Sapphires and Emeralds

Disclaimer for the Story: I do not own anything you recognize, including songs, lyrics, movies, quotes, other branded items, games and places. I do, however, own the plot, characters and the setting for the story. Plagiarism will be met with firm legal action.

Chapter titles belong (in this order) to Lifehouse, The All-American Rejects, Christina Vidal, Bryan Adams, Shakira, The Eagles, The Beatles, Britney Spears, Papa Roach, Barenaked Ladies, Good Charlotte, Switchfoot, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Buckcherry, Daughtry, Bryan Adams, Death Cab for Cutie, Edwin McCain, Tom Petty, INXS, Linkin Park, The Fray, Eddie Rabbitt and Hot Chocolate.

Dedication: To my darling readers and reviewers for sticking with this story and with me. For all your love, support, feedback and laughs. Thank you. And also, to my best friend, N. For those laughs, tears and bickering; for reading this, calling me a bitch for not updating and admitting I'm better than you; for always being there for me.

Note (20th Sept '08): I am well aware that this story needs tweaking. Please read it like a rough draft because I'm working on a better edition. Any criticism or help is welcome. Thank you.

Prologue: Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time…

I was four years old when I heard those magical words for the first time. I still remembered the way my mother had me enraptured with the words that flowed from her mouth. Stories of princesses and knights and towers and dragons. Stories about love conquering all. And I still remembered the way I believed in Prince Charming.

But then, I entered high school and I grew up.

There’s nothing like a good healthy dose of teenage drama to completely throw one off fairytales. For all my life, I believed I’d found my Prince Charming the minute I was born. But then, high school and one guy showed me that there was no such thing as Prince Charming and happily ever afters.

And from the day my dream crashed and shattered, I hated fairytales. There’s just something about the way they teach you to hope and dream and believe, only to snatch it away from you when you encounter the real world.

Like, me for example. Sometimes, someone said a name and the automatic response was, “Who?” And at school award ceremonies, there was always one name that made everybody who was not sleeping, look at each other in confusion and ask, “Who?”

Well, I was one of those people. Emmeline Shepherd was invisible to the whole goddamn world and honestly, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If I was a princess in a fairytale of my own– like I was so often told– why was it that I was invisible? No one saw me, no one noticed me.

Before I started my senior year at Royal High School, I was a very pathetic excuse for a human being. I had been diagnosed with having mild depression. It wasn’t the suicidal, ‘let me bomb the world because I’m so misunderstood’ kind, but more the ‘my life sucks, let me cry’ type. I wasn’t much fun to hang around. I had to have daily counselling sessions with my school Guidance Counsellor. It was sad that sometimes he was my only friend.

I was not a physically attractive person, but maybe that was because I didn’t see myself as one. I never realised that when you think of yourself as ugly, the rest of the world sees you as ugly. And when you were happy, it often showed in your face. I hated looking in mirrors so much and seeing my reflection staring back at me.

I hated my lank black hair and my dull green eyes. I abhorred my cheekbones, that seemed to jut out almost vulgarly. I hated my lips and my nose, not to mention my wide forehead and my alabaster skin. I never realised that there were other girls out there who would kill for my features and my body nor that with a little bit of magic called ‘make-up’, I could make myself desirable. I never realised that the old adage really was true– the grass is always greener on the other side.

I did not have a model’s killer figure, though there were several overweight girls who would love my body. I represented the opposite end of the spectrum. I was painfully thin, with size two clothes hanging loosely on my frame the same as size ten would. I was a size minus-two. It was not fun to be thin. It was sad. I’d battled anorexia a few years before and it had left me a pile of skin and bones.

I also had the misfortune of being allergic to the sun, almost literally. Prolonged exposure to the sun, especially in summer resulted in me getting an almost splitting migraine. Sometimes, even the weak morning sun was enough to bring on an episode, if I forgot to close my curtains the previous night.

The only thing about me that I liked was my penchant for drawing. I loved it. I could live the rest of my life happily as long as I had an endless supply of charcoal and paper. And I was never stupid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth and downplay my talent. I liked being good at something.

My parents had always been on the rather affluent side. Sure, we didn’t live in a mansion or anything, but I could afford a car and stuff. We had a picture perfect life on the surface, but a deeper look would show unhappiness. My family was torn apart. My parents did not know how to react to my sudden, violent mood swings and my brother and I had had a huge falling out. It had resulted in us not talking for three whole years.

So, as the princess of the story, my life was certainly lacking in the ‘fairytale’ magic aspect. And really, fairytales were just a waste of time. Honestly, in real life princesses and castles and dragons and knights are so impossible. They give you false hope and teach you to love only to take it from you again. It was like loving a person and then discovering that you really didn’t know who they were. That was how I felt about fairytales.

When I lost some of my naïve nature, I realised that what really irked me about fairytales was the way people reacted to them. People pretended like all fairytales were different. They weren’t. It was always that a blonde haired, blue eyed, perfect princess was shunned because of something horrible and more often than not, was guarded by some unnatural beast. An equally blond haired and blue-eyed prince or a knight rode up on his majestic white steed and slew the dragon. They got married and had dozens of children and they lived happily ever after.

Happily ever after. I hated those words almost as much as I hated the stories themselves. There was no such thing as happily ever after. What I always wanted to know was that why the prince couldn’t really be an ogre who was locked up in a tower and was guarded by butterflies. And that the plain commoner rose up on a black cow and rescued him. Why couldn’t they decide to just have sex and never children?

Of course, fairytales never showed that happening because it was unrealistic wasn’t it? Almost as unrealistic as the clichéd stories themselves. The truth was that such shit would never have sold. People would not have wanted to listen to such unconventional crap. And in the end that was what it was all about wasn’t it? It was all about the selling, the propaganda.

But the point remained that even though I hated fairytales, a part of me still believed in them and still had faith that they would come true. I was just the same as everybody else.

Before I started my senior year at Royal High, I thought my fairytale was done and over with. I thought that the first fourteen years of my lifetime had been my fairytale. And I was bitter because I hadn’t gotten my happy ending. The day I lost my Prince Charming was the day I lost my belief in fairytales.

But then, I went into my senior year. It didn’t take me long to realise that my fairytale hadn’t ended… it hadn’t even begun yet. Because my Prince wasn’t blond haired and perfect. He had beautiful black hair and the most obvious flaws. My Prince Charming fucked up so many times that I lost count.

Sure, my story had the cringe-worthy clichés because it would hardly be a story worth telling otherwise, right? But it did have its downright depressing moments. In fact, it quite proved to me that a bed of roses could never be comfortable because everyone conveniently forgot that roses had thorns.

My story was a one where the admittedly flawed Prince Charming rode up to his commoner on a black steed. He transformed her into a beautiful princess and took a long time to fall for her. And once that was done, he nearly killed her with his apathy. But in the end, he saved her and that was what mattered to her the most.

And believe me, it was one hell of a ride.

A/N: This is my first attempt at a chaptered story, so any advice and criticism will be taken well and appreciated. Review! I always reply.

–Quill