in the village with their fair hair and tall heights. With his bony, unremarkable face and close cropped, severely parted fair hair, he gave the impression of harshness and his features in that moment seemed to blur into the faces of all her childhood tormentors combined; cruel, pinch faced and vicious tongued boys who had taught her what it was like to be hated just for who and what ones parents were and how to handle the misery and pain of such torment.
But as the haze cleared she realised that she did not know this boy at all.
"I can get down quite well," she called out, pride making her scoff.
Shuffling her small feet across the branch they were resting on, her movements were slow and hesitant but despite this she felt her left foot slip beneath her in a whoosh of motion and cried out in alarm as her two feet dangled freely on the air, her skinny arms and weak hands straining around the branch, struggling to hold her up.
"I was lying; I can't do it!" she cried. "I'm going to fall! Help me!" she pleaded pitifully, feeling her palms moistening despite the cool day and worsening her plight even more.
"Just hold on, will you? Stop wiggling or you really will fall on your face!" the voice was sharper then, an unconscious command. "I'm coming up to get you."
The boy had already skirted the thick trunk calculatingly before he had finished speaking and attacked the tree head on, climbing higher and higher with lithe agility and in no time at all, she was firmly back on the ground but not after he had brow beaten her into letting go of her death grip on the branch and forcing her to put her arms around him.
"What were you
thinking
?" the rebuking tones made her open her eyes reluctantly and icy green eyes meet her perusal.
Held by a pair of sturdy but very slender arms, Ysabel felt fear mingle with revulsion and trickle through her.
Enemy!
she internally cautioned in childish antipathy as she looked at the Sydnam boy as he released her to the ground but a muffled and slightly panting voice caught her attention.
"Who is -? Oh, Lord, I knew it! Ysabel! Belle, for all that's holy!"
"L-Lukas?" the sight of her brother after so long an absence combined with her grazed and cut stinging palms, the angry boy holding her and the events of the afternoon with the boys of the village hurling abuse, all combined to make her sob pathetically.
"What did you say to her?" Lukas asked then, frowning.
The boy, affronted, replied in defensive tones, "Me? She was stuck up in that tree and one breath from falling on her head! Why anyone would climb up so high if they couldn't get down, I don't know."
"I'm fine," Ysabel assured Lukas with a sniff, wary of the eyes of the strange boy assessing her tear-stained, grimy face critically.
Ysabel waved her brother forward feeling like an old crone with her aching limbs and hugged him about the torso.
"What are you doing back, Lukas? In your last letter you said you wouldn't be back until the end of the school year," she sniffed before a horrible thought occurred to her.
"You didn't get expelled, did you? Oh, mother will be heartbroken! And father will surely thrash you."
"Of course not," he rolled his eyes before getting all excited. "But there was a fire and half the building was destroyed so we've all been sent home for four weeks until they sort it out - though we'll have to make up the blasted lost time during the summer," this, bitterly. "This is Damon, by the way," his tones were off hand. "He lives too far away to have gone back home so the school decided we had to pair up and offer a room to another, so he's staying with us," his indifferent tone relayed that this was more a chore than a pleasure. "Well, come on. Let's head home. Mother's been looking for you."
