[ORIG] The First Meeting

THE FIRST MEETING



	The dull clouds of a chilly early spring day hung low in the
afternoon sky, camouflaging the high-rise buildings of the city.
 Nobody standing on the street could have seen the
thirteen-year-old girl on the twenty-seventh floor of the
hospital, carefully watering the flower-bed she placed inside
the closed window.  The lights were turned on, emphasising the
sea of crisp white, but the room was vacant, except for her and
one other girl, named Vicky, who was visibly slender and short
for her age even sitting up in bed as she was.  Her hair was
long and almost the same white that was surrounding her,
swallowing her, bleaching her skin, and her eyes, the blue that
was hidden by the clouds, knew things hidden from those much
older than her twelve years. She was quietly smiling to herself
as she sat up in her bed, watching the girl in the wheelchair
tending the flowers she loved more than any human being still
alive.

	"Hey, how long until they come into full bloom?"  The
red-headed girl in the wheelchair, in appreciation of Vicky's
interest in the roses that were her namesake, gave the same
quiet smile as always, her face's bright green eyes and short
hair emphasised by the overbearing whiteness of the hospital.  

	"Um ... Maybe a week if we get some sun.  I just planted some
more today, and they should bloom in about a month."  Rose's
quiet voice was as beautiful as she knew her flowers would be.

	Vicky paused.  "I hope I live long enough to see them."  Her
tone conveyed the fact that this could not possibly be.  She
knew she would die before Rose's new flowers bloomed.  That was
why she was here.  Rose had only once asked her what she was
dying of, seeming content with her answer: 	"It doesn't matter." 

	Vicky knew things that nobody else knew.  She knew she would
soon die, that she would soon pass into that other realm which
the living can only speculate on.  Her parents would frequently
visit her, telling her she could avoid the inevitable, the thing
most feared by those who do not understand it.  But before one
who had seen the mysterious, invisible world beyond, and could
comprehend it, the fear it held was reduced to nothingness.  It
was merely a part of life that was happening to her before
schedule.  

	She felt far more sorry for Rose than she did for herself. 
Before her accident, Rose had told her, she had easily been the
best runner of her age in her athletics club, and her coach told
her that she was going to make it into the Olympics one day. 
She had loved bushwalking and gymnastics and bike riding, and
all kinds of other activities that she was prevented from doing
ever again.  All her dreams, and her family, had been destroyed,
shattered along with her spine by one drunken man in a speeding
car.  "Compared to Rose," Vicky thought "I'm really lucky. 
She's been condemned to hell while she's still alive."

	There was also something else that she knew about.  Reality had
become a dream to her, and her dreams reality.  Around a
fortnight ago, she had dreamed of a world other than Earth.  She
had dreamed of a woman, a girl actually, not much older than
herself, with flowing, rainbow-colored hair down to her ankles
and a marble-sculpted face, dressed in silver chain-mail armour
and with a sword slung over her shoulder, who had introduced
herself as Luminia, Moon Goddess of Sekain, and explained to her
that she and four others had been chosen as champions of Light. 
Vicky did not bother wondering why it was her that had been
selected, but she often did wonder who the other four were.  The
fate of Sekain was one of the only things important to her.  As
she lay down in her bed and let sleep overtake her, she felt the
dream of harsh white and menacing grey fading, and her real self
coming into being.

 *	*	*	*	*



Vicky of the Mysticpower stood on the beach just before dawn,
peering into the forest beyond.  She wore a garment that would
have reminded her dream-self of a leotard, bright green,
V-necked, with white sleeves and yoke.  The green appeared as a
flame design when it reached the yoke, and the garment had no
apparent belt or other device attached to it.  The black leather
of her knee-length, high-heeled boots was polished with
army-style devotion, and upon her head was a tiara with a the
crystal symbol of Luminia, a crescent moon below a three-pointed
star, in the centre.  Her silver staff was a foot taller than
she was, and bore the same symbol, this time in a luminous green
stone.  

	The trees in the forest she looked at grew tall and straight,
arrogantly ruling the Great Island of Miiran�, daring any
foolish human to enter their domain.  Once within, Vicky was
trapped in a world that was not quite dark, only dark enough for
her not to be sure of what she gazed upon, the still air making
her feel as if her skin was covered in ice, with not even a
remnant of a trail present among the undergrowth which concealed
the soft, black, ankle-deep mud beneath.  The countless
tearflowers made her heart beat faster, being glowing eyes of
red, or yellow, or green in the twilight and hiding real threats
amongst them.  The noise of insects and birds, which she may in
other circumstances have found comforting, hindered her
listening for danger, and the honey-sweet scent of the
f�r�-plants was making her head spin.  As she ventured towards
the centre of Miiran�, she was forced to spend energy
maintaining direction and danger-sensing spells in an effort not
to become one of the forest's many victims.

	She did not know how long she had been journeying into the
forest for - An hour? Two hours? Most of the day? - as she
arrived at the fork in the crystalline, rushing river she had
been following upstream.  The left fork led deeper into the
forest, but Vicky was drawn to the right-hand fork and the huge,
frowning cliff along its north side, blocking the sunlight as
much as the trees did.  Of course, that was if the sun was, in
fact, still shining as she journeyed alongside the cliff.  In a
short while, the wall of rock became interlaced with a series of
short waterfalls in a massive, twisted mockery of a stairway,
giving birth to the crystalline stream she had been following. 
The scene glowed with an unearthly, pale blue light, and her
danger-sensing spell buzzed in her head.  

	"Welcome, Mysticpower."  With her whispered voice somehow able
to be heard by Vicky over the crashing waterfalls, the form of
Ametra came into view.  She was standing upon a rock in front of
the lowest waterfall, her black hair flowing in the wind,
clashing against her death-pale yet beautiful face.  She was
carrying a golden staff which divided into four points at each
of its ends, and wearing a silver and navy garment in the same
style as Vicky's.  The right arm of the garment had been torn
off, and Vicky gasped in horror as she saw that only the bones
of Ametra's limb remained.

	"A token I kept, Mysticpower.  To remind me of our last
encounter.  Are you shocked by the results of battle that you
just noticed?  I didn't think you could possibly be so naive."
She raised her staff to the heavens and began to chant, a
multitude of secrets hidden in every word.  Vicky barely managed
to recite a protective spell and deflect the rays of violet
light that appeared, searing to ashes everything they touched. 
She saw the cone of frost she conjured blocked by Ametra's
barrier, and readied herself for her rival's next attack.

	But Vicky was not ready for the ferocity of the volley of
orange beams that emerged from the elf's staff.  Even if she had
been, it would have made little difference.  She was flung
backward, her skull clashing against the cliff face, and her
body falling upon the dagger-like rocks a mere foot below the
surface of the river.  She could still, only barely, stand, her
bloodied body staining her clothing and the crystalline waters
red.

	"Your turn."

	As she had been trying to rise from her prone position, Vicky
had known she would have to call upon the Flame of Luminia if
she was to have any chance of defeating her adversary.  But as
she attempted to cast the spell that would be her only chance of
survival, she could not dispel the memory of their last battle,
of the sight of Ametra being engulfed in flames, the sound of
her screaming in pain, the smell of her burning flesh.  Even
now, she did not want to let loose the force that had created
those sensations.

	A thin, pale yellow streak of flame emerged from her staff, not
even reaching the barrier created by her enemy.

	"Oh, you poor little girl.  Are you afraid that you'll get me
angry?"  The contempt in Ametra's voice as she glared upon the
tears beginning to well in her vanquished rival's eyes was not
even a fraction of that she felt for a mage who did not have the
courage to cast a powerful spell.

	Vicky cast her staff onto the rocks on the river's bank, and
the remnants of the protective spell she had cast faded.  The
calmness with which she spoke her two final words, to her
surprise, was enough to make Ametra shake.

	"Kill me."

	Offering a silent prayer to Luminia, asking her forgiveness for
the fact that her efforts to save Sekain had been inadequate,
the twelve-year-old girl waited for her spirit to depart from
her body.  She stared, emotionless, as the ball of orange
radiance grew between the tips of Ametra's staff.

	Vicky gasped in shock as she saw her conqueror struck backward,
dropping her staff as she fell over.  As Ametra teleported away,
disappearing into a shroud of purple light, Vicky's eyes turned
from the projectile that had saved her life - a flower - to the
figure that had thrown it.

	She was a girl not much older than Vicky, who moved so swiftly
and gracefully that she seemed, instead of running, to flow
between the trees lining the stream.  She was clothed in a short
skirt and pair of low-cut boots, both made of plain, well-worn
leather, and had a bow and quiver of arrows slung over her
shoulder, and a long knife or small sword hanging from the cord
around her waist.  The only ornament in the girl's possession
was a small piece of emerald hanging from a string around her
neck.  It was the symbol of Luminia.

	As she reached for a pouch at the back of the cord around her
waist, withdrawing a handful of moist, olive-colored moss and
rubbing it into her wounds, Vicky stared into the face of one of
the four girls who shared two worlds with her.  As she stared at
the face, the bright green eyes and cropped, red hair of her
companion, she was overcome by a bewilderment which instantly
turned into tears of joy that intermingled with the sweat and
blood covering her body.

	"Rose!"

	Rose of the Forestwind gave the crying Vicky the same familiar,
quite smile as always, and handed her discarded staff back.

	"Thank Luminia you're all right.  I don't know what I - or the
others - whoever and wherever they are - could have done if you
had died then."

	"At least my destiny was not that I should.  It is my hope that
when the time does come my death in two worlds should be in a
way that may somehow help both, or at least one, of them."

	Rose sat down next to her friend, one of the only friends she
had in either world.  Together, they stared into the forest,
where the last remnants of light were being conquered by the
terrible darkness of nighttime.