And so it was...

Prologue

  Once upon a time in a land far, far away... We all know this one.. there is some unfortunate female person in dire straits and uses some assortment of magic, luck, and plain old common sense to get out of her situation and hook up with the man of her dreams. Often there is an elderly old woman who waves a magic wand to help things along... or some overly intelligent and helpful animals lend a helping paw, hoof, claw... well you get the picture. These stories are full of messages of hope, resourcefulness... and often a good dose of humor. Children have fallen in love with the stories... but there was a time when these stories would have been forbidden... had they been thought of in the first place. These stories are not merely stories. They are based upon facts surrounding the life of one person, a young woman specifically.  This particular person was a hero of sorts, an unsung benefactor to nearly everyone in the land. Sure, she had her slip-ups and her mistakes. Nobody is perfect you know. Ok, so maybe there were more than a few slip ups, but whether out of luck or sheer force of will everything turned out alright in the end. But this girl I am talking about, she is the true fairy tale. I am not talking about those stories you hear every night where special things happen to special people. The real fairy tale can happen to anybody at any time if you hold enough magic in your heart.
  As you may have guessed, this woman I speak of is myself. Hello, my name is Siilva. I could be considered somewhat of an authority on magic and happy endings. Before my story began there was no such thing as magic or hope in this land. People went through life as though the present day was the worst day of his or her life. Even nature had slowly absorbed the hopeless dreariness that emanated from our cities and towns to leave nothing but charred remains of trees, low lying bushes that seemed to grow only to scratch at tender skin, and streams so full of sludge and waste that it seemed you could just walk right across them. This land did not really have a name, because people did not love it and so were not inclined to lay any claim to it whatsoever. Now not ALL of us had such dismal lives. Some people were quite wealthy and were able to enjoy their lives in a twisted sort of fashion. These families were the ruling class of our land and their whim was law. Creativity was not encouraged because the hopeless acceptance of life made those not of the ruling class that much easier to control. And so life was; dry, colorless, and merely a way to pass the time until you could die and return to the stars.
  Ah the stars. They were the one bit of mysticism left to the drone population of the world. They represented a relief from pain and toil, and most people poured what little bit of good will and charity they had in their hearts into desperate prayers to these silent sentinels. They were the closest thing to a loving deity they had, and so they prayed and thanked them for everything; then embraced them whole heartedly at the ends of their lives. Now, what the people did not know is that such an outpour of positive energy and emotion was bound to end up somewhere... and ten of those cold diamonds on the velvet canvas of the sky began to warm and vibrate with that life. Slowly over the centuries they gained a type of conscience, as well as an overwhelming amount of power. These ten grew stronger and stronger, becoming more intelligent with time. They watched their creators and experienced a strange sense of sadness and a desperate desire to brighten their lives; for a people with such dreams and love to create these stars deserved to experience happiness in their lives as well. The stars absorbed memories of the people who departed the land as well, and slowly an idea began to form in their collective mind. Being stars, they had knowledge of more than what was just on that world, and after another couple centuries of planning, it was decided that they would bring magic to the land. In order to do this they would have to die, but it would be a small sacrifice to make. And so it was decided. They mustered energy, careful not to use too terribly much, and managed to shake themselves from their positions, until they began to fall. They fell  and fell, until they began to see homes and people in dry fields... And then they landed.
  Now, to back track a little, I must tell you about me, for you must understand that before the story of the stars can continue. And don't you be getting up and looking around for a book with that story in it so you can read the ending, because that story has never been told until now, and never will be again. I was born into the ruling class, the first and only child of my parents Arlan and Laiira. My upbringing was a standard one for one of my class, and when I was five I had already mastered outrunning my nannies and making them worry. I will admit I did get some sort of devilish glee at their frantic cries, and I ran all the harder to keep from being caught. As you may imagine, as one of nobility, my life was planned. I already had a betrothed who was ten years my senior, my classes were suited toward furthering HIS career. My parents kept me strictly away from anyone that was not of our station or one of my nannies so as not to taint my sensibilities I suppose. I was slated for a long, boring life attached to a man I would barely know, tending future children, and playing a good mistress of the manor. In some cases though, such planning  was to a girl child's benefit, for instance I was a homely child, mismatched and awkward even as a babe, and were I to continue growing like this I would have had a hard time finding my own husband in the future. My teeth were uneven, my nose was always spotted with sunburn and freckles, I had thick, unruly brown hair of all things. Not chocolate, not auburn, just plain old nondescript brown. Even as a child I knew I was not pretty, and so I let myself go, escaping into the woods to spend my time there rather than in my room sewing so I was always a mess of bloody scrapes, dirt, and torn clothing. I  believe that in their hearts, my parents had written me off as well and they breathed a huge sigh of relief when they had found a suitable match for me young, In any case, my life was not so difficult at all, certainly nothing a fairy tale would originally be made of.
  On this particular day, the day that everything changed not just for me but for our entire land, I was an insolent child of nine and I was currently playing an impromptu game of hide and seek with my nannies. Earlier in the day mother informed me that I was to begin some sort of instrument lessons, and I did not take very well to that. I was a child full of energy and sitting for hours on end in a cold, dark room with an old instrument and an even older tutor did not appeal to me in the slightest. So I ran. The cook was a bit absent minded today and had not locked the doors to the vegetable garden, so I made good my escape and ran. First I hid up in a large oak that I had discovered a couple years back. It was a good hiding place because once you got up to where the real branches started forking off, there was a largish hollow that I could tuck into comfortably until the nannies went around to the other side of the manor. Today I did just that and quietly slipped down again to the ground, sneaking up to the small lake at the top of the hill. They would find me in a few minutes, but until they did I had a few moments to myself with nothing but the water and the frogs and fish that lived in it.
  Once I arrived at the pond, I pulled out my favorite tooled silver hand mirror and shifted it around until the light from the sky reflected off of it and created a bright patch of dancing color wherever I chose to direct it. Today I decided to play it along the ripples in the water, fascinated by the shadows and the deep ever changing colors that the murky lake reflected back. And that is when it happened. Something, I did not know it was one of the stars at this point, hit my mirror and jolted into me. I remember a startled face in my hand mirror before I fell to the ground, grey, stiff, and clearly not breathing. The nurses found me shortly after, and I do regret not having been awake to see their panic as they found me in a death like pose near the banks. Later I was told that they had tried to take the mirror from my hand but were unable to my hand was clenched so tightly.
  When I awoke I was in my own room, dazed but alive. I had no idea how long I had been unconcious, nor that I had been essentially dead for almost a day. What I did remember though was that face in the mirror and I looked around for it swiftly, groaning and holding a hand to my head as I got dizzy. There it was, on the pillow beside me, but the surface was blank, no face. Strange, it must have just been my own. I looked around the room, slowly this time, and discovered to my shock that my parents were sleeping on a thick pallet on my floor and my mother had no cosmetics on. Blinking, I clenched my mirror tightly once more and slowly slid my legs to the floor. Honestly I was surprised how weak I was, having to use any furniture in my path as I headed to relieve myself, trying not to wake my mother and father. Finally I did make it to the curtained off pot, but I will spare you the specific details of my difficulties there. It was not until I made my way past my full length mirror that I really got a good look at myself, and after a moment, screamed bloody murder.
  My parents woke up with a start and rushed over to me, trying to figure out what was the matter. All I could do was point at my reflection. Where I was once unremarkable, I was now... flawless. Here I cannot help but be somewhat proud of my appearance, even though I had no hand in creating it. Where I was somewhat stocky and rough-skinned, I now stood slender and pale with a form that a willow would envy, and a complexion that would allow me to blend easily with a warm, cream silk. My once impossibly brown hair was now hip length and a red so deep as to match one of my father's best wines. Eyes that used to be a nondescript muddy color were now a soft shade of grey, my lashes had filled out and lengthened and my lips and smoothed and darkened a bit to a coral color. Had I been older at that point I am sure my chest would have greatly improved as well, but as I was only nine I was not concerned with that part of me yet. After a few moments my parents were finally able to gain my attention and long story short, had told me that I was sleeping for almost a forty days. They had watched these changes happen to me, as well as other immense changes in the realm, happen in shock and wonderment.
  People now danced in the streets and laughed. The ruling families in immediate power had been over thrown, their pride and power stripped of them. My family was spared, as we were reasonably kind to our vassals as nobility went; there were many much larger fish to fry as the saying goes. The land itself had also visibly brightened. There was new, green foliage covering the trees, the sky was bluer, and flowers were popping up everywhere where once they could only be found in special conservatories owned by the wealthy. Random mystifying events good and bad had been popping up too. One crippled child in our village was now running with a simply amazing speed, chickens were laying more eggs than the farmers could collect, and some people who were just so plainly bad to the core just up and died where they were standing.
  I listened to all this, slightly bemused, shrieking when I heard a whisper in my head. -It is magic, girl child. The releasing of magic into the world is more noticeable than we had thought.... It will calm itself down in time.- My parents were looking at me concerned as I looked this way and that, looking for the speaker.  I tried the strange word out on my lips, not really sure as to what it meant, but at least it had a name now. I assured my parents that I was merely tired, and they helped me to my bed. Closing my eyes, I imitated sleep whilst the voice in my head slowly, patiently explained what had happened. If I did not know any better, I would have thought that it sounded rather shocked and embarrassed itself. The voice told me how the ten stars had dropped to the earth, spreading out so that their power would have more range. Each was aiming for a different sort of landmark, so as to be sure that magic infused everything in the lands. This particular star had been aiming for water... my lake specifically. Unfortunately when I had been playing with my mirror, the light distracted it and it hit my mirror instead the lake a pace or two beyond me. So no I had a star living in my hand mirror, and that explained that shocked face I had seen. Some of the magic of course ended up within me, and now I can talk to my hand mirror, as if I am not strange enough on my own. All the strange phenomenon were happening where waves of magic from the stars met and made small clashes of power before they blended together in almost a blanket surrounding everything.
  In the end, the mirror was right, the ripples did end up clearing up and things settled down, but they never went back to what they were of course. I learned later that one of those bad people that dropped dead was my betrothed, so by the end of this particular event I found myself flawless and unmatched. Another benefit to having been nearly dead for so long was that my parents utterly spoiled me. They no longer made me attend my lessons, and my mother would not permit my father to find me another husband. They spent more actual time with me as well... So I ended up aging with a rather high opinion of myself.
  Well I think that is enough to tell for now. There is still plenty more to this story of course, but that is for another night. One thing that I have learned as I have lived is that a little bit of waiting and expectation can do a person good. Next eve though, you will begin hearing the fairy tale that is my life. For now though... I do believe I shall go chat with my mirror before I retire for the evening.