I went in the crowded store. Many prisms filled the place. I searched for Mrs. Xylopia. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t have any trouble, she found me.
“Here she is, Your Highness!” she greeted me bowing and making some hand gestures.
“No! Mrs. Xylopia, call me Lola, please,” I asked in small voice, five levels lower than hers, trying not to get the attention of the rest of the store. This ‘Your Highness’ put a really heavy weight on my back, I didn’t want it right now.
“So, don’t call me Mrs. I’m too young for this respectfulness. Deal? Come here, Nefarious sent a pigeon to prepare me, let’s see some dresses for your High… you! Darling, how curious are these clothes you’re wearing… let’s find you something more updated!” she said, taking me to the fitting room, trying to fake her disapproval of my hybridus clothes.
Mrs. Xylopia gave me a brown leather dress with long sleeves (to protect me from both suns), made with rabbit fur (which, as she reinforced a few times, was fake) and long boots that covered half of my legs. It was the least weird option she offered me. I felt like I was going to a costume party, but at least I was dressed like a typical prism.
“This outfit was done this week! The fake leather and fur are becoming more perfect all the time. You look stunning! Are you sure you don’t want to wear something more appropriate for a princess?”
“No! Please, dress me like a normal person.”
“Darling, you are not normal, you are royalty! But fine, we can agree on your taste, Your High…” She bit her tongue before saying again. “Your Highness.”
She made me try two more dresses and added it to my cloth shopping bag. When I met white beard again, the sensation of being cocked by the sun had cooled down with this new outfit. How can they handle two suns burning the top of their heads?
“So, Xylopia found something you should wear. Now you look good, like a prism! But you have such a Caucasian complexion. Take this sunblock. Summer here can melt even your thoughts. Let me help with your bag.”
Who would guess! Nefarious gave me a lotion that looked like honey, but not so sticky, one drop covers a lot! It was made of sunflower pollen and sequoia amber, said the lotion bottle. That prism sunblock worked, even my body temperature seemed to go back to normal, amazing.
As we walked, we passed a group of strong men and women wearing iron vests with lotus blossoms embedded on them, all carrying their weapons.
They walked in pairs marching synchronously, they made my neck turn when they passed by us.
“These are the Keepers’ troops, Lola. They protect the Kingdom.” Lumen was an organized place. If Nefarious saw Kaleidoscope, my Auntie Eva’s store full of antiques, he would have fallen back from the mess.
We walked until the wall that borders the Village, high enough that no one would dare to jump it. It was surrounded by strategic stairs where some Keepers went up and down to guard the perimeter. We went through the wood door, which led to a huge and wide green landscape. I could see faraway a thick forest with aligned trees making a natural barrier, called Pantanal Forest. We walked there, where the view back to the Village with the castle at the center was panoramic. Walking along its border I heard running water, I recognized in front of us the downside-up cascade full of blue peacocks, where I landed the first time. Wiky moved uneasily on Nefarious’s shoulder because of the presence of other birds.
“I arrived here on my first time. I remember this place!”
“That’s right. This is Aratama cascade, protected by the blue peacocks. They are a type of guru. It is where your grandfather and I came looking for advice on the best solution to use. They have been here since Gunnar colonized the region. We have immeasurable respect for them. They reveal through this water facts and very powerful information, including the portal for other dimensions. This was discovered by your grandfather, Prince Persus, and Axel Leike when they were young. They were swimming at the cascade, which ran down normally until they found a rather large amethyst stone at the bottom. When they took it out, this water changed its course, turning into this downside-up cascade we see now, which opened a portal that until that day we didn’t know existed. They ran to show it to your great-grandfather, who alerted them of the risks and prohibited them from going back there, keeping the amethyst at a safe place inside the castle. The gemstone chose Mikael (your great-grandfather) as its owner, but Axel Leike’s curiosity betrayed them.”
One night, the curious young boy stole the gemstone and crossed to the other dimension for the first time. There he met greediness and saw how life with no limits could be, and he felt free. He was running through the woods trying to come back to Lumen to tell his friend Persus what he had seen, when the gemstone fell out of his pocket and broke, leaving a piece behind. He went back to the creek’s surroundings after a week. He ran to meet his friend and together they told King Mikael, who got furious by this. He ordered the boy never to do it again. He broke the chipped gemstone into two parts: one he kept on his own ax. The other part he gave to me so only the both of us had the key for a weapon so powerful and dangerous like that. Mine is in my stick. Your grandfather’s was stolen by Elof right after the destruction. But I created a spell which only let the portal to other dimensions open if three conditions were present, with one of the gemstone pieces at hand, using an energy conductor (water or a mirror, for example), and with the owner’s consent, King Mikael and his blood line, or mine. But a third piece, this one from your necklace, was left behind without any spell on it. That’s how your father crossed for the first time. As soon as he got here, I put a spell on his gemstone and fixed this issue, until the day Elof found a way to cross and kidnap your father. For our luck, he lost the gemstone right after it, into the water. But only the stone wasn’t enough, he still needed a conductor and the consent. Someone from the royal family allowed him to go there.
“Don’t tell me it was me!”
“I don’t think anyone else could have done it. In Lumen’s war, Elof stole the stone on your grandfather ax. But it wasn’t worth anything if he didn’t have royal consent or mine, so we were safe. He must have kept this stone hidden. I just don’t know how he got your consent to open the portal.”
“Wait, I don’t… No! I asked for my father to vanish when we argued at home, I was angry.” I could mess things up without even wanting to, what a gift!
“That must have been it. Your consent opened the portal and he could take your father.”
I should be congratulated. I didn’t even know where to start apologizing by my stupidity. When I think the world’s mistakes are made by me, I’m totally right.
I went back to the wall and walked around it by the outside, arriving at a huge vegetable garden where many prisms worked. Some were harvesting, some were taking samples of the roots, and some others tested colored potions on the plants, sometimes a bit of smoke would come out.
“Here is the center of the Villages’ provisions. This huge garden provides food for all Lumen’s people. Our specialist farmers take care of it, prisms study to do this. Each one of us has a gift, this is theirs.”
“Taking care of the vegetables is a gift?” I didn’t find it that amazing.
“Don’t disdain of the farmers’ work, Lola. If they didn’t study the soil, the seasons for planting and harvest, we all would starve to death, all of us. These are food scientists, all of us in the Village respect our farmers very much. Even the ones that don’t show any gifted mark (haven’t a studied career) are fundamental prisms to keep our society working.”