room.
He bows with a flourish and leaves. I still don't feel like I have any grip on the situation, but at least I'm making progress with the dragon prince. A few moments later, Uria steps through the door and curtsies deeply.
"My lady," she starts. "Would you like me to draw your bath?"
"Sure. That sounds super." I cross my arms over my chest and watch her walk to a wall within my chamber and press it lightly and a panel clicks open.
"How do you open the doors?" I ask.
"This bath chamber door is opened with a light push. You entrance door is enchanted to keep out Orgs. It will only allow Endorians or dragon born through when you stand before it.”
“That’s why I’m trapped in my room,” I say, annoyed.
She nods uncomfortably and goes to a large copper basin. She pulls a chain from the bottom of the tub, and water begins to bubble up through the hole at the center. It takes a few minutes for the entire large basin to fill with hot water. Uria plucks a bottle from a shelf against the wall and pours sweet-smelling oil into the water. It smells of almonds and lavender.
"May I help you disrobe?" she asks expectantly.
"No. That's fine. I can manage. But where is the shampoo?"
"What is shampoo, your highness?"
"For washing hair?"
"Ah. Yes. Hair tonic. Here." She hands me an amber bottle before curtsying again and backing out of the room. "I will wait for you in your chamber and help you dress, my lady."
"Sure, great."
The door slides closed behind her, and I sigh. This is weird. I don't know if I like this "my lady" stuff. Yesterday I was a broke photographer with PTSD living in an old RV with my stinky dog. Now I'm somehow a princess. Not how I was expecting the day to go.
I pull out of my dusty, sweaty clothing and climb into the basin. The water is perfect, almost too hot, and smells like a dream. I settle in, luxuriating in the warmth. This is exactly what I needed. My sore muscles, tired from months of hiking and sleeping in a cramped, lumpy bed begin to unwind. I let out a little moan of pleasure. Maybe I could get used to this princess thing.
My life back on Earth wasn't exactly going well. My parents died after the farm was foreclosed, years ago. They'd been older when they had me, but losing the farm just made them both give up. They got cancer and died within a year.
I never had any brothers or sisters. Apparently, I was something of a miracle baby.
My career is in the toilet. After I left Iraq, totally shell-shocked and pissed as hell, I couldn't cut it at the paper anymore. All the New York bullshit and office politics drove me insane. Literally, I had a nervous breakdown over someone stealing my breakfast burrito out of the refrigerator.
Well, it wasn't just the burrito. It had been compounding for months. After what I'd seen go down in Iraq, I wasn't in the mood for the pettiness of normal life. I saw a shrink once a week to help me deal with the fucked up stuff that constantly ran through my head. On top of that, I had to deal with skinny, twenty-year-old interns, misogynistic bosses, and being handed one too many puff pieces.
There wasn't really any way of hiding the fact that I'd nearly lost my mind in the Middle East. Dead babies will do that to you. They brought me back, and my old paper let me go. I got a job at a gossip magazine. It sucked big hairy balls.
So I quit. To put it more correctly, I rage quit. After that, I bought the RV and decided to do what I'd always really wanted to do, nature photography. Growing up in Idaho, nature was all around, and it inspired me more than anything else. But after college, I got into a practical career. Not that there weren't parts of photojournalism that I loved. It was an intensely exciting and challenging occupation. But after the war...
I pick up the bottle of hair tonic and rub it into my wet hair, breathing in the fresh scent. I duck under the water to rinse it off. When I'm done, my hair feels so soft, it shocks me. My course, wavy