Prologue
"Ow," Desi groaned, and even in pain, she managed to sound sarcastic. "That hurt." She stood and brushed herself off, rubbing her backside and grimacing. "What the—" She had taken the liberty to look around, and found that she was not where she had been.
"Where are we?" The young man next to her had managed to stand too. He spoke more to himself, however, than to her. His eyes narrowed behind his horn-rimmed glasses, as he surveyed the scene and whistled.
Both focused on the scene before them, as it unfolded to their disbelieving eyes. They stood on a grassy plain, which blended green, yellow, and brown in a way that Desi did not think possible, but looked marvelous together. At first, she thought she was dreaming, and began rubbing her eyes and pinching herself to see if she was indeed awake. However, the softness of the earth and the itchiness of the grass blowing against her bare legs were too realistic to be any man-made fantasy. A cool breeze blew through her long, black hair, and she shivered in her summer wear. Other than the sky and the distant mountains, nothing else was on the plain except for what loomed directly in front of the two.
A gargantuan white… Desi grasped for words… city, it seemed, was lunging out from one side of the cliffs of the mountain range behind it. The glaring brilliance of the structure contrasted sharply with the black basalt rocks of the mountain. Was that a basalt mountain? Desi wondered, and squinted. The pores made it look so. It was built like a tower out of fairytales: tall, with the highest peak as the back of the white city.
The entire place itself was also quite fairy-tale-like. The towers of the city rose in circles, each one smaller than the next, and guard towers could be seen on each level, though they were at different places, never in a straight line. The city did not seem so much like a building made by man, but a piece of stone carved by nature itself in the mountains. Counting the levels, Desi made out seven. In conveyed in her heart a sense of awe and wonder, as if looking upon something old and venerable. She felt as she had when she had gone back to China with her family and looked upon the Forbidden City and the Ming Tombs.
Carlos must have felt the same, for he whistled again. "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."
The very air here was different—sweeter and sharper, but in a way, more wholesome. Desi could feel the change in climate as well, shivering in the cool zephyrs but welcoming it at the same time. It was definitely more humid, but almost anywhere was more humid than dry and arid Southern California. It seemed that the short-sleeve top and capris Desi had chosen for a sultry, July afternoon would not be appropriate here.
"Wherever we are, it still seems like Earth, right?" the girl joked, but her warm, brown eyes, usually sparkling and laughing, were doubtful. To these high schoolers, who had only traveled abroad during summer vacations, this seemed as alien as Mars.
Flicking another glance around, Carlos raised an eyebrow and answered, "If you just count the sky and grass." Everything else stood still in an unrealistic way. This illusion, however, was soon broken.
Bells chimed in the distance, and the two looked up at the city once again. The sun shone lazily to their far left, breaking through the clear, blue sky. Morning, Desi guessed, had come upon the city. Carlos dropped the humor and flat out panicked. "Okay. Where the hell are we, and how did we get here?"
Desi thought, and tried to answer this question. One of her main faults was thinking too much.