Barcelona. July 2nd

Mariona heard her flight to Dublin was being called as she walked the B-Terminal's long corridor, which seemed even longer with her heavy bag. As she approached the gate, she hoped that they wouldn't need to take one of those shuttle buses to enter the airplane.

While she waited for her seat row to be called, she read text messages from her friends. Her best friend Anna wished her a good flight and reminded her of what sort of souvenir she wanted. Mariona smiled as she read, and went on to with the next one. It was from Pau:

"Don't boss the Irish around too much, or William Wallace will punish you! Wait, he was Scottish… Never mind, have a nice stay!"

Mariona made a mental note to herself: "Strangle Pau when I come back." She read the last one with a slight blush on her cheeks. It was from Razek.

"No matter how far you are, you'll be in my heart. You're my shining star. Come back soon to my arms, my princess. I love you. (Miss you already)"

Dublin. Some hours later.

About two hours later, the plane landed at Dublin's airport. After picking her bags up, she headed outside. She looked among the people who were waiting for travelers to come out and searched for somebody with some sort of sign with her name on it. She saw a beautiful, tall, red-haired girl holding a green piece of paper. Beside her was an older woman and man with similar features, but both had blond hair instead of red.

They were the O'Brien family. Mariona was going to stay at their home for the next two weeks, as had been arranged by Mariona's language school.

"Mariona, is it? Welcome to Dublin!" said the woman. "I'm Karen. This is my husband Bernard…"

"Call me Berni, please," he interrupted, shaking the Catalan girl's hand. Karen went on.

"And this is our daughter, Shannon."

Shannon, the red-haired girl, just said "hi" with a hint of a smile. For a moment, Mariona worried that Shannon would give her a hard time, but she decided not to worry yet. Berni took Mariona's suitcase and the four of them left the airport to drive to Mariona's temporary home.

The O'Briens lived on the suburbs of Dublin, in a residential area with identical houses, each of them with a garden full of flowers. Their home was no exception, and Mariona wished she could have such a house back in Barcelona instead of her rather small flat.

She and Shannon would be sleeping in the same room, which was big enough for the two of them. Karen told Mariona to unpack while she prepared lunch and afterwards, they would do some sightseeing.

During her stay in Dublin, Mariona would be going to English lessons in the morning and in the afternoons Shannon would be in charge of her.

Mariona learned that Shannon was 19, just a year older than her, instead of twenty-something, as she had thought at the airport. She was studying to become a nurse and during the summer months she was working at a residential home for the elderly in the mornings.

Mariona had gone to the residential care home to help Shannon on a couple of afternoons. The head nurse had been happy for the help, and Mariona had served the elderly their food and kept them company, despite her linguistic problems.

Everything was going fine until Mariona had a strange conversation with an older lady when she was serving her dinner. The head nurse had already warned her not to take the lady's stories seriously, nor to try to have a normal conversation with her, as she was a little mad and always explained strange tales.

However, Mariona didn't find her strange at all when she came into her room and found her reading a novel. The old woman greeted her in Irish, but realizing that Mariona was neither Irish nor a nurse, she translated her own words into English.

"Are you a new nurse?" the woman asked.

"No ma'am," said Mariona with her best English, even though she couldn't hide her accent. "I'm just here to help today."

"Where are you from… Mariona?"

The Catalan girl was shocked that the unknown lady knew her name, and wondered if she had said it already.

"I'm not a witch, if that's what you're thinking," said the old woman, as if reading Mariona's mind. "That's what says on your necklace. Unless you have a girlfriend called like that, of course."

Mariona instinctively touched her necklace, a golden shell with her name engraved on it.

"It's a present from my grandmother. She gave it to me before she died," she explained.

"I don't think I can do the same for my grand-daughter, unless her mother allows me to," replied the old lady with some melancholy in her voice. "I guess they've already told you that I'm mad because I explain strange stories, haven't they?"

"What… sort of stories?" Mariona asked, full of curiosity. The old lady smiled.

"Tell me, Mariona: do you think there's life outside Earth?" By the girl's stare, she knew she didn't. "You won't believe me, but there is. Our solar system is not the only place in the universe where we can find life. Many stars have planets orbiting around them. There was a time when the glorious Moon Kingdom rose and ruled in peace for a long period of time. But darkness is always attracted by light and it tried to take control of the entire universe with the power of the Silver Crystal, the source of power of the Queen of the Moon. The fight between light and darkness is eternal and no-one is bound to win it."

Mariona, mouth-opened, doubted whether she should believe the story or not, because the old lady seemed to be remembering her own life or maybe the plot of an old science-fiction film. She was about to ask her to continue her story when the room's door burst open.

"Mariona, what on Earth are you doing? We have a lot of work to do!"

It was Shannon. She pulled the Catalan girl out of the room and slammed the door behind them. Mariona noticed how she looked at the old lady with something close to hate.

"I'm sorry if Marian has said anything strange to you," apologized the red-haired girl, still looking angry.

"Oh, never mind, she was telling me a wonderful science-fiction story, something about the Moon Kingdom. If she wrote it, she might make a best-seller," tried to joke Mariona, but Shannon seemed not to find it funny at all. Instead, she just said, dryly:

"Come on, we have lots of work to do."

Shannon had almost not spoken after what had happened at the centre. Mariona was dying to ask her why she had been so nervous back then, but she didn't dare -after all, she only knew Shannon after two weeks.

But Shannon herself explained everything that Mariona needed to know.

"Marian is my grandmother. Mom blames her for shaming the family with fairy tales about aliens and life in outer space. During her teen years, Mom's classmates made fun of her because of Marian's stories and reputation, and she came to hate her. Then, in college, she met Dad and they got married, but she tried to keep him from learning about her mother. She did the same with me as well. After my grandfather died, Mom convinced her brothers to send Marian to this centre, and that's the last time I saw her. I was about five or six. Then I started working here, and Mom allows it because she talked to the head nurse and told her explicitly that I shouldn't have any sort of contact with Marian. Of course, I'm not supposed to know this. I overheard a couple of older nurses talking about this in the storage room. You see, Mom doesn't even let me call her 'Grandma'. It was always 'Marian'."

There was a long silence. Mariona didn't know what to say or do, and Shannon was fighting to hold her tears.

Author's comments: Not much to say this time, I hope you are liking this story I've corrected the spelling and punctuation mistakes on chapters 1 to 3, and I'm about to finish chapter 4 (after almost a whole year trying to write it... it's unforgivable of me...).