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“Hello child, my dear Kyra,” Queen Anita said, smiling.  “We meet face to face, after all this time.”
    
“What do you m-mean?” Kyra stammered, rapturous at finally meeting the queen.  “This is the first time I’ve ever been to Enchantus.”
    
“Maybe so,” Queen Anita said, “you may never have been inside Enchantus before, but you have seen it from afar, you just didn’t know it, and you have visited Aisis Lip more times than any other of your kind.  You visited this beautiful land and its people in your dreams.”
    
“You mean that was all real?” Kyra said, trying to keep herself steady.
    
“But of course, my dear.  What else could it have been?  You are not a stranger here.  My dear, every dream you have had of Aisis Lip in the past was not just you going to sleep and dreaming, but you going to sleep and transporting your spiritual self to Aisis Lip.”

Kyra was speechless.  All she could do was mumble some unintelligible comment about being surprised and then coughed. 

Queen Anita was radiating beauty.  There was a magnificent aura around her, though it was more like a halo, golden in color, encapsulating her.  Wherever the edges of the halo reached, they in turn became brilliant.  Kyra could actually feel its light and warmth on her skin.

“I guess this has been quite a day for you, my dear,” Queen Anita continued.  She smiled again and a dimple forming in her left cheek.

Kyra gasped.  Something in her conscience had been pulling at her mind, trying to tell her something.  She’d ignored it and that dimple had just made her realize what it was. 

Somehow Kyra was looking at her mother, and yet this was Queen Anita: it was her mother, just twenty years younger.  Kyra’s father had always told her that her mother had been very beautiful (and still was in his eyes) and that she, Kyra, had some of that same beauty within her.  But this was more than beauty; what was behind the beauty, within Queen Anita, the warmth and benevolence, made her perfect.  Kyra didn’t know what this was, this internal force, but she knew she wanted to be a part of it.  It was almost as if Queen Anita was some sort of goddess. 

As Kyra thought of Queen Anita, looking like her mother, being all that was good in this land, it immediately brought to her mind Jolus the Malignant, looking just like her brother, the supreme being of all evil within Aisis Lip.  This adventure of hers, if she could call it that was starting to become scarily personal.

Queen Anita looked at Kyra as if she could read her thoughts.  She raised her hand, palm out, in a calming motion, with complete understanding in her face.

“You shall understand more, in time, but you are tired now, and I can see that your senses are truly overwhelmed by all that you have seen and experienced in such a short time.” 

She looked to Marie.

“Could you escort dear Kyra to her new room, please.”

“O’course, my Queen,” Marie said and waddled over to Kyra and held her gently, supporting, and guided her towards another wall of the room where there was an arch of pearls.  Kyra let herself be taken, but before she walked through, she looked back at Queen Anita one last time, then went through the tunnel and disappeared under the arch.  She would never ever forget that divine face.

Orcus stepped out from behind the crystal pillar where he’d been hiding the whole time.

“By the dreams of Enchantus, it is really her, is it not?” he said, beaming.

“Yes it is, and she is even more spectacular than I imagined.”

“It’s astounding.  Just as the Scriptures say.  What has been known for so long and is recorded on parchment has just happened right before our very eyes, just as it was written.  Simply amazing.”

Orcus, clearly elated, sat himself down on the smaller throne next to Queen Anita.  It was of a exquisitely varnished mahogany, with emerald green cushions and padding.

“Do you realize she recognized me also?” Queen Anita said. “Not at first, but at the end there, it all came clear to her when I smiled.  I had to send her away to rest otherwise she might have had some sort of attack and collapsed right in front of us.

“Aye,” Orcus said.

“Let Demto know that her training is to first thing tomorrow,” said Queen Anita.

“Yes, of course,” Orcus replied, “but are you going somewhere?  Will you not tell him yourself?”

“I was,” she said, “but I need to take a walk and think on some matters.”

Queen Anita got up and left through the door of another arch, this one made of blood red ruby. 

Orcus stood up and walked away from his smaller throne.

“Demto, I need to speak with you immediately,” he spoke to the empty room.

A cloud of blue smoke began condensing from thin air and a six-foot apparition formed; Demto stepped out into the visible light.  He was dressed in a long royal blue cloak that touched the ground, concealing his feet.  Nobody was really sure if he had feet, but then he was a wizard; one simply didn’t ask stupid questions like that to a wizard, for one was bound to get a stupid inexact answer, especially considering how quirky Demto could be.  His usual reply was something to the effect of: “No, of course I don’t have feet; today I have frogs feet, and tomorrow who knows!”

Orcus relayed the Queen’s message to Demto, even though he was pretty sure the wizard already knew everything and had probably seen everything from some concealed location.
“Very well,” Demto replied.  He stepped back into the cloud that was still behind him, and disappeared.  The cloud shrank and vanished.

*

Queen Anita stopped at a particular point along the corridor, faced the crystalline wall and let out a breath upon its surface.  A white haze formed and then grew, molding into a doorway.  She walked through it and the doorway vanished, reverting to the crystalline wall.

There before her stood a podium of shiny wood, cedar, hovering four feet off the ground.  The room was box-like, composed of fog: the walls, ceiling and ground on the inside did not seem solid at all, but more like she was standing inside a cloud.  On the podium sat a heavy leather-like bound book.

Queen Anita stepped up to the floating podium and looked down at the book.  One word was burned into its thick worn cover:

SCRIPTURES

She turned the heavy cover and flicked through the tough, age-worn pages to a specific chapter.  The chapter title was four words:

KYRA, THE CHOSEN ONE

Then she read below the title.   

Let it be known to all of Aisis Lip, be they people or animals, good or evil, that in the distant future, long after our time, the people of Aisis Lip will be granted with a most special gift.

A Prodigal Child shall come to Aisis Lip from another place, another time, another world.  She will answer to and be known as Kyra.  The Queen of the time will know her in a way that no other person can.  The partner of the queen will also be familiar to this Blessed One, but less so.

There will be a rising Evil, one that has existed for some time; he will be familiar in ways known only to the Chosen One.  We, the Creators of these Scriptures, do not know with our prophetic powers who will triumph or succeed in this great confrontation of Good and Evil.  Ultimately, Kyra will be the Chosen One to fight on the side of the Good against this oncoming Evil who will present to Aisis Lip the greatest threat the world has ever faced.

She will be accompanied by a Guide, one of her age, who will lead her to where this evil resides.  The Guide will bear a certain mark upon him, a symbol.
    
Queen Anita looked at the drawing she’d studied for so long.

Treat the Chosen One well and just, for in the end, when this great confrontation is in its genesis, she will be the only one with the ability to save you all.  Do not question her ways, nor her motives; all your aiding will not change her destiny of success or failure.  She is the Chosen One.  You must trust and believe in her fully, only then do you stand a chance of victory and salvation.

    
Queen Anita gently closed the Scriptures.  There was no more information about the Chosen One, her Guide, or this Evil.  The Scriptures could no longer help Queen Anita, nor anybody else, for they had done their duty, and now it was up to just one person.

Kyra. 

And what she could do against another evil person.  Her brother.  Jolus the Malignant.
    
Queen Anita stood tall and proud, closed her eyes, and thought about how she had been blessed with this special person.

    
They walked through three different corridors, all constructed of what seemed to be wood, but all different colors: amber, mauve, and turquoise.  Kyra was starting to wonder if they would ever get to her room.  In the second corridor, the mauve one, she’d seen a weird picture on the wall.  The picture hadn’t been hanging, but sort of hovering as if the old frame and cloud-wall had some strange supernatural connection.
    
Then there’d been the picture itself.  It hadn’t seemed like an actual painting, but more like a mirage or a hologram.  Kyra had seen a lot of paintings in her life and this was different from all of them. 

She knew she could neither draw nor paint, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t go and see the wondrous talent and skill of brilliant artists, dead or alive.  She loved going to galleries and art museums and when there was an exhibition in town, she was there.  But now all that had changed.  She felt a slight pang in her heart at not being able to go to the galleries she loved to frequent.  Then she realized that that was exactly what she was doing: studying this picture and appreciating it for its artistic brilliance, albeit in this different setting.  She was sure there were plenty of paintings and pieces of art in Enchantus alone for her to enjoy.
    
It looked too real to be a painting.  There were no sweeping gestures, no strokes of color; it was all pristine, perfect.  It portrayed a man, who appeared to be middle-aged, but then again he could have been a lot older or younger, it was one of those paintings where you couldn’t really tell.  Kyra thought he looked like an older man. His head was clean shaven, but he wore a small cap, which didn’t actually cover his scalp, but just sat on his head liked an extended dome; like a sleeping terrapin she thought, giggling to herself.  He had a long gray beard that hung down, and where it ended, she didn’t know, for it continued below the border of the painting and into the imagination.  Maybe it stretched all the way down to his feet, but for some reason she didn’t want to know.  He wore a deep blue cloak.  This also appeared to be long, but the picture ended at his waist.  Two crystal white globes shone from his eyes.
    
Now she knew what had been confusing her about this painting.  The problem was that she knew it wasn’t a painting, and she hadn’t been able guess exactly why it wasn’t a painting.  Now she knew.  It was that the picture seemed to be alive.  She stood perfectly still, staring at the painting that was alive, waiting for some sign of movement: the flap of the cloak, the twitch of the face, perhaps the intake of breath.
    
Nothing happened and the mysterious picture continued to remain just that.  Kyra turned and followed Marie along the corridor to yet another.
    
A light smile touched Marie’s lips, which Kyra couldn’t see.

*

Demto’s eyes followed Kyra as she passed in front of him and continued along the corridor.  Once the two had left for another corridor, he stepped out of the frame and stood on the floor.
    
If anyone had been watching – which no one was – they would have seen that the old wizard did in fact have feet, encased in pointed silky-blue shoes, nothing like frogs feet at all.
    
Once he stood on the ground the frame disappeared.  Demto looked one more time down the corridor and then began walking in the opposite direction.  The wizard disappeared at the start of his forth step and the corridor was empty.

    
Marie stopped abruptly in this third and apparently final corridor and Kyra was just able to stop herself from bumping into the large pigeon.  Marie turned to face the wall and Kyra just waited, wondering.
    
“You must breathe onto the a’wall, my dear,” Marie said.
    
Kyra was confused, but nevertheless she blew out a strong breath and it formed a solid cloud before her very eyes, disappearing into the wall and then forming a cloudy doorway before her.
    
“Now, you rest a’yourself, for tonight is a’big night.  The people of a’Enchantus will all meet a’you.  Some you have a’met before, no doubt, in a’your dreams.  But you are the a’Chosen One, and they all anxiously a’want to meet you again, as a’well as all those that a’haven’t.  Now, rest.”
    
Marie turned and continued waddling up the corridor, turning right at the end.
    
Kyra felt alone for the first time in Enchantus.  She turned back to the doorway, which was now an exact outline of herself.  She walked through the cloud, with no problem, into her new room.
    
It was . . . just as she had left it.  An exact replica of her bedroom back home, where she once lived.  That place seemed more like a distant memory now than a past reality, no, it was more like a dream she’d had, and could barely remember.  But this was her bedroom, in its completeness, just as she’d left.
    
Kyra had always been very protective over her bedroom and kept it just the way she wanted it.  She was having a little trouble comprehending that this wasn’t her bedroom back home on Earth, but her bedroom in the great palace of Enchantus.  She sat down on her soft but firm bed, the bedspread a tapestry of a mythical land of elves, goblins, wizards and fairy folk; a place which had only ever existed in her imagination.  Until now.  There was a bookcase with rows upon rows of fantasy books; she knew every little world that’d been created within those thousands of pages.  Then there was the thick, leather bound, worn copy of The Lord of the Rings, a necessary bible for her.  On the wall was also a great poster of Treebeard, done with immense detail and filled with color; she often lost herself in that poster, picking out and studying the details of the background, as well as imagining the characters in that setting.  It was Merry and Pippin having their first conversation of Treebeard.
    
Kyra smiled and looked around the room where her desk and school things still were.  These were naturally all there, but were ugly gray colors, with neither a tint nor a shade of color.  Kyra didn’t have to go over and touch them to know that they weren’t really there, for she knew she would never need anything like that again in Aisis Lip.  Especially not when she would be facing Jolus the Malignant.  She forced his repulsive face from her mind.  But everything else was real, and it was at that moment that Kyra realized just how tired and exhausted she was, and what a long day it had been already, and that there was so much more coming.