“There's a little more to love and life then fairy tales and hand me down dreams.” ~ “Someone Else’s Dream,” Faith Hill

“All that we see or seen is but a dream within a dream.” ~ Edgar Allen Poe

Sascha awoke the next morning by Selene throwing herself onto the bed next to her. Sascha screamed and almost fell off the bed with the incredible bounce from the force of her friend’s hurtling. It was apparent that the sun had just rose and there was no reason for Selene to be awake now. She was the heaviest sleeper in the entire castle.

“What are you doing?!” Sascha groggily mumbled. “Why are you even awake? Go to sleep!”

“Hell no, bitch. Now get UP!” Selene argued, shaking Sascha, who had dove under her covers. “I left my curtains open so the sun would get me up.”

“That worked?” Sascha poked her head out of the covers to ask her question. She was amazed. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, I’m perfectly fine, and of course it worked. I wanted it to work so it did,” Selene replied, sticking her tongue out. “I’ll let you go back to sleep if you tell me what happened after I left last night.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Sascha moaned. “Fine. We snogged. Are you happy now? Leave me alone! I want to sleeeeeep.”

“Well now that you’ve told me that,” Selene said. “Of course not! Details, woman, details! And I’m not even going to SAY that I told you so.”

“You are much too energetic this early in the morning. Don’t make me hit you,” Sascha warned her best friend. Selene just made a “phooey” motion and beckoned her to spill. “Fine. I don’t know, there was flirting, and then there was kissing, and then we had hot chocolate, and then there was more kissing, and then we went to bed. Separately, mind you.”

“Gee, how’d you guess that was my next question? You’re no fun,” Selene pouted. Sascha was about to start crying so Selene crawled under the covers. “Fine. I suppose sleep is in order. You had a strenuous night from the sound of it.”

“Ugh! You’re horrible, sis,” Sascha said. She laughed then. “I believe at one point last night I told Gabriel that you have a dirty mind.”

“You only speak the truth,” Selene mumbled, already falling asleep.

“Hey! You can’t fall asleep before me! You’re the one who stormed in here to wake me up. That’s not fair!” Sascha’s cries were useless and Selene conked out as though drugged. Grumbling, Sascha settled back under the covers to sleep for a few more hours. She hoped Raya wouldn’t get anxious over her missing mistress but didn’t worry too much about it as sleep overcame her once again.

“Girls,” Amelie said, struggling to wake Selene as Sascha groggily stretched. “Cecilia has requested your presence in the dueling room. She also requires you to dress casually, although she requests that what you wear be of a feminine nature. Come now, you’ve already slept past breakfast!”

“Fine, fine,” Sascha said, rising. Amelie went to her closet and selected a beige peasant dress that had large paneled ruffles on the bottom and a cinched neckline with a wine coloured sash to give it some shape. Sascha asked that she wear brown slippers today as she had not yet worn them. Selene managed to stumble to her own room where Raya was waiting with a plum skirt in the same style as the bottom of Sascha’s dress, a loose white shirt like she’d worn the night before to duel, and a lilac vest, with black slippers.

“We’re probably the best dressed peasants around,” Selene mused as she and Sascha conjoined in the hallway. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

“Those colours look nice on you,” Sascha said. Both girls’ hair had been left loose.

“Thank you. I think it has to do with the hair,” Selene replied. They went to find Cecilia.

She was, as Amelie and Raya had both told them, in the room where they had dueled. There was now a small rectangular table against the windows, off to the side. The girls had brought their books and papers with questions for Cecilia. However, she sat the two confused girls down in chairs before they could ask her anything.

“After last night’s little demonstration, I feel it is absolutely necessary to begin your actual training immediately,” Cecilia told them. The girls’ faces lit up, but Cecilia continued speaking before either could comment. “Now, I know you had questions for me, and we’ll get to those later. I want you to know the things in those books more so for getting to the capital and communicating with people there, and not seeming like complete dolts or foreigners when you do it. The power itself is probably dying to be used right now, so I thought we might try it out.”

“Thank you!” The girls chorused. They jumped up and threw their books and papers and pens down on their now empty seats. Selene asked, “Where do we start?”

“I know you girls have wings. I think I ought to teach you the little chant so they can be produced without damage to your clothing. How’s that?”

“Great. An excellent place to start, I think. What’s the chant?” Sascha asked, bouncing up and down. Cecilia laughed.

“All right girls, repeat after me. It’s quite simple: Najimala haygarrang,” Cecilia said. “After you say it, just summon your wings. It’ll be as though your shirts had no backs to them.”

“Interesting. But one question: How exactly do we ‘summon’ our wings? They just sort of appeared out of necessity last time,” Selene asked.

“Oh! I didn’t realize you didn’t know that. Just wish them to be there. Make yourself think you need them,” Cecilia told her. “I don’t know anyone that has wings, so I’ve never seen them summoned, but as a scholar I’ve read much about the topic.”

“I see,” Sascha said, thoughtfully. “Well, come on Selene, let’s try this. Oh! And your wings are rather large, so when you summon them, see if you can keep them closed. You’d take out the windows otherwise!”

Selene grinned. “I’ll try not to break anything, but I make no promises.”

Together, the girls recited, “Najimala haygarrang.” Then they closed their eyes and concentrated. Selene’s wings appeared almost instantly, closed. She tentatively started to open them and stopped when she realized that her wingspan was indeed the size of the room. Sascha’s appeared a few moments later and she stretched them, as they weren’t nearly as large as her best friend’s. Their clothes were not torn. They laughed with excitement and Sascha’s wings disappeared, then she hugged Cecilia. Selene kept hers out a little longer before letting them disappear and then she too hugged Cecilia.

“That was great! So, is controlling power really just about incantations and stuff?” Selene asked. Cecilia shook her head.

“A lot of it can be done naturally, depending on a person’s ability. For instance,” Cecilia said. She pointed her hand at the parchments the girls had thrown down and waved her hand back towards herself. The parchment flew to her hand as though attached to string. The girls clapped. “You can learn things like that easily and by yourself, once you acknowledge your capacity to do it. My teaching you will be mostly the things you won’t be able to figure out for yourself, the incantations and whatnot. And I’ll make you practice, of course. Power is a very easy thing, as I’m sure Aubrey has told you. It’s just a matter of harnessing it properly,” she explained.

Selene now pointed at her pen and motioned it to her. Nothing happened. She pointed again, angrily, and the pen lifted up, shook for a moment, then fell back down. Cecilia and Sascha both laughed. Selene huffed and turned back around, admitting she needed more work.

“Power is largely about discipline,” Cecilia said. Selene and Sascha both groaned. “Now before you get upset, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Selene, do you know why it didn’t work? Because you didn’t really want the pen. I know that sounds silly, but your strength of character and determination is important. You can’t just want to do something to do it, you have to really want it for its own sake. It must be a pure need or desire, not just a trivial thing. You can’t want the pen to come to you just to show off, you must honestly need the pen.”

“Then why’d the papers come to you? You aren’t using them,” Sascha pointed out. Cecilia smiled.

“Good observation. But I wanted them to come to me so I could demonstrate to you what you are capable of doing yourselves eventually. It was an honest need,” she told her.

Selene pointed again to the pen and motioned it to her. This time it flew swiftly to her hand, and she smiled. She took the paper from Cecilia and began to write on it. “I really did have to use it,” she explained smugly. Cecilia laughed, and Sascha just shook her head.

“Must you have the last word always?” Sascha giggled. The pen flew from Selene’s hand to Sascha’s, causing the word Selene had been writing to smudge. Selene protested, and Sascha handed it back.

“Now what’d you do that for? You didn’t need it! Why’d it work for her?” Selene said to the two women. Cecilia just laughed as Sascha plastered a big grin on her face.

“I sincerely wanted to teach you a lesson,” she said innocently. “And apparently the pen agreed! Hey, now there’s a question. Does the power prevent us from doing things if it doesn’t think we should, do we stop ourselves and not realize it, or does everything in Elysium have some inherent power in it that connects to ours and communicates with it? Don’t look at me like that, Selene, I know it sounds stupid but it’s a plausible question.”

“It’s all within ourselves, I think, Sascha. Obviously inanimate things such as pens and paper are easy to manipulate, but other living things pose the problem of their power conflicting with your own. When that happens it’s a question of the power communicating, or the stronger power simply overriding and suppressing the lesser, as with an animal.”

“So then, everything has power, even, I don’t know, ants?” Selene asked. Cecilia nodded. “Well, that’s just a little weird to think about. Do they power-form their ant hills or what?”

“No, Selene. They don’t ‘power-form’ their ant hills. They don’t really do anything with their power, but they do have it,” Cecilia told her. Selene and Sascha just laughed. “Well, come on, you have a lot more to learn.”

“Okay. So what else can we do besides telekinesis and wings? Which are wonderful, but Aubrey said that power here took the place of technology. Like, oh! What was that thing Milly had, Selene?” Sascha cried. Selene thought for a moment.

“She used a ‘rhycse jewel’ to communicate with Aubrey, I think?” Selene suggested. “And mentioned something about unconventional travel?”

“Oh! Rhycse jewels are found throughout the castle, I don’t know if you’ve actually seen them though. Or, well, recognized them at least. There’s an incantation to use them, including the name of the person you want to see. The person does not need to be near a jewel to respond, which is the nice part. You can speak as long as you keep the connection open on your end through the jewel. I’ll teach you the incantation later. As for ‘unconventional travel,’ that would be the bigger version of the rhycse jewel, the one used not just to talk but to actually go between places. It’s more complicated, I’ll get to it later, all right?” Cecilia explained. The girls nodded.

“Gabriel,” Aubrey called. Her grandson had tried to sneak past the open door of the room she was sitting in, reading. He paused and stuck his head in. “Come in here.”

“Yes, Grandmother?” Gabriel was unsure what she wanted. “Is there anything you need?”

“Not really. Cecilia has told me that she’d begun explaining power to the girls and how to actually use it, so I’d imagine they’ll be ready to go to the capital within the week. I want you to show them your palace, of course, let them adjust. See if you can get them to talk to anyone of… them. You know what I mean. I don’t encourage it but it would probably help,” Aubrey told him, sighing. “I can’t believe it’s already coming down to it. I feel suffocated and in need of their decision already!”

“Calm down, Grandmother. We haven’t left yet and no matter what happens, I think everything will be okay.” Gabriel had thought the previous night what it would mean for Sascha and himself if they didn’t help her. He hadn’t reached any definite conclusions but knew that no matter what, he would still care for her deeply. He didn’t tell his grandmother this yet though. Well, at least not in full extent. “It’ll all work out, trust me.”

“I want to, Gabriel; I really do,” Aubrey smiled sullenly.

“Not to be rude, but I was on my way to speak with Thomas. He is still here, isn’t he?” Gabriel lied. Aubrey nodded and her grandson dashed from the room.