Vasilisa was amired by everyone; she has the loveliness of a rose, the grace of a swan, and the beauty of the fairest maiden ever to walk the earth. She was barely out of her childhood when prince Dimitri sent for her. Vasilisa was shocked; surely the prince couldn't want her, she was just a villager from a non-existant village. Her father just smiled at her and handed her a small doll with silvery hair like spun glass, identical to her own. "This was your mothers," He pursed his lips and swallowed, "She'd want you to have it. She loved little Elena when she was still alive." He smiled and patted her head.
That day Vasilisa rode behind a horseman, his hair a dark cap of inky curls and his eyes chips of burning ice. He had bowed to her as if she was royalty herself and presented the Czar's letter. It read:
Dear Vasilisa Romovski,
Prince Dimitri Dragomire II himself wishes to have you presented at the grand mascerade.
It was signed with a single cursive D.
Vasilisa was dismayed. "But father, if I leave you I do not know when I shall return. What if something happens to you!" She cried, flinging her arms around his neck. But all the same he had reassured her and sent her on her own with the man. The horseman had helped her mount a beautiful horse, the color of twilight itself. "I'm Ashallyn. Ashallyn T'kmarkyn." He roared as the horse had begun plunging through the dense forests of Siberia. For several hours they rode, Vasilisa clinging to his dark cloak as her own scarlet one fluttered behind her in the wind, her doll was tucked into her pocket.
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