A Twinkle In The Night Sky
Chapter One: To A New Place

Alicia

Today was the day Mother's magical reactor was supposed to be tested. I watched from the balcony, idly wishing that Mother would come home soon, before I saw a bright light. I tried to run farther into the house to escape it, but it didn't work. I blacked out, but to my surprise, I woke up in an unfamiliar place, a woman who looked a bit like me, but with silver hair and blue eyes instead of blond hair and red eyes standing over me.

"Are you okay?" She asked. "I saw a bright light and then you appeared. I was worried that you might be . . ." She trailed off, but she didn't need to finish. I knew what she meant.

I shook my head and sat up. "I'm okay." I looked around. "Where am I?"

"You're in the Moon Kingdom, child." The woman informed me.

I blinked. "The Moon Kingdom? What's that?"

"You don't know? The Moon Kingdom is made up of the planets in this solar system, except Earth which has recently petitioned to join." She explained. "I was certain everyone in this solar system knew about the Moon Kingdom."

"How far is Mid-Childa from here?" I wanted to know.

"Mid-Childa? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

I sighed. "Swell. The blast must've transported me."

"Blast?"

"My mother was working on a magical reactor and it was supposed to test today. I saw a blast of light from where Mother works and then I blacked out only to wake up here. I guess I must have been sent to this place." I explained. "And I'm stuck."

"Would you consider letting me adopt you then?" The woman asked. "I'm Selene, the queen of the Moon Kingdom. I'm offering because I recently lost my daughter, Serenity, to a mysterious illness that's swept the kingdom, devastating every planet. And of course, you all but lost your mother, having no way to get back to her." She looked at me again. "You look a red eyed version of my daughter Serenity, blond hair and all. In fact . . ."

"In fact what?" I demanded.

"In fact you look so much like her that we could pass you off as her." Selene began.

"And if everyone believed that I was her, no one would object to me being the heir." I finished. Mother made a point to teach me all about politics and other stuff like that, wanting to make sure that nothing like what happened to her, when she was abruptly kicked out and forced to fend for herself when she defied her parents and refused to marry the man they had planned for her to marry because it would unite their families and keep their bloodlines going happened to me. You see, Mother's family was an old family from before the time of magic and were as stuck up as most old noble families were with all the stereotypical practices— right down to arranging marriages for their children to keep the bloodline pure, even if it meant marrying cousins. Mother wanted to make sure that never happened to me, and so taught me almost everything she knew about noble politics and related topics, and I learned it all pretty well.

"Exactly." Selene agreed.

I thought her offer over for a few minutes. I had no way of getting back to Mother, or even letting her know I was alive. Selene just lost her daughter. It seemed like a win-win situation: both of us gained something we lost. I got a mother and she got a daughter.

"I accept your offer." I decided.

I didn't really thing there was anything to lose by accepting.

She smiled. "Good. Remember, in public you'll have to answer to Serenity, because everyone will believe you are her. We'll tell everyone the sickness caused your eyes to change from blue to red because it reacted badly with your mixed blood— Serenity was half Lunarian, what I am, and half Uranian, the only one to my knowledge."

I nodded. "Okay."

After that, I started calling Selene Lady Moon. At first I wanted to call her Lady Mother, because she was my mother in a manner of speaking, but I still had Mother on Mid-Childa, but I kept saying Lady Moon because I was used to Mother's "I don't got no more an eye for you 'den the Lady Moon" about some guy who liked her at work. Mother had a tendency to occasionally lapse into street cant when she was angry or annoyed, probably because of the numerous years she spent on the streets before she found a job with the TSAB and met my father (I didn't ask and Mother didn't tell me— all I knew about him was that he died shortly before I was born).

Years passed. I met a boy named Darien, from Earth, on one of my numerous missions as the first Lunar Agent (Two was Artemis-nii-san, Three was Luna-nee-chan and I was One but no one knew it). Before we knew it, we had both fallen head over heels for eachother. However, Beryl, a woman who met Darien and believed that he loved her, didn't like that Darien chose me over her and decided I must have forced Darien to love me.

Because of this, she started practicing all sorts of nasty magic and even went to the Negaverse, the Moon Kingdom's enemy, to get power to 'bring Darien back to her' because she got it in her head that I was the reason Darien didn't love her.

In the middle of a battle, I used Mage magic, what little of it I remembered, and Darien noticed the difference. So after the battle was over, I came clean about why I preferred to be called Alicia in private— because that was my name and I wasn't really Lady Moon's daughter by birth. The real Serenity, the girl Lady Moon conceived and gave birth to, was dead from that sickness. The sickness that killed Serenity didn't make my eyes change color, because they were already like that. If I couldn't trust him with my secret, who could I trust?

Needless to say he was quite shocked, but told me that it all made sense; he'd met Serenity once before, but didn't feel anything for her, and she acted a little different. Plus, she always called Lady Moon 'Mother' both in public and in private. I only did so in public to keep up the charade that I was Serenity, so that no one would complain about me being heir. He actually told me that he suspected I was a different person. I congratulated him on figuring it out.

Around the time I was fifteen and Darien was eighteen his best friends and generals, who he had sworn a blood oath with, were kidnapped and brainwashed to believe they had always served Beryl. Because they were brainwashed, that meant that they didn't break their oaths willingly, which hopefully meant that they would be able to find true peace and happiness, which those who willingly broke their oaths would never find again once the broke the oath.

A year later, when I was seventeen and Darien was twenty, Beryl launched an all-out attack on the Moon Kingdom, targeting me specifically.

Lady Moon called me to her throne room. "I'm going to seal Beryl and send you to the future. Where you'll be safe, so no protesting." She added, fixing me with a look. "Unlike the others who will be reborn, you'll be de-aged and only your memories of the Moon will be erased."

"But—"

"Alicia."

"Fine." Lady Moon raised the crystal and began chanting in Old Lunarian. I looked at one last time, and sure enough, like mine, her face was streaked with tears.

"Goodbye." She whispered, and just like that I'd lost my mother. Again.