Autumn And Winter With Rowena - Chapter 1 . The Storm

Dear Diary,

It is an unusually cold day in My Kingdom today.... I have nothing to do except take selfies to post on my fabulous Instagram.

Oh, yes and write in this diary... You know, dear diary, I don't really like keeping a diary where you're only supposed to write true things... So don't be surprised if I write things that are not 100% true... But I'll keep all my 'lies' as close to the truth as possible.

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(this part is written one day after the text above, early in the morning before light)

So, I'm sitting in the dark, spooky nesting box of the Haunted Henhouse, typing on my mini-laptop.

I didn't write since yesterday morning, but nothing interesting has happened during that day, except some heavy rain and having a warm layers' pallets mash lunch and supper.

Well, here's the story of last evening:

As it began to get dark, my sisters and I took our grit, which was slightly soggy from the rain, and headed to the coop.

Suddenly, we heard the humans' back door open, and the mother human stepped out.

She boarded up the windows of the Haunted Henhouse (which were more like doors to us) with a yellow cloth-like thing, and some board and bricks.

Then she disappeared back into the Human House.

"Th-that was... Odd." said Strelitzia, shivering in the icy cold air.

I nodded. Protea said briskly, "Come on, Your Majesty, it is getting dark."

We all got up onto the rickety roost, but we were barely upon it, when the door opened again, and this time the our girl came out.

The hurried over to us, wrenching away the wire fence and not even bothering to close it is again.

"Yikes," I whispered. "What's going on?"

"I-I dunno," said Strelitzia. "Sh-she hasn't got any treats..."

Then she squealed, "Oh, Princess, l-look out!"

I found myself being lifted from behind. Human Girl was trying to move us!

I kicked and slapped her hands with my wings. She dropped me for a moment to rub her hands, and then she lunged at me again and this time she caught me tightly.

I squawked indignantly. Human Girl carried me out of the run, towards the back door of the Haunted Henhouse; she could not simply slip me through the window/door, cos it had been boarded up.

I tried to scratch her, but I didn't succeed. She entered the spooky building and laid me like a little chick onto the 'roost'... 

"I'll bring ickle Wenie-Claw her friends, shall I?" she cooed as she left.

I bristled angrily, and settled myself as comfortably as I could.

After a few seconds, she returned carrying a ruffled Lady Protea. She gave me a cold look. "I want to sit there," she said icily as she was set down beside me.

"No way!" I told her.

Soon, Strelitzia was there too. We were all pretty much settled for the night.

Human Girl placed some cold water and cereal with yogurt on the floor near the door.

"Night-night!" she said to us.

Then she shut the door and left.

It poured during the night, and the wind blew horribly hard, but it was fairly warm in the Haunted Henhouse.

Finally, morning came and we hopped down to have some food and water.

We drank much, but the cereal and yogurt we just nibbled.

After we had eaten we waited for our Human Girl to let us out.

She came after a while, and let us free range her garden a bit, out of the run.

I desperately wanted to lay an egg; so did Streli. But we wanted to use my Broody Corner.

I hurried over to it. "It's my Broody Corner, I get to go first!" I called to her.

"B-but I'm younger!" she shouted stubbornly.

I reached the leaf-covered corner. "Ha!" I screeched in triumph. "I got here first!"

But as I peeked inside, I gasped in horror. My whole cozy little nest was soaking wet!

I screamed for Human Girl. She hurried out at my call.

"What is it, Princess?" she asked.

"NO! Noooo! My nest! Look at my nest!" I howled.

"Calm down, Rowena," my human snapped. "Wait here."

She went into our coop, and gathered some dry grass from the nest. Then she went into the Haunted Henhouse and took some dry grass from that nest, too.

She returned to My Broody Corner with a good amount of warm, dry grass.

She laid it over the wet leaves at the bottom of my nest. I crept in and tested it. It was lovely!

I gave my human a quick look that meant 'thank you' and began to lay my egg.

It came out after about 4 minutes, with Strelitzia hopping up and down with impatience by the entrance. What a beauty it was! I nudged it carefully into a soft spot and let Streli in.

"B-bok," she grumbled. "W-what took you s-so long?"

I ignored her. 

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The rest of the day was pretty much OK. We ate a hot lunch and supper and we were put back into the Haunted Henhouse for the night. "It's a terrible storm, girls," our human informed us as she put us up. "You must stay here. It's warmer than your Summer Coop."

So we will probably stay in the Haunted Henhouse for the rest of winter... Or forever, perhaps.

Anyway, it's really time I stopped typing; it's nearly morning and Human Girl will let us out any time now.

- Princess Rowena of Rowena's Kingdom

Autumn And Winter With Rowena

Late Autumn is upon the sleepy land of Rowena's Kingdom...

The leader of this little country, Princess Rowena, has just had a thought.

The thought is, when last did she write in her diary?

The princess hops off her high wall, and quietly enters the Haunted Henhouse.

The henhouse is mostly shadowy, but she can see clearly by the golden blade of sunlight which streams in through the window.

The henhouse is comfortable, and not really haunted at all. There is a mirror and one end of the room, and a spacious nesting box at the other.

Rowena jumps into the nesting box and finds her diary; it is an old, dusty book and she can't find the pen anywhere.

On the inside, her writing is smudgy and hardly readable. She clicks her beak and decides it is not good for writing in anymore.

But then she has an excellent idea!

Her human spoils her rotten, and would surely lend Rowena a laptop!

Chuckling in satisfaction, the little red princess goes back to perch comfortably on her wall-throne.

Later, at lunchtime when the human girl came down to feed them, Rowena tipped the water-bowl over, so her human had to stay a little longer to refill it.

This gave Princess Rowena a chance to talk to her. She said, "Bok bok? Karrrk."

"Yes, my little cherryflutters?" her human replied. 

"Don't call me that!" Rowena bristled. "And I would like to borrow a laptop... Please?"

"Oh, of course you may, Wena! You are so cute... What will you use it for?"

Princess Rowena cleaned her toe-talons carefully. "None of your business." she said in polite, sugary voice.

Rowena found herself being hugged, and later that afternoon, she was sitting in the nesting box with a large laptop before her.

Actually, her human had given her the smallest laptop she had in the house, but it was almost at big as Rowena, and much, much heavier than her.

Rowena thought to herself, "The world needs to know more about fabulous me... Don't you think so?" she asked of a small sparrow who was sitting in the window. 

The sparrow cocked his head cheekily at her and chirruped something very rude.

"Oh, buzz off!" Her Majesty said to him with an icy glare. He did. 

Suddenly, two pretty heads popped up in the window where the unruly sparrow had just been.

"Hullo, Wena," said Strelitzia. "What is it?"

Princess Rowena clicked on her Blogger dashboard with her talon. "Nothing. It's only that stupid little sparrow, Bullet."

Protea approached the princess. "Blogging?" she asked gently.

Rowena nodded. "I'm trying to start a new diary, in fact!"

"That's nice, dear," said Protea. 

"But, look here, I need some help from you two."

After some teamwork and advice and other blogging stuff like, choosing the font, the title, etc, this piece of writing is completed! Chapter one of Autumn And Winter With Rowena will be published on this blog soon!
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Written by Helen Cryestira Viorel.