“Good morning! What a beautiful start to the day! Everything is sparkling!”
“Fi, you can’t see a thing. How can you even tell if it’s sparkling?”
“Phooey. Nothing gets past you, Seven.” I clamped my mouth shut awkwardly, not knowing what to say.
Because my cute spirit friend was exactly right.
My name is Serafina Náv, and I was born as the Náv Kingdom’s second princess. I’m turning six this year.
My ladies-in-waiting tell me I have red hair, which is a good color because it means I’m loved by the spirits. My hair goes about halfway down my back—although, sadly, I have never seen for myself what I look like. This is because I was born without eyesight, and I can’t even open my eyelids.
Since my eyes can only sense a bit of light, I couldn’t even tell whether it was sunny or cloudy that morning—just like the spirit said. This was the reason why my parents sent me to their villa in the Forest of Lent right after I was born—they were worried about my well-being, and they thought a life surrounded by beautiful nature would be good for me.
I bet my parents were secretly hoping that the forest springs, which apparently improved your health, would cure my eyesight, but despite almost six years of drinking from them, nothing changed. Doctors and saints also came by from time to time to attend to my eyes, but none of them were able to help me either.
Since my eyes weren’t improving, everyone thought it was pointless for me to be at the villa and that I ought to return to the castle. But as for me, I was just really glad to live where I was—because I made a lot of friends that only I could see.
For a while after I was brought to the villa, people wouldn’t take me outside because they thought my blindness would be a hindrance. But when I turned three, they let me step into the forest as long as I had my ladies-in-waiting and knights to escort me. There were no monsters in the Forest of Lent, and I had no trouble walking, so they figured it was fine.
The day I first went out into the forest, there was a restlessness in my chest. I just knew that something special was going to happen, and it filled me with anxiety all morning. I had this weird feeling that the forest was calling for me.
As I tried to steady my beating heart, I stepped into the woods, but my eyes only showed me the same darkness they always did. Nothing special happened at all. It made me kind of sad, because I thought it meant my intuition was off. But after a short while, these tiny, flickering white orbs appeared in my vision. It was my first time seeing anything other than darkness, and I had no idea what to make of it.
At first, I stood frozen in shock, but then I quickly became fascinated by the white light. Slowly, I walked toward it and held out my hand. I waited super, super patiently, and then the light made its way into my palm.
“Whoa.”
I sat in the shade of a big tree, and the white light sat in my palm the whole day. It felt so nice! The wind blew gently, as if it were trying to tell me something. Unfortunately, my ears couldn’t figure out the meaning.
None of my ladies-in-waiting or knights were able to see the white light I was sensing. To them, it looked like I was smiling at my empty palms. But still, none of them dismissed me when I said, “There’s a shiny white thing on my hand.” Instead, they treated it as a fact. “You can see what we cannot, Princess Serafina,” they said. “Perhaps something good came of us protecting you.”
It turned out that the white light belonged to young spirits. Through spending time with them every day, I gradually learned to discern their shape and understand their language. Weirdly enough, though, nobody else ever saw them or heard them speak.
I guess that’s why everyone else called the spirits the “invisible blessings.”
The “invisible-blessing”-slash-adorable spirit came into my room that morning to wake me up like usual. The one who looked out for me the most was a boy about the same age as me named Seven.
Although the spirit children couldn’t be seen, I did get a sense of how they would look as I got older. I could clearly see Seven’s pure-white form, right down to his facial features.
At the moment, his eyes were wide as he tugged on my sleeve. “Fi, stop mumbling in bed and get up already,” he said impatiently. “You’ve got special visitors from the capital today. You have to get ready to see them.”
“What? From the capital?” I instantly sat up and faced Seven in shock. “But it’s not my birthday yet. They wouldn’t have presents from Father and the others, would they? Why else would anyone come see me?”
The knights gave me seasonal gifts, but this never involved a formal messenger. The spirit’s choice of words made it sound like a birthday celebration, but I couldn’t be sure. One thing I did know was that the spirits were never wrong about anything, so there definitely were visitors heading our way…
“Oh well, they’ll tell me why they’re here. I should just get changed now, yup. Hmm, since they’re from the capital, I guess I should wear a super nice dress?”
As I paced around the room in my pajamas, Seven sighed in exasperation. “Your ‘super nice dress’ is all covered in mud after you tripped and fell in the forest while trying to show it off to us. Your ladies-in-waiting were so mad about it. How have you already forgotten?”
“Uh-oh, you’re right. Then I guess I’ll wear a normal dress without the mud.”
As if on cue, a lady-in-waiting swooped into the room right then. After she helped me get dressed, she let me know my breakfast was ready.
I turned to Seven, and he muttered, “One man…and ten others far behind.”
So I told the lady-in-waiting, “I have a feeling visitors will come today. It’ll be just one at first, but after a while, there’ll be ten more. He’ll be here real soon, so I’ll have breakfast with him.”
“Oh, really?” The lady-in-waiting sounded flustered. “Your intuition is always right, Princess Serafina, so I’m not doubting you for a moment. But, oh, how could there be a visitor so early in the morning?! What a peculiar individual he must be! And eleven people! I shall request extra food from the kitchen at once.”
She hurried out of the bedroom, and I headed out into the foyer after her. I was part of the family that owned the villa, after all—I felt like I ought to welcome the visitor.