New friends

Dear Diary,

I'd heard through the grapevine the story of another young girl like me (mom says I'm an old maid but I don't believe her.. 14 isn't too old to be a maid, nyet?). She lived alone on an island with her father and the sprites of the woods for twelve years, and came back a Princess of Naples and Milan, because she fell in love with the King of Naples' son, though how he found her on a desert island nested in some of the roughest waters in the Mediterranean - I don't know.. I didn't ask her.

We, the Capulets, went to pay our respects to the Prince and the new Princess. Father said that Miranda (that's her name)'s father used to be the Duke of Milan once upon a time, but he shushed up about it real quick.

At any rate, I now have a new, if slightly strange, friend. She speaks poetry, not normal language, and is extremely sensitive - she nearly cried her eyes out when they served us re-dressed Peafowl for dinner - said that it was such a beautiful creature that she wished she could have met it alive rather than dead, imagine that.
Aside from her oddities, I find that she's quite nice, and rather well-read for someone sequestered on an island for twelve years - I'm going to ask her for help on my Geography. She also knows what all the trees and flowers are, and what they're good for. We had a great romp out in the palace gardens..and outside of them (don't tell my mother, for the love of Peace!) We walked out hand in hand under the pretext of being two ordinary Princesses going for a ladylike stroll (which mother highly approved of). Father kept that poor husband of hers engaged in all manner of conversation pertaining to hunting deer and arranging Masque balls.
The gardens are all a maze of hedges and lawns. For the most part, the mazes are fairly tame and the hedges not too high, and it opens out into a central clearing with a huge fountain all bordered with flowers. Miranda's handmaidens didn't take too kindly to us splashing water all over their beautiful dresses (and ours), so we stopped that and decided to lose them.
How exactly we managed to accomplish that I am still not quite certain of, and I begin to suspect that it had something to do with a sleight of hand and mild conjuring of illusions, but we slipped away and found ourselves in a deeper part of the gardens where the maze was real and the hedges quite a bit taller. From there, it was an easy escape outside the palace grounds and into the wildflower-meadows and young thickets that bordered the gardens. Here, the plants grew untended, and oh! what a sense of freedom! Miranda showed me all the different flowers that I thought I already knew, and told me their names in three different tongues. Some of them are edible, and some can be made into medicine. There was one that she said was effective against acne.. I have sent Nurse out with orders to come back with a whole basketful (which she complied to but not without a lot of muttering about witchcraft and old bones). In the woods, she showed me where the squirrels and the owls live, and how to sit still for long enough that starlings and robins would hop quite comfortably close.
Of course, she wasn't the only one doing the showing. We ran to the cliffs' edge, following a soaring hawk, and we lay belly-down on the grass, peeping over the ledge, from where I pointed out the buildings in the city and the people who milled about working in them. Milan isn't where I grew up, but I think it's a beautiful city with beautiful people. She had never-ending questions about how people actually lived their lives. Now I might be a castle-bound noble, but she was stuck on an island with trees and fairies and knows even less about people than I do, for all her learning.
I also found, to my surprise, that she has a spark of temper in her that flares up if she perceives injustice. We vowed that when we both were married (well, when I was, whenever I was) and our husbands came into power, that we would change the way our cities were run. In Miranda's case, I suspect that she might weild some power of her own, given that by rights, she's the daughter of the Duke of Milan, though she's a woman.
In my case -- oh, in my case - I don't know. I finally gave up on that vain peacock, Paris. He may look pretty, but a man with such a petty heart - his 'pretty' can't cover it up. His head is empty, and I wouldn't be surprised if his soul was too either.
I did get asked out on Valentine's by a shy young man with excellent manners, and I accepted. Poor Romeo decided to turn up later and ask, cos he couldn't find anyone to go with, and I had to turn him down, sadly. Turns out that Vici is some distant cousin to the Montagues.
Ah well, hope Romeo found someone. He's a nice guy, actually. Sort-of. In a needs-to-grow-up-and-be-less-irritating kinda way.

Oh, Nurse's back with my anti-acne flowers. Seeya!

-Jules