The Blackwood War: Ice Queen - Introduction
#1 of The Blackwood War
This story is about 20 years old now and all my own work.
I do not own any of the song lyrics or anything that is from films, books, or TV shows. Credit goes to the writers/singers/directors/who-ever is appropriate for the content from such artists and writers such as:
David Bowie (rest in peace, David)
Roxette
Apollo 440
Richard Adams
Disney
There may be more yet, or other things that have influence this story, so if anything else is recognisable as being somebody else's work and I haven't mentioned them in the list above, credit goes out to them too.
I am not making any money from this. I am writing for my own enjoyment and nothing else. It relaxes me to write.
This story contains highly sexualised content, graphic language and brutality.
The start of a series of books about a girl/woman's journey to find herself, and resolve her problems and fears with the help of her family and friends. Friends made, enemies gained. Battles won and lost, experience gained. Love and War. Peace and Anger.
The (back) story starts in Africa, but Crystal Blackwood travels worldwide, with the majority of the story set in Canada.
Introduction
Crystal Nawa Blackwood was born in Johannesburg, South Africa to extremely wealthy parents who had a very large house and a great deal of shares in some of the world's biggest companies as well as running two or three large and successful companies of their own. She had a halcyon childhood for the five years that it lasted. Her cousin, Seth Falk Blackwood was the same, born five years before her.
Her parents, her aunt and her uncle, as well as her cousins apart from Seth, were hunted down and slaughtered, dying outright from gunshot wounds inflicted by assassins. The only survivors were Crystal and Seth, and that was because they were not with their parents and so survived.
After the substantial number of funerals, which Crystal doesn't remember too well, and Seth refuses to do so, they were sent to their shared grandparents in Scotland. This was all well and good until she started at the local primary school.
Seth, when he had started school five years earlier, had made friends instantly, as most boys do, rowdy ones that suited him just fine. Crystal, when she started, was the quiet one, choosing her own company rather than that of her schoolmates, shunning them almost, it was almost as if she knew they were so very contrastive to her. This drove them to bullying her, just because she was so different. Even then, Crystal had startling eyes, dark hair and an almost otherworldly radiance to her skin, which made her seem highly developed and for her tender years, in some ways she was.
Seth had that same sort of non-human look to his eyes and sheen of his skin, but no one ever picked on him, not after the first day when he quite calmly said.
"I am no different than everyone else. Leave me alone."
Seth's friends were the ones who picked on the elfin and ethereal child that was Crystal the most, as much as he tried to stop them and defend his cousin. He gave up after a while, reluctantly, realizing he had to leave her to fend for herself. She did so, in a strange way. Oh, she surely feared Seth's friends, but never once showed it, locking everything behind a cold and emotionless disguise, her eyes revealing nothing. Only with her close family did she show true feeling. It earned her the almost savage and brutal nickname of 'Ice' or the 'Ice-Queen' and even 'Ice-Dancer' when they wanted to be almost nice.
As she matured, she gained friends, who would defend her as much as they could. They adored the quiet confidence and wisdom that she exuded as well as her affectionate ways. Protecting the quiet child as much as they could became their hobby almost. She passed through the remainder of her school years quietly, studying hard and passing with extremely high marks before going on to University via College and studying business management among other things, passing there too with the highest grade possible.
Being nineteen after she finished University, she received her inheritance which was her share of the family companies, their shares, their homes and all the riches they had. She took to travelling then, exploring the world, and going to almost every country and in the countries she had homes? She examined them, decided on whether she was keeping them or not and moved on, sending the contents of houses she was selling to those she was keeping.
Where-ever she went in the world, her friends, Seth, and her antagonists followed until she finally decided to establish her home in Canada, the land of the maple leaf. Just outside Vancouver to be exact, in the largest of the remaining family homes, next door to the family Manor. They too all settled down into the surrounding area, keeping an eye on the almost elfin and still light-boned creature that was Crystal. She bought a horse and started going to shows and various other equine events. She gained a sort of fame in the area due to her show-winning and everything that she was doing.
It was there in Vancouver that everything kicked up a notch and would continue to do so for the rest of her life.
Seth's former schoolmates got even more belligerent then, shadowing the young woman when-ever they saw her, clobbering her savagely and terrorising her into a half-crazed, horror-stricken mental state since she was so fearful that she wouldn't and couldn't tell the police even if she had wanted to do so because she was so scared of them. Their declarations of assault became even more blood-curdling, their drubbing, a more regular event; it was almost like they were making certain that she wouldn't ever tell on them. Even Seth was bound to silence as much as he wanted to tell, and help his more ethereal cousin.
And that is where her story truly starts.