I had a good beginning here, despite having a horrible cold that struck me early this morning and has made me so tired and cranky that even my cats are avoiding me.
This is the opening to The Servant Girl. It's a dull opening, but considering how difficult it was for me to write today, I don't care:
The fever had spread from west to east, not deterred by deserts, mountain ranges or rivers. It worked its way from village to village to town to city and left behind dead in such numbers that some villages disappeared -- and no one knew it for a year or more.
The fever took no noticed of age or wealth. Young and old died, rich and poor, peasant and noble... king and queen.
The kingdom of Ranas had only Princess Sondra left, a small child of six, hastily put in the care of her mother's younger brother, now Prince Regent Petrin. And he, a widower and childless, had no idea of how to deal with a child who cried for lost parents.
He found her a playmate. Found her one quite by accident. Riding back from the docks two days after the death of the King and Queen -- only hours a part, sudden and unexpected, for the King had hidden his own illness well so as not to scare Queen Mara. On the ride back in the rain, he had seen a small girl child sitting on a street corner, clutching a blanket, so obviously abandoned that he had stopped to ask others if they knew where she belonged. One old man said her mother had died, they didn't know if she had family. No one wanted her.
So Prince Petrin took her. She seemed a godsend that day. Took her home to Princess Sondra, a playmate and servant girl named Elizabeth. And for the next twelve years they were inseparable.
And then the world changed for them again.
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