Author’s Note: Hello everyone! I couldn’t help it – although my novel-stories always wind up not working out, I had to try it again. Please, it you read, review, and if you review, be truthful! I spend a lot of time online just waiting for a review to pop up, so I don’t care if it’s complimentary or not – I love both, and they really help me write. I’ll probably be trying different writing styles throughout this, so if you notice a change please tell me if you like it or not. If you leave more than one review, I’ll e-mail you when I update unless you ask me to do otherwise. And now, onto the story!

*~*~*

            A girl leaned against the cold, iron bars set inside the window of her prison. She blinked in the moonlight, trying in vain to keep tears from flooding her eyes. It was no use; nothing could stop them from coming. There was no one there to see them, anyway.

            She drew a shuddering breath as she thought of her situation, trapped and forgotten in this cold prison cell. She had no idea how long she had been in here – no less than a month, certainly – but her meals had been few and far between, and she was starving, tired, and sick at heart. The dancing moonlight itself seemed to mock her situation, a prisoner trapped – and probably going to die, she thought as another tear leaked down her face – for no reason that she knew of. At this point, death would be welcome after sitting here at the window for countless days, hoping that someone – a villager, a hero, or even the moon herself – would come to rescue her. But that hope had waned with the moon, leaving her with an empty feeling, like a flower denied light. Inside, she was wilting, even as her white village dress became soaked with tears.

            She sighed, and moved again, so that she could at least watch the full moon. She had tried many times to find a way of escape through the very window she leaned on, but it might as well have been a stone wall. The bars would not move, the trees grew too far away, and the guards passed too often. She would spend the rest of her life as a forgotten prisoner, and she knew it. Already she could feel the slow knot of starvation gnaw at her mind and body, sapping whatever strength she might have had otherwise.

            Her crystal blue eyes focused through the tears at the moon, the one thing that she could measure time and change by. Through her tears and utter despair, she managed to murmur a wish. Please – moon, queen of transformations, bring me some sort of change, anything to get me out of here! But the moon was silent, and unforgiving.

Her eyes became so blurred tears that she could barely see the moon, just a sea of pale light. But she could feel something white in her hands – the hem of her dress. She pulled it with all her might, but somehow, instead of feeling her dress move, she felt it move like rope, or thread in her fingers. She pulled as much as possible, weaving it, laying it down, not knowing what she was doing, but moving anyway.

Suddenly she saw an explosion of light, and instead of leaning on the bars of the window, she could feel cold stone beneath her cheek. She wiped her eyes with her dress, and looked around.

She was sitting in the same cell as before – she recognized the bed, and the basin – but an entire wall had been blown out. Little pieces of stone were scattered all over, like crumbs from a gigantic stone cookie, and several trees had been singed. And yet, somehow, she had remained uninjured.

She picked herself up wonderingly, touching her face and smoothing her dress, just to make sure it was all still there. And then, without looking back or asking questions, the young escapee tore into the forest at full speed, like a white ghost running into the night.