There are rules to this sort of thing. Everybody knows them even if nobody could tell you exactly how or why they came to be. Jade certainly didn't think she was qualified to even guess, what with the long years of isolation and all, but even she knew that there was definitely a Way This Was Supposed to Go.
She had never been sure of the particulars, but she had been so certain that once whatever she had been waiting for finally happened she would finally know exactly what she was meant to do. The scenario had played out a hundred times in the clouds she glimpsed through the single window that had been her only connection to the outside world for so many years. Princesses would wait at the top of their respective towers (sometimes patiently, sometimes not so much) until one day the designated hero (princes, knights and the occasional pure-hearted pauper seemed to be the general demographics placed in such roles) would appear and do battle with whatever beast guarded it. Then the princess would be free to leave.
A textbook happy ending to be sure, but Jade had greater expectations. Maybe this was the end of the hero's journey, but it seemed incredibly silly to declare the story over as soon as the girl took her first steps into the outside world. No, Jade firmly believed that this was a story's beginning and she had waited all her life for hers to come around.
But she'd watched a giant serpent duke it out with a much smaller antagonistic figure from her rather excellent vantage point and had no adventure to show for it. Instead the serpent's thrashing in the midst of battle had brought the tower down around her and while she had the foresight and good fortune to be at the bottom of the stairway before it properly collapsed, she was now quite simply trapped.
She'd tried shifting the debris to see if she could find an exit (one escape from the tower caused by a heroic battle was as good as another after all, horseback ride into the sunset or no), but she couldn't make anything budge. It seemed criminally unfair that she had waited all this time and done everything she was supposed to and was still denied her shot at an adventure.
Maybe she'd had it wrong? She could be a witch after all – they too lived in isolated buildings, guarded by fearsome monsters found at the end of a hero's journey. If that was the case, she should have been vanquished in the battle – crushed by the collapsing tower, brought down by her own monster in a moment of sublime poetic justice.
And even if that was the case, she still found it really unfair! If she was a witch she would have liked more time to do...well, witchery. Spells and potions had always seemed really fascinating and she hadn't had the chance to try any of it. She'd never even seen the serpent in the fight before (she'd always assumed something lived at the bottom of the tower, but had been far more preoccupied with looking up at the stories that played out in the clouds than looking down) and what kind of witch didn't know her own monsters.
At least if she had been a witch she could have magicked herself out of this mess, but instead she was alone in the dark, optimism having long turned to anger, which was finally giving way to misery.
Or perhaps she wasn't so alone after all. She heard a noise from the space to her right and while she couldn't be sure in the dark, her glasses having been well and truly obliterated in the tower's collapse, she was almost certain there was something shifting.
"Hello?"
Jade almost didn't expect a reply. Odd figures lurking in the dark didn't seem like the type to be that courteous, but then again nothing else had gone as she had expected so far either.
"Ah, I'm terribly sorry. I know that I'm intruding without permission and I'm in no position to make demands really, but I would like to ask that you remain on that side of the room for the time being."
The twinge of curiosity that Jade felt at the strange request wasn't enough to tempt her into risking scaring off the only conversation partner she had (or had ever had for that matter) by disregarding it. Having spent her whole life waiting in a tower only to wind up here, she could safely say she'd followed silly rules for less.
"That's okay, you're not intruding at all! My name's Jade, who are you?"
"Oh! Well, I've gone by a few different names, but I've always been rather fond of Calliope so I'd be much obliged if you could call me that."
"Well it's nice to meet you, Calliope! I'm sorry if this is rude, but can I ask what you're doing in here? It's just that I'm pretty sure that I was only the one in the tower before now."
"I'm afraid I don't know how to explain this without coming across as a little odd, but I suppose there's no way around telling you and I'll just have to hope that you believe me. You see, even before you introduced yourself to me I already knew who you were. I actually came here specifically hoping to meet you in order to help you start the adventure you're meant to go on. I guess you could say that I'm a sort of fairy godmother. Or, well, that I would like to be such."
Jade felt excitement thrumming through her. Okay, so it wasn't exactly what she had been expecting, but frankly a fairy godmother sounded much more interesting than a prince. (Now that she'd thought about it, she wondered if her fairy godmother could teach her some magic – it wasn't quite witchery but it would still be sooo coool.)
Still she should make sure she understood the situation before getting too carried away – assumptions hadn't done her any good so far. "What do you mean by you 'would like to be'?"
"It's a bit embarrassing, but I may have miscalculated in my plans somewhat. It seems that I have exhausted myself in getting to this point and will need some time to recover before I will be able to get you out of here. I wager I could manage it given three days and three nights, but unfortunately that's the best I can do, love."
"Don't apologize, that's great! I really appreciate you helping me out, I was afraid I was going to be stuck down here forever. And maybe in the meantime we can talk some more?"
And so Jade's story began with two unlikely friends meeting in the dark ruins of her previous life.
On the first day, Jade was full of questions. This wasn't unusual for her, but she'd never had someone at whom to direct them before.
"Calliope, you said you already knew who I was, but I've pretty much been stuck in this tower all my life. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I was just kind of curious about it."
There was some shifting from the corner Calliope had taken up (if Jade had had more experience with people she might have been able to characterize it as nervous). And then, hesitantly: "You might have noticed that sometimes when you look at the clouds...you can see things."
Jade clapped her hands together once, sharp and quick. "Oh, so you can see them too! I'd wondered about that – sometimes I was worried that I was just imagining it all."
"Oh no, what you see in them is very real, if not always entirely clear in its meaning. The clouds are actually how I came to know about you. I saw your adventures many times when I watched them."
"So I do get to have adventures?" This was better news than Jade could have hoped for.
"Oh, yes. Many splendid adventures. In fact, I'm-" here Calliope paused briefly and the noise of uncertain shifting resumed, "Well, I'm rather a fan."
Jade felt heat rush to her cheeks. She'd always hoped she'd have adventures, but a fan...she'd never even dreamed...
Making an effort to steady her suddenly racing heart, she spoke hoping that her voice wouldn't betray her flustered state: "Well, it just seems wrong that here you are a fan of all these great adventures I'm supposed to have and I don't know anything about them. Do you think you could tell me some of them?"
And so Calliope told her of the Heir, the Knight and the Seer.
The second day Jade was afraid. She was hungry and tired and it was dark and cold and cramped and Jade had never known a time in which she could not see the sun.
The second day Jade was angry. It wrong of her to dwell on such things when Calliope had promised to get her out. What kind of hero placed doubt on her companion's word like that. What kind of hero was such a coward. It was disgusting.
The second day Jade was ashamed. She was foolish for being afraid and foolish for being angry at herself for being afraid. How would either solve anything?
The second day Jade was quiet.
The second day Calliope was quiet and Jade wondered about the thoughts that occupied her head.
The third day Jade was excited and impatient, her heart pounding to the beat of "tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow".
"As I said, I'm afraid I've already told you everything I can about every story I know, Jade," Calliope's voice was taught, stretched with thinning patience, before once again softening, "I really am sorry, love, but you'll get the chance to experience your adventures first hand soon enough. I just can't tell you anymore about them without risking changing things."
"Then why don't you tell me some stories you don't know."
"What you mean...make things up?" There was an odd note to Calliope's voice here.
"Yes – don't you ever do that? You're such a good story teller, Calliope, I'm sure you could come up with something great!"
"Well...I do sometimes. But it's rather personal, I think I'd be far too embarrassed to share."
Jade was quiet for a moment. "Sometimes, when the clouds were dark and I couldn't watch them, I'd think up...things. Useful things that I could make if I ever left the tower and could find parts to build them. I think I'd like to show them to you someday."
There was silence from Calliope's corner.
And then she told Jade the story of the Witch and the Alien and how they became friends.
The clock struck twelve in some far away kingdom, a woman lost a glass shoe and Jade woke from a doze to the sound of rumbling and the odd sensation that the room was at once expanding and shrinking around her. She ducked low to the ground, covering her head with her arms and not moving until she felt the chill of wind on her back.
Her immediate reaction was to spring up, searching for a sign of Calliope, only for all thought to fly from her head at the sight of a giant serpent towering over her. She'd assumed it had perished in the fight. This made her zero for three this week.
Before she had time to work out an appropriate response the serpent shuddered before seeming to rapidly collapse in on itself, leaving behind a humanoid figure with green skin and skeletal features.
"I think I rather overdid it," the figure mumbled, staggering a bit.
There was no mistaking that voice.
"Calliope?"
"Oh, bollocks!" Calliope brought up her hands in a futile attempt to hide her face. "Jade, I'm so sorry. I never meant for you to see me like this, I just wanted to get you out of there as quickly as I could and I miscalculated the amount of magic I would have left to apply a glamour. Which isn't to say that I meant to lie to you, of course! I just thought that you might be expecting something different and I didn't want you to be put off by seeing what I looked like. Which isn't to say that I think you're shallow! Oh, I'm really buggering this up, aren't I? I can explain, I swear I can, just give me a moment-"
By this point Calliope had begun wringing her hands rather frantically, clearly too caught up in her own desperate train of thought to take notice of Jade. And Jade was-
Jade was-
Jade was taking hold of Calliope's hands and ever so gently pulling them apart before linking their fingers with her own. And Calliope was slowly but surely calming from her frantic state, frustrated tears clinging to the lids of her eyes.
And then the tears spilled out.
And Jade pulled back her hands and reached out as if it was the most the natural thing in the world. And then, merely hovering over Calliope's cheeks, she hesitated.
And Calliope exhaled shakily and nodded even as more tears fell and her already bright cheeks turned a brighter green. It was misery and it was permission and it was hope.
So Jade did. She started intending to just wipe her tears, but found herself gently running her hands over Calliope's cheeks, marvelling at their smooth coolness and how much softer they were than she had assumed. She found herself doing something like cradling Calliope's face in her hands.
And then she was moving her face toward Calliope's or Calliope was moving her face toward hers or they were both moving their faces toward each other and they met in the middle.
And it was like adventure. And it was like coming home.