[@Thinslayer]

Isabella was, as she had given up with batting the dragon with her sword, curious.  Why her? Why would a great fire breathing dragon decide that "Yup, this is the day. I'll capture the hopeless, runaway princess and her equally lifeless sister.  It's going to be a blast!"

She shook her head, seemingly at a loss for words.  As she took in the rivers speeding by her feet she remembered a distant memory, something she'd kept hidden in the back of her brain for so long.

[i]Her mother, on leave from some trip or other sat with her on her lap.  They were watching the men fish, some had already given up on rods and waded into the rivers, grabbing and laughing at the slippery quicksilver that darted to and fro in the water.  She got up off her mother's lap, ready to waddle in and play with the men before her mother's quick arms reached around her and drew her back.
"Not yet, my dear.  You're destined for great things, fishing not being one"
"But mom!" Isabella wailed.  She'd always "been destined for great things" but sometimes she just wanted to play.  What was the harm in that?
"My dear, you're part of the royal family.  These men are not." 
Isabella started crying then, not understanding why there had to be restrictions between classes.  She had just wanted to play.
"Shush.  Your father would not allow it, darling.  But maybe some time else...when we are away perhaps?" Her mother smiled down at her, a faint twinkle in her eye.
Isabella giggled through her tears. It was all going to be alright.[/i]

But now she was going away.  Away from the stable hands, the men who joked and laughed as she talked to them, the handmaidens who often would sit gossiping for so long that a concubine herself had to come in.  She missed them all now, terribly.  She had not really been away from home and if she was, she had been surrounded by company.  However, now she was all alone, drifting in the sky with her lifeless sister barely hanging onto a thread of her former self.  

If the dragon had noticed anything, it might've been the sagging of her shoulders and the sudden limpness that took over her.  It was a hopeless case.