The future was bright, excellent. His wench had taken him to a kind doctor—perhaps a Hebrew?—who prescribed some magnificent pills that balanced his moods in less than three hours.

To his surprise, his problem was not an excess of yellow bile, but something the doctor called ‘Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.’ He also ordered him to return in a month for more tests, as he saw the possibility of another disorder, the name of which Ailill had already forgotten. But he had to make sure to remember how he felt before and after taking the pills.

All this happened outside the AEONALIZE fortress, in a metropolis built underground, full of squares and roads, colours and sounds that were hideous but also interesting.

Its towers rose high up to the stone ceiling and were surrounded by huge white metal snakes carrying people inside. Ailill and the wench travelled along long paths, from one corner to another, in mere minutes.

She wanted to get off the beast at a certain place, but Ailill used his royal authority to ride around the city for several more laps. In the end, she fell asleep in his lap while he looked out the window.

The wench bought him a kind of frozen butter that tasted very sweet, the ‘ice cream’ he had heard about on his television programmes. If it hadn't been for the wench's limited finances, he would have tried all the flavours, but they were forced to settle for only four of the twenty available. She promised to buy him more in the middle of this moon, if he avoided yelling at other AEONALIZE employees.

On their way, they also found huge libraries, much larger than any he had ever seen in the cities where he had lived. Harper bought him countless volumes that he chose with enthusiasm. Apparently, the nasty bug in his brain also translated words written on parchment.

The wench insisted on buying clothes for Ailill, which they found ready-made, with no need for seamstresses, and all were similar to those of his time. The markets even had a section just for crowns.

They looked for tunics in the colours of his house, as well as trousers and boots.

Harper agreed to wear the clothes he had chosen for her, but only in private, even though there were many wenches wearing even more revealing dresses in the squares of the metropolis. ‘They are from other times. In mine, those clothes were only worn under other clothes, and in your own time it was the same!’ she replied to Ailill's insistence.

In the end, they also bought some outfits from different eras for him, just in case they had to attend a funeral, as it was considered courteous to wear clothes from the era of the deceased.

Inside the large clothing fortress, they saw a shop specialising in wedding dresses, most of them in shades of white, although there were also more colourful options.

The wench took him by the hand and showed him one in particular, which looked like a garment Ailill would have seen on his own mother. Harper's eyes filled with dreams:

‘I wore one like that at my wedding. We had a medieval theme. Of course, I wore white because I didn't know much about the customs of the time...’

Upon hearing this new information, the prince felt a certain heaviness that the magic pills could not completely block. Without them, he might have become angry, but with their effect, he only felt a knot in his stomach:

‘Do you have an owner, Harper?’ he managed to say. ‘Do your hand and your heart belong to another man?’

The wench's smile slowly turned into a bitter expression. It took her a while to answer: ‘I was widowed before I was recruited.’ Then she fell silent.

The knot in Ailill's stomach loosened a little, and he realised how absurd it was to envy a dead man, who was also of low birth.

Of course, Ailill would always be first in Harper's heart, for what low-born wench could dream of being the lover of a king? Not that he loved her or anything...

‘Of course...’ he tried to correct himself, ‘you and I could never marry, my noble rank would not allow it.’

Harper rolled his eyes: ‘I was just telling you a story, Your Majesty.’ Her tone sounded hurt, although he suspected it wasn't exactly because of his words. The wench let go of his hand and walked away from the area where the wedding dresses were on display.

They sat down in a garden to rest after walking for hours, touring castles and endless markets.

Ailill noticed how the wench was looking at the children playing around them.

‘Don't worry, my love, I'll soon fill you with my seed,’ he said, kissing her on the forehead. ‘And I promise to legitimise at least one of them, if I don't have any real heirs with a noble lady.’

Harper just rolled her eyes, saying nothing.

Ailill kissed her again, this time on the cheek. He hoped that giving her hope would make her a little happier.

‘We could have at least two, one who looks like you and one who looks like me.’

The wench closed her eyes in exasperation.

‘Robert,’ she said finally.

‘Is that a name you would like to give them?’ he asked, confused.

‘Robert was the name of my husband and my youngest son. The eldest was called Henry,’ replied the wench with a sigh. ‘They died on the same day.’

The prince stared at her in silence for a while, waiting for her to continue the story, but she seemed to be concentrating on holding back the bitter tears of loss.

‘My mother lost some children,’ he told her, thinking he understood why Harper was confessing this now. ‘I heard her say one day that even if she had a hundred living children, they could never replace the ones she lost.’

Harper swallowed and nodded.

‘Did your people bury their dead?’ continued the Celtic prince.

‘Even if we had buried them, their graves would no longer exist.’ The wench seemed resigned.

Ailill nodded. He thought that the infants must have been buried under the wench's old house, or perhaps they had been laid to rest with her father, in the open air or on a modest funeral pyre. Harper guessed his thoughts:

‘We had almost the same customs as your people. The three were cremated and placed in a communal mausoleum under a Catholic temple called Saint Baird.’ She seemed more willing to talk now.

He chuckled gently. ‘Saint Baird. It sounds like my brother's name.’

‘They named that temple after your brother,’ Harper said in a slightly lighter tone.