One Thousand: All the ways it can change one life...

I.

When she was four, war broke out in a neighboring country and the king's champions were summoned to wage a battle at the front, to keep it from crossing the borders between the two realms. On the eve of heading out, the nearby village held a festival to send their men abroad in good spirits. She cried because she didn't want her father to leave.

He took her aside upon a grassy knoll, scooped her up in his strong arms and dried her tears with one worn thumb. "Whenever you get lonely, all you have to do is watch the sky and make a wish on a falling star, and I'll come home a day sooner."

As the fireworks ending the fair lit the sky, she imagined a thousand stars fell that night, and she made a wish on them all.


II.

Her father was gone for one thousand days and returned in a coffin, nothing more than a body for their family to bury.


III.

Black decorated the main hall permanently until the mansion's ruin, and her mother refused to wear any other color. She was six when the chambermaid told her that for every pearl a girl owns, it will equal a tear she'll shed once she's grown to womanhood.

In her mother's jewelry coffer, she stopped counting the pearls at one thousand. The weeping coming from the chapel down the hall kept distracting her.


IV.

At age nine, she was forced to wear the stiffest corset and gown to the funeral of the king. The procession was so long it connected three different towns across the countryside, and the casket was decorated in no less than one thousand rose petals. It was one of the most beautiful sights she'd ever beheld, and her mother told her to remember the moment forever because she'd need to learn early that death wasn't something to be feared, but given its due honor and weight in the world.


V.

"How can you support such a bastard?"

"I hardly think you've any right to call my liege the bastard, Lucas."

"He's the worst thing that could happen to this country!"

"If you think overthrowing our entire political structure will be a merry summer stroll, you're delusional!"

"So that's what this is about, Valerie? Greed and power? The hungry aristocracy bleeding everyone else dry for some piece of material wealth that will condemn their souls?"

"Better something that will feed our family than the carrot of peace George dangles in front of his lackey horses."

And so she watched her eldest brother and eldest sister divide the family's loyalty between the two vying for the throne. One thousand years of prestige and heritage in the Hawthorne family name fell when the ancestral home was demolished in the ensuing civil war.


VI.

By the time she was thirteen, the hill where her father had told her to make a wish on falling stars all those years ago was a home for one thousand graves.


VII.

Thomas Dunngeld was an archibishop no more. The once lavish compartments of his occupation had been reduced to nothing more than a single cramped room in the upstairs of a ramshackle tavern rife with thieves and prostitutes. His patrons had long since fled the country or been killed in the turmoil, and when a knock sounded upon the door, he didn't know what to think.

It was no place for a woman, much less one of noble birth, like the young lady on his doorstep. He had nothing to offer her, no comfort, no wealth. Both of them were ruined, as far as the world went, and the only thing to save them was the grace of the gods.

As she left in search of the answers she needed to find for herself, he told her that one thousand prayers would pave her way, even if he had to whisper them all himself.


VIII.

One thousand men. One thousand drills. One thousand weeks of training with her brother's rebel force. Then...


IX.

She watched the light leave the woman's eyes. Her hand still cradled the hilt of her brother's sword, driven straight through Valerie's heart. The least she could do was give her own sister a clean, quick death.

Cries immediately erupted, one thousand cheers for their new heroine, the one who had ended the war, even though it cost her everything she ever held dear.

She was all that was left of the Hawthorne line.


X.

George invited her to stay, become the king's champion, be restored to wealth and power in his court, but she spurned it all. There was no going back once the blood of your own kin stained your hands, and her calling was to serve a higher power. There was only going forward, one thousand miles into a new land, and a new life.


XI.

Her journey ended in a world far from her homeland, one roiling with strife and discord. One thousand realms and none of them had ever enjoyed permanent peace.


XII.

Sir Donovan Keane was a champion of the people, and though the fight was not her own, she'd learned to heed the call for help when peoples' lives were on the line. She found in him an able comrade, a wise man, and a kindred spirit.

They fought side-by-side against the darkness threatening to overwhelm not the land but the population's hearts, bringing hope to conquer despair. Hopes and dreams - one thousand of them - were restored to the disheartened inhabitants, and finally the time came when she could rest, and learn to love.


XIII.

I do wish to underscore the level of my interest and affection for you, however, by requesting your company with me...

As she read the letter, and remembered the many talks they'd shared about what it meant to live and be alive, what it meant to love and cherish, what it meant to fight for something possibly unattainable, and something that might require the cost of their very selves, she knew. She'd spend more than one thousand sunrises and sunsets by his side.


XIV.

Darnerian and Drystan, her twin sons. Born in some of the worst of times and almost succumbing to tragedy themselves, they were her pride and joy. She was happy, finally, after all her years of sacrifice and struggle. Throughout her battles on behalf of peace and good, she'd never expected to find a small measure of either for herself.

Looking into their eyes, so different from that sapphire gaze that dimmed when her sister met her end, she knew tranquility, she knew exhiliration--she knew she loved them each in one thousand different ways, for one thousand different reasons. It would be never-ending, unceasing, unfailing. It would be forever.


XV.

Cailyn Hawthorne Keane.

One thousand memories.

One life.