Dedicated to my Grandma- God bless and keep you!
______________
Bettina sat quietly among the softly waving dandelions, blinking in the drowsy late-morning sunshine. Her perfectly straight brown hair was impeccably combed, as usual, and her serious grey eyes were half-closed from unusual weariness. It was her playgroup Saturday, and the horde of children had been taken to the park on the south side of town. Kids of all ages were running about, but Bettina was the only one to be sitting in the soft grass near the woods. Nathan ran past her, shrieking delightedly as John failed to catch up to him in the game of tag.
Bettina, for lack of something to do, smoothed her denim jumper over her knees and fell back into the grass and stared at the sky through half-lidded, tired eyes.
‘That cloud,’ she thought to herself, ‘looks like it is hiding something. It’s so big… I wonder if there’s a house hiding in it. Yes.’ She squinted at it. ‘And a little person would come out of the house every morning and sprinkle dew on the world.’ With that thought, she closed her eyes, imagining what the person would look like.
He would be a little chubby and kind of squat, but would have a smiling, good-natured face that was very brown, because he lived closer to the sun and there were no clouds to shield him from it. And his voice was as gentle as the wind or as angry as thunder.
Bettina began to doze, lulled by the whispering breezes and the distant thudding of many feet in the playground.
Several hours later, she awoke, alone. At first she wondered what could have caused her abrupt return consciousness, and then she heard a voice, saying,
“Do you think that she’s alive?” And felt a sharp tweak of her right ear. She abruptly sat up, rubbing her ear and looked around, curious.
“Whoa- it moves!” said a small female voice dramatically. Bettina looked around, puzzled. She saw behind her two little children- about six inches tall each. One was a girl with blond pigtails, wearing a stocking cap and a green skirt and shirt, barefooted and carrying a large paintbrush in one hand and the other was planted firmly on her hip. Her companion was a small boy of the same height, wearing green shorts and a tunic, arms crossed over a bucket of some small clear substance, a elfin hat on his small head, though instead of hanging down as the girl’s did, it stuck straight up. His hair was curly and blond, and seemed to tumble all over the place. They both looked to be about ten years old.
“I told you she was alive, Alamandastor!” said the little girl triumphantly, swinging the paintbrush and grinning.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. It was your stupid idea anyway, Alabastia. But now she can see us.” He nodded at Bettina.
“Why did you wake me up?” asked Bettina, turning her whole body around so she could look at them more comfortably.
“Because we had a bet going on about whether you were alive or not.” said the girl, Alabastia, with a wicked grin. Bettina eased herself down onto her stomach so she could get a better look at them.
“What are your names?” she asked, because she had been told many times that that was the polite thing to ask. “And what are you?”
“It’s really more polite to give your own name first.” Said the boy. “But we are Alabastia and Alamandastor, the Bubble Sprites.” Alabastia grinned even more deviously and performed a mock bow, still brandishing the paintbrush that was as tall as she was. Alamandastor looked frankly bored and only inclined his head.
“I’m Bettina Dove.” Said Bettina simply. “And what’s a Bubble Sprite?”
“We ARE THE Bubble Sprites!” said Alabastia proudly, tossing her pigtails defiantly. “We make bubbles. Watch! Alamandastor!”
“On it.” Grunted Alamandastor, pulling a small wand out of nowhere and dipped it into the bucket, and blew into it. Bubbles flew out of the wand, and hovered near the earth for a second. Alamandastor and Alabastia clambered up onto them, and they began to rise slowly as Alabastia began to move the brush over the surface of the bubbles, giving them their rainbow tints. Alamandastor let the bucket rest on one of the smaller bubbles and sat down on his as Alabastia began to dance around on the clusters of bubbles, stocking cap and hair flying gracefully behind her.
“Miserable show-off.” murmured Alamandastor, tucking the wand back into nowhere as he watched her do a handstand on a bubble, to a small cry of delight from Bettina. Alabastia flipped backwards and neatly stabbed Alamandastor’s bubble with the base of her brush. Bettina caught Alamandastor on the palm of her hand as Alabastia began to cackle with laughter, sitting down next to the bucket bubble.
“Your names don’t really go with you,” said Bettina, as Alamandastor crawled back onto a bubble, safely far from Alabastia’s ruthless brush. “Are you twins?”
“Yes.” Said Alabastia, adjusting her hat with a smile. “We’re siblings. And we’re stuck with the names Alabastia-“here she gave a theatrical shudder- “and Alamandastor, because a friend of our parents liked big words. They don’t suit us at all.” Bettina nodded her agreement.
“I could give you nicknames, if you wanted.”
“Oh, do, do!” said Alabastia, clapping her hands together. “I hate the name Alabastia. And you try screaming, ‘Oh, Alamandastor! Watch out!’ you have to say that long, ugly word when your brother could be dying.”
“Give me a few minutes. I’ll think of something.” Bettina watched Alamandastor blow more bubbles and Alabastia pop them.
“Okay. I have something. You,” she pointed at Alabastia, “are Tap, because you’ll always tapping Alamandastor’s bubbles. Alamandastor is Tip, because when the bubbles are tapped, he tips over.” Tap fell over her own feet and pointed to something over Tip’s shoulder.
“Tip!” she shrieked. “LOOK OUT!” Bettina looked around. It was still very calm out. Tap nodded, satisfied. “Good. It’s easy to shout when I’m a damsel in distress. Okay. I am now Tap, and he is Tip!” She pulled her paintbrush out and floated over to Tip, putting the paintbrush on his shoulder. “I dub thee Tip!”
“Thanks.” Said Tip sourly, shaking his shoulder free of the bubble formula left over from the bubbly paintbrush. “I dub thee annoying.” Tap stuck her tongue out him and said, cheerfully,
“We should get going. Come on, Bettina!”
“Going where?” asked Bettina, already rising carefully, so as not to jog her friend who was resting on her shoulder.
“Here and there, everywhere and nowhere!” said Tap maddeningly, dancing around on her bubble.
“Oh, ha-ha,” said Tip scornfully. “You know the parents wanted us to go see our cousins before anything else.”
Tap made a face.
“But I don’t wanna see the stuck-up Rainbows.”
“You’re related to the rainbow?” asked Bettina, with great interest.
“Yes.” said Tap, gloomily. “Our Great-Grandfather-something-or-other, a simple Sprite, was married to Indigo, a Rainbow. His descendants were the first Bubble Sprites, because Indigo put the colors in the bubbles. So about half the family is Bubble Sprites and the rest live on the rainbow, and they’re called the Rain Sprites, ‘cuz they manage the rain and where there’s rain there’s a rainbow.” she grimaced. “Violet and his little sister, Mustard, are the most annoying Sprites I’ve ever met.” she and Tip put on a mocking, high voice in unison. “Oh, dear cousins, would you mind singing along with us? SomeWHEEEEEEERE, OVER THE RAINBOW!” they also snorted in unison.
“I guess we’ll go anyway.” said Tap resignedly. “They have good food up there.”
“Am I allowed to come?” asked Bettina.
“Of course, silly! Especially if we say we invited you. They’ve got a huge palace in the clouds.” Said Tap, regaining her old cheerfulness. “Everything is fluffy and sweet. And it’s really, really warm and kind of humid. And tasty…”
“But will I fit up there if it’s made for little people?” asked Bettina, anxious.
“Yeah. It’s all made of clouds, so it can be as big or as small as the Rain Sprites want. Which is really, really big.” Said Tip, with a yawn.
“How do we get there?”
“Well, first we have to find a rainbow to ride, of course.” said Tap, sitting down on a bubble. “I think that the capital might be having a lot of rain soon, ‘cuz it’s Blossom-tide.”
“The capital of what?” asked Bettina.
“Well, this land is called Cyri, and the capital, Geoneath, is in the northeast.” Said Tip, who seemed to know more concerning geography.
“And where are we now?” inquired Bettina.
“You see,” said Tip, “this is kind of a strange place. Its full name is the Desert of Swiftly-Singing Sands, though most everyone calls it the Changing Desert. Every time someone comes here, it’s different. We live to the south of it, so we had to pass through it. And we found you, lying here, and Tap put a bet on you.”
“Which reminds me…. pay up, sucker!” said Tap, holding out a hand to Tip.
“Never mind that. We need to find a rainbow. And since… what was it…uh…Geoneath is in…” Bettina looked at Tip helplessly.
“Geoneath is in Blossom-tide.” he said shortly. “It’s the season after Silver-tide. Blossom-tide is when everything blooms and it rains a lot in the northeast.”
“Oh, okay. How many tides are there?” asked Bettina.
“Even I know that, silly.” said Tap. “There are four tides, Blossom-tide, Sun-tide, Wind-tide, and Silver-tide. And in the tides are the twelve moons, Frostmoon, Chillmoon, Lionmoon, Rainmoon, Flowermoon, Cloudmoon, Heatmoon, Cricketmoon, Harvestmoon, Huntmoon, Singmoon and Glacialmoon.
Right now we’re in the middle of Flowermoon, which is the third moon in Blossom-tide.”
“Right.” said Tip. “And we were supposed to get to the Myriad Palace by, at most, Heatmoon.”
“Urgh.” Tap made an ugly face. “Who in the universe in their sane mind would want to travel during Heatmoon of ALL the moons to travel in? Yuck.”
“Well, next to Glacialmoon, Frostmoon or Lionmoon, Heatmoon sounds good to travel in…”
“It was a rhetorical question.”
“I know.”
“Shut up!”
“No.”
“Alright, you two, do we at least have a map or something?” asked Bettina.
“Yeah. It might be kinda hard for you to read it, though.” said Tap, pulling a map out of nowhere and unrolling it. Bettina squinted at the minute print.
“I can’t read it. I think Tap will have to lead the way.”
“Oh-KAY!” said Tap happily, jumping up from her bubble and twirling around in ecstasy. “I’ve always wanted to be a captain!”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, dear sister, but you’re not the captain of anything.” said Tip, yawning lazily. “Aside from the insane association.”
“Shut up!” Tap pulled a diminutive compass from the same place as the map, and swiveled around on her bubble.
“Northeast is that way,” she said, pointing right. “But,” she added, pointing forwards, “we have to take the highroad to Ira, and then straight from there to the mountain Requite, and Geoneath rests between the mountains Requite and Respite, in the Valley of Reprieve, and Citrine Palace.”
“How long will it take us to get there?” groaned Tip. “Assuming that we don’t find a rainbow before then.”
“Oh, about a moon.” said Tap, after thinking for a second. Tip moaned again.
“And then we have to talk to Violet and Mustard.” they made a face in unison.
“They can’t be that bad, can they?” Tip and Tap turned to her incredulously.
“Does the sun shine? Do birds sing? Is water wet? Is heat hot?” asked Tap sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “There’s nobody worse, I swear.”
“Who lives in the Citrine Palace?” asked Bettina, getting used to dealing with unfamiliar names.
“The Queen and the Prince. And the King and the Princess.” said Tip. Bettina shot a questioning look at him. Tip sighed.
“The Queen is the Queen of Elves, and the Prince is the Prince of Elves, and the King is the King of Sprites, and the Princess is the Princess of Sprites.”
“Oh!” said Bettina, excited. “So you mean that there are elves here, as well as Sprites? And they both live in the same palace?”
“Yep. Elves and Sprites live alongside each other.” Tap made another face. “I don’t like the Elves much. To big and too happy.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” sniffed Tip. He clasped his hands under his chin and fluttered his eyelashes at nothing. “Oh! The sky is blue, the grass is green, the wind is blowing and I AM HAPPY FOR EVERYTHING!”
“Oh, shut up, twerp!” said Tap, grinning all the same.
“I am NOT a twerp!” interjected Tip.
“You are so! I’m older!” taunted Tap.
“Only by a few minutes!” snapped Tip.
“Twerp!”
“Grandma!”
“Brat!”
“Old bag!”
“Crybaby!”
“Stiff-jointed dried-up pile of DOO!” retaliated Tip.
“TIE!” shrieked Bettina, breaking up the fight.
“Hmmph!” went the twins in unison, turning away with their noses in the air and crossing their arms.
“Oh, come on, you two,” said Bettina, a little nervous, trying to restore truce. “It doesn’t matter who is older.”
“YES IT DOES!” shouted Tip and Tap in accord. They pointed at each other at the same time.
“She’s too bossy!” complained Tip at the same time Tap screeched,
“He’s too bratty!”
Bettina sighed heavily. Traveling with these two was going to be an interesting experience.
When it became clear that restoring truce wasn’t going to happen soon, Bettina sat down and began to consider what lay ahead of her while Tip and Tap silently glared at each other and looked away at the same time.
For one thing, she had to get back home, or Aunt Sisily and Mother would begin to worry. But she had a humungous curiosity towards this new world, filled with Sprites and Elves. And even though she had only been in it for the entirety of a bare half-hour, awake, she liked it and felt quite at home with the strange pair of twins. For another, while she was here, she had nothing better to do then visit the Bubble Sprites’ family, the Rainbows. What other kinds of Sprites where there, anyway, if there could be Rainbow and Bubble Sprites? And she had yet to meet an Elf, too.
“Does anyone in Cyri know magic?” she asked of the sullen silence. Tap emerged from her sulk long enough to say, whilst glaring daggers at her twin,
“There’s the Royal Wizard in Citrine Palace, and I think there might be one in the city of Uthla, and witches are common enough if you look for them in the right places. Why?”
“Well, after you do whatever Bubble Sprites do, I have to go home.” said Bettina seriously. “And I think only a powerful Wizard could send me back home.”
“Where do you come from, anyway?” asked Tip, gaining interest.
“Sun Springs, Colorado.” said Bettina, wrinkling her brow in thought. Was that where she came from? It seemed very vague, like a half-forgotten memory on the fringes of her mind.
“You know,” said Tip suddenly, “if we stay here long enough, the desert will change.”
“But that might mean we also change, too!” squawked Tap, forgetting her anger. “We have to get out of here!”
“That seems like a good idea.” said Bettina, standing up and brushing her denim jumper off busily. “Use that compass again, Tap.” Tap waved the compass for a few seconds, and then pointed it straight forwards. Bettina, with Tip on her shoulder and Tap floating cheerfully –all traces of anger gone from their demeanors, Bettina noticed, surprised- next to her, calling out occasional directions.
They walked straight into the trees, following a worn path that Bettina hadn’t remembered seeing before, but ignored this fact. The trees were in full force, and ivy crawled up it delicately. Bees buzzed in the hazy distance, and the sun filtered through the trees, lighting their way with a soft, glowing light on the forest carpet and path. Tap would sometimes float ahead, and come back with news of what was ahead like an energetic puppy, adding even more color to the scene with her lively chatter.
An hour or so after they had entered the forest, Bettina mentioned over the growl of her stomach,
“What should we do about food, if we’re going to be traveling for a-“she scrunched her eyes, remembering the strange new dialect “-moon?”
“Well,” said Tip, squinting around. “You can usually find a dinner-tree around here, I think, or maybe a lunch field. Check the map.” Tap was already looking at the map.
“There’s a grove of dinner trees ahead, I think,” said Tap. “By the witch Lorelei.”
“Laurel eye who?” asked Bettina, who didn’t know about the legend.
“She’s a witch, of course.” said Tip matter-of-factly. “I think she might be a Plant Sprite, from what Demmy told us.”
“Who is Demmy?” asked Bettina.
“Our girl parent.” said Tip calmly. “Only the word ‘mother’ makes her feel weird, she claims, so instead of ‘dear mother’ we just added a e and ee sound to the middle and end of the two first letters, which makes her Demmy.” That confused Bettina immensely. A rumble of her stomach brought her back to reality, and she looked around. They had come to a large clearing, with a field planted with melons and a single, huge, several-feet-tall tree stump squarely in the middle. The melons were a large, sickly-green looking variety that Bettina had never seen before.
“Oh, right.” groaned Tap. “It’s only Flowermoon. None of them will be ripe.”
“Well, can’t we call anyway?” complained Tip.
“You can’t call on a witch without an excuse to call,” said Tap virtuously.
“I could ask for help getting back. I mean, once you complete whatever it is you must complete,” Bettina added hastily.
“That’s good enough for me! Let’s go!” Tap shot off across the field of melons like an arrow from a bow, leaving Bettina with Tip on her shoulder and trying to work her way among the melons and melon-vines without damaging them. When they were about halfway through, Tap came floating back, and Tip said, teasingly,
“Didn’t have the courage, Tap?”
“Shut up, twerp!” said Tap, looking quite dignified. “It wouldn’t be proper for me to be there with you straggling along in the background, you know.” Tip muttered “Grandma!” so only Bettina could hear it, and she tried to hold back a smile.
The tree stump loomed over her, reaching about ten feet into the air, at least five feet thick. The door was almost tall enough to let Bettina in comfortably, she only had to duck her head a little to see in as the door opened.
A Sprite with long brown hair stood there, one hand on the doorknob. She was obviously older then the twins by several Sprite years, looking like a fifteen-year-old girl, with an expression to match at the strange collection of visitors.
“Yeah?” she asked disdainfully, looking up at Bettina. Tap cleared her throat, and the girl’s eyes flicked to Tap’s mischievous face,
“Are you Lorelei?” she asked solemnly.
“What do you want?”
“We want to see Lorelei.” said Tip, rolling his eyes. A much older Sprite came to the door. By Bettina’s human standards, she was very old; in her mid seventies, probably. She had a worn, good-natured looking face and was dressed in clothes that looked as if they were made from plants, which they probably were.
“What is it, Lori? Visitors?” she peered at the group with evident interest.
“Yeah. Whatever.” said Lori and vanished inside as the older Sprite held open the door and stood back as Bettina, Tip and Tap entered.
“Please forgive my granddaughter.” said the grey-haired Sprite, and offered Bettina a seat that she was pleased to see, fit her quite snuggly.
“The Elves visit me sometimes, and they are just your size,” she explained as Tip and Tap also sat down. “I am Lorelei II. My granddaughter is Lorelei IIV, but she is Lori and I am Lurai.” she smoothed her skirts. Tip was taking a look around the large room, big enough to accommodate two Bettinas and at least seven more Sprites comfortably.
Tap introduced herself and her companions.
“I am Alabastia, commonly called Tap, and my brother, Alamandastor, mostly called Tip, and we’re the Bubble Sprites. This is our friend, Bettina Dove.” She, Tip and Lurai clasped hands at their waists and bowed their heads in unison. Bettina wondered if she should join in this strange ritual, but since none of her friends seemed to notice this, she decided it was a Spritan practice and she was not required to join in.
“Would you prefer me to call you Tip, or Alamandastor?” asked Lurai, as Lori entered, bearing a snooty frown and a tray bourn with a small plate of cookies, a steaming teapot and five teacups.
Tip accepted a cup of tea and said, frankly,
“I don’t care what people call me, as long as I know that they are speaking to me.” Lurai laughed at that, a easy, chuckling laugh.
“Alright, Tip. And would you be Alabastia or Tap, dear?” she asked of Tap.
“Oh, please call me Tap! I hate the name Alabastia! It’s a granny name!” Tap covered her mouth at the last few words and stole a furtive glance at Lurai, who laughed again.
“It is a rather old name, from the era of Flames,” agreed Lurai, after her titters had abated. “Though it means ‘white bearer of good tidings’.” Tip thought this was very funny.
“Why’d they name me that if I’m a descendant of a Rainbow?” asked Tap, giggling along with Tip. Bettina’s teacup was also just her size, and she wondered what Demmy was thinking.
“Now, why did you decide to call on me, besides empty stomachs?” asked Lurai, making Tip and Tap glance at each other guiltily. Lurai also thought that was very funny, and Lori sniffed audibly from a corner and said,
“Children!” Bettina, to save her friends, explained how she had gotten here to Lurai, who looked very interested.
“The Desert of the Swiftly-Singing Sands, you say?” she asked, at an opening in Bettina’s narrative. Bettina, Tip and Tap nodded in unison. Lurai sat back in her chair, face thoughtful. Not daring to break the silence, Bettina looked to Tip and Tap, who stared back mutely.
“So far as I know, and I have lived here for many Fourtides, nobody has ever come from another land through that desert.”
“It wasn’t a desert,” Bettina added, “when I came it was the edge of a clearing in the woods.”
“Yes, well,” said Lurai, sipping her tea reflectively, “that desert has a mind of its own, I daresay. Getting you back isn’t within my power, I’m afraid. I’m only a Plant Sprite, so my powers are limited to dealing with plantlife, and in the Desert that won’t help you. I can, however,” she added, with a smile, “ripen some lunchmelons for you.”
“Really? Oh, thank you!” said Tap happily, nudging Tip, who added, not quite as enthusiastically,
“Yeah, thanks.”
“Thank you.” added Bettina, meaning it with all heart and stomach.
Lurai produced a long, thin wand from inside her sleeve, with ivy wound around it. Getting up gracefully, she swept out the door, followed by Lori, who also pulled out a wand and followed, with a bored expression smeared across her face like after-toast jam. The little party trouped outside, and Lurai and Lori walked around for a few minutes, stooping every now and then to examine a melon.
“How is our lunch in there?” asked Bettina in a whisper, to Tip.
“Lunchmelons. You’ve never seen one?” he asked, slightly perplexed. Bettina shook her head.
“They’re yummy. The food grows inside.” interrupted Tap, just as Lurai called out from across the field,
“Over here, dears!”
Bettina, Tap and Tip proceeded to pick across the field, followed closely by Lori, who obviously had a lot more practice with that kind of thing. Tap had gotten off her bubble in the house, so she was sitting on Bettina’s other shoulder, humming cheerfully and playing with one pigtail.
When they more or less finally reached the edge of the field, where Lurai and Lori were already waving their wands over one large melon, that was rapidly turning from the sickly green to a bright, metallic color and also changing in shape, until each resembled a tin lunch pail. They then proceeded to two Tip or Tap-sized melons, and those grew much more quickly, but stayed small enough for Tip or Tap to carry.
The two Plant Sprites excused themselves after that, saying that there was something inside that needed attending.
Bettina and the twins were left with two lunchmelons each, and decided to go into the cover of the forest to eat.
Each lunchmelon contained a folded paper napkin, a small bottle of lemonade, a sandwich with a meat that tasted kind of like chicken, and kind of like pork, but not quite either, Bettina decided, a cookie and several strawberries. Everything was attached to the lunchmelon by a small stem, easily broken in the melon’s state of ripeness.
Bettina thought it was one of the best lunches she had ever eaten, but Tap insisted that dinnertrees bore even more delicious fruit.
After they had rested for several minutes, digesting, Tap sprang up and brushed the crumbs of the front of her dress.
“Blow me a bubble,” she said, bossily. Tip rolled his eyes but obliged, producing a large, wobbly bubble that immediately stabilized when Tap painted it with the rainbow.
“I think if we keep traveling steadily, we could make it to Ira.” said Tap, sitting down on her bubble and examining the map.
“Okay.” said Tip, though Bettina knew that he didn’t really care, or was even listening attentively.
“That sounds fine, here.” she said. Tap pulled out the compass and made a big show of trying to find the north point, and they began the paused journey again by skirting around the lunchmelon field.
About half an hour after they resumed the road, they heard footsteps behind them and looked.
A man, only about Bettina’s height, was approaching them at a fast pace, dressed in a dark brown tunic and long pants, a goatee on his chin. The first thing Bettina noticed about him, however, were his ears; they stuck out of his hair, long, and had three small points on the ends; quite obviously he was an Elf, Bettina decided. There were smiling wrinkles around his eyes and a kindly expression on his face. Over his shoulders were a yoke and two buckets of sand, which he supported with the yoke and steadied with hand.
“Good afternoon, youngsters!” he said, cheerfully, stopping, level with them.
“Good afternoon, sir!” said Tap cheerfully, making her bubble float over. “Could you tell us how far it is to Ira?”
“I just got back from a trip there, yesterday.” said the Elf, smiling benignly. “If you follow this road, you should be there by early morning. But surely you don’t plan on traveling through the night?”
“Of course not!” said Tap, just as optimistically. “We didn’t plan on traveling so slowly, is all.” The Elf smiled. Bettina liked him immensely, and she could tell that Tap did, too.
“I am Sabure, the Glass-Blower, at your service, Sprites.” said Sabure, bowing from the waist down. Bettina did likewise, Tap performed a sort of curtsy on her bubble and Tip inclined his head, though a smile was on his lips.
“We are Alabastia, Alamandastor and Bettina. Though I like to be called Tap and my brother is Tip, because we both hate our names.” Sabure gave a wide smile at her childish frankness.
“Would you give me and my wife the pleasure of dining with us?” asked Sabure. Tap accepted before Bettina could blink, and the group turned down a side path.
They soon learned that Sabure owned a large workshop and had some apprentices, all of which boarded with Sabure and his wife, Vilane. They passed a pleasant evening with the couple and the three Elven apprentices, Burlwee, Ronoa and Parvisal. Tip took a particular liking to Ronoa, and asked him countless questions, which Ronoa cheerfully answered between bites. Vilane was an equally cheerful Elven woman, a little fat but definitely kind. Bettina began to understand what Tap complained about Elves, though she didn’t really agree with her tone of doom about their unfailing cheeriness.
Tap and Parvisal got on famously, and re-enacted old battles from the Era of Flames, Tap explained to Bettina. Burlwee was made of quieter stuff then the rest, and Bettina talked with Sabure and Vilane, learning about the world around her. Sabure seemed quite interested in the fact that she was a ‘world traveler’ and kept asking if she was of Enchantress descent. Bettina shook her head modestly.
“The thing is,” she explained over her empty bowl, “I didn’t even ask or wish to come here. Though I do like it so far. Everyone is so kind and helpful.”
Sabure smiled.
“That’s because of Tiamet and Hath’s Will, at the end of the Era of Flames. ‘Love always your peoples, Serve always your friends and Care always for those in need.’”
“’A friend in need is a friend indeed,’” Bettina quoted without blinking. Sabure smiled.
”Yes, exactly! There’s a lot more to that Will, but everybody follows those three requests. We think not of gain, but of serving and pleasing another.”
“So you don’t have money?” asked Bettina, not thinking. Immediate silence entered the room and Burlwee cast a scandalous look at her.
“I’m sorry, was that wrong…?” she said, timidly.
“Aika declared money-“he said the word delicately, as if it might bite him- “- useless, at the end of the Era of Flames. It is called the Era of Flames because it was filled with great and terrible wars over money and greed. Hath, Zu, Tiamet and Aika brought an end to the wars by that Will and a great spell.”
“Oh.” Bettina stared at her hands.
“Bed, I think,” said Vilane, breaking the silence by scooping up Bettina’s bowl and spoon. “If you want to get to Ira, you’ll have to get up bright and early.”
“All right. Thank you very much for the meal and board!” said Tap, curtsying and smiling. Tip and Bettina repeated that, and Vilane led them through the house. It was a beautiful house, not connected to the glassblowing workshop. The guest room for Bettina and the twins had two twin beds and an oil lamp sitting on a small table between them, which Vilane lit. It was quite a cozy room, with a large window that faced the sunset. Vilane threw it open.
“Though it’s Flowermoon, it’s pretty warm.” she said, gazing out. “I’ll only leave it a little open, to let in breezes. Bathroom is down the hall. Good night!”
“Good night!” replied the three in unison. Tap plopped down on the pillow of the twin bed closest to the window.
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ACK! Another long story by me. This is one of the fantasies I've mentioned in my guestbook (:lol:) and I have practically the entire thing mapped up. This is all I've written so far.
This story is a little for younger folks then my other story, the one about Archangel Gabriel (it's up here, but under the title (Tile open for Suggestions)) but it'll get more interesting later. Promise.
Constructive criticism, reviews and stuff like that greatly wanted/appreciated.
Arigato!
-Ink
Actually, Tip and Tap get along very well (compared to, say, my siblings and I 
) and Tip is waaaay to lazy to stir up the sea of life with arguments- except on the matter of who is older. His one touchy, sore spot.
