"Ah. So that is how Earthling transportation works…"
Today, Diaspro had spent some time browsing the internet on her sleek silver laptop.
On it, she was currently looking at a webpage about the history of transportation. The concept of Earthling trains and planes in particular had caught her attention and she made up her mind to try a ride on one someday.
"Perhaps the Eurostar would be fun…" She thought, before shaking her head to clear it and turning to more important matters.
Earlier that week, she, Zinah and Helen had gotten together to help her figure out what GCSE subjects she should pick. Mathematics, Science, English, ICT and History were the first five choices of her own as she felt those five would provide a solid foundation for living on this planet.
The other ones she had a bit more trouble with. Which ones would she have a knack for?
They had her doing a whole bunch of tests both online and in real life, trying to determine her aptitudes. Hell, they'd even dragged over to the institute that had appealed to her the most and they'd provided consultations, helping her to pick subjects.
Therefore in addition to the original five she had picked, she'd also be studying Business Studies, Art & Design and French.
With all those courses on her plate, she therefore had something to occupy her for the next year at the very least and she would be taking them full-time during the day, so it would almost be like she was attending a British secondary school except without the uniforms.
Now with that all out of the way and finalized, it was time to go school shopping.
Funny. Shopping of this kind had always been done for her and now she was doing it herself. The little shopping she had done since arriving on Earth, she actually enjoyed. After all, when you did it yourself, you could make sure you got exactly what you wanted…
"Hey, Diaspro! Ready to go? We've got a couple of things to get ourselves!" Zinah stood in the doorway.
Helen rolled her eyes.
"I'll just go get my jumper. Hang on…"
Diaspro ran into her room and retrieved a thick, pastel pink sweater and her black purse.
"So, where are we going then?" She asked as they strolled down a busy street.
"W.H. Smith has a wonderful collection of books and so does our Uni's bookstore. Which one would you like to try first?" Zinah asked.
"Which is nearer?"
"W.H. Smith it is then. Let's go. I believe there is one in this shopping centre over here…" Helen led them over.
Several shopping bags later, they all sat together in a food court, eating happily.
"I'm thinking that these McDonald's burgers might just be a guilty pleasure for me…" Helen admitted with a mouthful of burger.
"Really?" Zinah raised an eyebrow. "That greasy American crap? Helen, I'm sure you can do much better than that…"
"I've never been fond of fast food myself, but I will pick at it if I'm really hungry enough. I do like the sandwiches that the sandwich shop here makes. I never thought a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich could taste that good…" Diaspro swallowed a bite of her sandwich before commenting.
"I hate tuna…" Helen grumbled.
"Because of a certain incident, huh?" Zinah nodded knowingly, leaving Diaspro in the lurch.
"What…?"
"Trust me; you do not want to know…" Helen's face went dark for a few seconds before resuming a normal expression.
"Okay then. All set? Let's go. I want to get back home and bury myself in these books…" Diaspro stood up.
"Okay then…" Helen scooped up what was left of her fries and walked with the other girls as they left.
Taking a large sketchbook and some coloured pencils in hand, Diaspro lounged on her bed with the pillows propped up and began to sketch.
Losing herself in the drawing, she did not stop until she was finished.
Colours blended with colours, shapes were interlinked, shading was done as she twisted the pencils here and there.
Once she was done, she got up and gently laid the drawing on the bed before stepping back to admire it.
It was a drawing of her, Zinah and Helen sitting on a bench in Hyde Park with their shopping bags at their feet and tickling each other with blades of grass they had picked.
It was a memory of her day today that she cherished. After admitting she'd never been there, Zinah and Helen insisted that they'd take her there.
She didn't regret it.
The park was one of the most beautiful places she had ever seen. She might have been a princess in her former life and as a result had been to beautiful, luxurious places, but she knew that there were different kinds of beauty.
Friendship was one of them.
Diaspro had hardly been on Earth for a month and she already had two good friends that she had spent almost every day with.
It was more luck than she deserved and she knew it.
After what she'd done, no-one would want to be her friend. Granted, Helen and Zinah didn't know that. At least not yet.
She'd tell them about where she was truly from… someday, but for now she'd enjoy the friendship she had with them.
Snapping her fingers, they glowed with a red light which surrounded the picture and formed a sleek, red frame around it.
Snapping her fingers again, it appeared on a wall in her living room.
She flicked her hand as she walked into the living room and a bottle of orange juice floated into her outstretched hand as she sunk into the sofa there.
"School is going to start soon, so we'd best enjoy ourselves while we can!" Zinah exclaimed as the other two met her at Lazeez.
All three were dressed up to go clubbing. Zinah donned a dark green halter-top mini-dress with flowing sleeves and a flared hem, black and green vertical striped leggings, black heels and her frizzy hair was tied with a green bow.
Helen was wearing a leather vest with criss-crossing chains in the front over a long-sleeved black shirt, a black, pleated miniskirt with a silver chain-link belt, fishnet stockings, black knee-high boots and two pairs of silver hoop earrings, Her spiky hair was even spikier than before.
Diaspro's hair was up in a bun tied with a red bow and had a fringe that hid her eyes slightly. Her long-sleeved, form fitting knee-length red dress shimmered slightly and black ankle boots with red laces adorned her feet.
"We all look like we're going to a fashion show! Well, maybe except for Helen. Helen looks like Jacob Marley with all those chains…" Diaspro snickered and Zinah joined in her laughter.
Yes, Diaspro had been catching up on English literature…
"I will choose to pretend that I did not hear that…" Helen smiled good-naturedly.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" Diaspro yelled over the loud, ear-throbbing music of the club.
"I SAID: HOW DO YOU LIKE IT HERE AT THIS CLUB?" Helen yelled.
"IT'S OKAY, I GUESS!" Diaspro yelled back.
Zinah was nowhere to be seen as she had gone off to mingle with some other friends she'd spotted there.
The lights of the club flashed as everyone danced and had a good time while the DJ addressed the club every once in a while.
Even though she could hardly hear herself think, she did think that had she still been an official royal, she would never have been able to go to places like this by herself- scratch that- at all. She wouldn't have even wanted to. And here she was now, in a club, dancing until she got sweaty and tired, with music pounding loudly through her ears and shaking her very core.
Much more fun than the stuffy state dinners that she had had to attend. She almost felt sorry for her younger sister. Poor Reina would be stuck with all that now. At least the one good thing for her was that she had a fiancé she actually liked. Reina might not have been in love with him, per se, but at least they got along well, unlike what had happened with her and Sky…
"Let's go get a drink!" Helen grabbed her arm and tugged her over to the bar, where Zinah waited for them.
"No alcohol for me, thanks. I'll just be sticking to soda and juice…" Zinah held up a can of diet cola.
"Oh, come on, Z! Be adventurous! Try a martini or even a rum and coke!" Helen ordered a glass of the latter.
"No thanks. Growing up in an Arab household tends to put your mind off alcohol. Even though we're not Muslim, my parents still grew up in a Muslim-majority country after all. Plus do you remember the last time I tried alcohol when the last school year ended?" Zinah grimaced.
Helen grimaced as well. "Good point, Zinah. You do not make a pleasant drunk…"
"So… What do you recommend I get? Alcohol content or not, I don't mind…" Diaspro asked.
"Rum and coke should ease you into the harder stuff. Hey, Anthony! Slide another rum and coke down here for my friend, eh?" Helen called.
"Coming up!"
The bartender, who was a tall, lean, young man around their age with dirty blonde hair pulled back into a short ponytail and bright green eyes brought over the drink.
"Diaspro, this is Anthony. He's not only a part-time bartender here, but he's also set to enter the Legal Practice Course at the same City University that Zinah and I attend!"
"Nice to meet you, Diaspro." He beamed. "Now here's that drink for you…"
He, Zinah and Helen watched Diaspro's expression as she took her first sip.
Zinah fell off the stool laughing when Diaspro scrunched up her face.
"Oh my God! How much alcohol content is in this rum?" Diaspro's eyes watered.
At this point, Helen and Anthony began to snicker too.
"It's always the first one that feels like that. Try it again. It won't be as bad as the first time." Anthony advised.
Diaspro hesitantly did so and found that Anthony was right.
"You were right!" She exclaimed in delight.
"Of course I'm right about the drinks. I'm a bartender!" He said smugly.
"Go get me another one!" Diaspro polished off the glass and Anthony chuckled as he went to get another.
The three girls walked through a park near to the club to take a shortcut to the main road.
"That was a really fun night out, huh?" Zinah asked.
"It sure was. I'm glad I went. We should do this again!" Diaspro cheered.
"Yeah. We should go get a taxi now instead of strolling down the London streets at this time of the morning…" Helen slurred slightly. She wasn't drunk though- just tipsy.
"We can go to my flat. Z, you told your parents that you might not come home this morning, didn't you?"
Zinah answered in the affirmative.
"Okay then. We'll all just crash at my flat until we all recover." Helen said.
Diaspro raised an eyebrow. "We recover? I think it's you that is in need of the recovering…"
"Eh, whatever, Diaspro. You coming or not?"
Diaspro was about to answer when a blast of sound waves hit them all, sending them careening through the air and crashing into trees.
"That's going to hurt in the morning…" Zinah moaned. "Well, later in the morning anyway…"
Diaspro stood up quickly, but felt her heart sink at the same time.
Another magical presence? Here? Now? And an apparently hostile one at that?
Another blast came towards her, but she dodged it quickly.
"Hello there, fairy. Did you really think your kind could hide from us forever?"
Four wizards floated down from the sky and surrounded her.
If her heart could sink even lower, it would.
They fired more blasts at her, but she put up a red shield in time. However, said shield was ineffective, as it shattered, sending her careening through the air again.
Before she could hit the ground, she managed to transform and landed gracefully in front of Zinah and Helen, who looked as if she'd been slapped out of her tipsiness by what just happened.
She put herself in a protective stance. "What do you want, wizards?" She began to form an energy blast.
"Us? We're the Wizards of the Black Circle." One of them, a man with long, red hair smirked.
"Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap…" Diaspro chanted over and over in her mind.
"And we're here for the last fairy of Earth. We believe that it's you." A long-haired blond man tipped his hat to her.
"That's not me!" Diaspro fired off the blast, but the red-haired man caught her ball of magic in his outstretched palm and twirled it around until it disappeared.
"Pathetic."
"Girls, you should run now!" Diaspro exclaimed.
"But-" Zinah started.
"GO! You won't be able to do anything!" She shooed them off and they took off, running as hard as they could.
She took to the air and fired off energy blasts from several gems which surrounded her.
One of the wizards, one with a pinkish-purple Mohawk transformed into a giant hawk and went for her, but she narrowly dodged, only to be thrown into the path of the blonde one's sound blasts.
She crashed to the ground and tried to call up her Charmix power-up, but failed.
The Wizards surrounded her and formed a swirling vortex that began to suck her up.
It was getting darker and darker; everything around her seemed to get smaller…
And then the circle rejected her.
She skidded along the ground and her back slammed into a nearby tree. Her head also began to throb as she stood up unsteadily.
"I told you that I wasn't from Earth! I hail from Isis!" She exclaimed.
"Pfft. A waste of time here, Ogron. She's not the one we're looking for!" The dark-skinned one with short dreadlocks exclaimed, addressing the red-haired man.
"Let's go, men. Our search isn't over." Ogron clapped his hands and all four men disappeared.
"What the hell just happened?" She wondered as she began to fly, albeit unsteadily.
Casting an invisibility spell on herself, she flew as quickly as she could to Helen's flat and rang the doorbell.
She heard footsteps coming to the door and it swung open, revealing a very worried Helen, with Zinah standing some distance behind her.
"Thank goodness. I made it…" She swayed on her feet before de-transforming and stumbling into Helen's outstretched arms.
"You can explain to us later, Diaspro. Right now we've got to get you fixed up!" Helen dragged her inside, shut the door and hoisted her onto the nearest sofa with Zinah's help.
