The Golosina, the Forgotten Land and the Skurkene - 1. Chapter 1

Once upon a time, in a place very far away from the real human world, there were two kingdoms.

One kingdom, called Phaenomenon, was bright, full of colourful buildings, golden paths and the smell of sweet cinnamon was always in the air. The people who lived there were called Golosinas. The kingdom was so beautiful and sparkled so much that the young Golosinas forgot that this was a training camp, a training camp that moulded them into fairy tale heroes.

The other kingdom, called Damp Cook, was greyer, darker, with always a slight chill in the air and constant fog. The people who lived there were called Skurkenes. The young Skurkene were aware they were to be trained to the rivals of those young Golosinas, that they were trained to be the fairy tale villains.

Each young Golosinas was indirectly paired up with a rival Skurkene. In their trainings they would be told what their role would be, learn on their rival, they would be trained in what they were required to fulfil in their stories, then they would ‘act’ out their story with a cloud filming them.

Between these two kingdoms was a garden. It wasn’t much of a garden, more of a forgotten patch of green that lived between the kingdoms, with untamed bushes and trees. The area was always forgotten about by the two kingdoms; there were both so busy they didn’t have time for this.


Phaenomenon and Damp Cook were overlooked by three giants who supervised the realm between the real human world and these worlds. The giants found that the real human world loved the stories from these kingdoms so they set up the kingdoms to work together to create and act out stories that the giants could watch and then pass through to the human world, [the giants were inspired by seeing the evolution of commentary in the human world and wanted to put dominance into this]. The giants would record these stories as fairy tales created by the kingdoms and show them to certain humans, seeing their reaction, and allowing that human to take ownership on those stories.


In these two kingdoms, it was like each character was signed up their entire life for a role and that’s all that mattered.


This story is based on the tale of Princess Kiera, a beautiful young girl, who stands up to an evil wizard called Tavarious. Tavarious then decides to spitefully kidnap her. Prince Alfred, Keira’s prince, then sets out to rescue her, he fights the wizard and saves the day.

However, at the moment, Prince Alfred was about eleven years old. He was in the training camps at Phaenomenon which appeared like summer camps. He hated being called Alfred, it made him feel bored instantly. He pencilled his own name into his work book, ‘Freddy’. His older tutors weren’t happy with that. They were going to tell him off but their managers above them stated there was no harm in Freddy having a personality. Freddy had seen other boys rebelling, in much louder ways and they were always dragged off and not seen again. So, Freddy felt confident in his own quieter softer rebelling when he would scribble off ‘Alfred’ on his desk and put ‘Freddy.’

He had the same haircut as the other princes, with blonde short locks, their hair had to be shiny and pretty so he had to take tablets with his breakfast every day. He was booked to have his teeth and jaw looked at in a few years or so, to make his smile beam. His smile had to be perfected; he was graded on that. He had to be tall and slim too, he ate the same as the other princes, strict health diets. He would watch other princes and copy from them, finding it easy to mimic them and pass the grades. He had to pass quickly before he was eighteen before his story was to begin. He would sometimes look over at the classes the princess had to do, it looked way harder, they had to sing exactly on point and dance without mistakes. He saw Kiera a few times but she was focused on being popular with the other princesses so Freddy got bored quite quickly of that.

Most of the princes didn’t have to sing, Freddy was one of them, thank goodness. He just had to learn how to fight with a sword and ride a horse, the only sword classes he genuinely did enjoy. He was very average at the fights, but it didn’t bother him when he lost or won, he loved the feeling of having the sword in his hand, waving it around, it was dangerously fun.

He was always told off.

‘Sword down when you are not fighting, Alfred.’

‘Alfred, you’ve lost your match, put your sword down now.’

‘Alfred, stop staring at the point end of the sword, you fool.’

Freddy always pulled a face at which he was always reprimanded ‘Handsome princes don’t pull ugly faces like that.’

It sounded like he was the naughty kid in the class, but truth be told there was other princes much more mischievous than him, they just had more charisma to get away with their actions. Freddy was slightly awkward but it wasn’t something that bothered him that much.

One day, in a class about elegancy, the princes’ tasks were painting large pictures. Freddy was too impatient with it; every other prince had a steady hand but Freddy just wasn’t focused enough. He painted outside the lines too many times before the tutor said enough. He was put down as failed the class and sent to his room.

Later on, in the evening Freddy was in a bad mood. In another art class that day, he was also told off for colouring outside the lines. He thought the tutor was petty, speaking to him as if a five-year-old could do better.

Maybe he meant to colour outside the lines.

He had worked hard to be what they wanted, he was practically a clone of the other handsome young princes, and now Freddy was in a very bad mood. He didn’t want food so he went out for a walk in the gardens. He got to the end of the garden and saw a brown bolted gate.

Kicking some stones on the path, he looked up at the dark path beyond the gate.

He heard the older kids talk about this place. This grey place that didn’t belong to Damp Crook or Phaenomenon. The middle ground, the garden between. This was supposed to be scary for both Golosinas and Skurkene.

Shrugging, Freddy climbed over the fence and carried on his walk through this garden; he saw things and smiled. He saw ugly weeds rooting and snails around the ground near old brick walls. Unruly bushes with pretty bright pink flowers. Large hard tree trunks that smelt like moss. It was a mixture of ugly and beautiful. He kicked more stones hard across the ground. He didn’t want to go back.

He heard a cough and looked up to the tree. There was a boy.

He stared at the boy and the boy stared back.

Unsure, Freddy raised his hand and waved.

The boy just stared back. Freddy couldn’t tell who the boy was, if he was a Golosinas or Skurkene.

Freddy smiled and shrugged. He didn’t know what to say. So, he waved again and stepped backwards.

One of the steps, he misplaced his foot and fell down with a thud.

The hard mud hurt, Freddy grimaced.

The boy in the tree laughed.

Looking up Freddy cocked his head to the side about to say something. But instead, he shook his head and laughed at himself. Freddy never took himself too seriously.

The boy came down the tree and slowly walked towards him. Freddy instantly saw the boy was different. He didn’t have normal skin, but lizard scales that glistened in the moonlight and starlight. The scales were blue and grey. The boy had tall soft black hair and very large dark eyes. He wore large blue shirt and black trousers, with long boots. He was tall, slim. He looked so different.

Freddy instantly stood up, his heart beat fast inside of him but it wasn’t from fear at all. It was something else.

It was quiet as this captivating strange boy stared at him, his scales changing colour from blue and grey to lime green and teal.

‘Freddy,’ Freddy instantly said, wiping his backside down.

The boy smiled, ‘Tav. Short for Tavarious.’

Freddy smile went as he coughed nervously, ‘Oh. Yes, I know that name. I think you’re the wizard, the rival that’s linked to my story.’

Tav titled his head, ‘The attempted curse of Princess Keira because she ignores my apple rule? Ah, right Prince Alfred. Yeah, that makes sense.’

‘Think it’s more the woods and all the trees belong to you but she says they are for everyone so you get mad at her and try and curse her? Please don’t call me Alfred, I hate it.’

Tav grinned, ‘That’s going to help a lot when I taunt you when we are older, so thanks for that. Yeah apples, woods, trees, our storyline is so boring’

‘Can’t argue against that, Wizard Tavarious. Think it’s a metaphor of how the trees belong to everyone. I don’t know. It’s pretty dumb.’

‘Wizard is just a title like Prince or sir.’ Tav paused and added, ‘Unlike you, my whole name doesn’t bother me.’

‘Yeah, because Tavarious isn’t the same name as a nine-hundred-year-old man.’

Tav laughed at that, his laughter was sweet and smooth and Freddy couldn’t help but laugh too.

Tav crossed his arms, ‘You seemed in a bad mood? Someone made you feel angry? Thought your goodie boys weren’t made to be in a bad mood.’

Freddy looked down at the stones he had been kicking earlier, he shrugged and looked at Tav, ‘You were hiding earlier, maybe you were up that tree to get away from it all? Do you own that tree?’

Tav scowled at that and Freddy just laughed, ‘I’m joking man.’

Clicking his tongue, Tav unfolded his arms.

‘I like it here,’ Freddy stated, looking around.

‘Me too,’ Tav replied, with a little smile.

‘It’s a shame we have to fight in a few years,’ Freddy said.

Tav shrugged, ‘Buck up. This is what it’s like here.’

Rather than getting offended at Tav’s response, Freddy instantly smiled, ‘Maybe this is a good thing? We could work together, you know, research? Make our story even better?’

‘Work together?’ Tav raised an eyebrow, scowling.

‘This is perfect actually,’ Freddy beamed a bright smile and started pacing, wringing his hands in excitement. ‘We could actually practise our script together, I’m not sure why no one else has done this, this is better than just training and performing on the spot. We could practise. You could tell me more you and we could coordinate out fight moves to make it look really good in our fights and stuff.’

‘Okay?’ Tav shook his head. ‘That’s just really weird.’

Turning around, Tav lifted his hand, he flicked upwards and a large glass bubble emerged, sparkling with electricity, it crashed onto the ground into shards. Tav sighed at himself.

‘Wow,’ Freddy’s eyes and smile widen.

He looked over at Freddy who was memorised by the electric sparks off the ground.

Tav frowned, ‘Okay, I failed the bubble.’

‘That was so cool though.’

Tav was taken aback by Freddy’s genuine enjoyment of his magic and not of his failure. He frowned and tried again with a new glass bubble, flicking his hand a large bubble appeared, he felt himself turn into smoke and he was emerged with bubble.

As he floated away, he looked back at Freddy.

Freddy beamed and waved good bye, noticing Tav’s scales were turning a blushing shade of red and amber.

Tav, annoyed at himself, decided it wasn’t a good idea to come back and see the strange idiot again.