Story of the Rose

~Chapter 1~

"Grand-pere!" Sophie whined, "Tell me a story." Grand-pere eyed the eight year old girl in front of him. "Ehh..ca va," grandpere said,"Ecoute." Sophie obeyed and sat down on the floor, eagerly awaiting grand pere's story. Grand-pere always told wonderful stories.

"Once upon a time, in the Wilderness Alpines, tall with pine trees and thick with bramble and bush, there was a clan. A deadly clan." His eyes glistened. "They were called 'Vine whip. Why? Because it was a clan made entirely of women, their symbol, the rose. Beautiful flower, but painful thorns." He winced to himself as if a ghost, come out of nowhere, had just poked him with a thorn. "Their fighting technique was impeccable. Flawless precession, deadly one blow attacks. Besides being an excellent fighter, you also had to be exceptionally beaufiful. The Roses were not only fighters, but spies. They tricked men into revealing secrets with their cold charmingness." He twisted is face into a grimace at the latter sentence, then continued, sighing.

"A young, ambitious General fighting with a battalion on the Redemption side of the Sacred wars, was one tricked. His name was Jaques." Sophie was about to point out this was was Grand-pere's first name, but he quickly told her to shut up, fermez la bouche, and continued. "His battallion was on a march to a town just past the Wilderness mountains, that had recently become occupied by Hellspawn factions. After a few days of what seemed like endless marching, his unit encamped just south of a small village named Snow Valley. Jaques had a few leave days, so he ventured out into the village, not expecting to find much, maybe a drink, at most." The elderly man paused, as if his last few words had some sort of deeper meaning.

"But he found more. He found oh, so much more. At the Snow Valley Inn he'd stumbled upon, good for a drink or two, he met a woman named Mariko.But Mariko, a Vine Whip member was not there by chance, rather on purpose to try to get the Redemption army's tactics from him." Grand-pere suddenly fell silent and looked out the window. Then he continued, "Mariko and Jaques could not help themselves from falling in love. He swept her into bed and she did not resist. They stayed for a few precious days together in the inn, until Mariko remembered the obligation she had to her clan, and stole a few tactics charts he'd had on him. When Jaques woke up the next morning, she was gone. Fled back to the Wilderness. After getting considerably drunk, he returned to his battallion: But he had something with him. A scroll."

"On the scroll was a few lines written in a strange language, vaguely resembling english, but all I could make out was that the bottom line meant this: 'This should be passed down the ancestral line, passing over every other generation'."

Silence hung in the air.

Sophie had many questions formulating in her mind, but for once, quite out of touch with her bumbling, extroverted, personality,
she asked only one: "Grand-pere, is this story true?"

Grand-pere did not take the liberty of answering immediately. After a few minutes of torturing silence, his eyes widened and turned to the window. "Maybe", he replied.