She dreamt of a city graveyard, tucked in among tall gothic structures. Thick clouds and a purple haze hung over the graves, and she entered the yard.

Camellia searched the stones for her mother’s recent grave, wondering why it had been moved from the country town of Marteren. Along her path, a statue wept, and a single mausoleum stood with a cage across its open door. Camellia gazed inside to see a pale figure among the shadows. Nearby, stoneless graves possessed the same cages, secured across gaping holes in the ground. Camellia glanced inside each one, sometimes seeing nothing but often seeing pale faces and eyes.

She finally found her mother’s stone and produced a bouquet of yellow lilies. Just as she bent to lay the flowers on the grave, a man caught her eye. She straightened to see Adalhard beckon her from the graveyard’s back exit – a small unassuming gate. Camellia’s heart quickened, and she dropped a lily. She stepped towards him.

From a nearby cage, she heard its occupant croak, How fucking inappropriate. Pay your respects.

 

Camellia struggled out of her dream and sat up. She rubbed her face and sighed. As the vision slipped from her mind, she remembered her mystery. She had double checked her memory on the symbol, and she was right. The symbols matched. It followed that the artifact – a round thing of metal, with long legs – originated from the same place as the ship.

Camellia could tell Adalhard and the rest of the excited archaeologists, but she couldn’t find the will to say a word to any of them. Instead, she would go back to the crashed ship and study it again.

I have no energy to talk them, and yet, I have the energy to travel miles from here and look at a ship in a frozen tundra.

Camellia took a deep breath. She got out of bed and finger-combed her hair. Before she could search for a dress, she heard a knock at her door.

Camellia froze. She checked her current outfit – a sparkling purple nightgown. The waist was high and concealed her lower body, but the bodice was filmy and scant. The knock came again.

“Coming!” Camellia called as she seized a blanket. She tossed it around her shoulders and slowly opened the door. “Cahir? I thought you’d be…” Camellia shook her head. “Nevermind.”

“Adalhard?” Cahir raised an eyebrow.

Camellia winced and looked at the floor. “Yes.”

“Oh, he’s pissed at you. The minute he got free, he went straight to his office and slammed his door.” Cahir smiled. “I think it’s safe to say you should avoid him. That’s why I’m here to offer you an escape.”

“Escape?” Camellia brought her gaze back up to meet his.

Cahir took in her outfit, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re not sick, are you?”

Camellia shook her head.

Cahir smiled again. “Good. You should come with me back to Tagtrum. Nearby, the Dragua Library there’s a quiet, warm...”

“I’m fine really,” Camellia held up a hand.

Cahir sighed. “Fine. Stay in Presereme, our quiet corner of Groaza, and hang around the headquarters. Keep your ears closed because they’ll all be talking about you again.”

“They’ve been talking about me?”

Cahir said, “Since you’re not dressed, can I bring you something for dinner?”

“I don’t think you should.” Camellia felt an expression of surprise pass over her face.

“But, I…”

“Bye, Cahir. I have to get dressed.” Camellia closed her door and didn’t hear the rest of what he had to say.

 

With her mystery in mind, Camellia hurried down the hall, making for the AAH’s exit. She had her things, and she wouldn’t be coming back till she’d done what she set out to do.

“Camellia?”

She froze. Slowly, she turned to face Adalhard. In his office door, he stood. Orange light, broken by the windows’ cross-beams, cast a warm hue over his pale face. He wore red and silver – pants and a simple tunic. He held a stack of papers and stared at Camellia.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Camellia looked at the nearby exit. “Out.”

“Do you have some time?” Adalhard beckoned.

She peered past him and snuck a view of his office. She saw his desk, its chairs, and an antique bench, with a high back and coat hooks at the top. Adalhard stepped aside and gestured her welcome.

Camellia entered his office. As she passed, she brushed his chest.

Adalhard closed the door. “Thanks for earlier.”

Camellia glanced at him askance. “Sorry. I didn’t know they would react like that.”

Adalhard sighed and rubbed his neck. “No, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. As you can see, you aren’t the only person that’s interested in it. But, I don’t see how we can check on the symbols. It’s not as if we have a handy glossary of all the runes, letters, and symbols we’ve studied.” Adalhard threw up a hand and strode past her to his desk. “If they want to search the library for hours in their free time, they’re welcome to it.”

Camellia nodded and pretended to be interested in the things in Adalhard’s office. Papers sat in semi-neat stacks on the desk. Adalhard’s coat hung from one corner of the bench. Snow boots had been stowed beneath it. On the opposite wall, a tall bookshelf held tools of their trade. Camellia read some of the titles – Atlas of Northern Iruedim, Tour of the Equatorial Islands, Vaypor’s Steam Powered Technology, and Remains of Great Robots.

“I hope you’re feeling better,” Adalhard said.

Camellia turned from the shelf and gave him a small smile. “Yes. I’m much better.” She classified her words as half-lie. She certainly felt better to be back, and her curiosity about Ridvan’s artifact and the crashed ship beckoned her out of her fog. But… she wouldn’t call herself well.

Adalhard stared, but she refused to meet his eyes.

“It would have been a dream come true to meet someone from beyond the wormhole. To see a new scout ship.” Adalhard leaned against his desk and crossed his arms.

Camellia just smiled and nodded. She glanced at Adalhard’s desk and glimpsed a colorful timeline of Iruedim’s history. Camellia felt her eyes narrow as she tried to see it better. Something for the textbook update?

The painting showed events scattered across a night sky, much starrier than Iruedim’s real sky, considering their sun’s status as a stellar outcast.

“You like that?” Adalhard pointed to the image. “I saw you looking at the ceiling mural today. This will be something like it.”

Camellia felt herself blush. Had she been so obviously inattentive?

Adalhard leaned over his desk. “It’s a mural design for the stairwell. The most recent history will be at the top, and the oldest at the bottom. Like a dig site.”

Camellia raised her eyes to his and saw his smile. She tried to return it. She gestured to the image. “Are there enough floors for it?”

“Let me lay it out for you.” Adalhard picked up the paper, carried it to his chalkboard, and pinned it to the top.

He selected a piece of chalk and drew a quick sketch of the stairwell. He added squares at the top, center, and bottom to represent windows.

Then, Adalhard sought Camellia’s attention. “There’s a more detailed image that shows exactly where everything goes, but the artist has that right now.” He lifted his chalk and stood with it poised at the top of his drawing. “AAH Headquarters has five floors, right?.”

Camellia nodded and mumbled her answer.

“Not a lot of space to fit eight-thousand years of history, but we can do it – if we zig zag the timeline from side to side.” Adalhard pointed to the top of his drawing. “Let’s say this area is floor five.”

Adalhard started next to the topmost window; he wrote events from recent history.

First, he scribbled in the AAH’s foray outside its two founding countries. Camellia recognized many names: Vetoin – a desert civilization; Vaypor – a land powered by steam; and the intriguing land of Sonkrag, which explored technology powered by the sun.

Adalhard didn’t write all of the AAH’s travels, just a few to show Camellia how the image would progress.

Next, he added Groaza’s recent treaty with Tagtrum and its non-aggression pact with the Ponk Empire. Groaza and Tagtrum’s partnership had been easy to create, as the two lands were separated by a small sea and traded for hundreds of years. Groaza’s non-aggression pact with Ponk came as more of a surprise, but the Ponk Empire dealt with so many internal conflicts, it decided to eliminate the most likely external one.

“That’s floor five. If you look at this picture, you can see that the window would go here, where all the random stars are.” Adalhard pointed at a colorful nebula on the artist’s rendering.

“That part isn’t going to be painted?”

“No, the idea is that you’d see galaxies and stars from the stair window.” Adalhard paused and smiled. “I’m a bit skeptical. While the top window might be high enough for us to see the night sky, I fear we’ll have to use our imaginations for the lower windows.”

Camellia’s eyes clouded as she tried to remember their neighboring buildings. She could only think of the museum.

Adalhard continued. “We might have to consider our neighbor, Ms. Delphine, to be a star. The lowest window looks directly into her bathroom.”

Slowly, Camellia smiled. She remembered the office building, run by landlady Delphine. Ms. Delphine lived on the lower level.

“I’m too short to really look out any of the windows,” Camellia said. Each window ended just above her head.

“You’re very lucky.” Adalhard faced the chalkboard again. “Now, where was I?”

He paused, and Camellia stared openly at his back.

“Right, the Lurrien war.” Adalhard cringed as he wrote the words. He seemed unwilling to remind Camellia of their early discussion. Quickly, he penciled in the known events, starting with the destruction of the mysterious Lurrien monsters, and ending with the arrival of the Lurriens.

With three thousand years of history covered and floor four mapped, Adalhard numbered floor three. “This one is tricky.”

“Oh?”

Adalhard glanced back. He did a double take when he caught Camellia’s expression. She wondered what it had been – melancholy, confusion…lust?

Adalhard rediscovered his voice. “We have to fit all of the late colonists from the wormhole, and we have to work around the window. I won’t bother to write everything.”

Adalhard wrote the latest group and drew a line to show the pattern that would take the mural further back in time. At the end of his line, he wrote: Foundation of the Ponk Empire.

“You only have about three-thousand-five-hundred years left,” Camellia said. She added, with a hint of sarcasm, “That’ll be easy to fit.”

Adalhard nodded. “Floor two starts with Groaza’s most recent wave of immigration.” Adalhard added the event, showing the exact point of time that supernatural beings arrived in Groaza and shifted the country’s balance of power.

Camellia bowed her head.

When she looked up, Adalhard zigzagged his way across the second floor with the foundation of Tagtrum – the arrival of various elements of the Ponk Empire – and the arrival of the first gothic Groazans.

Adalhard looked at Camellia, lingering before he continued. He smiled, just a little. “One floor left.”

Camellia smiled back.

Adalhard bent and wrote on the lower portion of his chalkboard. He made a zigzag of the saviest space travelers, peaceful and warlike groups both.

Adalhard knelt to write the final group, the first colonists to Iruedim: Volanters. Judging from the picture, the design called for an elegant series of symbols to represent the first people’s language, but Adalhard merely wrote Volanter. Not much was known about those first visitors to Iruedim. The Volanters had disappeared mysteriously before any other colonists arrived, or they had been absorbed into the arriving populations? No one knew for sure.

I wonder… Camellia thought. She approached the chalkboard. Did they leave?

Still kneeling, Adalhard looked up. His eyes found Camellia. She didn’t acknowledge his gaze but studied the chalkboard and the pinned design.

At last, Camellia voiced her admiration. “I see how it’s going to work now. Windows here. The steps follow this line.” Camellia’s finger hovered over the paper, and she traced the artist’s work.

She looked down and found Adalhard. Her next sentence went unsaid as she got a view of his amber eyes. Camellia slowly clasped her hands over her heart and took a step back. “I’m sorry you had to go to this trouble for me.”

“It’s no trouble.” Adalhard rose, put the chalk on the tray, and dusted off his hands.

Camellia stole a glance and found his penetrating eyes still focused on her.

“I should be sorry. I’m keeping you from your destination,” he said.

“You aren’t keeping me.”

Adalhard stepped close to Camellia. He raised his hand, reaching. Before he entered Camellia’s space, he let his hand fall. “Where are you going? Out to dinner?”

“No...well, yes, but I’m not going with anyone,” Camellia answered.

Adalhard listened and stared. He expected her to say more, but Camellia stared back, wide-eyed.

She cast her gaze on the floor. “I’m going to an inn. I should let you know actually...I think I need more leave.”

Adalhard’s shoulders slumped. “I see.”

“I’m just not ready to be back.”

Adalhard paused. Camellia thought he held back a sigh.

He said, “Where will you stay? Are you going to your father’s farm?”

“No, I’m going to take a short vacation to travel around Groaza.” Not true. Camellia needed to go to Tagtrum.

“Do you want work as a restorationist? I can find you something at the Headquarters museum.” Adalhard walked to his desk and rifled through papers.

“No, no. I don’t think I would do good work right now.”

Adalhard stopped. “Camellia, that’s nonsense. You’ve always done good work, and despite the...the.” Adalhard struggled for the word. He gave up and asked instead, “Would you like another contact card for the therapist?”

Camellia crossed his office and headed to the door. “I want to reach an inn before it gets too dark. May I have the leave?”

“Yes, yes of course. Take a couple of weeks. A month if you need it. When you return, come see me in my office, and I’ll set you up in a restorationist position. I don’t think you should travel outside the country just yet.”

Camellia nodded. “Thank you.” She turned to go.

“Camellia. Please come back.”

Camellia glanced over her shoulder, unsure whether he was asking her to come back after her leave or at that moment. She left the office and headed to the back exit, which sat right beside the stairwell. She turned the knob, and the hinges’ loud squeak obscured another call of her name. Camellia walked outside.

 

Camellia entered the inn. Warm firelight greeted her. It reflected off black marble floors and dark wooden walls. She crossed the open room, passing a handful of embroidered chairs and couches. The hotel desk rested at the back, right before a great stone fireplace. The fire blazed, illuminating high-placed windows of stained glass.

A man behind the desk dressed in a light shirt, with his back to the fire. Camellia felt the heat and wondered if the concierge bothered to wear pants.  

“One night, please,” she said, placing her AAH identification and payment on the counter. She had stayed at the hotel enough to memorize her discounted payment, despite the fact that the AAH headquarters were in walking distance.

The man glanced at her id, counted the lower than normal payment, and put it away in his drawer. He reached under the desk and produced a room key. “I presume you’ve stayed here before?”

“Yes.” Camellia took the key.

“Second floor tonight. The stairs to your right will get you there fastest.”

Camellia nodded. “Thank you.”

Alone, she trotted up the hotel stairs. She reached the darkened second floor and walked the hall. With its narrow windows of colored glass, Camellia passed through shades of blue, purple, and green. She paused before a purple glass and peered out. The sun set rapidly, and when it did, the hotel would become dark and quiet, like the church it had been a hundred years ago. Most of the light came from street lamps and ambient light outdoors. The hotel’s upper level only possessed a small light every thirty feet. While it was too little light for the average guest, Camellia’s night-vision showed her a hall that was not dim but instead glowing. As she walked, she could see the cracks in the slate and the grain of the dark wood.

Room 2-12.

She stopped at the door and pushed her brass key into the hole. The heavy door swung open, and Camellia stepped inside.

Camellia closed the door, dropped her bag on the floor, and stopped.

It had been a bad day.

Camellia lowered herself to the floor and sat down.

Bad days tended to make her think of a certain recreational activity. Camellia reached into her bag and pulled out a small black mirror. Runes of blue were etched around the edges, forming a ring of symbols. Camellia looked into the center. Whispers started around her, and she looked away. The whispers faded.

It wouldn’t help to play with the mirror, and that was an understatement. If she wanted to get better, she should probably throw the thing away, but it was a sought-after artifact, one she shouldn’t have.

Camellia put the mirror bag into her bag and left it there on the floor.