B.R. Schlüter - The chronicals of Elderon

Right when we got to the dance floor, the DJ played our favorite song and we half danced our hearts out.

We swung our bodies around wildly, to the beat of the music. After a good half hour, I pointed to our place and made a pantomime movement with my hand, as if I was going to drink something.

So we went back to our table , where 2 ice cold Fantastic Lagoon were already waiting for us.

I took the straw in my mouth and drank almost half of it in one go.

Lilly stared at me somewhat incredulously and we both had to start laughing.

At midnight sharp, the DJ turned off the music and announced that date night would now begin.

Instantly, masses of men poured out of the club, to our table.

It could be compared to a lush meadow and a swarm of locusts, I was them meadow.

The manager of the Triangle saw the commotion and asked the men to behave in a civilized manner and not to regard me as a piece of meat. Otherwise, they could leave his club and receive a one-year suspension.

"Date night or not, there will be no riot here!" he said, scowling at the crowd.

I listened to one life story after another.

There were stories about sick family members who needed expensive treatment, to heirs who were also rich, where a merger of the businesses and between us could be very beneficial. I had heard all these stories so many times now and I was tired of it always being about the money.

I was sitting bored at the table, sipping my third Fantastic Lagoon, when suddenly I saw a black shadow flit by in the corner of my eye. I looked up to see the figure that had so suddenly caught my attention. Standing in the back corner to the storage room was her. She looked like the woman I had been dreaming about for weeks. She nodded at me briefly and disappeared behind the next door.

I stood up with a jerk, so that the table began to sway threateningly. Lilly and the gentleman sitting across from us looked at me in confusion.

This could not possibly be real, I was awake!

I had to get to the bottom of this.

I walked around the table and ran across the dance floor, toward the storage rooms.

Lilly was having trouble keeping up with me.

When she finally caught up with me, she asked me, all out of breath, what had suddenly gotten into me.

"You're going to love this, I just saw the woman from my dreams, she was walking towards the storage room. Think I'm completely nuts, but I want to know what's going on now.

I finally want answers!"

Shortly after I said these words, we heard a purring voice telling us to follow her.

"Did you hear that too?" I asked, and Lilly nodded at me.

Since I wasn't the only one who had heard that voice, I was sure I hadn't lost my mind. We continued to creep towards the storage room.

As we entered the room, I could still see the tip of a coat darting around the next corner.

We went after it. Behind that corner was a huge, magnificent mirror, with strange runes on the sides.

This language should have been unknown to me, but as soon as I touched the frame, the runes unraveled before my eyes and I could read it.

It said, "The gateway between worlds."

I actually read it only to myself, but shortly after I had pronounced the last syllable, the mirror suddenly shone and and our reflection changed.

Before us now stood no longer our mirror images but a picture of a fairy and an elf.

In disbelief, I raised one hand and the fairy followed suit.

I looked over at Lilly, but she only grinned over both ears, as if this was nothing special for her.

The elf in front of me put her hand on the surface of the mirror, I snapped my eyes open and before I could say anything, I did the same.

A bright beam of light appeared, then everything went black and I fainted.

Welcome home

"Juna, Juna. Come on wake up. You're home." I heard a female voice say.

Bright, warming rays of sunlight woke me up.

I hadn't slept so well in a long time. Wait a minute, slept? Hadn't I just been at the Triangle? Had something been slipped into my drink, perhaps?

I scooted up and opened my eyes.

I had to put my hand over my eyes because the sun was so blinding. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the bright light.

I was sitting in a meadow of flowers in the middle of a clearing in the forest.

How on earth had I gotten here? And where was Lilly?

My head was spinning.

I sat down in the meadow and buried my face with my hands.

"This must be a hallucination! Yes exactly, I'm guaranteed to have fallen down in the storage room and hit my head and now I'm lying in the hospital, pumped full of medication, just dreaming all this!" I said to myself.

"What is a hallucination? Is this a new spell?" Asked a voice I didn't know.

I took my hands from my eyes and looked into 2 ice blue eyes.

Immediately I jumped up and looked over to this mysterious pair of eyes.

There was a wolf sitting in front of me!

I wanted to run away, but my legs immediately turned to jello and I slumped back to the ground. So I tried to somehow put some distance between me and the wolf by sliding around silly.

But instead of looking at me as his next prey, he tilted his head. First to one side, then to the other.

The image had something of a puppy hearing a squeaky toy for the first time.

"Ha ha ha, Jun you are really gorgeous." I heard Lilly exclaim behind me.

"You're really scared of your soul guardian?!" she laughed.

"My WHAT?!"

I turned to Lilly and couldn't believe my eyes.

She had wings and she was glittering?!

Now I was sure, THIS HAD TO BE A DREAM!

"I'm dreaming all this! This can't be real! A talking winged wolf and my sparkly winged girlfriend?!" I laughed hysterically.

She came over to me and pinched my shoulder.

"Ouch!" I groaned out.

"This is not a dream Juna. I told you, eventually the truth will reveal itself to you." she said, smiling lovingly at me.

"What truth? Where are we here? Why is there a winged talking wolf sitting not two meters away from me?

Why could I read the runes on the mirror? And why do you have glittering wings?"

I had questions just bubbling out of my mouth.

"Shh, all in good time Jun. Right now, we should head to the crystal castle before the guards collect us." she whispered to me.

But by then it was too late.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, 8 guards appeared and circled us.

One of the guards stepped forward and pointed his sword at me.

"You there! What are you doing on the royal lands?" he asked, visibly enraged.

"King's lands?" I stammered.

"The extent of your punishment will be decided by King Matteo. Take them with you men!"

We were tied by the wrists with ropes and had to go with them.

"Shh, Lilly. What's all this about?" I asked as unobtrusively as possible.

She looked around and made sure the guards weren't looking right then. Then she answered me. "I actually wanted to answer some of your questions before we would have gone to King Matteo, so you would have at least had a little bit of a head start!"

We walked for several minutes through the forest until I saw a large and very imposing castle in front of me.

On the flags on the castle, you could see the royal coat of arms. A star above a sunset.

It looked so familiar, but I just didn't know where I had seen it before.

Once in the throne room, the guards pushed us so hard that we fell to our knees.

However, they took our shackles off.

"Keep your heads bowed until the king allows you to look at Him!" one of the guards ordered us.

"What is going on here?" asked a deep, angry voice in front of us.

"These two figures were walking around the Lovers' Glade, sir." Answered the guard, who had also ordered us to keep our heads down.