With a look of utter helplessness in her large, vibrant green eyes, Clarice Gisèle Violette Marie Boisvert – names all given to her by her long-deceased parents, Alain and Yvette Boisvert – set down her quill pen and looked up into the stately branches of the ash tree that spread, in a wide, sheltering canopy, over her.

Then she sighed, closing her eyes.

It was a cool but pleasant, fresh morning in the lush French countryside: early in the spring, just when the green of the foliage and trees and grass had returned again after the winter's chill, along with the very earliest of the pastel blooms of various flowers.  A light, teasing breeze swept about the neat, quiet, expansive lawns of the Boisvert manor, and, every once in a while, they would pause for a moment to stir the puffy sleeves of Clarice's simple white walking gown, or to play with her luscious, ebony-black locks as they spilled innocently over her small, delicate shoulders. 

This was just the sort of day that Clarice loved: everything was silent, but for the soft sighing of the wind and the songs of the birds.  No one was about the place except for her aunt, Jacqueline, and her uncle, Felix, was away on business to Calais.  Clarice was free to be on her own, and to attempt to make some further progress on the story that she was writing.

The year was 1514, and the country, of course, was France, at its most idealistic, romantic, and enlightened age.  The High Renaissance was upon most of Eastern Europe by then, and anyone who was anyone bore a passionate interest in the liberal arts, literature, society, and all of its facets.

Clarice was an orphan: her young, adventuresome parents having died of an illness when she was no more than an infant.  Upon their almost joint demise, her father's brother – Felix Boisvert – had taken her in, although it had been much against his will.

Felix had no regard for his brother's free-spirited, generous lifestyle, as he himself was a rather hard, shrewd man, and it had been his firm opinion that Alain and Yvette had died because they had been too reckless.  He had no interest in bringing up little Clarice, and so now, at sixteen years of age, the only parent she had really ever known was her timid, although sweet-tempered Aunt Jacqueline. 

But if Clarice did not 'get along well', as it was said, with her uncle, she scarcely ever had any time to experience the trials of this situation.  Felix was very often away from their home in Rouen, about his own business, leaving his wife and niece to their own means.  Together, Jacqueline and Clarice owned a shop in the nearby city, where they sold various fanciful odds and ends; music boxes, jewelry, paintings, and other little trifles were dispensed for decent prices at their hands, and their undertaking in this had always been fruitful.   

Stirring restlessly, she pursed her full, red lips together slightly and shifted position, drawing her feet up closer underneath her, moving her hand to let her chin rest upon the back of it.  Her vivid green eyes scanned gracefully, silently, over the blank pages of the book before her.

"Once upon a time: a long, long time ago, in a land far, far away – way across the ocean…"

The natural, windswept beauty of her surroundings should have helped to kindle her inspiration; at least, that was what she had thought a few hours earlier that morning, when she had been out her way out the kitchen door, pen and book in hand. 

But as of yet, she felt nothing but an emptiness of mind.

"Oh pour le bien du Ciel!"

After this soft but fully frustrated outburst, Clarice sighed and leaned back against the tree dark trunk, her eyelids sliding halfway closed, so that her long, thick fringe of black lashes veiled the vibrancy of her gaze. 

Wordless and pensive, she listened to the noises around her: the wind, the rustling of the leaves, the birds. 

Her imagination was, as Aunt Jacqueline had said so often – sometimes fondly, and sometimes in exasperation – almost a being in its own right: certainly an imagination unleashed.  As far back as she could remember, she had always been in love with fanciful, extraordinary things: fairy tales that spoke of magic, far-off lands and strange creatures, princes and princesses and beautiful tales of love, revenge, danger, and intrigue.  The developments of 'La Renaissance', as so many people had come to call the revival of the human mind, only somewhat interested her, in comparison to the effect that it had on the lives of those who surrounded her. 

To her, it seemed a bit superficial, at times.  Certainly, some of the products of the enlightened time in which she lived would surmount to something someday…but there were excesses.  And people in general could be so silly.

Clarice was an unusual girl.

Such a statement would seem cliché indeed, but anyone who met her would come away from the audience with the distinct feeling that this was truer in her case than in anyone else's. 

Perhaps it was the way that she moved about: light of foot, graceful, and silent.  Or perhaps it was the way that she saw things, the way that she spoke and responded to situations around her, the way that she reacted to life in general: with clarity of perception, with wisdom and understanding, and, more often than not, compassion.  At sixteen – almost seventeen – years of age, she was not quite the average child of the Renaissance, although most of her young peers held the same qualities.

But Clarice… 

It was said, sometimes, that she was odd: that her unbridled imagination would lead her into trouble one day.  She did not often interact with her young feminine peers of Rouen.  Instead, she was mostly to be found either at home or in the shop, with her aunt.  Or out on the hillside, underneath the ash tree.

Clarice was an artist. 

She had seen the works of the great masters many a time in her sixteen years, and her hunger for their exquisite beauty was only suceeded by her desire to create her own works of unparalleled excellence.  Painting, drawing, writing…all were her loves.  Hours of her days were spent devoted to bringing a picture or a paragraph to life.  And what pictures and paragraphs these were!

All were fraught with fairy-tale enchantment.  Under her hand, princesses: swept up in beautiful gowns, long hair flowing and studded with jewels, came to life, as drawings, and spoke, in her stories.  Princes fought evil and triumphed gloriously.  Dragons roared, eagles spoke wisdom, and woodland sprites set their mischievous little traps for the mortal kinds.

"And yet, for all of my previous work," Clarice commented acidly to herself under her breath, as she attempted to rally her poetic muses again, "I still cannot think of a name to give to this Elven princess."

Well.  In the end, she would.  She had to – this story, of the most beautiful, and yet most mysterious, of all the fairy tale races, the Elves, had been living in her mind for the longest time, waiting to be written out on paper.

But she did not know the end.

And she could not think of a name.      

*                       *                       *

A/N:  It it short?  Yes. …For now.  ^_*  

I am only just getting started on the development and writing of this, because I have been under the curse of, as the French call it "bloc de l'écrivain", up until now.  And yes, I will be using quite a bit of French phrases here and there in this newest edition to my Travelers of Enchantment series – if I make any errors, please don't hesitate to point them out, but I beg you to be gentle!

What's this?  What is the Travelers of Enchantment Series?  Indeed.  They are to be found in my fan fic listing; I invite you to peruse them, but as for now, let us see where this story goes.  Please review for me!  ^_^