Author's Note: Thanks to all my readers, reviewers, and subscribers.

Of Light

Chapter Two

- Lakeshore -

DG walked the lake shore with Raw once a day. Most times were quiet, as he always had little to say; occasionally, she'd find herself overcome with the need to speak of silly things, Other Side things. He always nodded though, like he knew of alternators that refused to keep a battery charged, and of charcoals that made black look so unnaturally... black. She enjoyed his hushed, monosyllabic responses, and his calming nature, the way it always managed to quell the uneasiness that she felt in her new life and royal role. Truth be told, she needed their walks together.

"Mother and Az travel tomorrow to the Tombs. 'To lay the emerald to rest'. I get to stay home, all by myself. No babysitter!"

Raw chuckled low in his throat. "DG has entire palace of babysitters. Father will still be at Finaqua."

DG smiled. She watched the shoreline for fish basking in the sun and reeds. "And you, too, Raw. And Tutor, and Glitch. And an entire staff of people watching everything I do. I swear I'm going to suffocate. I thought Mother and Az would take a parade of people with them, but..." She trailed off. Only Cain and a handful of Resistance soldiers would accompany her mother and Azkadellia. Why Cain? She'd asked herself too many times. Raw did not interrupt her thoughts, just walked quietly beside her. He was surprised when she spoke again, on a completely different train of thought.

"A month and a half since I left the Other Side, Raw." She stopped walking, her bare feet sinking a depression in the soft, wet ground. The suns bore down brightly, wanting to snuff out her thoughts with laziness and warmth. "You know, I wonder all the time if my friends wondered where I went. If my parents and I – my foster-robot parents I mean – were reported missing. We disappeared! Gone! Just … poof." The last word fell, anticlimactic.

Raw stood silent. She turned to him, bright blue eyes filling with tears. "I don't know if our house was destroyed by that Travel Storm. What happens to a house that has a Travel Storm sidle right up to it? Glitch doesn't know, he says its information he keeps in his other brain." She tossed her friend a smile; her Other Side self still thought the idea of removing the brain and retaining the mind ridiculous. "And Tutor, his 'field of study' is magic, not meteorologic alchemy."

DG was quiet a long time, staring out at the reflections of the suns on the water. Finaqua.

"I wonder when someone noticed, is all. My boss at the diner would have fired me over an answering machine, never thought that something might have happened to me and my family. Was it when Pop didn't show up at the hardware store for a couple of days? Did one of his friends come, to see the farm destroyed and us not there?"

Again, silence. Raw put his furry hand on her shoulder, hoping to comfort her. Her despair radiated through her skin, and he wondered, momentarily, how long she had worried about this. It was deeply rooted, cloaked by tears and clouds of emotion. Hard to read.

An insect, close kin to a dragonfly, bright red and dual winged, flitted past her face. Its flight clicked, adding to the realness of where she was, and of what she was speaking. "I don't miss my life on the Other Side," she said. "I just wonder when or if it missed me."

- The Dining Hall -

She hadn't changed her dress before dinner, and so the subject of etiquette lessons came up again over their soup.

"Wasn't there a dress laid out for you in your room?" her mother asked.

DG nodded slowly. "There might have been. I came to dinner straight from the library."

"The library? What were you reading about?" Ahamo inquired of his daughter. He was not fazed by his anxious wife, but comfortable sitting amongst his family.

"Travel storms," DG said, a little offhandedly. "I was just wondering how they worked, if you had to summon them or if they roamed wild somewhere..."

Ahamo smiled. "Well, you won't need to worry about Travel Storms. It's hard to get a royal escort to agree to use one. If you need to go anywhere, a car or carriage will take you there easily." He caught her eye, and gave his head the slightest shake.

DG thought a subject change was in order. "Do you know how long you will be gone?" she asked her mother. Their soup bowls were cleared away by attendants and their supper brought out. The queen folded her napkin, and smiled at her daughter.

"Not long. Three days, perhaps. We can't travel by car for most of the trip."

DG pushed away an image of her mother navigating her father's balloon, silk dress and day robe. "Horseback?" she asked. The Queen nodded. Horses, and riding, had ended up being her saving grace in her new life. She'd grown up in a farming community, and although she wasn't trained properly, although she rode faster and harder than even Ahamo, she didn't make a fool of herself. And that was something.

"Ambrose," The Queen said, "will you please remind me what time Captain Cain will arrive tomorrow?"

"He'll probably be here around midnight," Glitch said, quite unceremoniously. While DG was used to his... obliviousness, she knew her mother had a harder time accepting the new Ambrose. With his brain back inside his head and his hair growing back after the removal of the classifying zipper, he was a man who suffered most of the day with mental overload. "He and the rest of your escort will be ready to leave by first sunrise."

- Azkadellia's Chambers -

After dinner, DG sat in Azkadellia's bedroom. She was at the foot of the bed, her sister sitting up at the head, under the covers, her legs tremulous. DG put a hand on her sister's ankle, and continued what had become their routine. DG talked, so Az wouldn't have to.

"I stopped and washed my hands after touching those mouldy old books! Then I went to dinner. My dress wasn't dirty!"

Az smiled, then waited, but DG didn't continue. So she spoke, words that poured more easily than she thought they might. "I'll be glad to leave tomorrow. I want this trip over with. The emerald needs to be safe guarded, not sitting in my jewelry box like a cheap trinket." She shook her head. DG watched her sister, sympathetically. The emerald seemed to be leaving a larger taint than the Witch. Tutor studied at the Queen's request, but there were few texts that spoke of the emerald. Everyone wanted it buried again.

"I might stay up until Cain's group arrives. I haven't seen him since we left Central City." He'd stayed behind in the city, tracking down fallen Tin Men, again at the Queen's request. DG had asked him twice to Finaqua, and once threatened to come to Central City with Ambrose to see him, but all her summons were politely declined in official dispatches sent to her mother about his progress in his task.

"You'll run into Mother in the halls," her sister warned. "She doesn't sleep at night. I heard them speaking about it, yesterday." Az smirked, the closest she'd come to a laugh in all the time since the Tower, and DG squeezed her ankle, trying to supportive, non-intrusive. It was the first time she'd heard her sister speak since that night, a month before.

"You'd better go find a hiding spot while she's still pretending to go to bed," Az said, and nudged DG away with her foot. DG nodded, said goodnight to her sister, and left the room quietly. Azkadellia got up out of bed, and went to her window. A single moon lay reflected in the surface of the lake. She could see a breeze whipping through the reeds; she opened the window. Her body carried itself to bed, her mind separated, back with the sound of the whispering fields beyond the lake.

- The Parlour -

Glitch beckoned to DG from the empty parlour. "I won't ask you why you aren't in your room," he said with a grin, closing the double doors behind her. "They'll pass by here walking their horses, and we can go out through the kitchen door and back to the stable."

"You've been plotting," DG laughed. She sat down in a soft armchair, and pulled up her knees. Glitch flopped down onto a sofa, lounging back. "How's your head?"

"It still feels too full," he said, placing long fingers on his temples. "And I can't get the Sunceder out of my mind. My brain was focused on that one thing for too long. It's burned there, it'll never go away." She couldn't tell if her friend was being dramatic, or if he was really worried. But the next second, he was off on another thought. "Captain Cain," he said, and shook his head. "Do I have to salute him? I know you don't, you're a princess."

"I salute no one," DG said with as much authority as she could muster without laughing. Her eyes wandered the wall shelf across from her, stacked with thick books. This room had been thoroughly cleaned, and she doubted these would spit as much dust at her as the books in the library had.

"Your mother has given me the task of demolishing the Witch's Tower. She wants the entire thing scrapped. Salt the earth, that type of thing. A lot of towns will be glad for the building materials," he said. Sometimes DG had trouble switching from Glitch to Ambrose as fast as he did.

Maybe coming downstairs was a bad idea.

"Why was Cain assigned to my mother's detail, Ambrose?" she asked.

"He was requested by your sister," he replied; he rose and walked to the bookshelf. After a moment, he chose a volume and returned to his seat on the sofa with it, sitting upright this time, a little more dignified. Cracking it at a random place, he began to read. DG glared at him, trying to decide if Ambrose had opened the book as an end to their conversation, or if he'd simply become distracted. She sighed, not wanting to interrupt him. She glanced out the window; the glass showed nothing but reflection and darkness.

"There wasn't anyone else higher than a Tin Man?" DG asked him finally. She knew that rebuilding the army of the O.Z. was a mission whose outcome was hazy at best. After the usurpation, most of the Zone's army had vowed allegiance to Azkadellia; those who did not hid, joined the Resistance. Those who were caught were killed outright; no tin suits or torture..

"He was requested by your sister, specially," he said. Then he laughed. He looked at DG over his book. "She wanted the man who helped you so much."

"You and Raw helped me as much," DG pointed out. Ambrose shook his head, and went back to his book. "She's getting better, you know. She actually talked to me tonight."

"Well, that's something." He didn't look up at her again.

Moments passed by, the clock on the wall ticking away the uncomfortable seconds. Silence with Glitch had once been golden, but now she would have rather had his rambling. Finally... "What are you reading?"

"No idea," he said, and laid the book open in his lap. "It was going on about trading protocols within the different regions of the O.Z. But it kept mentioning products that I've never heard of. Or forgot about. So I figure I'll just read until I remember. There are some books over there about the Gale dynasty, if you're interested."

DG didn't think a book would be able to hold her attention at the moment. It was getting late, the clock on the wall said it was getting close to midnight. "I think I'm going to go sit in the gazebo, I'll be able to see them come around the maze from there. I'll see you down there, if you can tear yourself away from your book."

"No, I'll come with you." He put the book aside, stood and stretched his lanky frame. His state of dress was somewhat disheveled, collar unbuttoned and jacket open. DG led the way out the side door and down a passage that led them directly to the kitchen. Together they stumbled blindly to the gazebo by the lake. By the time they reached the open platform, Ambrose had tripped over a thick root sticking out over the path and DG had put her foot in the water. Otherwise unscathed, they sat on the step, away from the swing.

The night sky was littered with stars. DG sat back on her hands, staring upwards. "Are there constellations?" she wondered aloud.

"Some, not many," he said, following her gaze. "I can't remember most of them. But there is the Bell, and I think there is one with a bear."

"They have a bear constellation on the Other Side, too," DG mused. "I couldn't tell you where it was in the sky, but I know it was up there somewhere. I think there was a big one and a little one. Minor and Major."

"If Cain keeps up these missions for your mother, he'll be up for Major. Uniform and regalia and shiny medals," Ambrose shook his head and chucked to himself. "Can you imagine them trying to fight that cowboy out of his hat?"

"Yeah, he sure does like his hat," she said, casting a side glance at her companion. An image of Cain swam before her eyes. She missed him. Her connections with this world, while prestigious, were few. She felt comfortable with Cain, the way he could manage the ground beneath his feet. He was practical, no nonsense, like the people she'd grown up around. He was small-town, Cain. She wondered, briefly, if he'd always been serious, quiet, non-reflective. Or had the horrors of his imprisonment altered him in that way.

Ambrose hummed a little to himself. DG decided to risk it. "Why did Azkadellia specially request Cain for this?"

He stopped humming, and shook his head a little. He stared skyward still. "You'd have to ask her, DG. Her orders were sealed in a letter sent directly to the Captain. She didn't speak to me personally about it. Hasn't talked to me at all, actually, since the Fall and the return to Finaqua. Still sees this, I think," he said, and gestured vaguely to the uneven hair on his crown.

DG strained her ears, but all she could hear was the sound of insects, the breeze, the water lapping the shore. It was a different kind of night than the ones she'd had in Kansas, staring out her tiny attic window, but somehow it reminded her of home. But then out of nowhere, the sound of horses, the slow plod of hooves hitting the packed dirt of the road that wound around the maze broke through her thoughts and the night magic.

Cain's party had arrived.