Finley Cai Aies Hall March 28th, 20XX

Something was strange.

I could feel as much before I even opened my eyes.

My body was heavy and refused to move for the first few seconds, but I didn’t think I would have moved even if I could. I’d peeled open one eye first, but kept the other closed, reluctant to open both eyes and see reality.

Even before I could look at the ostensibly bright room they had taken me into, the dull bronze flecks in the air seized my attention. They intermingled with the few bright golden ones that bounced around in the air but overwhelmed the bright room with a dirty feeling.

My consciousness roamed around my body and isolated the source of heaviness to my back. I was careful as I sat up, but the unfamiliar weight and heightened awareness of my surroundings made my head hurt. It also had something to do with the flecks in the air.

I stayed still to catch my breath and to wait for the golden flecks to increase in number as they had been doing. It hadn’t been noticeable at first, but now that I was paying attention, the bronze flecks were quickly disappearing and changing into bright golden sparkles. I didn’t know what it was about them, but the more of them there were, the easier it was for me to breathe.

As I waited for the room to clear and for the blinding headache to recede, I looked around the room and wondered what to do.

The room was gorgeous and large, probably larger than my entire flat, but it was unfamiliar. The walls were gold plated and had mysterious symbols engraved into them. On a level, I knew I’d be able to understand them if I tried, but I wasn’t ready to acknowledge that yet.

All the furniture looked like the child of a mad architect, and an even madder designer made them. They had large holes at their backs and the seats were constructed from glowing wood and padded with a cloth so tightly woven that they looked like plastic.

There were artifacts all around the place, although I couldn’t place what period in time they were from, and there were many wonders of technology. Such as the holographic sphere that hung in the middle of the room and showed a scene of an old-fashioned land or the ceiling that looked like they had carved out a piece of the night sky and had dyed it yellow.

Even the bed I currently laid on was the size of a small room and had enough space to fit about twenty other people my size. Someone had invested a lot of money into making this room, but I didn’t know why.

What could have been the reason to kidnap me and put me in such a luxurious environment?

All the dull bronze flecks finally filtered into bright golden flecks, and I regained the energy to move.

I got up carefully and slowly adjusted to the counterweight on my back that had shifted my center of balance.

Wait, that’s not right.

The dull pain that had paralyzed my back had suddenly become a lighter weight that slightly dragged me down and slowed my movement. It was still an unfamiliar sensation that made it difficult to move, but it was much lighter and less painful than before. But moving away from the mobility problem. There was something on my back that hadn’t been there before.

I tried to reach behind my back and feel it out, but once my hands contacted the source of the unfamiliar weight, my mind shut down and refused to make the connection.

No.

My legs moved faster than my mind did and helped me cross the large room in record time. They pulled me to the front of an extravagant mirror and my eyes connected to those of a stranger.

“No way.”

The stranger in the mirror mouthed the words as I spoke them and mirrored my actions as I stumbled and fell backward in shock. The carpeted floors cushioned my fall, but the shock I felt was much more mental than it was physical.

He was as similar as he was different in appearance to me. My nose that had been slightly higher than necessary had descended my face, and my eyes that had been slightly too small to suit my face had grown larger and more innocent.

My hair had become curly and had taken on the form of thick strands of metallic gold instead of my familiar, thin, straight black hair. Just like the hair, mischievous green eyes with gold flecks had replaced my usual dull blue ones.

While these differences were enough to shock me into a coma, the largest difference between myself and the man in the mirror were the wings on his back. They were huge and dwarfed my upper body, making me look smaller than I already was. They were also thin, so thin that I could almost see past their green spots and golden stripes to the other side of the room.

“Are you finished admiring yourself, your highness?”

I turned my head so quickly that my neck almost snapped and had to close my eyes to regain my balance. I opened them to see Esmeralda and Cambridge standing in the doorway.

As awful as it was, those two were the only familiar things I currently had. There were a thousand things I had to say and a million questions I wanted to ask, but as I opened my mouth only one of them came out.

“How?”