Disclaimer: I do not own the characters.

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Exhausted and lost several hours later, the prince was regretting ever leaving the palace. To his credit, Naru hadn't been thinking very coherently then and while he wasn't very sure exactly when he managed to get his scrambled thoughts together, he was certain it had been in the field with all those damp looking sheep. It had begun raining not long after he'd left the palace behind and he'd squelched through endless monotonous fields of mown grass before arriving at one with all the sheep. He knew because he'd sworn to fire Takigawa when one of the sheep, a particularly woolly and mad-eyed member of the flock had tried to eat him and everything that had transpired in the pervious eight hours came rushing back. He sighed. Becoming a frog was slowly but surely impacting his once astute mind negatively.

Or maybe it had been that fall.

He hopped to the end of the field and found himself facing a road and a stretch of forest. Then, as he hopped onto the road, a horse came out of nowhere and sent him flying right into the helmeted face of the rider. The rider gave a startled cry but managed to save the frog from being trampled by his spooked mare. "Whoa! I say, Chrissie! Whoa!" The horse calmed down on hearing her master's voice and stopped prancing about and allowed him to place the frog on a stretch of grass on the other side. "Here you go little friend. Be more careful of crossing roads eh," he said before clambering back onto Chrissie. Naru blinked. A Canberrean accent? What was a knight from the Southern Kingdoms doing in Albion, he mused as he made his way towards the woodlands.

As in all stories such as these, Mai had indeed gotten lost just as her guardian had warned. She had actually completed all her errands within half an hour of reaching the town, but then, her two friends visiting from the Merchant Guild had to rope her into having tea and cake at the bakery. Then, a brawl would have to happen just as they were about to leave, and Mai found herself unexpectedly cheering the young man who'd broken up the fight single-handedly. He'd spoken with a funny accent but Mai hadn't stopped to listen properly as she rushed out into the setting sun. And now, not unnaturally, she was lost. Again. To make matters worse, it also looked as though it would be raining soon and all the stars were hidden behind thick clouds. As Mai groped her way around another oak tree, she found herself next to the well for the third time.

"That's it. I give up!"

There had to be something vaguely ominous about the way she always found herself at the forest well whenever she got lost. This time, she wasn't going to fight whatever magical creature it was that was causing all the forest paths to converge to this one spot. She heard it snigger and then something rustled in the bushes. Shaking her head a little at her misfortune, she hunkered down at the well. If the creature wanted her to spend the night next to a dirty old well, then she was going to show whatever it was that she could sit it out.

It was rather dark, and a few drops of rain splashed down on her bare arms. Mai hastily drew her short cloak tighter around her. Then, she felt something wet and cold plop down next to her and she jumped up in fright.

"Careful!" A rather hoarse voice admonished coldly. Mai looked around, but all she could see was the dim outline of the trees around her.

"H-hello?" she whispered nervously. She could sense the speaker huff impatiently. "Are – do you happen to be human?"

There was no reply to that, and Mai began to feel her way round to where she had left the basket on the ground. Then, the voice spoke again, startling her. "I don't think so," it admitted reluctantly.

"Oh?" Mai, who had been busy crawling around the base of the well, frowned. "I can't find it!" she said after searching for her missing basket in vain.

"Your basket is on top of the well, where you left it when you first sat down" the voice continued in a faintly bored tone. Mai jumped up immediately in relief. "Really? Where?" But in her hurry, her flailing arm collided with the edge of the basket and sent its contents flying into the well. Naru watched as several apples and two wrapped oilskin packages went splashing into the depths below. A plan was beginning to form in his head.

"I could get them for you," he said when the strange girl had finally exhausted exclaiming and swearing, "On the condition that you provide me with room and board."

"But you said you weren't human."

"I said I didn't think I was"

"That's the same thing," Mai scoffed.

Just then, it stopped raining, and a convenient patch of moonlight illuminated the well. Mai, who had tried and failed so far to identify the mystery being which had been speaking to her, stared.

"You're – you're a talking frog!" she sputtered. Naru gave her a look. "As I was saying, if I successfully retrieve your items, you would have to let me eat from your plate and sleep on your bed. Two conditions for two things seem fair."

Mai shuddered. "No offence, but I think I'll get them myself." To Naru's disbelief, the girl snatched up a long stick began poking into the well. Usually, it was he, Prince Oliver of Albion who did the rejecting. Nobody, and definitely no girl, had rejected him before, and for a moment, he was at a lost as what to do. "I highly doubt your intelligence. I'm as you pointed out, a frog. I can swim in a well. I can rescue your shopping without any danger at all." The last part was in reference to how Mai had nearly fallen into the well herself. Mai pouted. It was true the frog could do a better job, though she wasn't sure if she wanted to be eating at the table with a frog. Then, she was concerned that she might have hurt its feelings. Magical creatures were always so sensitive. "Well, you're rather nice," she began. The frog smirked. "Of course. I'm glad to say that you've good taste in spite of that horrid dress you've on." Then, while she was still flabbergasted, he added, "You'll owe me one." Without waiting for her to react, he hopped right into the well after the packages. "Hey! Wait! This isn't fair!" she shouted after him.

The packages were heavier than he had initially thought, and Naru struggled with trying to get a grip on them for a while. If there was any advantage at all to being a frog as opposed to being a human, it was that he could see pretty well in the dark. While the apples were all floating, the other two had sunk into the weeds at the bottom and he had to tug at them for a while before they would become lose. Then he discovered how heavy they were, and he barely made it to the surface before Mai managed to hook them from him with the stick.

As Naru then discovered, hopping out of a well was not as easy as it looked, and by the time he did, Mai had unwrapped the two packages anxiously. While the oilskin wrappings had prevented much of the dirt and water from soaking the contents, both were now a little damp around the edges. One of them was a slim, pretty volume titled Townsend's Guide to Cultures in the East. As she checked them anxiously, Naru was amused to see that the other one was the very astronomy treatise he'd written, titled fittingly for something written by royalty, Kings in the Sky. He cleared his throat. "You."

Mai gritted her teeth. "I've a name you know."

Naru ignored her protest. "You owe me." he repeated. She sighed. "Yes, thank you, er,"

"Shibuya," he said with a quick glance at the cover of his book. "And how do you intend to do so?"

"My name's Mai," Mai volunteered.

Mai. For a minute, Naru wondered where he'd heard that name, and hoped that she wasn't from one of those blind dates that his mother had been recently setting him up for. There were, as he recalled, still several unopened invitations in his drawer waiting to be rejected. "Well?" he asked.

There didn't seem anyway out of this and Mai nodded unwillingly "Alright, I promise." Then, a brainwave hit her and an evil grin flashed across her face. "But only if you beat me to the mansion!"

Why, that girl! The prince hopped as quickly as he could after the girl, and although she was wearing long heavy skirts that weighed her down, he was after all, a frog, and he watched in frustration as her figure vanished down the path. But, fate was not on the side of Mai Taniyama, who, in her excitement at having outwitted the odd frog, ran down the wrong path just as dawn broke. Then, just as Naru was about to give up, he spotted something through the undergrowth. Mai had mentioned a mansion, and he could see a little of what appeared to be a brick wall in the distance. He looked back at Mai as she rushed round a tree in the opposite direction and smirked to himself. With any luck, he'll reach the mansion just in time for breakfast on the mansion lawn.

Author's notes: The long awaited Mai - Naru interaction. Finally! XD And the Lin residence gains a new mysterious guest in the next chapter. Anyone cares to guess who?

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