Eve was feeling restless.

“Are we seriously going to follow the people who only just threatened to kill us?” she whispered urgently to Bree, as they rode Antares together. They’d been following the group of Rose warriors on their lizard steeds. A little ahead of Eve and Bree, Cat was chatting with Light, the girl who’d attacked them earlier. Eve groaned at the sight. She did not like that girl. I mean, what kind of name was “Light of Stars” anyway, right?

As for Oliver... he was keeping some distance from the warriors and, presumably, from Catherine too. Princess Catherine.

“Well, Cat seems to trust them,” Bree replied, “so it’s fine by me. And besides, if there really is a sandstorm coming, I, for one, would rather find shelter somewhere safe.”

Eve grunted, but did not say anything. Well, I don’t trust them, she thought to herself.

It wasn’t a long journey. After about fifteen minutes, the group came upon a large stone archway leading... nowhere, apparently. It was just there, standing forlornly among the rocks, as if someone had decided to build a smaller-scale version of the Arc de Triomphe smack-dab in the middle of the Arizona desert. Eve watched curiously as the lizard-riders advanced toward it. One by one, they crossed under the archway and disappeared.

Seriously, they just disappeared. Eve saw Cat and that Light girl blinking out of existence right before her eyes, and, for the second time that day, she doubted her sanity. Then Bree and Eve crossed under the archway, as well. In a flash, the desert scenario around them was replaced with a grassy meadow. There were maybe a hundred people roaming about, and a few dozen lizards basking in the sunlight. She could see crop fields to her right, and a little village up ahead.

“That’s... wow... did we just—”

“Yeah,” said Bree, breathless. She was just as in awe as her sister.

The two of them dismounted Antares, and looked at the landscape around them. There was no sign of the desert anywhere. A moment later, they saw Oliver blinking into existence under the archway.

“Wow,” said the boy.

“You can say that again,” Eve remarked, amazed.

What happened next was somewhat peculiar. A couple of people beckoned Light of Stars over. The Rose girl walked over to the stone archway, and stopped just in front of it. She took a glass bottle filled with some red powder from her purse, and smeared her hands with the powder. Then, she started making gestures in the air, slowly. The powder began to glow, and left a trail of reddish light with each gesture she made. The girl drew symbols in the air, mostly overlapping circles crossed with lines. Once she was done, they all changed color together, from red to gold. The carved inscriptions on the stone archway lit up in the same golden glow, forming patterns which seemed to complement the ones Light had drawn. Both the archway inscriptions and Light’s drawing grew brighter and changed colors again, this time to a deep purple, before the glowing lines gradually unraveled and faded into thin air.

Bree was obviously very excited about this. She scampered over to where the other girl was standing. “Hey, um... Light, isn’t it? Can I ask you what you just did there?”

Light was wiping the red powder from her hands with the aid of an old rag. “I sealed the gate,” she announced. “We usually only do that by nightfall, but there’s a sandstorm coming, and we don’t want to fill the whole place with sand once again.”

“What is this place?” Bree asked. “Is this another world?”

“You know what, I’m not sure,” said Light, wavering. “But if I had to guess, I’d say... yes? Maybe. Probably.”

“Then... was it not you who built that gate?”

Eve began to realize why Bree was pursuing that particular line of questioning. She wanted to know if these people knew of a way to send the two of them back to their own world. It would get them home sooner, and save them a trip to Sol Kingdom.

This was it. A real possibility to go home. Eve should have been thrilled.

She wasn’t.

Why wasn’t she?

“I didn’t build the gate,” said Light, “but maybe I can tell you who did. Now, this could be a long conversation, don’t you wanna chat over some food? Come on, let me show you around,” she offered a hand to Bree, and the girls smiled at each other. Eve trudged on behind them, with arms crossed, feeling entirely out of sorts.

—

The logs crackled in the fireplace. If the round room that Light called home were to be defined in a single word, it would be “cozy”. The wooden floor was covered with carpets. There were a few couches arranged around a round coffee table, and cushions were spread out everywhere. The windows, too, were round, and a spiraling staircase near the fireplace seemed to lead up into a bedroom of sorts, upstairs.

Light rescued the boiling kettle from the grate over the fireplace, and served her guests some tea. Well, she served Bree, and Cat. Eve refused any tea. She didn’t trust these people, and she especially didn’t trust Light of Stars. There was something about that woman that just… just… well, there was something, okay?! Eve didn’t know what, exactly, but whatever it was, it was there. And that meant this Light girl should not be trusted.

Oliver didn’t have any tea, either. In fact, as far as suspicions go, he seemed even more alert and restless than Evelyn. Rather than sitting around the coffee table like the girls, the boy simply leaned against the wall and stared, distrustful. But while Evelyn’s distrust was of Light of Stars and the rest of those Rose people, Oliver was very clearly wary of Catherine.

It stood to reason. His father had been captured by the crown guards. He resented the royals, maybe even considered them his sworn enemy. And he’d been helping Cat all the way there without knowing she was one of those very enemies.

Cat, who either did not notice Oliver’s glares or had chosen to ignore them, praised Light’s tea, and she was answered with a very courteous smile from Light of Stars.

“About that thing you asked me earlier,” said Light, “how familiar are you all with the stories about the First People?”

Bree shrugged. “I don’t think I’ve never heard of them,” she said. Eve glanced over at Oliver, and knew that he was paying close attention now.

Light nodded. “Well, I don’t know much about it, myself. It happened a long time ago, and we only ever hear about these things from stories our parents and grandparents tell us. But I’ll do the best I can.

“There was a time before kings and kingdoms. Before wars were fought, and cities were built. Back then, the people who inhabited these lands would live not in houses like this one, but in networks of tunnels and caves dug inside mountains. They lived there for many generations. Those are the ones we call the First People. As in, the first people who have lived on this land.

“Then, several hundred years ago, strangers started coming from other parts of the world. They settled on the lands around the First People’s mountains, and started building cities. They brought violence with them, and wars. They exploited people. And at some point, they started trying to reach the First People, to take their workforce and resources.

“The First People did not fight them. Instead, they simply left. One day, they all migrated together into the desert. They were well-versed in sorcery, so they built these gates, and created a new life away from the land that was now occupied by kings.”

“Wait up,” said Oliver, shocked. “Are you the First People?”

Light shrugged. “I don’t know? Maybe?”

“Mother once told me about this,” said Catherine, and her voice alone was enough to send Oliver back into sulking. Cat ignored that. “She said that throughout time, those people who wished to leave the Kingdoms sometimes wound up in the desert. And when they did, they would find a trail of desert roses leading up to one of the gates. That’s why these people are called the People of the Rose. Because they were guided here by roses.”

“We don’t know what happened to the First People,” Light continued. “Whether any of us here are descendants of them, or if we’re all just great-grandchildren of those who followed the roses, that much is not clear. The records are all indecipherable.”

“Records?” Bree asked, curious.

Light nodded. “The First People left us a lot of books, but nobody here can read them. They’re all gathered in the library. Want me to show you?”

Bree’s eyes glinted. “Yes, please.”

—

The library was the largest building in the village, although it was still comparatively small when you think of those enormous public libraries of the big cities in Bree’s homeworld. The books were all at least a couple of centuries old, and some looked much older still. A lot of the books had a gleam of magic faintly visible running along the spine, which was probably the only thing keeping them from disintegrating. Bree dashed to one of the shelves, and eagerly took one of the titles from it. She opened the book, and yelped.

“Evelyn, come look.”

Eve walked up to her, glanced over one of the pages, and frowned. It was all a bunch of strange-looking characters neatly ordered in lines and columns.

“What about it?” she asked, unimpressed.

Bree gaped at her. “Don’t you see what this is?” said the girl. “It’s traditional Chinese.”

Eve stared at the page again. She still couldn’t recognize a single one of those characters. Which should be a given, since she had never shown much interest in foreign languages at all.

Bree handed Eve the Chinese book, and selected another one from the same shelf. She opened it, and smiled. Eve scoffed.

“Don’t tell me you know what that one is, too?” said Eve, in disbelief. The symbols in that book looked just as foreign to her as the previous ones.

“Yes,” said Bree. “Yes I do. I’ve seen these before. This is Tibetan script.”

Eve wrinkled her forehead, unconvinced. “Now you’re just making these up.”

“Am not!” Bree protested. She replaced the book on the shelf, and took another title from the shelves at random. When she opened that one, she squealed happily. “Okay, now tell me you don’t know this one.”

Eve looked at the book in her hands, and her jaw dropped. It was in English. Not only that, it had a goddamn picture of Shakespeare on the first page.

“Shit!” Evelyn exclaimed, to Bree’s amusement. Bree laughed, replaced the book on the shelf, and took another.

“Latin,” she announced, giggling. “And not any Latin, either. It’s Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy. Eve, do you know what this means?”

“Uh... Maybe?” said Eve, cautiously. “Actually, I’m not sure I do.”

Bree shook her head. “Can’t you see? These books are all from our world!”

Evelyn replaced the Chinese book on the shelf. “Okay, I can see that,” said the brunette, “but what does it mean, exactly?”

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” said Bree. “What if these First People were originally from our world?”

“That, or they were interplanetary book thieves,” Eve remarked, making Bree laugh.

“Yeah, could be that, too.” Bree reached for some books on another shelf, and froze. The smile disappeared from her face.

“What’s wrong?” Eve asked, concerned.

“Magic books,” she whispered, ominously. She took one from the shelf, with reverence, and opened it slowly. Evelyn approached her, and recognized some of the french words on the page. Bree’s hands were trembling.

“Bree?” she whispered. Shocked, the girl closed the book, and placed it down on the shelf.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s... I never thought I’d see another grimoire in my life, apart from the one grandma gave me. I’m... scared.”

Evelyn furrowed her brow. “Scared? How come?” she asked.

Bree took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, before attempting to explain. “Grandma’s book... it was filled with annotations she left for me. Warnings, advice, notes about spells I shouldn’t try, or about the dangers of said spells. But these...” she took the grimoire from the shelf again, and leafed through it. “These have nothing. I think the way back home could be in one of these, but how can I know if it’s safe to do one of those spells, without grandma’s advice to guide me? When... when I brought the two of us here, that night a week ago, it was because I ignored her advice.”

Evelyn felt something strange stirring inside her chest. An anxious, unnerving feeling. There was a question she realized she needed to ask, but now she wasn’t really sure if she wanted to.

“What were you trying to do, that night?” the words escaped her lips before she could stop herself, as words sometimes do.

Bree winced. “If I tell you,” she said, looking at the other girl with pleading eyes, “will you promise not to hate me?”

Hate you? thought Eve, surprised. What could Bree possibly have been trying to do that would make Eve hate her?

“Okay,” she said.

“It was a wish-granting spell,” Bree confessed, “one of the greater spells of power. The problem with spells of power is that they never do what you want them to. You can dominate smaller spells, make them do your bidding, but you can’t do that with spells of power. And I thought I could, you know. I thought I’d say ‘this is my wish’ and get it granted. Grandma had written a really huge warning on that page that I should never try this spell, because what we think we want and what we actually desire are two completely different things.”

“But you tried it anyway,” Eve concluded. “Did you really wish to send us to another world?”

Bree looked miserable, then. “Not us, Eve. Just you.”