Soon enough, in around ten minutes total, the two were at their destination. Waleria tapped Levi on the shoulder as they got up, and the two stepped off at a bus stop nearly lost amid lush greenery, a small piece of the sea and a far-off peninsula visible in-between some of the nearby buildings. The brisk seaside breeze smelled faintly of saltwater, and Waleria took a deep breath through her nose before waving her companion to follow her.

Leaving the street, Waleria and Levi went through an arch in-between two residential buildings and into the courtyard. Behind the branches of yet more trees, they could see a playground with human and elven kids playing, the latter taking care to not get their treewood antlers caught in anything. Closer by, an elven teenager and her grandma were working on a small garden, and a couple of tall beastfolk were sitting on a bench, solving a crossword puzzle in the newspaper. Levi followed Waleria as she went into the foyer of the building where she and her family lived. The place was built five decades ago, and it looked the part: dusty corridors, tiled floors, tall windows crossed by several transom bars per unit. She nodded to the concierge - a grumpy-looking human wearing a homemade sweater in an eye-catching geometric pattern and navy-style bell-bottom trousers, his legs up on the ornate front desk as he watched the people visiting. Waleria then went up the stairs, Levi following after her. Now, the real challenge was upon them: navigating a post-War interior plan of Waleria's apartment block. In this "everything new is just well-forgotten old" type of building plan, the architecture was not dissimilar to the Late Guild Era and Early Modern Era way of building up living spaces in cities. There, two or three big kitchens and dining rooms could serve a cluster of bedrooms, bathrooms, and living rooms, occupied by either good friends or very large extended families. It wasn't for everyone, of course - some people needed separated apartments to maintain personal comfort - but for a surprising number of people, it worked. This layout style was born of the Continental War - not just the material shortages that persisted after the guns fell silent, but the continent-wide realization that people living together and being kind to one another is the only viable alternative to mutual destruction.

As she and her visitors ascended the stairs to the second floor, Waleria made a couple of turns, went through a door, then went out onto a balcony-like external walkway, and dove back into the building. Passing another door that she opened with her apartment keys, she arrived to a second foyer that had a large-volume shoe drawer standing next to an umbrella hanger and wallpapered in inoffensive teal shade, and from it into a large dining room that had a couple of human neighbors of hers talking on the other end of the table. She then turned to one of the doors leading into it, and opened it with her keys too. She was now in the living room of her apartment - with its tall 3,5 metre ceilings, wallpaper decorated in a green flower and leaf pattern, and the old pre-War furniture, the chairs and tables and drawers redistributed into the hands of the people from some rich official's mansion. The sun was streaming through the windows of the room, the curtains drifting in the breeze, and the table had an unfinished board game round on it. Looking around with a smile, Waleria said loudly:

"Hey, I'm back! And I've got news!"

At those words, Waleria's husband emerged from his office room, and her two kids ran out to the living room as well. "What's going on, mom?" one of them asked.

"Well, Franciszek... how do I say it!" Waleria replied. "Remember the meeting today that I've been invited to, by someone from The Magazine of Obscure Geographies? Turns out that we're actually heirs to a lost kingdom that's been gone from the maps for centuries!"

"Wow! That's so cool!" Franciszek said, his ears perking up at the news.

"Mind you, it doesn't change anything for us, since our country replaced the old kingdoms, and the one we're talking about is... well, lost." Waleria said. "But I'm going on a trip around some coastal museums for a long weekend. I want to see if we can find some pieces of it. First we're going to the Lighthouse Museum of Spokojny Brzeg; then the museums of Ferienstadt Binnenstrand; then a museum by a railway station up the shore; and last the city museum in Orangenbaum-Stadt!"

"A long weekend, you say?" Waleria's husband asked, raising his bushy eyebrow.

"Yeah, it will only take three days, at most four. I already talked with Karl, he agreed to provide some vacation days!" Waleria replied.

"Should we help you pack?" Waleria's husband asked her.

"Naw, I can do it myself! Meanwhile, you and the kids can talk to comrade Rubinstein, and find out what all the fuss is about..." she told him, and started going around gathering the multitude of items she would need to take with herself.

Now, my dear reader, you may wonder why Waleria believed Levi's seemingly tall tale after simply looking at his bundle of notes and remembering a book that she read about the subject. But truth be told, low-level magic and mystery was everywhere around her. Her neighbors invited her to seances every other week, currying favors with the spirits; the chief mechanic at the tram depot, meanwhile, learned divination and inherited a crystal ball from his parents, just as they had from their parents and so on, nine generations back. Her boss, Karl, dabbled in summoning rituals just as her neighbors did, learning professional lore from the railway spirits as much as his day job. And then there was her husband's interest in runic words, his weekends spent elbow-deep in chalk dust as he practiced carving magic runes into chalk tablets. To her, wizardry and mystery and legacy were nothing new, and having some to her own life was not unthinkable - far from it.

In short order, Waleria packed her bag for the trip - toothbrush and furcomb, a change of clothes, a photo camera, a book of local maps, and a novel she was reading to pass the time on the trains. She added cash to her wallet to buy whatever small things she might need along the way - after all, Duchowiesen did have a market economy even if it was people-owned - and checked that she has her identity card and transit pass with her. At the same time, her husband and Levi explained to the kids what was the deal with the Lost Kingdom... something she herself would have to hear later, as she and Levi had to set out now if they wanted to catch their electric train out of the city. After she informed the neighbors in the next apartment over, she picked up her stuff, and walked out the same circuitous way as she got in, Levi following after her.

As they left the apartment building and went to the bus and tram stop, the heroes didn't have to wait for long to see a tram arrive. They got onboard, and Waleria immediately turned to Levi, then asked:

"So start from the beginning again. What do you even know about... Oostelijk Wunderwald, right?"

"Not that much," Levi told her. "For my article, I rounded up almost all the info that Duchowiesen has, but it's still not a lot. It was a kingdom somewhere east of the Inland Sea, and the "Wunderwald" name implies its connection to the forested areas. Likely not Stalwart Woods, as those are too well-charted; the common rumor - and the best hypothesis we've got - has its location northwest of the Meadowlands. Next, we know the date of the Kingdom's disappearance: approximately from 9742 to 9745 on the Continuum Calendar, just as Early Modernity was kicking into high gear."

"Okay, I see," Waleria replied.

"Onwards!" Levi continued. "Besides the name and the purported location, what we know really well is the surviving iconography of the Kingdom. We know its coat of arms, we know the features of its coinage, we know the names of some of its royal family, which is how I found you. Then, we know the tell-tale signs of its grey literature--"

"Grey literature?" Waleria asked in confusion.

"Technical and government publications, like budget books for example," Levi said, then continued with the explanation. "We know how to distinguish the few that survive from the Lost Kingdom. On a basic level, we can identify the Kingdom's remnants, by ways mundane or occult. And finally, we know the reason why it disappeared; a war immediately beforehand. The riddle historians have reasons to believe the kingdom was literally and figuratively wiped off the maps by a conclave of powerful spirits in concert with mortal occultists, and even if any of them are still extant now... they won't talk, let me assure you."

"Then what are we even looking for?" Waleria asked, raising her eyebrow.

"Scraps and morsels, if we're being real about it," Levi said as he turned to Waleria. "We just want to see if you, the heir apparent, can glean anything from the few surviving items, books, or art pieces that everyone else can't. If you can divine anything from them, this'll be my big scoop for the year, and if we find much of interest, we can refer it to the Riddle Historians. But I doubt we will find a lot."

As they talked about the Lost Kingdom, the tram went along its grass- and cobblestone-covered tracks towards the local train station. Waleria and Levi stepped out, and went over to the ticket booths to buy the short-range intercity tickets to Spokojny Brzeg. Then, Levi got his suitcase from the station storage lockers, and they went out to the platform, and sat down on one of the comfortable outdoor benches - with arched structure and only two smooth armrests capping the edges of the bench, placed in the shade of a broadleaf tree. Waleria looked up, past the railroad electrification gantries and the tall lighting masts with gas discharge lamps high up on top, and stared into the blue sky peppered with puffy white clouds. Her entire worldview was upended not two hours ago - or at least, the world tried to upend it, with mixed success. She asked herself what it really meant to be a descendant of a long-lost royal family, and heir to a kingdom that literally did not exist, in a modern socialist democracy no less. Did she have any obligations? Was she really entitled to any honors? Could she shift the inheritance to someone else? What did it mean for her day job of scheduling public transit? To her, it was one big question mark. She tried to get back to her reality here and now, and looked back down to the station. In front of her and her newfound companions, there was the spacious platform, the four-track arrangement with two central through-tracks and two platform stop tracks on the outside, then the other side's platform - a typical Duchowiesen suburban station. On the other side, she could see the other, smaller station building, and then the tall new 12-floor apartment blocks behind it, built of large prestressed concrete panels that were colored grey, gold, and orange, all framed by the green leaves of summer. There was the quiet hustle and bustle on the other side of the station, and a janitor in a deep blue uniform with a long swishing tail and an extravagant, almost Gearhead-like haircut, sweeping the station platform with a large broom. The sound of the broom head brushing against the rough ceramic pavement of the platform was, to the janitor, a good indication that things were in order and as they should be. And then, Waleria realized that at least, she knew one thing for certain: the intercity electric multiple unit train that she and Levi got tickets for would still arrive on time, or at worst be late by no more than five minutes. No matter any revelations about her ancestry and no matter any strange happenings ahead, the World's globe kept on spinning.