3 : Unfamiliar Familiarity

Drakon felt his teeth grind in frustration. His eyes narrowed at the little girl. He had to give her some credit for being suicidal! She was just an ant compared to him, as well as most other people present there, who were all bowing to him. She was brazenly and rather impertinently staring at him.

Throughout his life, Drakon had craved for some semblance of the so-called normal; for people to stop looking at him like he was a mystery. Yet, now that this girl was doing that, he did not feel so good. It did not feel normal at all. It felt more strange than any of the other looks of fear that he was getting from all around.

However, he himself could hardly turn away. Everything about her - her blazing, ocean blue eyes, her small stature, her wavy hair ... - everything, for some reason, seemed to scream at him to continue staring. And he felt something - something he'd never felt before - something that almost seemed like a long long, long buried, long forgotten familiarity. Like a long awaited-for unity. It was almost as if he'd known her from even before his birth.

Angrily, he forced himself to turn away. Why would he feel such stupid, unrealistic feelings?! Why would he think such stupid thoughts?! He must focus on the current reality. Though, little was he able to concentrate on the rest of the tour.

"Who was she?" Drakon's mind was repeating the same question over and over. He was determined to find out, just to remove the questions from his mind. There were enough parasitic thoughts preying on his mind, and he just could not handle another bunch. Did he really know her? Had he seen her before? She had felt so unfamiliar yet so strangely familiar to him. Maybe she was some Royal minister's daughter, and had come to the palace at some point. That was the only way he could've known her, since he rarely ever ventured outside the boundaries of the castle halls nowadays.

After returning from the tour, Drake immediately went to the King's office, trying to recall everything he'd noticed on the tour. King Rupert sat on his "precious" gem encrusted chair, riffling through some papers while coughing his head off. A stack of books sat on the table on one side, while a pile of stationaries were neatly arranged on the other. He pursed his lips, annoyed, as he watched him wearily turn over the pages of the document he was currently studying.

Drakon said to him, "You can go back now. I'll finish the work."

He looked up, surprised.

What's so surprising about my offering you help, you idiot?! Drakon thought defensively, feeling some embarrassment creeping into him.

"Sure. This is a surprise, indeed, Drakon. I think that you're finally growing to love Harkenland, to participate in it's duties willingly," saying this, he beamed at his son. King Rupert waited a few seconds for his reaction, but was disappointed. Drakon's face remained as blank as always. Him love Harkenland? Impossible. This was a hellish cage for him.

Drakon remained as still as a statue as he watched his father limp out of the room. Years of battles and old age had clearly taken a toll on his health.

As soon as he was out of the room, Drakon walked towards the desk and plopped down on the chair, trying to send snatches of freezing effects to it. He was weary, and was clearly going crazy. Even the small effort required for freezing the damned chair was draining him so badly. It was as if he was not freezing a small chair but a huge mountain. It took a whole minute for his power to get it done. At last, it was completely covered in ice, and he was finally comfortable.

He pulled out the laptop from the bag nearby and opened the file where the citizens' register was stored. Every year, there was a ball at their castle - the annual and the one and only ball they held - where every man, woman and child had to come. That way, the register was updated every year; the people who did not come were marked as dead after checking the hospital records, and new insertions were added, whose bio-data was later stored from family sources.

Drakon typed in the word 'Peterkin Street' in the address bar. And...long list! He sighed. Not that it was unexpected. Harkenland was a pretty big city, though it was mostly isolated from the rest of the world. And Peterkin Street was one of it's biggest streets in it.

Drakon started scrolling down the list lazily, vaguely noticing a few interesting faces, like a man with a long white beard that reached the floor or a blue haired lady whose face looked like she would tear off anyone who approached her...his type exactly! But he had no idea when he would come across the person he actually wanted to see. For all he knew, her name could start with 'Y'! However, Drakon wasn't ready to give up just yet.

Yes, it was the first time - or at least he thought so - that he had met her, but it was the first time he had felt so strangely familiar to a person without actually knowing him or her. Not to mention, she was the only commoner who had ever dared to look into his eyes. "Didn't she know about the prophecy?" he wondered, "Or was she to being plagued by the same thoughts residing in his mind?"

Luck was there for him. He had not scrolled down for even a minute, when he came across the picture of the same girl - small, cute, but in a strangely fiery manner...He shook his head vigorously to drive away all those thoughts.

"Ashley Turner. Age - 16 years currently."

"Almost two years younger than him. Or maybe I was older," He thought, before realising that it was the same thing anyway.

"Native to Harkenland. Gender - Female. Parents - John and Arabell Turner. Younger sister - Cara Turner." Then it went on about her ancestry...Nothing else?! Confused, he shut down the laptop.

She must have been one of those insignificant citizens of Harkenland, to have no other data saved. But she certainly had not seemed insignificant. Then how the heck did he know her? He couldn't even remember seeing her before.

Something was definitely wrong with him!

First of all, there were his crazy powers regarding the cold, that seemed so out of place in the world! And then he seemed to be immortal, too. After all, after his rapid growth till the age of eleven, when he looked more in his twenties than in his adolescence, he had not grown anymore. Even now at the age of eighteen, he was still the same, except that he felt older than he actually was. It was as if he lived a year in a day.

Secondly, he was having nightmares in which he was either lost or broken or angry or all three combined. Nightmares in which he roamed all around dark, sinister forests, trying to find someone or something, but was all alone. Nightmares in which he screamed in locked, dark hallways, but no one came except the returning echos of his scream. Nightmares in which he replayed his worst memory, the one which had completely damaged him - the one in which he destroyed his ... mother. These nightmares were so frequent at times that they even sucked the lights out of him in day-time!

And thirdly...this mere common girl, Ashley Turner, had clearly taken up much more space in his mind than he had previously thought.