Wo0t! Chapter 18 (or according to the menu thing… 19) is *finally* here! I'm really sorry for keeping you all waiting so long, really I am! *cries* At first I was just lazy for a few days, but then I went on… like... two week-long vacations and I couldn't do any writing. When I got back from them though, my doggie got attacked! So I spent a day or two just watching after her around the house while everyone else ignored the poor little girl :( So then I started writing whenever I could, but when you throw in the fact that my sister has recently started taking up time on the computer also, it gets difficult to actually get much done. So I really am sorry everyone. The updates will be coming a lot faster from now on, hopefully.
Now just so that everyone is up to speed, they have all been at the castle for two weeks now and there's only one week left before the train should be fixed and they all leave. So now I'm done talking, and you're free to read chapter 18!
Oh and by the way… if you're wondering why Friday in the last chapter was what it was, then I can tell you that I got that idea from a friend, and it was a heck of a lot better than what I had in mind, so I used it.
When Naomi woke up from sleep, it took her a few minutes to recall everything that had happened the week before. It was Sunday again, and exactly a week ago she had awoken to a chimpanzee running a fashion show with her clothes. But this week, she was happy to note that what she woke up to was something she found that she didn't really mind as much.
She was a bit stunned at how much she tossed and turned that night, though. When she turned her attention to herself, she discovered that she somehow managed to get in a position so that her body was across the bed rather than aligned with it. In other words: she'd rotated by ninety degrees. As a result, her head was crammed into the prince's back (which was facing her), her own back was bent over the barrier of pillows, and her legs were hanging over the edge of the bed beginning a small way passed her knees.
When she could finally focus on her situation, she noticed that it was surprisingly comfortable. The pillows did a good job to crack her back (god knows how long she'd been needing that…), she was stretched out all the way and thus didn't need to bother to stretch herself, and the arm that was poking out slightly from underneath Prince Miruto made a nice pillow.
Even though there was absolutely no need to, she stretched out of habit. When she straightened herself and made her body stiff like she always did, she began to slide off of the bed and onto the floor, starting with her feet. Before she could react, she had reached the ground, where she took the opportunity to yawn; just another habit to carry out after stretching.
"Finally! You're awake! You know, you told me that you rolled around a lot, but that was a little over the top."
From her seat on the carpet, Naomi saw the prince lean over the edge of the bed to look at her. She grinned sheepishly at having been so active during her sleep and said, "Yeah, well I don't usually move around that much. It probably had something to do with the fact that I got my own body back during the night."
"Sure, blame the curse," he said just to poke fun. "Well in any case, you sure were violent… I felt like I was sleeping next to a dreadfully aggressive masseuse." He took a second to fling his legs over the bed so his toes touched the ground next to Naomi, and he straightened his back and began to rub it as best he could. Then he put on a completely phony expression of being in pain and said, "I think I may need to start seeing a chiropractor regularly after the thrashing you gave me."
Naomi stood up and scowled at him in return, but couldn't manage to stifle a laugh. "Okay, make fun if you want… I'm just glad that everything is back to normal and we don't have to watch out for any more curses."
"Yeah, I have to go talk to my parents about that. Not that there should be anything more to worry about, but yesterday when I saw my dad, he said that he'd create a new holiday if he didn't first." The prince chuckled at that and added, "As if it didn't do him any good to be in a more active body."
"Was he serious about the holiday?"
"I don't know; that's why I'm going to talk to them."
"Well beat it then. I want to get dressed now."
"No respect…" he said in mock disappointment. She stuck her tongue out in return and was saluted before he left.
Across the hall, Sen was busying herself by combing her hair while she waited for everyone to gather in her room for breakfast.
Haku had offered to go and wake Boh after he got dressed and Sen had already dressed herself and ordered some food from a passing servant in the hall.
Naomi was the first to find her way to Sen's room for their meal. Sen noticed that she was looking particularly happy that morning and decided to ask about it for the sake of conversation. "Looks like you woke up on the right side of the bed. How is it possible for you to be so… jolly?"
"Well first of all, it was the left side," she corrected.
"Huh?"
"I woke up on the left side of the bed." Well she did… she'd gone to sleep on the right side, but when she got her own body back she was moved to the left side, where the prince had fallen asleep. But she wasn't going to explain that. Sen didn't need to know… or she didn't want her to know just yet. Take your pick.
"Oh."
"And I'm happy because the curse is finally a thing of the past, and now we can live normally, even considering that we're in the Spirit World."
For some reason, she didn't think that Naomi was telling her everything. "Is that all?"
"Yeah," she answered a little too quickly, causing Sen to get more suspicious that she was holding out her. "Aren't you happy about it, too?"
No doubt that she was. She and Haku were so happy, in fact, that they spent a good chunk of time making out before actually getting up… "Sure I am," she said cheerfully.
Not too long after that, Boh came in with Dayu on his shoulder, fallowed by Haku. When Haku saw Naomi, he looked at her with a somewhat confused expression. "Naomi, what was the prince doing in your room? He's usually only there before you go to sleep, not after you wake up…" It wasn't like Haku to prod, but everyone (including the few chefs that usually brought their food) knew that Naomi and Prince Miruto had a relationship, whether they both wanted to admit it or not.
Naomi sighed in defeat and explained about what she had worked out with the prince last night. She mentally gave herself a pat on the back too, because she managed not to blush the whole time and so Haku and Sen didn't jump to the conclusion that something happened.
"And you woke up… in what kind of a position? How on earth can that be comfortable?" Sen asked.
Naomi shrugged as their food was brought in, and they all dug in greedily without bothering to wait for the prince, who wouldn't be joining them that morning.
"And that was when the gnomes came in and stole all of the balloons."
"Um… Boh, I'm confused… didn't you say before that the gnomes were in the cave, holding all of the farm animals hostage?"
"Yeah, but then they decided to throw a party, so they went out to steal the balloons."
"But then who was guarding the animals in the cave?"
"I'm getting to that! The gnomes decided to have a party so they needed the balloons. Before they went and stole them, they made a deal with the talking sheep that if it guarded the other animals, then the gnomes wouldn't shear or slaughter it."
"Oh… and why did they kidnap the animals again?"
"So that they could send a ransom note to the farmer, asking for some new dishwashers in exchange for the animals' safe return."
"Okay I get it now."
"So anyway, they had a party with all the animals while they waited for their new dishwashers, but then they all got drunk on sake. One of the bigger gnomes was playing chicken with some cattle and they accidentally knocked down one of the cave walls and opened up a worm hole."
"Ooh, this is getting interesting. Where did the worm hole lead?"
"It brought them all to some sort of room for punishment… there was a monk there and he was meditating on a rock. He said that the gnomes were naughty for leaving the sake in reach of children and that to get back home, the gnomes would have to find the sake and then lock it up."
"That has to be the most bizarre thing I've heard of, even after the past week… But did they get to find it?"
"After they looked around for a while they found it. Then a hole in the side of a cliff appeared and there was a mine cart for them to go back home. But the track was on the top of the hole, and so the cart was up-side down. Then it ended before they could figure out what to do."
"Oh… it was over, just like that?"
"Actually, no… after they saw the cart, the monk said, 'Everything will be okay, as long as it all makes sense,' and then it ended."
"Man, I wish I could have some dreams like that… the best one that I ever had included a pink whale and a blue whale that were both made of cardboard, and they were scowling at me for the whole thing…"
A humorous snort could be heard a few feet below them. They looked down and saw Prince Miruto, who was laughing uncontrollably at what he had just over head from Haku and Boh. The two of them, plus Dayu, were looking down at him from various positions in the anti-gravity field of the product testing room, where they had decided to float around for while.
"How long were you standing there?" Haku asked, starting to feel defensive over his whale dream.
"For the whole thing," he managed to get out. After he could talk without his laughter getting in the way, he added, "Well actually, I came in on the part about the balloons. What did you eat last night Boh, marshmallows with mustard? I only have dreams like that after I eat something really crazy."
"It wasn't last night, it was when I was taking a nap before Naomi and Sen brought me to Zeniiba's house with them."
"Oh," the prince said, and at the same time stepped into the anti-gravity field and launched himself up with his toes.
"Were you looking for us?" Haku asked.
"Yeah, and you weren't very easy to find, either," the prince replied as he pulled himself along the ceiling, gripping it between the tiles like monkey bars. "But now that I found you, I can tell you that my dad has declared this day as a local holiday to celebrate the end of the curse and take a day off. There will be people shouting it up and down the halls later, but I thought I might tell you all before hand."
"Will there be a cook-out?" Boh asked at once.
The prince chuckled and said, "Probably, if the chefs aren't too fed up with cooking for everyone as it is. They might be sick of making so much food for people to stuff themselves after not eating yesterday… But anyway, there's gonna be partying, fireworks, and all that good stuff." It was only an hour before noon, so there would be plenty of time for all that.
"Sounds like fun," Haku said in his usual calm manner, though he was looking forward to it.
"Yup. By the way, where are Naomi and Sen? It's not very usual for you all to be separated," he noticed.
"They went to the third level to get all pampered in honor of being females again. You know: get a massage, get their nails and hair done, and maybe go for a facial. At least that's what they told me," Haku explained, thinking that Sen didn't need a facial at all, and never has or ever would.
"How long have they been there?" the prince asked as he thought the same as Haku, only about Naomi.
"I'd say… maybe an hour and a half. They went right after they finished eating breakfast."
"Oh good, then they should be done soon, if the length of my mother's appointments is anything to go by. Well I need to go help organize some things for the all celebrating, so I'll see you later."
"Bye," Haku said as Boh and Dayu waved at his retreating form. A little while later, Haku decided that they should wait in Sen's room to tell the girls about everything.
"Haku!" Sen called when she saw him, Boh and Dayu approach the door to her room. She and Naomi sped up a little to catch up to them.
"There you are, Chihiro. We were just going to wait in your room for you and Naomi. Prince Miruto found us and said that today has been stated as a new holiday by the king."
"Really?" Sen and Naomi asked in unison.
"Yup, and he said that there'd be all kinds of things going on around here. Then he left to help prepare for it all."
"Cool, I hope it turns out to be as good as last Thursday," Naomi said. "That was fun."
"Today has been declared a local holiday, and everyone is welcome to join the celebration outside! Festivities will officially begin in thirty minutes and go on until midnight! Again, everyone is welcome to join!"
The five guests standing outside of Sen's room watched as a servant with a megaphone walked down the hall and delivered the message over and over again. After that, they decided to take the thirty minutes that they had to get ready to go outside.
Naomi and Sen both went into Naomi's room to consult each other on what to wear, since her closet had the largest selection and fit the both of them. Haku was stuck with helping Boh get ready, as he always was, and Dayu just hung around Sen's room and waited.
When they finally were heading out to party, Naomi had settled on a yellow rugby t-shirt with white shorts, and Sen was wearing a more or less casual light blue skirt to go with a white tank top that had a blue, sheer, button-down blouse to go over it. Haku was wearing something that looked like his normal clothes, but they were a light green color, Boh hadn't budged to change into anything different, and Dayu was wearing his black hat that he had received the first night they were all there.
"I wonder what they'll call it," Sen thought aloud as they waited for the elevator to take them to the first level so they could find their way outside. "The holiday, I mean."
There was a short pause as everyone in the elevator pondered over different names it might have, which was only broken when the door rang out a 'ding!' and it opened to release them all.
The first floor had been decorated for the sake of getting people in a partying mood before they got outside, and had thus been decorated rather scantily since it would only be of some use for a short while. There were a few streamers here and there and some confetti tossed around, but other than that it looked normal.
The halls of the first floor were crowded with people making their way out to the party, and the five guests fallowed the crowd out the front doors of the castle and around to the biggest part of the outer area, where the training field was not far off. Once they got there they saw that the king, queen and prince were stationed at the top of a short hill to give them height over the rest of the people there. There were picnic tables in various places over the grass and under the shade, the chefs were already pairing every grill they possessed with people to make good use of them with the food, and a crowd of professionals were gathered in the training field to get the fireworks organized.
Once she caught sight of them, the queen hastily got up and rushed towards her and the king's five honored guests with a smile plastered on her face.
When she reached them, she didn't hesitate to take the hands of Naomi and Sen, who were the closest to her, and drag them back to where she had been sitting, telling them that mingling with the crowd was lower than they deserved, and should accompany her and her son and husband on such a day. Or until everyone broke up to have their own fun, at least. But she also had ulterior motives to get Naomi to be around the prince as much as possible from that day on, since she had more than picked up on the time the two spent together already. Naomi had been the first single female to mosey on into the castle without being chased away by Prince Miruto's… tendencies… and although Naomi was only sixteen, the queen had convinced herself that she would make a good daughter in law one day. They all took seats on either side of the royal family and their positions were the same as they were during the feast in their honor a couple of weeks back.
After waiting around for a bit while the remainder of the castle inhabitants found their way outside, the king rose from his seat to give a speech.
He mainly dwelled on making jokes about what happened during the curse and the effect that it had on people before breaking into the point, and saying that the new holiday would be called Liberation Day, seeing as how they had all finally been freed from the results of the curse. Then, after reverting back to a few more jokes, he wished everyone a happy Liberation Day and invited them all to enjoy themselves however they pleased in the spirit of the occasion.
Once the speech was over, all five of them plus Prince Miruto stayed and chatted with the king and queen for a while (but mostly only the queen) about absolutely nothing in particular. The queen was the one who most of the time started the dialogue between them all, and her only reason for not ending the conversation was to see Naomi and Prince Miruto react to each other around her.
After a slightly longer pause than the rest that showed that the queen was out of topics, Boh remembered when he was talking to Haku about his dream and how interesting that seemed to be, so he started discussion it. Thankfully, it started the rest of them on getting into the conversation, and from then on it was no longer uncomfortable and pointless small talk.
They must have stayed on the dream subject for at least an hour, since there were six of them (Dayu can't talk) that were all eager to tell everyone else about the dreams they had had in the past. But just like all good things, it came to an end, when a few advisors sought out the queen to nag her about the fireworks.
Once they were free to do whatever they wanted, since they didn't have to honor the queen's out-of-the-blue desire to talk to them, they found that they wanted to continue to discuss their dreams, and so they did just that for as much more time as they wanted.
It was nearly one in the afternoon when the chefs had finally got it together and were dishing out lunch. After they all got their food, they ignored the crowded picnic tables and instead sat under the tree on the edge of the training field to eat while they laughed at the people fumbling over the fireworks.
"So what else is there to do out here?" Naomi asked the prince, who, as always, was with the five guests. They had finished eating and were now throwing out their trash.
"Well I don't really know… There are probably some people who have gone off and thrown their own smaller parties… maybe we could find something to do at one of those."
With that said, they spent some time walking around and observing what other people were doing. More than half of the entire population of the castle had cleared out of the field where the whole thing had originally started, because they had all moved a bit farther from the castle and over to a lake that the five of them had not seen… probably because it was not really considered to be on the main territory of the castle.
But like I said, more than half of the people of the castle were at the lake, so not surprisingly, there weren't any spots on the shore that were empty to claim— unless they wanted to walk half way around it.
They dropped that idea and moved on to see what other people were doing. Not much was going on outside, and the people who weren't at the lake were also not where everything had began, so they went inside the castle to see if there was something more interesting in there.
Upon entering the front door, they couldn't help but let their attention be drawn to what looked like fire on the carpet of a hallway. A closer look revealed that it was only a spell though, and wasn't actually hot or burning anything. They decided to go in the direction that the arrow indicated, since there must be something interesting that way if somebody took the time to so that and all.
More arrows came after that one and pointed them down a long staircase. Before they even got there, the prince voiced his suspicion that something must be going on in the dungeons. It was confirmed when they neared the bottom of the stairs and could hear music blaring from what was evidently the door of the dungeon, since it was labeled by that weird fire and all.
The first thing that Sen and Naomi noticed was the music. It wasn't at all like what they would normally listen to in their world, but it sounded instead like some strange mix of techno, pop, rap, and traditional Japanese music. On the whole, it was probably the strangest and at the same time, best thing they had ever heard.
Next to catch their attention was the flood of colors that assaulted their eyes. The room was dimly lit, but strobe lights were everywhere and what had to be the spirit world version of disco balls were hung from the ceiling, reflecting more of the color.
Once their eyes adjusted to the change in the light, they saw what had attracted so many people besides the arrows. A group of people had cleared out the largest part of the dungeon and conjured a skating rink right smack in the middle of it. The individual cells were filled with skate rental booths, snack stands, games, and there were even a random few that had light-up disco floors and dance cages or an anti-gravity thing like the product testing room on the seventh floor. The largest cell was filled with the people responsible for the music. A thought struck them that if the cells were vacated then the prisoners would be running about, but then it dawned on them that they probably didn't get many captives since the castle was basically out in the middle of nowhere.
They stood there for a while staring blankly at everything before them, until the guys all noticed Sen and Naomi were unconsciously dancing as they observed it all. Then the girls noticed it too, and they stopped, but only to turn to Haku and the prince.
"Can we rent some skates?" Naomi asked the prince before Sen even had a chance to open her mouth. Then she put on her most pathetic and pleading face in hopes of encouraging a yes.
"Sure. There's no reason we wouldn't be able to," he replied after laughing slightly at her expression.
"Yay!" the girls cheered even as they turned to charge towards the skate rental cell. The rest of them followed and ogled at the dungeon's makeover on the way there. In the spirit of the holiday, whoever had set everything up had made it all free, and so before they even caught up with Naomi and Sen, they had gotten their skates along with pairs for the rest of them and had met them half-way there.
"Well this is all just fine and dandy, but I've never actually used a pair of skates before…" the prince confessed.
Naomi and Sen just openly stared at him.
"Um… how do you put these things on?" Boh asked, obviously not having ever skated either.
"I must also admit that I've also never done this before," Haku admitted.
Well, they were just gonna have to do something about that.
I decided to split this into two parts, since I'm not quite sure what to do after this little skate fest. So I thought you'd rather be able to finally see what's here right now then wait for who knows how much longer for the rest of it. So maybe by the weekend you'll have the rest…? I guess it depends on how school goes this week. Wednesday is my first day this year. So bye for now ^_^