"Princess Gracia! What are you doing! We have to find Princess Amelia!"
Gracia grimaced and pulled herself from the window. "Oh, Mr. Guard! Come here, quick!"
"What is it," he asked as he closed the distance between them.
"Sleeping!"
Meanwhile, Amelia enjoyed a heaping cone of Saillune's famous soft-serve ice cream. It dribbled over the edges, down her fingers, and generally threatened to turn her pristine white outfit into a certifiable mess. She had been outside the palace before, but never actually in the streets of the city. It was exciting to see so many people at once, to hear the bustle of the market place, and to make a new friend. Zel stared at his ice cream and frowned.
"They put coconut on top. I hate that."
"Well you should have towd them not to," Amelia chirped and licked a trickle of chocolate off her wrist.
"Well I didn't know what I wanted, I just asked for a topping," he grumbled. "Who would want coconut, anyway?" Zelgadis grunted and carefully scraped the offending topping from the ice cream.
"I wike spwinkles!" Amelia announced.
"Thanks for sharing. Now where do you live?"
"Later! Could you take me to see Mr. Statue? That's Wezo, I mean."
"Mr. Statue?" Zelgadis asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I play on da' statue of him in our gawden."
"Figures. Someone as famous as him would have statues made of him."
"Could you? Could you pweeeeease?" Amelia curtsied and looked at the boy with the biggest, saddest eyes she could muster.
If Zel had the fortune of having younger siblings, he could have possibly been immune to the attack. However, he spent his days surrounded by rather serious adults and the cuteness hit him like a boot to the head. "Aw don't do—okay, fine I'll take you. But right after that I take you home. I still have sword practice today."
Amelia nodded and tugged at his wrist. "Let's go!"
Zelgadis reluctantly let himself be dragged down the crowded street. "He's probably in the town square. So head that way," he instructed.
"Which way is that?" Amelia asked, biting her thumb worriedly.
"Don't you know your way around your own city? Don't you go shopping with your Mother or Father?"
"No…" Amelia trailed off, unhappy to be getting a lecture. She made a mental note to ask Mom to take her shopping, not bothering to wonder if her mother in fact went shopping.
Zelgadis groaned. "Well, I shoulda figured that, you being a little kid and all. Okay, I'm not from around here, so we'll need to get directions from someone."
"Well," said Amelia as she peered up between the buildings and into the sky, "I fou'd you by fo'owing the shiny wrights. Mebbe they wead to Wezo, too."
"You know," Zelgadis pondered, looking up as well: "that's so stupid, it just might work."
So they ran down the cobblestone street with ice cream in hand to follow the trail of gently twinkling fairy souls.
Gracia rounded a corner and saw her little sister at the end of the street following a kid with terribly messy hair who wore a toy wooden sword at his hip.
"Hey!" she shouted indignantly, but they ignored her. She repeated her cry again, but to no avail. Soon, they were running toward the end of the street. How dare they leave her behind! No doubt, Amelia wanted to see Rezo before Gracia could. Not wanting to be outdone, she chased them down the street, elbowing strangers as she went. At the next corner, she caught up with them, and made her presence known with a sisterly tug on Amelia's pigtail.
"Oowwww!" she cried. Immediately, Zelgadis drew his "sword" and faced their "opponent."
"Who are you and why did you pull that little kid's hair?"
"I'm her big sister, dummy," Gracia teased, and stuck out her tongue.
"Gracie-sis, you're mean," Amelia whined, a tear dribbling from the corner of her eye.
"That's what you deserve for sneaking out and seeing Rezo behind your big sister's back. Now who's your boyfriend there?"
"Look weirdo, I'm definitely not that little girl's boyfriend," Zelgadis grumbled. Why did he always run into whackos? "Your little sister found me and asked that I take her to see Rezo before I took her home. Since a little kid like her can't make it in a city on her own, I decided to be nice, okay?"
"Well then, if that's the case, then I suppose I'll let you be my escort as well."
"Gee, I'm honored," Zelgadis muttered as they waded into the ever-thickening crowd, one crazy sister on each side of him.
Fortunately, Rezo was between miracles when his world of darkness was invaded by a brief, intense flash of red. Suddenly, his dormant eyes hurt with intense pain and he threw his hands to his face, doubling over in torment.
"Lord Rezo! Rezo, what's wrong," Eris asked in a panic, gripping the sage's forearm. He made no reply for several moments, with the exception of several drawn out moans. The crowd backed away from him, filled with sudden, acute, and unnamable fear. It seemed like an eternity before he spoke.
"Must…get to the libraries…soon," he choked out. He stood, leaning on his staff for support. As he did so, the crown Prince and Princess of Saillune pushed their way to the platform.
"Priest Rezo! Is there anything we can do for you?" Prince Phil asked with a well-meant slap to the back.
"Are you in pain," his wife inquired as she readied a healing spell.
"You idiot! If that would help, don't you think he would cast the spell himself?" Eris spat defensively. "We've spent hours creating and casting variations of "recovery" and "resurrection" yet nothing works. Which is why you can do something useful and get us to your special libraries without wasting more time blessing newborns!"
The would-be queen narrowed her eyes. "You dare to insult the Crown Princess of Saillune? I'll have you know that when I was your age, I—"
"—Please, my associate means no offense. She is still young and very…spirited. Forgive her naïveté," Rezo coughed. Murmurs raced through the anxious crowd. Then without warning, Rezo slammed his staff into the podium and cast a massive mind-control spell, sending each and every attendant peasant, merchant, and aristocrat back to their homes. In a few minutes, only the astonished Prince, Princess and Priestess remained with Rezo. "Now," he said with a strange smile, "why don't we get to those libraries?
