WELCOME TO ARI'S WORLD

Presenting the beautiful, the amazing, the one and only… Princess Arianna!!!

Okay, that was a fail.  Ari would hate the grand entrance and bravado anyway.  It’s just not her style.  She also really wouldn’t approve of me talking about her personal life.  After all, she’s a pretty private gal.

Arianna was a little difficult to create.  Not because I didn’t know who she was or what made her tick.  It was because I knew her a little too well.  Let me explain:

Ari has spent her entire life in fear.  Fear of her parents, fear of her magical abilities and fear of the harm she might do to others.  Of course, she’s not a naturally introverted person.  She wants to have friends, go out and have fun and just live a normal life.  But more than anything, Ari doesn’t want to be afraid any more.

Of course, sitting in your nice comfy homes, it’s easy to think, well gosh, why can’t she see that Ian and Corbin are good friends and they can handle her magic?  Well, because fear does funky things to people.  Ari has spent fifteen years of her life being told by her father that she has a dangerous disease.  Her caseworker, Mr. Churchill (aka Silivus the magician), further fuels the fear by making threats to send her away or have her tested. 

So, if you grow up being told you are dangerous, you are bound to pick up some issues along the way.  It didn’t help that when Ari was younger she accidentally put a girl in the hospital because she couldn’t control her magic.  This was a catastrophic blow to her, making Ian’s job in befriending her all the more difficult.  Why?  Well, Ari has a soft heart and a gentle soul.  She feels everything intensely: hurt, pain, sympathy, anger, happiness and, yes, fear.  Once she has experienced the intense fear and pain from hurting her friend, she was never the same.

Being a full-blooded Garfelian only intensifies her emotions.  The Garfelian race is considered the peacekeepers of the galaxy and the direct opposites of their Warrior neighbors of Bankhir.  The Warriors may win your war, but it’ll be the Garfelian peacekeepers who will clean up, heal the wounded and bring diplomacy and peace to your planet.  Ari doesn’t understand Ian, Corbin or the warriors.  It’s difficult for her to process Ian’s need to fight and his violent side when he switches into Battlelust.  It’s against the core of her nature.

When Ian and Ari swap trinkets to create a communication link, little does Ian know that he passed a part of his warrior-ness on to Ari as well as received a section of her peacekeeping personality on to Ian.  Those two are so tied up around each other, if ever they should go their separate ways the magical reverberation on the galaxy would be cataclysmic.  There is no question as to why Ian hates it when Ari asks for her crescent pendant back, but what Ian doesn’t know is that when she takes back who she is, her mercy, her peacemaking heart…she finally feels whole and complete as a person.  It also explains her craving need to constantly be around Ian.  It’s one, big messy knot for those two.  Which only gets knottier as their story progresses.

Creating Ari was hard.  It was painful and it was raw exposure.  Ari is me.  (Even the dorkier side that busts out once and a while...)

There is so much about me that I’d rather sweep under the rug or hide under a bush.  So much of my life was dictated by fear.  It wasn’t until I had grown up a bit that I realized fear was just a painful vice that threatened to squeeze the life out of me.  The only person stopping me from breaking free was myself.  Just like Ari.

As Ari discovers that she has so much to offer, it shocks her that people want to get to know her, be friends with her and love her.  She is gentle and kind and wouldn’t think a mean thing about anyone.  But even the gentlest of souls can be marred and Ari’s has scars all over hers.  It’s those scars we share that makes me love her.  In fact, as I wrote her, I became angry.  There is something so very wrong when a kind person is hurting.  Sensitive souls are so rare and so beautiful and it hurt to make her go through so much pain.  I wanted to protect her and fix her and the only way I could do that was to protect and fix myself.

I have big plans for Ari.  Big, big plans.

Next week:  Meet the horse that inspired Bob.  He’s pretty awesome.  And really fat.