Forbidden Love

• Isabel Schulz, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2020

My mother would curse me for liking girls. As I got older I grew used to it. I knew that my father would have been fine with me being lesbian, I think that if my father was still around my mother would act differently. After his death she changed, she became cold and unloving.
The only thing I ever looked forward to was when I would travel to the kingdom Astéri and see my one and only friend, Princess Astra. Astra and I had met at a ball one night when we were only 10 and since then we had been best friends. She was the first person I came out to and to my surprise she said was bisexual. Knowing that I wasn’t the only person who had these feelings made me feel happy. I had always thought that I was a freak for liking the same gender.
Years passed and I had slowly fallen in love with Astra. She was a beautiful and intelligent lady who was loved and admired by all.
I had decided that after a year of liking her that I would just let her know and deal with the consequences that would come.
When I told her, she had started crying which startled me. What she said next filled me with so much happiness that I started crying as well.
“Chatara, I love you as well. I never thought that you would feel the same.” Astra had smiled at me with tears in her eyes.
Before I knew what was happening we shared a kiss. It was gentle and filled me with joy. For years we dated in secret, same-sex relationships were forbidden in both of our kingdoms and as much as we wanted to we couldn’t abandon our responsibilities of becoming the next queens of our kingdoms.
On Astra’s eighteenth birthday there was a ball held for her, princes and princesses from across the world came to attend. We were both confused because there had never been this many people for any of her other birthdays. An hour after the ball had started her parents announced that Astra would be choosing a prince to marry. We were both shocked, Astra had not been told about this beforehand. We both knew that we would both have to marry a prince eventually but we had thought that we would have more time before we would have to actually get married.
By the time Astra was nineteen, she had married a prince from the Soleil kingdom. My mother had forced me to marry a prince from the Floare kingdom. Astra and I continued to date in secret even after we got married. When our husbands found out we were dating they told us that they had known for years that we were dating and they even told us that they had been dating for years.
“So that's how we have two mummies and daddies?” my daughters asked me, smiling.
"That's right" I smiled at my children.