original

Crown of Heroes

Bab 1: 1: They Meet, They Meet Again

She suddenly sat up and blinked.

Around her were rolling hills for as far as she could see (which wasn't far, since the hills were pretty tall). Long bright green grass swayed in a gentle breeze, with small patches of flowers nestled here and there. It was late spring here.

She stood up and looked around. Where was she? This wasn't a place she knew and she had no recollection on how she got here.

Of course, depending on recollection seemed like a bad idea. She had memories, strange fuzzy memories, of places she'd been and people she'd known, but she had no name for them. It was very strange. She felt like a large chunk of her mind was missing.

Looking straight ahead she saw small spirals of smoke reaching up into the sky. Not having anything better to do, she followed the smoke in the sky and walked over the first big hill.

It was a very large hill. About half way through she found herself huffing and puffing and she realized she was not the kind of person who exercised. Thinking on it, she was pretty sure she actively avoided doing so.

After making it to the top, wheezing heavily, she realized the smoke she'd seen came from chimneys. And the chimneys were attached to houses. The houses were clustered together into a very quaint town. Why, it looked just like——but her memory failed her. Though she could visualize what it looked like, she had no name for it.

As she was busy thinking about why she couldn't remember the name for one single thing, she heard a sob. Truthfully, she didn't realize it was a sob at first, so it gave her a fright. But there was a second sob, which she recognized for what it was, and she gave a sigh of relief.

There was a cluster of large boulders and rocks to her right. The noisy crying was coming from there. Curious, and a little worried for the crier, she went to see what was up.

It was very surprising to see a young man crying. He was a little bit older than a teenager. Maybe 19 at the most. He was thin and had dark black hair that curled slightly around the edges and lightly tanned skin. His hand was currently in a fist and he was beating on one of the large rocks in front of him while big tear rolled down his face. She couldn't see the color of his eyes because of the crying.

This was incredibly awkward. There was no way he wanted to be found by a random stranger. He'd clearly come out here to be alone in his sorrow. But it was too late, he'd been found.

"Erm." The woman cleared her throat, feeling both embarrassed and hesitant. "Are you alright?"

He jumped and spun around. She now got a good look at his eyes. They were a green, like the sea. Very clear and light. And his eyelashes were so dark and thick they made it look like he had eyeliner on. They were the kind of eyes women would kill for and men wouldn't care about. They were currently red and swollen from his sobbing.

"Who are you?!" He quite naturally demanded.

"Caroline Matthew." It surprised her she knew her own name. She'd known it the moment she was asked, but before than she hadn't even thought about it.

Well, at least she'd gotten a name for the most important thing: herself.

The young man frowned and tried again: "Where'd you come from?"

Caroline thought about it. She could clearly picture the place in her mind, but she couldn't think of the name of it. Her eyebrows raised and scrunched up, both confused and annoyed.

Finally, she settled on: "I kind of know but I'm not really sure."

"Are you lost then?" Naturally the young man was baffled by this response, as anyone would be. However, his question was right on the mark.

He'd given a name for her current situation: she was lost.

"Yes! Yes, that's what I am. Lost. Thanks!" She smiled excitedly and snapped her fingers.

This response was even more confusing to the man, and it made him suspicious, "You don't sound sure about being lost…"

"Ah well… something's not right up here." She tapped the side of her head. "I can tell it's not, but I don't why… it's really strange."

"I-is that so?" He was giving her that look people give when they're trying to figure out if someone was crazy and dangerous.

"Yep, it's so! Can you help me?"

He blinked his beautiful eyes (really, she found them enchanting, even if they were all red from crying) and scratched his head. She could tell he wasn't sure about it.

Hastily she added, "It's not like I mean for you to fix me or anything. I just need a place to stay. And I can work, so I'm not asking for anything for free."

This seemed to help, for he cautiously nodded then and agreed. Overjoyed, she rushed over, grabbed his hand, and started shaking it.

"Thank you so much! What's your name?"

"Acanthio from Hillsdale. But everyone just calls me Thio."

"Thio! Thanks Thio!"

"R-right…" Caroline was still shaking his hand enthusiastically, so he had to rather aggressively pull his away. He pointed to the town down below with his now freed hand. "I'll take you there and see what I can do for you."

"Okay! Let's go!" She started walking right away, but then paused and turned to him. "By the way, why were you crying?"

His whole face paled in embarrassment and Caroline realized she probably should not have mentioned the crying.

Hands raised in a flustered apology, she hurriedly added: "Sorry, sorry… I shouldn't have brought that up. Nothing wrong with a good cry though. Getting things out of your system is healthy! So, so, you don't gotta feel bad about it—"

Her attempts to make him feel better seemed to have back fired. One hand vigorously rubbing his eyes, as if trying to rub away the swollen red there, while the other hand raised up to stop her speech.

Giving a defeated sigh, he said, "Let's just… not talk about that any further, shall we?"

"Okay." Caroline controlled herself and managed to shut up. It was hard. Apparently her personality was such that any extreme emotion caused her to want to talk uncontrollably. Right now she was feeling an extreme sense of second hand embarrassment.