For many years the tiny spaceship had been travelling from the distant planet. Inside, Arianna White, the daughter of a pair of scientists, rested comfortably. She hadn't seen Earth since the terran year 1835 and was no longer certain how much time had passed on her homeworld.
Her heart thought of Imaginos. The man she had loved back then and there. She had allowed herself to become his guinea pig, to further his research into human immortality. It had been her dream to follow him, to gain the gift that he'd had since his birth. She'd thought that he'd offered it to her in order to have her by his side for eternity. But then he'd launched her into space and, for a short time, she hadn't been so certain.
Then those who observed the planet spoke of the wars that had erupted there. Great World Wars. Two of them so far which had devastated the planet and caused lasting distrust amidst the many nations of the planet. And Arianna had become convinced that Imaginos must have foreseen this and wanted to spare her the agony of watching her loved ones die so violently. And so, once again, her heart grew to love him.
And that love grew stronger as the ship approached the Earth.
In the anything-but-modest castle in the land of Plutonia, Desdinova played cards with her daughter Arianna as the moon rose over the Sea and modern day ships sailed to and from the nearby docks. The charmed ship, also called Plutonia, was moored at the dock and had never been decommissioned. Each night at seven, the ship's bell sounded the time. It was a tradition. The rest of the day and night, the nearby church bell sounded the time. But seven at night was always sounded by the Plutonia. The official reason was that it was the time of day that Imaginos and Desdinova had come to this land with their crew and colonised it. But the real reason was that it honoured the seven Oyster Boys who had given Imagnos his immortality.
Imaginos sat nearby, his attention on other things. He was reading an old diary that he had pilfered from Castle Frankenstein and shaking his head at the futility of the old baron's attempts to resurrect the dead. It had never succeeded, though Imaginos's own experiment in granting a living person immortality had met with far more success. As he thought about it, he suddenly realised that he had inadvertently named his daughter after the woman who had loved him almost two centuries ago. He hoped that Desdinova wouldn't figure it out. But then, Desdinova was his female aspect and had a version of his memories. Some part of her must have known.
What neither of them knew was that right now, that particular Arianna was on her way to rendezvous with Imaginos…
…and destiny.