Dear God,
Thank you for making me your special princess!
Teach me to trust and obey
my parents and teachers
who love me as you do
So I can help my friends
feel special too!
In Jesus name, Amen.
Dear God,
Thank you for making me your special princess!
Teach me to trust and obey
my parents and teachers
who love me as you do
So I can help my friends
feel special too!
In Jesus name, Amen.
Start with Part I.
8:00 AM, Saturday, April 15th, 2006
The Castle
I am a young man, now, perhaps 13 or so. The old man has long since passed away — or perhaps just disappeared. It does not matter. I was not emotionally attached to him. I am not emotionally attached to anyone. I am attached to my studies.
I had been gradually taking on more and more of the simple chores needed to keep up the castle, so his departure was not a radical shift. We never really talked or socialized, though he would teach and quiz me as needed. Which was not very much, since I soon learned to read and taught myself from his library. My horse — the only other living thing in the castle — had soon grown bored and wandered off. I felt a brief pang at the time, but since I was already too busy for him it didn’t really seem to matter. Did it? As usual, I just returned to my studies and moved on.
Alone in my castle, with few distractions and no visitors, life was placid, but never boring. I took joy in the simple tasks of self-sufficiency, conjuring food, mastering new ideas, maintaining order in the castle so it wouldn’t get it my way. There are no wild plants or dust to disturb my tranquillity, just a few herbs in a box for my research. The armor of my childhood still lay in my room, and I would polish it and magically stretch it to keep it in my size and in good condition — for I was well brought up — but I never needed it, since I never went out, and nobody ever came.
Which is why the knock on my chamber door is so startling. I am not scared, exactly — what need I fear? — but sufficiently surprised that I spill ink over the parchment I’m annotating. Actually, so surprised I don’t even mind my clumsiness, but — without thinking — get up and answer the door. For I was brought up well.
I open it, and there stands a well-built, bearded man in his early thirties. I’ve never seen him before, but he looks at me with a smile of recognition.