Ah, so. (This is the typical manner in which I begin a rather long and involved and complicated story, or at the very least something absolutely no one else on the planet could possibly find even remotely interesting.)

When I was in fifth grade, I had to read Bridge to Terabithia. We've all read this book, haven't we? If you haven't, not only do you live in a box, but you'd best peruse the children's section of your local library immediately and read it. Because I said so, naturally.

Now, I'd read the book two or three years before then (I was even more of a voracious reader when I was little than I am now. I was the girl with a book. That was my stereotype, that is what I am still known as. Some things you just never grow out of...) so I knew about the ending, which, incidentally, had been spoiled for me by my middle brother. I hadn't believed him when he told me she was going to die. I may have cried, but I don't think so. I think I was more upset with the fact that he'd been right than with the fact that my favorite character was dead. Anyway.

My fifth grade reading class had a few issues...for one thing, I had three teachers over the course of the year, for the same class. Not because the teachers kept getting sick, or dying, or retiring, but because the school had decided, in the administration's ineffable wisdom, that the fifth grade advanced reading classes couldn't possibly have only one teacher, you know, to prevent confusion and maladjustment in our impressionable little minds. For another thing, I was in the same class as my rival, which brought up many inferiority and jealously issues. Most of them still exist latently, in one form or another. Still.

So, my second teacher was a bitch. A horrible, terrible bitch whom no one liked. And we read that book, a book that I had enjoyed the many times that I had read it, but after fifth grade I couldn't read it ever again. Too traumatic. Mostly this was due to the fact that I, always a straight A student in reading and things pertaining to that, got something of a low B or nearly a C in her class. Can you blame me for hating her?

One of the assignments she gave us was to get in a group (I always have, and always will, despise group work.) of five or six people, and create a fantasy world like Terabithia. Figure out its history, its citizens, its laws, its anthem, its magic...everything. And you had to fit the members of your group in as some part of the government. I ended up working in the same group with my rival. And the world we created...

Even now, though the details have grown a bit fuzzy in my head, I'm still a little impressed with what our rather young minds came up with. There were...five of us. That I can remember. Only two of us had any interest at all in high fantasy...the other three were more or less along for the ride when we got started.

I think we pulled a lot from Narnia, now that I'm looking back on it. Without realizing, of course- originality wasn't high on our agenda. We were creating, and that was all there was to it. Our world was called Rynalkie. I'm not really sure why- and that's ri-NAL-ky. Not rine-a-lack, as one member of our group insisted upon calling it. Rynalkie, the land of gold and jewels, where no human foot had ever tread until five children from an outside world fled through the Mourning Mountains and the Labyrinth to emerge in the sunny, happy land of Rynalkie. And upon reaching Rynalkie, several of those five children ceased to be human, but we forgot to explain that...I wanted to be the Mistress of Magic, but he claimed that. So I was the Lady of Beasts. And boy-howdy, were there a lot of those. Part of the assignment was to create a creature lexicon (she didn't call it that) for your world. Our list of creatures was some three pages long, from the Master of Magic's platinum dragon (one of a kind, a gift from his dear friend and ally the Lady of Beasts) named Grezeka to the many tribes of ants. Compared to some other groups and their six different creatures, we went a little overboard. (I can't believe I remembered Grezeka's name...)

The other three group members became the Dwarven King, the Weather Master (he complained, saying he didn't want to be a weather man, until we told him that meant he made the weather, didn't just report it...), and the, uh...well, she didn't exactly rule the damn place, but she was in charge of the government. Meh. I can't remember everything, you know. I haven't actually thought about this in four or five years.

I remember that there had been a war when we arrived, and we'd all inherited our powers from something, and it was our job to stop the really really evil guy with the unpronouncable name (names were my specialty- this guy might have been Portalanthalcalkuzux, but I think that was a different project, one from computer class in third grade) using our newfound powers. You know, save the world, restore balance to everything, all that jazz.

From eagles to ants, with enemies and wells of souls and namers and all sorts of things...but our anthem sucked. We hadn't worked on the music nearly as much as we'd worked on everything else, and really, the other three group members hadn't gotten into the spirit of things quite so much as the two of us had...so our grade, if I remember correctly, was a B. Possibly a B+.

And now, I am possibly the only one who bothers to remember. I had so much fun with that project, and I was so angry to have gotten such a low grade- especially compared to the drivel some of the other groups churned out. Certainly there were a fair share of groups that were better organized than us, and there were some who had taken the project and added a bit of humor to it...but then there were the groups (composed mostly of giggling girls) that made pink and fluffy worlds populated by horses who were being oppressed by the Icky Vegetable People. When asked how the horses could fight off these icky veggies, they blinked vapidly and looked clueless, while we were marked down for "not enough detail".

From eagles to ants...*shakes head* It's not so much that I was angry, actually- I was upset. He was angry, and perhaps that anger was contagious. It was a very long time ago, as these things go- I may sound bitter, but I'm not. I've still got Rynalkie in my head, you see, with my mountain where the dragons live and the eagles roost, and the Labyrinth that keeps strangers out, and the Palace from which we all could rule...But very few of the ideas were mine. Again, as always, originality has never been my strong suit. That, more than anything else, and really as the only thing, is what I am bitter about.

Oh, did I mention that I was a person who lived in the past? I should have warned you; it's one of my many faults. The future's too uncertain, so I'll reminisce and remember until someone smacks me upside the head and points out the eighteen-wheeler barelling down the road towards me.

*shrug* This was pointless. I'm surprised I remember so much. "Rine-a-lack, Rine-a-lack, rah rah rah!"