Ashna

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Since Water Princess, Fire Prince has been officially released into the world I can now begin introducing you to the characters of book two. Because with the exception of Amber, Granite, Laura, and Alphego, it's a completely different cast. On the Rizkan end, it takes place a thousand years later, and predominately on the mainland, rather than on the island of Klarand. On Earth's end, I'm focusing on what I call the "Rizkan Group" rather than the "Klarand Group" that is the Water Princess, Fire Prince, and everyone else who has ruled over that island. (If you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about.)

I have talked a bit about Petra, admittedly, but as she was one of my first characters, it was something I couldn't really resist.

So to start with, I'm going to talk about Ashna, one of the most adorable young ladies who has ever barged into my writing and demanded I include her story.

Okay, so she didn't demand, that really isn't her style. She just smiled very sweetly and bribed me with interesting tidbits about her life.

Ashna has been in the story since the very first draft, and her role and story has actually changed very little in her overarching development. However, she wasn't a character I planned to be in the story. If you'll remember, Lady Dragon, Tela Du was an attempt to rewrite the LWW movie at the time, and I was trying to limit the cast to accommodate our supply of actors/actresses.

GWTT (abbrivieated form of the play's original title), was set on an orphanage for some reason - something that hasn't changed, though in LDTD, Arden orphanage was closed down about twenty years before, and is now just a house again - and so naturally, there were a lot of orphans running around. And I was stuck. Petra (who was at the time a very enthusiastic cross between Peter and Lucy), had just gotten back from Arcaland, but her younger siblings weren't believing her that there was a world inside a tunnel tube, and out of the blue, this girl just runs up to Petra and declared "I believe you."

I didn't know her name at the time - in fact, I called her "Noname" for a while. (Please keep in mind that I was eleven and didn't know what I was doing at the time.) But I took her back to Arcaland with Petra, where the Tumnus character, an elf then-called I-is, (don't ask), claimed her as his daughter, and finally told me her name.

Her largest change occurred when I rearranged the characters to accommodate love interests. In that draft, she became the girl that Petra's parents adopted after Petra's sister, Sarah, disappeared. As such, she was no longer the girl to provide validation out of the blue, but a source of strife. I'll let you know now, because it's still true, but Petra hates Ashna - who is now called Ashley while in the human world - with a passion.

Ashna is a Bookdaughter. She's only eighteen when we're introduced to her in Part 1, (and by elvish aging, that's equivalent to fourteen or fifteen), so she hasn't taken on the full responsibilities of a Bookdaughter, and she can't Speak prophecies yet. She does have a Bookdaughter's amazing memory, and has not only memorized the short version of nearly three hundred legends, but the long versions of both Alphego's Hill and Water Princess, Fire Prince. WPFP happens to be her favorite legend of all time, as she's a bit of a hopeless romantic. She also has a strong mischief side, mostly in conjunction with her gift - color changing.

She's an only child. Which is an interesting situation because it means she has no brothers for her father (who is now named Ritis, instead of I-is, thankfully) to hand down the Book to when he retires. Her mother is an interesting character to work with, as she seems to be great friends with Laura.

All said, Ashna is a fun character to work with, and I look forward to sharing her story.