In the eyes of some people, it might as well be an immutable law of nature that any given important story in the land of Duchowiesen has to start with a meeting in an inn. This theory is, of course, controversial, especially today. Some people contend that it's an ironclad law of sociology. Some argue that it only appears common due to the influence of tradition and convenience. Others still want to broaden the definition of "inn" to also include hotels, diners, cafes, bars, pretzel-huts and Wursteries and Biergartens, delis, greengrocers, flea markets, post offices, policlinics, railway station platforms and waiting halls, rows of payphones in the city streets, occult-hardened petrol stations and train halts far out in the wilderness, and basically any given places where people can meet without prior familiarity.  But regardless of which theory holds correct on the grand scale, many things in the past started in inns, and many things in the future will start in inns.

You don't have to go far if you want to get examples of the great and terrible, important and vapid, scientific and superstitious things that happened in inns. The defeat of the original Shadow Council by a group of wanderer heroes was precipitated by a meeting in an inn. The Second Gunpowder War started in an inn - an early modernity Biergarten - with an assassination of Queen Hedvika III by a musket-wielding cloak and dagger agent. The advent of modern antibiotics that upended complex healing magic and radically streamlined medicine is directly ascribable to two biologists meeting in a city diner, comparing notes, and realizing the antiseptic potential of certain fungal molds. The extreme sport of sandboarding was invented in an inn - the Old Haven hotel in Altynkhala to be exact. The list goes on. And the story that you're about to read is no different... but in the end, it didn't shake the world of Duchowiesen and Duchowieseners. It didn't shake the worlds of our heroes - not really. The only world that it perhaps had shaken when all was said and done was the world of Riddle Historians, for they had one less mystery to obsess over. It was a heroic journey where the important part was the journey, not the heroism... but like many heroic journeys, this one did begin in an inn. Of course, progress being what it is, it wasn't identical at all to the inns of ages past.

The Aquamarine Locomotive was by all accounts an unremarkable, decent suburban inn on the coast of the Inland Sea. With 74 years of history, it was neither particularly old nor dazzlingly new. As a location, it was not much more than a stopover point for city visitors arriving by ship or by train for a couple of days. When our story began, it was late morning there - almost but not quite yet 14 AM. Most of the patrons had better places to be around that time, so the dining hall stood mostly empty, with a single-digit number of people compared against dozens of empty seats. The television hanging in the corner halfway above the floor was off, and it was an old black-and-white model anyway; manufactured in Kolossalstadt a good fourteen years ago by Günther & Söhne Fernseherfabrik, a company that always advertised on the promises of supreme reliability rather than the latest technological bells and whistles. The almost-noon summer sun was shining through the windows, playing off the faceted glasswork of tableware like glasses and salt shakers, as well as the bright metallic red paintjob of the double-sided fridge that stood off to the side, with a hand-lettered label that said "Limonade" - a catch-all term for fizzy drinks in this part of Duchowiesen. Of course, the label didn't tell the whole truth; the fridge was big enough to also fit pre-made sandwiches and cold cuts in there. A little away from the fridge, the innkeeper stood behind the counter, absentmindedly polishing a beer mug and eyeing the ledgers that laid on the countertop nearby. A few of the robust wooden tables, covered in white-and-green checkered cloth, were occupied, and at one of them, sat Waleria: a beast-folk woman with tricolor red, brownish orange, and light grey fur, somewhat thin for her species and a little over two and a half metres in height, wearing a green-and-blue jacket with skirt. Her big triangular ears and clawed fingers twiddled as she waited for a meeting appointment. She worked as an ordinary tram service dispatcher in the city, and presumed nothing of herself besides that she was good at managing public transit timetables... but her false sense of her own unremarkability was about to be severely dented by another person specific to our yarn, who had just walked in.

Waleria didn't notice him at first when he walked through the doors. Then, he walked over to her, and she turned her head to look at him: just a regular human with short brown hair and blue eyes, a fluffy grey and brown tail, triangular ears near the top of his head, and a businesslike dress sense. Waleria saw his smart-looking hat and a notebook sticking out of his pocket and thought: "He looks like a journalist! This must be the guy!" He sat down next to Waleria and asked:

"Waleria Roos Nowakowska?"

"Yeah, that's me!" Waleria responded.

"Thank you for coming. I'm Levi Rubinstein, from The Magazine of Obscure Geographies," the visitor said, before showing his ID and accreditation. "I'm honored to speak with you; it's not every day one meets the heir apparent to the Lost Kingdom of Oostelijk Wunderwald!"

"Lost Kingdom of... sorry, what? Are you sure?" Waleria asked. She was intensely confused; not once in her life did any kind of inheritance make itself known to her.

"Wait, you don't know?" Levi asked.

"This is the first time I hear of it!" Waleria told him.

"You're the long-lost heir to the legendary kingdom of Oostelijk Wunderwald! The one that's been lost to the everyman's world for five hundred years and counting!" Levi enthused, waving his hands in the air.

"And how do you know?" Waleria asked, leaning forwards a bit.

"I went to three different soothsayers. Then I cross-referenced what they told me with the few remaining archive documents. Easy!" Levi replied, before pouring out an entire folder of historical documents and his journalistic notes right onto the table.

There was a silence over the table for a good thirty seconds, as the reality seemed to have the need to catch up to the truth that was just revealed. The air reverberated with the chatter of few other inn guests, the calls of seagulls from over the shore, and the quiet, remote sound of train wheels from the city's nearest railway line as Waleria looked over the small pile of papers gathered by The Magazine of Obscure Geographies. Then, she leaned back in her chair and asked, "Wait, if you expected me to know this... I guess you wanted to ask me about my ancestral history?"

"Essentially, yes," Levi replied with a slightly flummoxed look on his face.

"Well, I don't know anything about it," Waleria said. "Not what you'd like to know, at least. My family has lived working folk's lives by the Inland Sea since before the Overcast Era..." she continued, trying her best to remember if there were anything at all to hint at her heritage. "Are you sure I'm actually any kind of royalty? It just seems... far-fetched."

"Well..." Levi mused, "If your family doesn't have any leftover magic items that were passed down from generation to generation--"

"We don't, sorry," Waleria interrupted.

"...then we should probably go through our list of the Kingdom's remnants and visit museums so that you can try to reach out for the magic within. If you'd like to," Levi finished.

"I'm not really sure..." Waleria muttered. "I mean... do I really need to join your quest? I have trams to run!"

"You can stay and run trams, sure," Levi said. "But I don't ask for much! All I really need - right now - is a couple of days to take you to some museums across the shore. You can just think of it as an unconventional long weekend!" he said while sweeping his arms in a friendly gesture.

"A long weekend... hmm... I mean, it is midsummer..." Waleria mused.

"Besides, don't you want to know what your lineage was once entitled to, regardless of the Kingdom being gone?" Levi asked. "The mysteries of Oostelijk Wunderwald are yearning to be solved, and you could be the one to solve them!"

"Wait a minute... Oostelijk Wunderwald...!" Waleria said, the gears turning in her head. "I recall my husband reading a book about it, something like three and a half years ago..."

"Was it The Land, The Myth, The Legend: Oostelijk Wunderwald Explained?" Levi asked.

"Yes, that one!" Waleria replied.

"So... do you think you will help me unearth the truth?" Levi asked, leaning in a bit with a twinkle in his eyes.

Silence hung over the table for a few seconds, then Waleria scratched her chin, made a thoughtful expression for about fifteen seconds more... and told Levi, "Okay, you know what, I'll do it! Maybe you're the first person to tell me about my heritage, but now I wonder too! And it is only two days, at most three..."

"Splendid!" Levi replied.

"I'll call the depot if I can use some of my vacation days, and if they say yes, I'll take you over to my family and neighbors to tell them. Then we can get on our way," Waleria said.

She got up, and walked over to the payphone in the inn's shadowy corner - one that could as well be legally mandated for how often it appeared in folklore. The phone was a typical grey box design, with rounded corners and a black thermo-extruded plastic handset; not inspiring by any means despite its rugged practicality. On the front, there was a list of toll-free numbers and toll rates for city and intercity calls, reaching as far as the Land's End, the western border, and Krum's Oasis in the south. She dropped a few Groschen coins into the slot and dialed the number of her tram depot half a city away. Waleria didn't have to wait long for the answer; the depot's head manager picked up almost immediately.

"Hey, Karl?" Waleria asked.

"Waleria? What's going?" Karl asked back.

"Can I spend, uh, two or three vacation days on top of the weekend that began today?" Waleria told him. "Turns out I might be an heir to the Lost Kingdom of Oosterlijk-Wunderwald, and I've been asked to visit some nearby museums to check on their artifacts..."

"That's odd, but, uh, okay! You don't have those vacation days for nothing," Karl said. "Tell me how it went once you get back to the city."

"Thanks!" Waleria said, before hanging up the phone and turning back to Levi. "Well," she said, "you've gotta go with me now! I live only a few blocks away, and the train station is not much further off!" After she said that, Levi finished picking his papers back up, and the duo walked out of the inn.