“Madame? You there?” Nezani had felt her presence for a while now but was feeling too tired to turn around and greet her.

“How did you know?” Madame said appearing next to Nezani’s bedside as she turned herself in bed.

“Not sure, I just kind of felt your energy and knew it was you” Nezani said letting out a sigh.

“Interesting, I was concealing my mana as to not disturb your rest. You’re your parents’ child. Well now that you’re up, I want to take you somewhere, are you up for it?”

Nezani looked up at Madame exhausted “What is it? Is it something else big, I don’t know if I could handle any more laser out of my forehead or anymore trials for the moment”

“No, I think you’ll find some comfort in where we are going” Madame chuckled.

“Alrighty! Let’s go, Spirit will you walk with me?” Nezani asked her guide.

Always

Spirit grew to the size of a child and grabbed Nezani’s hand. Nezani looked at them puzzled wondering why she wasn’t full size. A small burst of energy filled Nezani’s body, and she felt a bit refreshed.

I am giving you a bit of mana since you’re still a bit tired from the dream session, hold my hand and let us go.

And with that the three of them walked of Nezani’s room and out of the hotel. They strolled leisurely before reaching a tall black rectangular building. Madame reached her hand out in front of her, and a small hand sized see through pentagon panel appeared in front of her.

“Access Granted” the panel spoke.

A similar panel popped up in front of Nezani and she stared at it before copying Madame and putting her palm to the panel.

Madame watched in what looked like anticipation.

“Conditional access granted please visit the welcome center to set up permanent access” the panel spoke, and a door appeared for the group to walk through.

“What’s with all the security measures, seems a bit much?” Nezani questioned.

“Welcome to the Research and Learning center! So excited to bring you here!” Madame said stepping into the building behind Nezani and Spirit.

“The security is just so we can manage who is coming in and out, there is a lot of important information stored here, and a lot of important research and experiments happening. Let’s look around!” Madame exclaimed.

They walked past a wall lined with plaques and busts.

Nezani began to examine the plaques on the wall. She quickly scanned the line of busts stopping abruptly in front of one to take a closer look.

“This one looks like my brother, DJ. But different, who is this?” she said searching for the name.

She ran her eyes across the name etched into the brass ‘Darrel Wimbi” what seemed like 100 times before Madame walked up behind her to break the trance.

“Your dad wasn’t from a royal linage, but he most certainly was very important and contributed a lot to what we know about manawaves and the life force. Let me show you why we are here!”

Not waiting for a response Madame grabbed Nezani by the wrist and walked her down a hallway around a corner to another hallway that led to another hallway.

They walked for a while before stopping in front of one of the office doors.

The plaque next to the door read ‘Wimbi’.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Madame pulled out a ring of keys. Finding the right key Madame excitingly shoved the key into the lock on the iron gate and slammed the doors open.

“I’m not sure why it took me so long to bring you here” Madame said gently tapping her own temple.

“Its your dad’s lab, have a look around” she said.

Nezani thought she knew everything about her basketball loving, loud, outgoing seemingly corny dad. But now she was standing in his lab, trying to figure out who he was and what exactly he used his lab for.

All be it weird to find out you don’t really know someone you thought you knew, Nezani walked through the lab proudly.

Encased in small, webbed domes were the miniature plants, animals, and objects.

“Why are they in domes?” Nezani asked hoping that even in this magical realm her dad’s experiments remained ethical.

“Something about the shape of the dome and webbing around it helps the manawaves travel better. Your dad was studying the mana signatures of all living things. The mintures you see here were created by taking DNA samples from actual living things and used mana to create a small copy to study here in the lab.” She said.

“Everything here, and everywhere really, has mana running through it. But not all manawaves look the same. Your dad was working to enhance our realms security hoping to help us know quicker when a threat is heading our way. He also was something like a doctor to some people. See, manawaves are unique to each object or being. The signatures don’t really change much, however when said being is, sick, or hungry, or scared, or lying their manawaves change. Your dad helped a lot of people and natural beings get help for the ailments before they even realized they had them. He could also tell when someone was pregnant, that one was always hard for him to keep to himself”

Madame seemed to speak brightly about her father. Hearing these anecdotes about his life before he left healed a small part of Nezani’s heart that was still grappling with the absence her parent’s death left in her life.

In the corner of his lab there was a bookcase full of books. Her and dad had shared a special bond over books. He always had some good reading if she had finished all her own reading. She was curious to see what kind of magical content her dad kept around.

She ran her fingers over the book bindings one book catching her eye.

‘Mana of Tree’s and How to Read Them’ written by “Darrel W and Anne M”.

“They wrote books together?!” Nezani yelled out loud startling Madame before letting out a loud deep laugh.

She used to think her parents were so boring, this was a far cry from the couple who didn’t go out on Saturday nights so they wouldn’t miss reruns of their favorite shows.

“You can come any time you want, I’ll leave this key to you.”

Nezani took the key and placed it into her satchel along with the book her parents wrote together.

This might help me with management of the arboretum and learning more about this world in general. If I could figure out how dad read people’s waves it will help me a lot!

Just outside her dad’s lab was a small bonsai, it looked identical to the one her dad used to keep in his office. He would spend hours talking to his plant, pruning it.

“That’s a special bonsai, I believe your dad took its twin with him to the third dimension. Your dad’s family specializes in all things manawaves, and his ancestors helped invent a communication method through the manawaves of plants. This bonsai allowed your dad to talk to his family whenever he wanted. And because manawaves are in everything it is near impossible to tap into. So, when he would spend hours talking to his plant, he was talking to family that had come to visit him and hear updates about you and your brother.”

Nezani was completely stunned.

Of course, the plant was some type of magical stealth phone!

Madame paused looking down before looking Nezani in the eyes.

“I know we said no heavy stuff today, but I must let you know. Your dad’s family is still all here. They have been asking me about you, but I thought it better for you to go see them when you were ready. Your grandparents, cousins and uncles are all very excited to finally be able to meet you.”

Nezani hadn’t grown up with any close relatives, and Aunt Marie never had any kids. The thought of an extended family kind of excited her.

“Thank you for trying to protect me, it probably would have been too much when I first got here. But now that I’ve met Uncle Winston, I have Henri, you and Spirit, I feel kind of excited to meet them. If they’re anything like my dad, it would bring me great joy to see them.”

Leaving the research center, Madame handed Nezani a piece of paper with a route mapped out to her dad’s family house from the hotel.

“When you’re ready” she said.

“Thanks, I think I’ll get up with the sun and pay them a visit”. Thinking of all the time she had lived not knowing them, Nezani didn’t want to waste any more time.

Returning to her room Nezani cracked open one of the books she had taken from her dad’s lab.

‘Manawaves I’ the title read. Nezani assumed by the title that it would be an introduction to manawaves. And that it was, the book described what it looked like to see manawaves. It also detailed how to read the small spikes and dips in manawaves and what it might mean based on the origin of the wavelength.

Resting the book on her chest she turned her head to look at Spirit who had been reading over her shoulder.

“What do you think they’re like? Do you think they’ll like me? Maybe we shouldn’t go, how will they feel seeing their dead son’s daughter?” Nezani questioned as anxiety rose in her body.

Relax beloved, I’m sure they will love you, there is nothing to hate. As for what kind of people they are, I do not know. But I’m sure they are nice, your father kept them updated on you so at a minimum it seems they were curious about who you were. That’s a start.

“That’s an excellent point. Okay maybe I don’t need to be so nervous. Let me put this away and get some rest before we head out in the morning.”

Nezani put the book on her nightstand and went to sleep.

She rose early the next sunrise with Sprit and headed out to find her dad’s family. She followed Madame’s directions meticulously.

At the conclusion of her visual map Madame left an X but Nezani saw nothing but dense forest and trees.

“Maybe its on the other side of these trees” she said to herself and began to walk into the forest.

After a few steps she realized it was getting difficult for her to lift her feet up off the ground, her legs began to feel heavy and before she could react she was sinking into the ground around her.

Quicksand?

Panicked she began looking around for something to grab onto, for some reason she couldn’t reach spirit either.

Anxiety began rushing over her body in waves, her life flashing behind her eyes. She began to scream but the pressure from the quicksand around her ribcage made it difficult for her to inhale to continue.

Through her tears she noticed a shadow standing in front of her watching, the figure bent down and began to crawl slowly toward her.

The figure was covered from head to two in clothe with only their eyes visible. They dug their fingers into the quicksand and it slowly stopped engulfing Nezani.

They crawled closer to Nezani, now nose to nose before speaking.

“And who the fuck are you? Do you have a death wish?! Everyone knows not to enter this forest unless you are family”

It was a young man, she thought from the sound of his voice.

“Well, I think I am family, Darrel Wimbi is my dad” Nezani let out dryly as the sand was still compressing her ribcage.

The young man stood up and pressed his hands together. The sand began to move again but this time it was pushing Nezani up back to her feet.

“Walk with me, I’ll take you to Granny. Don’t let go of my arm, you’ll sink right through the ground”.

Nezani grabbed his arm quickly and they began making their way through the forest.