"My big girl, going to a university in Europe! You know she'll even turn eighteen on the flight over! We had to have the party before she went of course."
Anna remembered her eighteenth birthday party as being just as soppy, a hearfelt goodbye from all her friends and relatievs as though they'd never see her again. Just what she hadn't wanted. At least soon she'd be on the plane out.
She turned to conintue her journey boarding the plane when, out of the corner of her eye she spotted an old man staring at her. It was a brief glimpse and it took her a moment to realise that the old man with the grayed beard and a long, purple cloak had been more than a little out of place. But when she turned to look again, the place where he'd ben standing was empty.
Anna stood staring for a moment before she realised there was some protest to her inaction. She was holding up a queue of people wanting to board the plane. Quickly she shook her head to clear it; deciding she was seeing things, and prepared herself for Europe.
********************
"Surprise!"
She hadn?t even noticed the hostess carrying the cake down the aisle. Someone had probably discovered that her father owned one of the biggest seeling, most popular magazines, "Golden News" and had wanted to impress her in an attempt for good publicity. She couldn't believe all teh fuss she'd wanted to get away from was following her.
She looked at her watch, 11:55, in five minutes she'd officially be eighteen. The giant cake had been produced out of seemingly nowhere. Eighteen candles flickered in front of her eyes.
"Blow them out and make a wish," said a passenger peering over the chair in front of her.
The candle flames blurred in front of her and a fuzzy image of a fish darter through them. She couldn't breathe. Clutching at the armrests, the weight of the plane crushed down on her chest and she felt claustrophobic.
"Are you ok?" asked the hostess concernedly.
"I?m fine," Anna managed to blurt out. The lights on her watch caught her eyes, 11:59. She prepared herself to blow out the candles, taking in a breath.
She blew out the candles, the illuminated digits on her watch flashed 12:00. Everything went dark....
********************
Anna spluttered as she started to awake. She couldn't breathe properly. Painfully she opened her eyes, and looked deep into the eyes of a gorgeous stranger.
"Are you alright?" he asked, his face twisted to a look of worry. She stared hard as his image blurred, splitting into two and reemerging again.
She coughed, bringing up water.
"I'm fine, I think," she told him as he seperated into two images again. She pulled herself up into a sitting positiong and her head started throbbing.
"Are you sure..." the stranger began to ask.
"I told you I'm fine," Anna told him grumpily. The world span. She turned her face to the side and threw up on the ground.
"And don't you dare say 'I told you so,'" she pointed at him accusingly.
He shrugged his shoulders and watched as she collected herself. Nothing but watch, his dark eyes piercing her skin. It drove her crazy but he just stood and watched, patiently and quietly.
"How did I get here?" she finally asked him, her memory was unclear.
"You were drowning when I pulled you out, I thought you were gone," he told her.
"Thankyou," Anna sighed, "What?s your name?"
"You don?t know me?" he asked, surprised.
"I'm sorry, but right now I don't even know where I am so what ever egotistical game your playing could you save it for later," she told him angrily, "Did I mention I don't know where I am?"
"You're in the outskirts of Dhar. This is the Dhar Minor Lake. Though, as you can see, it's more a pond than a lake," he surveyed the area. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintence Lady...?"
"Anna. Anna McKillop," she told him.
"Lady Anna Anna McKillop, I am Prince Caffron Dharmunde."
"It's just Anna," Anna said sarcastically, "and I'm not amused."
"I wasn't joking," the Prince said in a tone that suggested otherwise.
Anna ignored him. "I was... on a place. I was on a plane, what happened next?"
The Prince blinked at her. "I'm sorry, what?" he asked.
She sighed. "i was on a plane, flying to Europe. We must've crash landed. No. No, then there'd be a wreckage and..."
"Europe? Flying?" Prince Cafforn asked confusedly.
Finally she began to process her surroundings. She was sitting on a slight slop that fell into a large pond further down. Around her was a thing woodland that became a field or grassland at the top of the rise.
The so-called Prince stood in front of her wearing a tunic consisting of black pants, a white shirt and a red jacket . He had a slightly ruffled look and his boots were covered with pond mud and scum to the ankles. Her eyes also lingured on a sheathed sword that hung from his belt.
"What, did I land in the 16th century!??" she asked sarcastically.
"No, I told you, this is the City of Dhar," he told her, puzzled.
Anna rolled her eyes and sighed once more.
"Perhaps you could tell em what happened to civilisation then?" she asked.
The stranger look, confused for a moment more but then he brightened. "I'll take you back home into Dhar where you can get cleaned up. Perhaps then you?ll remember some more of how you came to be drowning in a pond," he chided.
Anna wanted to scowl a thankyou but forced herself to say it politely. She had decided that Dhar was most likely a European city and that she had bumped into it's stupidous or strangest local. She'd also heard of drugs that could influence one's memory and was wondering if she cuold attribute her own lacking memory to such a drug.
The stranger had lifted two of his fingers to his mouth and sounded a shrill whistle that pierced the countryside. For a moment she wondered what to expect before the thudding of hooves meeting the ground reached her ears and a chestnut-coloured horse galloped into view.
"Our ride home..." the man indicated with a wave of his hand towards the horse and offering to help her up.
"Of course it is," said Anna rolling her eyes to the sky.
