The Forgotten One

Day 2

    I woke up to the sun shining and it seemed that what had happened yesterday was a dream, but I knew it wasn't because everyone was asleep in my room. Marionette, Silvia, Flora and I, all fell asleep on my bed while Alex, Leon, Theron and Harper fell asleep on some comfortable chairs that were in the sitting area of the room. “Hey everyone! It’s time to wake up!” I raised my voice so everyone could hear it. They all started to gain consciousness and become more and more awake. “Clarabel are you in here?!” Marie’s voice sounded panicked. “Yes Marie I’m in here are you okay?”

“Thank goodness! The other servants couldn’t find any of the crowned princes or princesses!” As soon as she said that we all froze then started laughing. “Ms. Clarabel, is someone else in the room?”

“Marie, you can come in.” I called out to her and she opened the door to see all of us just waking up. A smile spread to her lips and she let out a light chuckle, “So this is where everyone is?”

“Yeah, sorry about that Marie.” I said sliding out of bed and walking over to her. “That’s perfectly fine Ms. Clarabel, I will go tell the other servants that they can stop worrying.”

“Thank you Marie!” She turned around and walked out of the room and I turned back to the others. “We have to get ready for breakfast. Alright? Now, are all of you okay with finding your rooms on your own? Or do we need to call someone to help us?”

“I think we can all find our rooms without help.”

After everyone got back to their rooms Alex answered. They all agreed and went to their rooms.

Once everyone got to their rooms and changed, we  met up at the great hall. Queen Jasmine of the Florensensia kingdom stood up once everyone sat down and got situated. “Good morning crowned royalty! This is day 2 at the palace of the old gods and we have gotten news that the other crowned royalty has arrived today, I will introduce you, but first. Ms. Clarabel, Marionette, Silvia, Flora and Mr. Alexander, Leon, Theron and Harper. You gave all the servants a huge scare. Try not to do that again,” As she said that all of us stifled our laughs and agreed to tell someone the next time we would all sleep in one room. “Now let me introduce Echo from the Shelive kingdom, Tara from the Gondish kingdom and Elis from the Hencero kingdom. Please treat them with kindness and respect. Today, once again you are free to do whatever you want. The activities will start tomorrow. Have a wonderful day, and may you be blessed by the Old Gods! '' Once Jasmine stopped talking and went to sit down we saw three people walking towards our table. “Hello my name is princess Tara.” Tara had brown hair and was dressed in a green dress that reached her knees and she had brown leggings underneath it. “My name is Prince Elis.” Elis also had brown hair and he wore a silver and gold suit. “Hello my name is Echo.” Echo had a pixie cut that was black and wore a gold and rust colored suit that represented that their kingdom was built around engineering. “Hello I’m Clarabel but you can call me Clara, this is Marionette, Silvia, Flora, Alexander, Leon, Theron and Harper,” I pointed to each person as I listed their names. “Echo I’m sorry to ask this, but what might your pronouns be?” Echo smiled at this and laughed. “No worries, I’m glad you asked. Im nonbianary so my pronouns are ‘They/Them’. Thank you for asking.”

After breakfast we all met out in the courtyard. “So what are we going to do today?” Marionette asked looking up into the sky. “I have no idea what to do today, but I know it's going to be hot.” Leon spoke up as he also looked into the sky. “If it's going to be hot, should we go swimming to deal with the heat?” Echo asked. “That’s actually a really good suggestion. Who else agrees?” Silvia asked. “I think that’s a great idea, but where would we swim, there are no lakes or rivers around here that I know of.” Harper said what some of us were thinking. “There is a really pretty lake in the forest, I think you guys would really enjoy it.” The voice echoed around us unnaturally and made almost everyone jump. “What the f**k Erveen! Make noise when you walk! That way you won’t scare people away!” Alex jumped away from the castle wall that Erveen was leaning on. “And hell no. We are not repeating what happened last night.” You could almost see her eyes roll through the blindfold as she sighed. “No, what I said was you are able to scream all you want in the forest during the day but at night no screaming. Besides you’re missing out if you don’t see the lake, from what I know almost every royal group has been to the lake, so I don’t think you would want to miss out.” Everyone went silent, Tara, Echo and Elis were confused on what we were talking about, but they didn’t say anything. “Are you sure that we will be safe in the forest during the day?” I asked to make sure that she was going to tell the truth. “I’m positive. Remember, I’m the one who got you out of that mess last night, I can do the same thing in an emergency.” We all thought about it for a while. “Guys let’s do it, swimming is a nice way to cool off in the summer heat,” Slivia spoke up. “Besides I might have accidentally dropped my gem as I fell down that hill and I want to get it back.” I smiled and agreed with her.

Soon we all dressed in clothes we weren't afraid to ruin and I gave Tara, Elis and Echo their gems, as well as crafted a gem that would heat up when we were near the glowing gems so we could locate it easier. Once again meeting outside my window we started to head towards the forest. “Are we getting Slivia’s gem first or are we swimming first?” I asked once we started waking. “Let’s get Silvia’s gem and then swim,” Elis suggested. “Everyone okay with that?” We all agreed and I took the locator gem out, and we walked back into the forest. We walking for about ten minutes before I felt the gem change in temperature. “Okay it’s this way.” I said walking to the left and everyone followed. Another couple of minutes passed until we found the hill from last night. “Gods, I think we are stupid for doing this.” Harper expressed his opinion not caring who heard it. “I think almost everyone agrees with you, but those gems are really beautiful and they can be useful in an emergency.” Flora said back to him. Once again we slid down the hill and got to the bottom of it, looking around all of us saw that the once leafy green ‘alive’ trees were now hollow, rotting and burnt. The insides of the trees had exploded and were laying on the ground, the trees were now only a hollowed out shell of what they used to be. “Silvia I think your gem is over here. Come search with me.” I spoke up trying to break the tense atmosphere that was created as we saw the trees. Silvia walked over to me, her eyes were still glued to the trees, “What the hell happened when we left.” I heard her ask when I crouched down trying to figure out where the gem was. “I don’t know, but it's in the past. Remember we are looking for the gem right now, try to get your mind off of the surrounding area.” Erveen raised her voice to catch everyone's attention and we all started looking. “Let’s find the gem quickly. I don’t want to be here longer than necessary.” Leon spoke up and joined in on the search.

 Soon everyone was on the ground looking for the gem. “Clara, can the gem lead us to a specific area that the gem is in?” Harper questioned. “Sadly, no. This is the first time I’ve had to make a gem like this. So really it's a miracle we even found this place.” I answered Harper’s question while rummaging through a pile of leaves. “Oh, wow... I didn’t know you were the one who modified the gems. That’s amazing!”

“Thank yo~” I was about to answer Harper when a scream echoed throughout the forest. “s**t, sorry!” We all turned to where the scream came from and saw Alex jumping away from something he had found. The noise repeatedly echoed throughout the forest giving us chills and we all went silent remembering what had happened last night. We were expecting to hear the bangs all around us but it was silent. “What did you scream at Alex?” Erveen was the first one to speak up, she acted like nothing happened. “Erveen, why aren't we hearing the bangs?” Flora asked. “Remember what I told you? You can scream all you want in the day, but at night you shouldn’t,” She answered the question and turned back to Alex. “So… What made you scream like a girl?” Everyone slightly chuckled at that making us feel better. “Sorry, I was looking around in a pile of leaves when I found a pile of animal carcasses, but the insides of the animals were spilling out just like the trees.” As Alex spoke he pointed to the pile of animals that he had found. “Eww~.” Tara was cringing in disgust when she looked at the pile. “Yeah, I would have screamed as well, not blaming you at all.” 

“Me too.” Theron agreed as well. The animals were squirrels and some birds that had their eyes hanging out of their sockets, with their intestines hanging out of their mouths, bones were sticking out of them and a pool of blood was gathering at the bottom.. “Yeah no, I can’t look at that. Sorry.” Flora looked at it and turned around walking to the middle of the circle of hollow trees. She layed down and looked up. “You guys are probably going to hate me for this, but look up.” We all turned our gaze to where Flora was looking and saw Silvia’s gem hanging on a rope from the dead trees. “What? How the hell did it get up there?” Elis asked, all of us couldn’t think of an answer. And a couple minutes later we decided to ignore it and look for a way to get it down. We decided that Marionette and Alex would lift Silvia up so she could grab her gem and we could go to the lake and get our minds off of what we saw here. 

“Got it!” Sylvia exclaimed as the gem fell in her hand and she got lowered to the ground. “Yay! Let’s get out of here, I feel like I’m speaking for all of us when I say there are a lot of weird vibes here.” Tara said. We all agreed and looked towards where Erveen for directions to the lake, but she wasn’t there. Instead there was a map of the forest along with a compass. Echo picked up both the items and turned the map over to see a note. Echo read the note aloud to us. “Good job finding the gem! ‘X’ is where you are right now, get to the circle and that’s where the lake will be, have fun!” -Erveen

“Who is Erveen anyway?” Elis asked. “We don’t know. She all of a sudden appeared when we were getting fitted for dresses, and when we were fencing.” I answered the question and walked over to Echo looking at the map in her hands. “Well that’s odd.” Tara said. “Yeah, but we should try to find the lake and relax there.” Leon said. I looked at the map and saw that it was a almost perfect representation of the forest. “According to the map, the lake is northwest of here.” Echo opened the compass and made sure that we were going the correct way. Once we started Theron brought up the question we had yesterday, “So, I know the group from yesterday didn’t know the answer to this, but I was wondering if you three knew what the color black represents?” 

“I don’t really know,” Tara answered, “At first I thought it represented the Old Gods, but the color purple represents them.” Echo and Elis both looked confused and also had the same answer as we did. ‘No one knew what black stood for.’

It was about an hour later, when all of us heard running water. “That’s the lake!” Flora exclaimed and started running towards the sound, we all picked up the pace and started running to the lake. We pushed bushes and leaves away to form a clearing, all of us stood in awe of what we saw. The lake was crystal clear, with big white rocks surrounding it. At the other side of the lake a small waterfall was running into the water, located behind the waterfall was a small cavern with hole in the roof, making it so the sun shined in and reflected an array of colors onto the cavern walls. It looked like it was taken out of a story book and put into the real world. All of us were breathless and entranced with how it looked.

“You finally made it here!” Erveen’s voice echoed bringing everyone back out of their thoughts and making us spot her. Erveen was sitting by the waterfall with her legs swinging back and forth, a woven basket was situated next to her. “I figured you all would be pretty hungry by now,” When she said that all of us realized that we hadn’t eaten anything after breakfast. “So I got all of you some lunch since it’s around noon.” She picked up the basket and started heading towards us, we decided that we would meet her half way and started walking on the white rocks. Once we met up with Erveen, all of us sat down and she opened the basket showing that there was butter and sandwiches along with a couple of cups. “The stream that the waterfall is made with is a freshwater stream so you can get water from there.” Erveen spoke as we all grabbed a sandwich and some butter. “Thank you so much Erveen, it’s delicious!” Harper exclaimed. “Yeah , Thank you so much for getting us some food!” Echo chorused after him. “Of course, it was no problem at all.” Erveen answered with a smile.

All of us ate the sandwiches and drank some water, until all of us agreed it was time to go swimming. Marionette walked up behind Leon going unnoticed and pushed him in the lake, he let out a yelp then the crystal water consumed him with a big splash. All of us started laughing and Marionette stuck out her hand to help him out of the lake. Instead of hoisting himself back out, he yanked her in, causing her arms to fail gripping the closest person, (which happened to be me) and pulling them into the lake with her. “Hey!” I managed to yell out before plunging into the cool water. I remember opening my eyes under water and seeing colorful rocks at the bottom of the lake along with a few colorful fish, pushing my golden hair out of the way I swam back up, breaking the surface gulping for air. “Jump in! It’s beautiful underwater, and it's the perfect temperature!” I called out gesturing for them to jump into the lake with us. Soon everyone was jumping into the lake and goofing around, not acting like royalty. Leon and Theron were swimming around in the cavern and talking with each other, Silvia and Flora were seeing who could get a fish to trust them first, Alex and Tara were splashing each other with water, while Elis, Echo, Harper and I played around in the waterfall talking with each other. 

After a while I lookinged over to see where Erveen was and I noticed her walking along the ledges in the cavern. “Erveen! Why aren’t you swimming around?!” I yelled out to her. “I didn’t feel like swimming today! But don’t worry I’m having a good time!” She yelled back at me. “Okay! As long as you’re enjoying yourself!” I was slightly puzzled, because she was still wearing a long sleeved blouse with long pants, and on top of that it was once again black, I would assume that she was extremely hot. ‘I guess the cavern is cooler than the air outside of it.’ I reasoned

About an hour later all of us had climbed out of the lake and flopped onto the rocks drying our clothes off, some of us had worn ourselves out so much that they had fallen asleep. “Who here is awake?” Flora asked sitting up and looking around. “I believe everyone except Tara, Alex, Elis and Leon, is awake.” Marionette said. “Actually I’m awake, not sure about the others though.” Leon said, raising his hand. “Okay, thanks. When should we wake them up? I know the sun might start setting soon and I don’t want to be in the forest when it’s dark.” Flora stated. “We can probably let them sleep for 10 or 15 more minutes and then start heading back to the palace.” Theron said, sitting up as well. We soon agreed that in about 15 minutes we would wake Elis, Alex and Tara up and head back, in the meantime the people who were awake talked and relaxed some more.

“Tara. Elis, Alex! It’s time to wake up!” I said shaking them. Yawning Elis mumbled out, “What time is it?” Once everyone sat up, I answered , “No idea, but we should start heading back to the palace, the sun is going to start setting soon.” They nodded in agreement and stood up dusting off their clothes. “Silvia, Clara, make sure you have your gems so we don’t have to go back for them.” Harper said. We both checked our pockets and confirmed that neither of us had lost them. We took out the map and compass that Erveen had given us and started walking back to the palace. Walking back we were goofing off and laughing about different things, until we noticed that, once again, Erveen wasn’t with us. “That’s really odd,” Echo said, looking around once more. “It’s like she helps us out and then just disappears once again.”

“Yeah, she’s a very mysterious person.” Alex added on to Echo’s words. “She seems kind of awkward around people, like she’s not used to dealing with them.” Flora said hopping over a tree root. “That’s a pretty accurate way to sum it up,” Theron said, checking the compass once more. “I believe we are a little more than halfway back to the palace.” I looked up to check where the sun was and saw that it was lower than expected. “Um, we might want to pick up the pace a little bit, it’s sundown.”

“Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask, what happened yesterday? You brought up an incident a couple of times, and there was the dead area.” Echo asked, while we started walking a little faster. “Um, last night we decided to explore the forest a little bit, Erveen warned us that we shouldn’t make too much noise, but it was night and we were in an unfamiliar forest, Silvia ended up falling down a hill and screamed. After we all slid down the hill to check on her, there were extremely loud bangs coming from everywhere around us,” I suddenly stopped explaining. “The last thing I remember is Erveen apologizing, then we were back at the palace the next day. Does anyone remember what happened?” We all looked around at each other confused. “I don’t remember anything except waking up in your room in the morning.” Marionette said, everyone agreed with what we remembered. “Sorry, we can’t remember what happened.” Silvia said, turning back to Echo. “It’s alright. Now us newcomers know why you don’t want to be in the forest at night.”

Right before the sun went down below the horizon we all made it out of the forest and quickly ran back to the palace not risking anything. Out of breath we all walked in through the front doors and went to our rooms to change into formal clothing. I put on the dress that was made for me yesterday, it was a ruby red evening gown, the dress had no sleeves going past the shoulders and the entire dress was draped in lace with only a sash across the waistline. It was a simple but formal dress. Once I had freshened up I went down to the great hall for supper. I saw that Silvia, Harper and Theron had already arrived and were chatting with each other. “Are you the first one’s here?” I asked them while walking over to sit down at the table. “Yeah, come sit next to me. We’re waiting for the others to come down and join us.” Silvia said gesturing to the chair next to her. I scooted the chair out and sat down in it. “Silvia, what is your kingdom like?” I questioned. She chuckled a little bit and answered. “It’s hot, there’s lots of sand, and the big cities are built around water spots found in the desert, the trees are found growing around the water and everyone has learned to be thankful for what they have. What about your kingdom?”

“There’s lots of mountains that are rich with gems and any sort of minerals. We have quite a few forests and one small rainforest, we have cities built on the mountain side or on cliffs and small villages in the forests. The people there learned from a young age how to work with the land and not fight against it. Theron,” I said calling his attention. “What is your kingdom like?” He looked up for a moment thinking. “My kingdom was formed when we found some of the purest gold and iron in the land, that led to cities being formed on the more evened out pieces of land. Then it went from mainly being focused on gold and iron to be more of a strength and fighting based kingdom. A lot of people there have learned that where you come from does not impact who you can choose to be.” 

“It seems like lots of people in our kingdoms have learned important life lessons.” Harper said, we all agreed with him.  We had supper and soon everyone went back to their rooms to retire for the night.