I watched as Princess Lunara walked into the room, and my eyes widened slightly. She had changed into a flowing gown of diaphanous silk, which hugged her body tightly. The silk was of a light silver, catching and reflecting the moonlight, sparkling incandescently. Starting at her throat, lines of gold flowed through until the end of the dress, studded at intervals with black onyx gemstones. The fabric around her chest and hips hugged to her body tightly, while it began to flow like water off of her hips. Her ethereal hair was held back by her tiara, flowing freely over the cloth on her back, while her tail was constantly molding the gown over it as it moved. Her wings were folded at her side, and I could see a strange accessory within her primary feathers. At evenly spaced areas were feathers of jet black, which upon closer inspection I could see were made of onyx, clipped to her wings to hold them in place. The entire effect set my heart racing, and I swallowed dryly as I attempted to speak.
"Ahem... Princess Lu-Lunara... That is, oh how do I put this... It is rather distracting, and may interfere with my studying."
"And why should that be," she asked, looking at me. "This is my teaching gown, and I have never had problems with my students before."
Yeah, and I doubt any of them would voice their opinions out of fear. Royalty was highly respected, to the point of terror at the prospect of offending them. But since that night, that parade, I knew she was a kind princess, and wouldn't hold anything against her beloved little subjects. She valued her people, both human and Celestial, loving all in her shared domain equally. So with my assessment of her character, I opened my mouth to speak words that might ruin my life.
"Excuse me for being forward, Princess, but I believe that you would not likely hear any complaints from your students. Most of the people in this world revere you and your sister as goddesses, and with that they respect you greatly, yet also fear you."
She looked down at me in surprise. Apparently she had never given any thought to those implications.
"As such, they fear you may banish them, no matter how kind they think you to be. So most keep their mouths shut, but I want to learn your sky and all of its glorious wonders, without too much distraction."
Lunara looked at me for a few moments, her expression unreadable. When she opened her mouth to speak, I winced inwardly. I hoped I didn't offend her too much.
"What if I decided to banish you for your words? Why would you speak these words, words which neither my sister nor I have ever heard directed towards us? Why aren't you afraid of punishment?"
"Because I respect both of you enough to let you know what I believe, even if you don't like it. I trust in your character enough to feel able to speak easily to you, with all respect accorded, but none of the unfair fears that hold other subjects back."
She closed her eyes for a few moments, and after a bit of silence, smiled as she opened her eyes once more.
"Very well, if this dress is distracting you, for whatever reasons, I will find something else. Pray tell, however, why it would distract you forcefully enough for you to mention it?"
I gulped. I didn't want to tell her I had a crush on her. I certainly didn't want to confess that I love her, really. So I opted for a different approach.
"Well, the material hugs your body very well. To be honest, I think any sane man would find it difficult to concentrate around you when that gown is worn. You are a beautiful Princess, just like your Queenly sister, and I really feel that anything you might wear that further bolsters that natural beauty would end up distracting me."
She frowned slightly, as if disappointed in something I said, before shaking her head and heading back into her room. She emerged five minutes later, with only her tiara and her typical royal chest and leg adornments of wrought silver and onyx. Underneath was a simple, unassuming black evening dress. Looking back to me, she reiterated her earlier statement.
"We will start with what you know of the moon."
Nodding, I launched into speaking my knowledge of her own celestial body. I spoke of the ebb and flow of the tidal currents, the reflective light of the sun on the other side of our world (she was surprised to learn that I knew our world was round, as most people disregarded that knowledge, believing it to be folklore), and the fact that the moon was far closer to our world than the sun was. Although we had the technology of telescopes, looking at the sun through them was a bad idea, but I had invented a small spell to lower the sun's effects enough to glean that knowledge.
She was astonished to learn of my spell, asking me to recreate it for her so she could provide future students with that knowledge. I happily obliged to teaching her something new, knowing that spell would be more useful in her hands than mine. Finally, she began to teach me more of how she controlled the moon. She told me of her ability to connect to the "soul" of the moon, manipulating it to keep it moving on its path. To a lesser extent, she could move stars, forming the many constellations within the sky, but it took great effort to do so, often leaving her unable to leave her room for long periods of time. She only did it when a heroic feat was accomplished, and only then if it literally saved the world.
After speaking of these wondrous abilities, we broke for a midnight lunch, courtesy of the night staffed kitchen workers. For the first few minutes, we munched lightly on ham and turkey sandwiches, and drank rogberry wine. The strange bluish purple wine was made from a berry found only where a timberwolf had died, and only if the wolf had died at the teeth of a manticore. This made me almost stop drinking it out of sheer rarity, but at my mentor's insistence, I at least finished my glass.
After our lunch, she led me out onto her balcony. Now I began receiving a more hands on lecture, as she guided my eyes through her telescope to study far away stars. Some of the stars were new to her, which shocked me, but she told me that there were always new stars. They formed naturally, not created by her, regardless of superstitions spread by the uneducated. She further surprised me by telling me that most of the stars I was seeing now were dead stars. but that their light took almost four million years to reach Anzaria. That bit of knowledge blew away every fantastical story of stars exploding or falling due to Princess Lunara's wrath. I chuckled a bit, and when she asked me what was so funny, I told her about what people thought of dead stars. She laughed too, joking about not letting me leave (my heart skipped a beat) to tell the world. After our giggling subsided, she went on to tell me that no-one could breathe outside of a certain space above Anzaria's surface, that eventually air stopped existing. I was puzzled at this, and was surprised to know that the air around me had weight, almost four tons of it floating above me, held to the planet by gravity. My head was starting to swim from this knowledge, and I swayed uneasily on my feet. Noticing my sudden lack of balance, Lunara reached with a wing to steady me, which gave me a flashback to that day.
Shaking myself awake from the memories, I noticed I was on the couch in Lunara's antechamber, while she stood over me with a wet cloth she had been using to wipe my forehead. Upon noticing me awake, she stood back to give me space to stand, which I did so awkwardly. Looking up at my mentor, I noticed a look of concern in her eyes, and suddenly I was afraid.
"Princess, is something wrong? I'm sorry for passing out during your lesson..."
"Novalis, when was the last time you had seen a doctor? You just woke up after two hours of having a 116 degree fever. I thought you were lost a couple of times there."
My eyes widened in shock. I had a fever of such high degree? I reached up to my forehead, and found that indeed my temperatures were skyrocketing. I looked to Princess Lunara with fear in my eyes, and she rushed over to me as I fainted.
In a deep, dark nightmare:
I saw violent images in my unconscious fever dream. Flashes of magic, blood splattering in large swathes. Humans and Celestials alike lie dead or dying, their lifeblood seeping into the uncaring ground. Smoke rose in the distance, fueled by fires burning ever higher to the sky. I looked next to me, seeing an unfamiliar but undoubtedly Celestial face, yelling something I couldn't hear, before an explosion knocked us both off our feet. Looking up, I saw a sneering human face looking down at me, leveling a magic focusing crystal wand at my face. I saw the glow of magic beginning before everything went black.
I drifted deeply into a dreamless darkness, hearing only the sound of her voice. She was assuring me everything would be alright, but the worry in her words betrayed her otherwise steady speech. I clung to her melodious and beautiful voice, lulling me into peace. Whatever that dream had been before was washed away by her steady, soothing whispers, which tantalized my emotions and set my heart at ease.
{Lunara looked over her student. That dream had been so vivid and wild. She even recognized the Celestial at the end, but they should never have met each other. How could Novalis dream of someone he had never had a chance to meet? Did he have precognitive magic buried within? She would have to watch over him. There was more to this man who had somehow grown a Celestial's horn, who could even invent his own spells, something that mattered more than her own curiosity.}