"There is no
Life I know
To compare with
Pure imagination..."

~Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Chapter 2

I hurriedly snapped the last piece of my armor into place on my left calf, and waited until I didn't hear anybody outside before I cautiously poked my head out of the broom cupboard. I had managed to get away when the assistant's back was turned and when Sir Junn was out for lunch, and I felt… almost criminal.

It was a thrilling feeling, I have to admit. But now that I was out of that almost useless robe reserved for patients and back in my normal, shiny, golden-toned armor, I doubted that Sir Junn would really notice me. After all, I had high hopes that he was searching specifically for a young woman with blonde hair that was down and in hospital garb, not a lady Warrior with hair hair pinned up. I grinned shamelessly before slipping out into the corridor, and from there outside.

The walls that were several yards away towered above me; unfortunately, they were dwarfed by the actual building they protected. I stared around and up, taking in the sight. I had been in such a hurry to get out of the medical clinic area that I hadn't had a chance to look around before.

"Now might be a perfect time to poke my nose exactly where it doesn't belong," I purred, grinning. With a new bounce in my step, I headed left. To the right was the stretch of the building with the medical clinic, and I really didn't want to head back there. I wanted to get moving. The worn path beneath my feet led me past several doors set in the side of the wall. The first one had a wooden sign hanging outside that declared it to be a weapons shop. I grinned.

"I'll have to stop by there later," I decided. I loved my sword, but I also wanted to get a look at some others. The next door had a sign that indicated it was the mess hall, and I passed quickly. If Sir Junn was on his lunch break, that would be the most likely place for me to get caught.

The next door I passed had no sign. Curious, I went up to it and tugged on the handle. It didn't budge, and this only made the interest flame brighter. I used both hands, pulling at it harder.

"You don't want to go in there," said a knight who had been standing by the mess hall.

"Why?" I responded, thoroughly puzzled by now.

"That's the cellar. It's said to have lots of very, very dangerous monsters in there," the knight told me matter-of-factly. Through the slits in his helmet, I could see his eyes gain this dreamy look. "It's also said there are ghosts down there… like the great Sir Koffagus… I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself. I'm Sir Pernatural."

"Calliope," I answered with a smile, shaking hands with him.

"Be careful if you go out into the woods… It's said there are ghosts out there…"

With a parting comment about how that was all very interesting, I moved on. Ahead of me, I saw a turn in the path, and a large, ornate fountain in the corner of the wall. The water was crystal-clear, and seeking any more doors that might have been around the corner, I began the turn.

"Boo!"

I jumped (as anyone might have in my situation), and spun to face the source of the voice, my hand automatically dropping to my sword hilt. A knight chuckled right around the corner I had been turning, and giggled like an idiot. I regarded him with some reservations.

"Gotcha!" he laughed. I smiled too, even though the joke had been on me. I'd always been good about letting that sort of stuff go. Likewise, I've never been able to hold a grudge for more than about a day, tops. As a result, people generally liked me. Then again, there were always those nut jobs that just didn't. This knight didn't seem like one of those lunatics.

"Don't give some poor old lady a heart attack," I warned after introducing myself. The knight had, still chuckling, bowed and said that he was Sir Prize. By his voice, I put him at between 35 and 40. That was the typical age for some knights. Much older and the men would be starting to lose the physical ability to keep up with the other men. Any younger, and they probably wouldn't have the experience to lead men into battle. Of course, there were always exceptions, like the odd so-called "natural" that came along now and then.

"I will attempt not to," he replied. Behind the visor of his helmet, I guessed that he was grinning.

"Never too old for jokes, huh?" I asked as I glanced around the corner. There was one last door, and I wanted to check it out.

"Never, miss," he said cheerfully, returning to his post. I tugged at the large wooden door's handle, but like the one before, it didn't move. I frowned as I pulled at it harder, trying not to jostle my ribs. They didn't hurt right now, but if I pushed myself, they definitely would. I preferred to avoid that.

"You would think some of these doors would be unlocked," I muttered under my breath in annoyance. But remembering Sir Pernatural's warning about the other door, I decided not to push my luck with this one.

I walked back the way I had come, but when I came to the huge door that was the entrance to the Keep, I paused, turning and looking up at it.

"Intimidating doesn't seem to cover it," I whispered to myself.

"It most certainly does not, my lady." A little to the left of the door stood a knight at attention who I had introduced myself to before—Sir Valance. He was the one who had shown me a place to hide and change into my armor. Satisfied with my halfway-done exploration of the keep, I turned to him now.

"Say, do you know where the Captain is?" I asked him curiously. I was determined to find him so that I could thank him. I always settled my debts, and I was going to try and find this fabled Captain Rolith with the intentions of paying back his chivalrous act.

"He has been out since this morning hunting down key members in the Darkwolf bandit group," he replied. Sir Valance was a no-nonsense kind of guy, and I decided I liked him right off the bat.

"Well, do you know when he'll be back?"

"Most likely sometime this evening, miss," he informed me amiably. I nodded, frowning.

"So that will be how many hours…?" I murmured to myself, mentally counting the hours up. Sunset would happen in around seven to eight hours, so that was how much time I had. "In other words, about seven hours to avoid Junn," I muttered with a sheepish grin.

"Here he comes," Sir Valance said. It was such a calm, level tone that I nearly missed it, and only just had time to hurriedly turn my back in the direction of the path that would have taken me to the armory and the mess hall. After a minute, I peeked over my opposite shoulder to see Sir Junn walking away, back towards the med clinic. It was really difficult to miss him, because his hair was a bright scarlet that automatically drew the eye. I grinned and let out a breath. I turned back to Sir valance.

"Would it bother anyone if I sat here for the rest of the day?" I questioned, pointing to a grassy patch that seemed out of the way between the armory door and the main door of the keep. Sir Valance shrugged, so I took that to mean he didn't mind. I sank down to sit on the grass cross-legged, and leaned up against the wall carefully. I winced as my back arched the wrong way, eliciting another stab of pain from my ribs.

"Maybe I should have stayed still," I muttered, making myself comfortable. My shoulderblades rested easily against the stone wall, and I looked straight up from the ground. All I could see was the wall, and the blue skies. "What a gorgeous shade of blue," I mused. "That would be phenomenal for a painting…"

Oh, how I wished that I had my brush and paints right now. Just looking straight up from the ground… it was a mesmerizing view, to say the least. The sun reflected off the pale stone, making a stark contrast between the endless cerulean blue and the nearly glowing (from the sunlight) eggshell color that was so bright as to nearly hurt my eyes. I let a smirk cross my lips, and while keeping my gaze firmly on what I was already looking at, I raised my right hand to about chest level. Even as I did, memories flew across my mind, one by one, and then in a torrent. I loved to paint. I could remember painting from the front porch back at home, and in my room while looking out the window. Mum patting my head as she saw my progress…

My hand started to move. Up and down, back and forth. It was like I was holding a paintbrush in my hand, and there was a blank canvas in front of me. In my mind, I was capturing that precise shade of blue, and that glowing ivory color. I was back in my room at home, with paint all over the walls. I had my paint palate in my left hand, and without looking at it, I would blend two colors until I got what I was looking for. In my head, I added a slight gradient to the surreal blue that served as the sky in my painting, making it ever so slightly darker the closer it got to the stone, adding a phantasmagorical element to the image. My arm controlled my wrist, which I forced to remain loose and relaxed, so that my brushstrokes would be fluid and controlled. It was a trick that I had taught myself some time back.

When I deemed it done, I looked back down at my canvas, expecting it to be full of color and seeming to shine with a light of its own—the kind of glow that the tops of autumn trees would give off when reflecting a brilliant sunset. That kind of brilliant radiance always filled me with a sort of elation that only an amazing piece of artwork could bring out. So without heeding the small part of me that remembered this was all in my head, I glanced down.

But my eyes were met with nothing but empty air. My painted canvas had vanished into my imagination, along with my paint palette and my paintbrush. The rapture that had consumed my mind disappeared along with it, leaving me feeling strangely empty. My hand fell, as did my expression. The sun hadn't moved too much, and I still had several hours before I could introduce myself to the Captain.

Putting it simply, I had a lot of time on my hands yet.

Frowning thoughtfully to myself, I stood with care, brushing off my armor (unnecessarily), and walked back over to Sir Valance.

"Sir Valance," I began, starting to get excited by my idea, "Would there, by any chance, be art supplies somewhere in the keep?"

"I'm afraid that is not in my circle of knowledge," he replied simply. "If anyone would know, though, my lady, it would be Maya."

"Maya?" I asked curiously. In way of explanation, Sir Valance turned, pointing towards a door that was back in the direction of the medical clinic. It wasn't right next to it, but I hadn't visited it yet for fear of being spotted by Sir Junn. No, thank you, I was perfectly fine not being stuck laying in a bed for the next few days. Thanking him, I began to walk towards that door he had pointed out. By the looks of it, one of the walls of the room that would surely have been behind that door would be the other side of the same wall that Sir Valance usually stood in front of.

I cautiously tried the door handle, and upon finding it to be unlocked, I poked my head inside. I didn't expect to see rows upon rows of books, scrolls, and tomes resting on the shelves. Several that I saw were quite dusty. A sturdy table meant to hold things far heavier than books sat in the middle of what must have been a library of sorts, and a couple of chairs had been pushed up to it. A smaller, less noticeable door hid in the corner, and would likely not have been noticed at first glance. I only noticed because my gaze swept the room more than once. A few sparse candles were lit around the back, and a handful sat in the middle of the table, well away from the edges. Where the candles' light didn't reach was lit by the two thick-paned windows on either side of the door.

"Hello?" I called out. The room was fairly large, a little bigger than the medical wing, but there was nobody there. I honestly felt just a little silly calling out to an empty room. I slipped inside, and gently closed the door behind me, shrugging my braid over my shoulder as I looked around yet again. "Something's missing," I breathed to myself. "Well, aside from the obvious, I mean…"

I walked quietly towards the center of the room, looking up and around me. The ceiling was pitched high, much like the medical area, and designed in a very similar way. Wooden beams held up the floor above that was part of the main keep, and the only windows were about a yard on either side of the door.

The sound of something falling caught my attention, and my head whipped around. It had come from behind that small, second door in the back, and with only a moment's hesitation, I headed back towards it. I carefully peered around the door, and found that this room—though smaller—was lit with many more candles. There was another one of those heavy tables, but different scrolls and readings were scattered over it. 'Neat' was most certainly not a word I would use to describe this room, especially when comparing it to the main room.

But I saw at once what I had heard, and started forward to help a young woman who was maybe my age to pick up a rather alarming pile of books that had clearly fallen onto the floor due to a small landslide that had occurred on the table. She looked over at me when everything was cleaned up, and I smiled, handing the books to her to stack upon other piles of the same.

"Thanks," she said with a slightly shy smile. The first impression I got of this girl was that she had a very cautious and tentative nature, as well as probably naïve; maybe more so than me. In a lot of ways, she reminded me of a deer… ready to flee at the slightest threat, and not willing to fight back. She could be very harmonious, I guessed.

"Maya?" I asked with a bright grin, holding out my hand.

"Yes," she confirmed, shaking my hand with a dainty grip. "I'm the Loremaster of Oaklore Keep."

I'm not saying that I don't have respect for people who don't have a firm handshake, but at the same time, a handshake can tell you a lot about a person. I got the idea that Maya was probably the kind of person who would fly under the radar, given the chance.

"I'm Calliope," I told her, beaming. "I was told by Sir Valance that you might be able to help me…?" I turned the statement into a question. I didn't want to seem imposing or like I was talking to her like stuff scraped off the bottom of my boot. Maya seemed fragile, somehow. But that particular thought was almost immediately eliminated by the intelligent gleam in her eyes. Guess she wasn't as fragile as she appeared, and that was a good thing.

"That depends on what you're looking for," she replied, leading the way back into the main room. I grinned again. Oh, I liked her. With her, you would have to ask the right questions.

"I was told that you would know if the Keep happened to contain some, maybe, long-forgotten art supplies?"

"Oh, are you an artist?" she asked immediately with another smile. She still seemed like the quiet type, but clearly she wasn't as shy as I had first assumed.

"I dabble," I admitted with a half-shrug. I hate boasting, I absolutely hate it. I would rather undersell myself and oversell a friend than have it be the other way around.

"Well, Calliope," Maya said, tapping her chin, "I think we might. We just might."

"That would be fantastic."

"Come on," she said with another small smile, opening the original door. "We can go hunt for some, if you'd like." With a blinding grin, I bounded off after her, for lack of a better term. I was sure if I had a tail, it would probably be wagging.

And digging through closets was exactly how Maya and I spent the next hour or so. We chatted back and forth, and I learned that the brunette had come from a town that was actually quite close to mine. We didn't know many of the same people, but we passed the time while we searched entertaining each other with funny or surprising stories or facts about ourselves. I knew instinctively that I had found a friend.

We emerged from the Keep covered in dust and sneezing horribly, but grinning, and with our arms wrapped around a great number of odds and ends that could be used. I carried the heavier of the items, because Maya looked like anything heavier than a stack of books would crush her. I carried a few rolls (of varying sizes) of heavy, pale fabric. When cut and stretched across a wooden frame, these would serve as the ideal canvas. Thankfully, there was no real shortage of wood around a forest. In the crook of my arm there was a wooden bucket with a matching lid that was much heavier than it appeared. This was plain white paint—but how it had avoided drying out was beyond me. Maybe it was just the place where it was stored…

Maya carried a few paintbrushes that were in really bad condition (but they were paintbrushes, and they were functional, so that was what mattered) and a small multi-compartmented box that was about the length of two of my hands placed beside each other. In each of these compartments was a colored powder that—for all intents and purposes—was no better than fine colored sand. However, when mixed with the thick, white liquid in the bucket that I carried, it would become a particular color of paint that I needed. However, if I wanted a particular color that wasn't in the box, I would have to mix it myself. For the palette, I could easily get a thin piece of wood. As I mentioned before, Oaklore Keep sat in the middle of a forest. There was really no shortage of wood.

Feeling like I had just won a race or a challenge, I fought to keep myself from skipping back to the library. My ribs were already screaming at me for carrying heavy items—hopping or bouncing would not help my case.

"Thanks so much for helping me find these," I chattered excitedly as I shouldered back the door to hold it back for Maya. "I can't wait to get painting again!"

"Do you have a place to set things up?" Maya asked suddenly, looking up at me with a smile. "I'd love to help!"

My face fell, and my step faltered.

"No," I realized regretfully. I felt like slamming my palm into my forehead as a sign of my stupidity. Problem was, there were three reasons that I wouldn't; one, my hands were quite full at the moment. Two, I did have metal gloves on, and it would hurt more than expected. And thirdly, wasn't I already injured enough?

Maya's face abruptly turned calculating, and she carefully set the things she was carrying on the heavy table. "How long are you planning on staying in the Keep?" she asked craftily, raising an eyebrow. I bit my lip thoughtfully.

"Probably a while," I finally answered with a shrug, unloading my arms. "There seems to be enough here to keep me busy for a while, at least, so… if it's not too much trouble, probably at least a few weeks, if not months." Maya nodded to herself, and smiled almost sneakily.

"I'll be right back. Wait here."

She was out the door before I could gather my thoughts enough for a response, giving me no choice but to wait. I blinked a few times before turning back to where everything lay on the table. I chewed on my bottom lip for a minute, then started inspecting everything. I wanted to know exactly what I was dealing with.

The brushes would need a thorough cleaning, and they were in appalling condition; but once they were cleaned, they would work just fine. The heavy off-white fabric was rolled up, very dusty, and the edges were a bit frayed, but it could be dusted off, and it wasn't the edges I would be painting on. The bucket with white paint was just a little bit crusted over at the top, but underneath that, it was just fine. After I broke off the top, I could use it. Just like with an iced-over pond, once the hard shell was gone, there was still liquid underneath. As for the box with the colored powders in it… a lot of it might need replacing, or run out a little too quickly, but they were still useful. I would just have to pace myself with some colors more than others, was all. There were only a few colors—six, to be exact—but I could make them work.

"Let's see," I murmured, "Blue, red, yellow, green, brown, and black… Yeah, I can do that." If I wanted any other colors—say, orange or purple—I could mix them on my soon-to-be-made palette.

"You can stay!"

I jumped when Maya made the exclamation as she opened the door, and frowned. "What? Where?"

"I talked to Sir Preem," she told me with another smile. I had been introduced when we had been raiding the Keep for the art stuff, and I nodded, my smile returning. "He said there's actually an empty room on the ground floor you can stay in."

"Sounds good to me," I said excitedly. "Where is it?"

"Let's get the stuff there, I'll show you," she told me with quiet cheerfulness, picking up the things she had been carrying before. I grabbed the other stuff as quickly as I could without bothering my ribs too much, and hurried after her.

"Well," I muttered with a quick grin, "Today is certainly turning out to be exciting."

Alrighty, guys, here's chapter two. :) As per the usual for me, I spend anywhere from 1-3 chapters introducing everyone and describing the main charrie. This is only chapter two. :3 Things will pick up soon, I promise. I put this chapter up early because... well, technically, it's a new month, right? :D

But if you see any errors, please let me know so I can try to fix it. :) I have my good friend MusicofPoetry12 to thank again, because she pointed out a handful of things that needed to be fixed! :D

Reviews!

MusicOfPoetry12: I'm just glad that you agreed to help! :D No worries, HERE IS DEH UPDATE. ^^

Arieta41: Yeah, this one's gonna be a little more lighthearted than the other one. xD No, this isn't a sequel, exactly... it just happens almost directly after the end of Zhi Lao'Hu. :) Artix and Magiya show up, but they're by no means the main characters. So in a way, I don't think that this IS a sequel. :3 Does that answer your question?

So, as you can see, Calliope has a fantastic imagination, and while she's no novice at swordplay, her strengths in artwork and everything in that area can't go unnoticed! :)

Now, this I promise: the mysterious Captain Rolith will be introduced in the next chapter, when things get rolling. ^^ For now, you'll just have to be content with what's here. ;D

I hope you enjoyed, and please note that ideas or thoughts on people or the plot are welcomed in reviews or through PMs. :) That's why I have the option up there on my page, people! :D

I'll talk to you (in a roundabout way) when the next chapter goes up! See ya!

Juliet