The distorted dark landscape set me with a sense of dread and strangely wonder, an odd sense of

belonging like I had never felt before. Everything was eerily peaceful and silent like the calm before
the storm. As I stuck my head out if the carriage window my dark brown curls danced erratically in
the wind, framing my nearly black eyes and perfect overall face. Before I was able to close my eyes
and feel the harsh yet gentle wind caress my face my mother pulled me harshly back into the
carriage, scolding me for being un-lady like and forgetting myself.

“Really Rosalie, I wish you would be more lady-like it is very unbecoming of a lady such as yourself
and status, especially one that is old enough to marry. Why can’t you be more like your cousin
Anna? She is already married to a Duke and has already two children” my mother reminded me for
the tenth time.

“Mother we have already had this endless discussion countless times before. I am happy for my dear
cousin but I do not want to be like her. We are two very different people who will never be alike” I
sighed.

“Edward, look what you have turned her into! Such insolence!” my mother groaned stubbornly to
my poor farther who just sat quietly in the opposite corner of the carriage clad in a black tailored
suit while my mother sat facing us with an angry fierce expression across her face. As beautiful and
delicate my mother was she had a very sharp tongue on her. Only God knows how my dear farther
ever puts up with it.

My farther just smiled at my mother while patting her hand affectionately, trying to calm her raging
temper down a notch or two before it got worse. “My dear beloved Eleanor, our little Rosalie is just
nervous about meeting the Count” he murmured softly into my mother’s ear, making some of the
tension in her shoulders ease a bit.

I imaged the Count to be fat, old and ugly. Someone greedy who preyed on young innocent girls and
once my parents found that out we would all go back to beloved England. I could only wish. But from
what I could gather from my mother’s obsessive rampages about him he was young, wealthy and a
bachelor. Anyone that my mother deems fit as a suitor instantly falls into my list of not-so-potential-
suitors.

At the tender age of sixteen my mother was already throwing me out to the hungry wolfs: the
wealthy bachelors. Even though I was already an adult and not the child I once was I had no interest
in marriage, wealth and having a family of my own. I liked to think and pretend like the child I once
was. Young and innocent without fighting my way through the blood hungry society! These thoughts
I kept to myself as my mother would lecture me with her idealisms of being a young and proper lady
who should want to be in wedlock. The idea may suit my mothers and some or shall I say many
young ladies but I did not take fancy to the very boring idea of being timid looking and without any
ideas except for her husband’s.

I was so agitated by the time the sun set fully in the sky, leaving only the pale moon and shining stars
in the black sky with blended in with my own skin that I decided to lean out of the window again.
The faint outline of the landscape was barely visible under the concealed darkness that it was hard
to see where we were going and what we were passing by. Shadows of trees and jagged rocks
passed by in a distant blur that made time see to stop and replay over and over again like a routine.
It made everything else seem unrealistic, distorted, dreamlike and unimportant like it was only me
and the surrounding night holding me in a fairy tale like oblivion.

A little more time passed without me realising before I saw the dreary looking castle in the near
distance. It stood morbidly proud, high up on the historic rocks as it towered and overlooked the
harmonious surroundings. By the time the carriage pulled up outside the great weary castle, both of
my parents had already fallen deeply asleep like a spell had been cast over them. They looked so
innocent and child like sleeping without a care in the God forsaken world which made me smile
happily to myself. It made me wonder what they both had been like as young children. Gently I
shook my mother and father awake. Sleepily, my farther made his way out of the carriage, ordering
the two men to unload our luggage.