She was looking at the stars.

The mysterious lanterns covered the endless blue in pride and glory. The princess showered in the light of the strange yellow moon as she dreamt of a different world. The breeze, somehow weaker than the one before, played with the parts of her hair that had fallen out of her ponytail. She felt special every time she sat on top of a roof; endless roads decorated with bits of green, the highest of mountains, and as big and different possibilities spread before her in just a glance. But the view of the unknown town she observed from the house that belonged to Thomas Hammer and his mother gave off quite a different feeling: the skyline was peaceful, its endlessness hinting at the size of the change she was about to undergo.

All that glory went to waste once a grunt scared the stars and made them hide behind the clouds. The creaking of tiles awakened her impulses, and Diane discreetly grabbed her sword. The movements were slow but sharp; Thomas Hammer was waddling towards her with two cups in his hands, making sour faces and letting out uninterpretable grunts. "Here," he said as he handed her a cup of tea.

Diane looked at him with suspicion as she brought the cup closer to her chest; the mist flew into her face and blurred her vision.

Thomas remained standing. "Don't worry, it's tea."

"What do you want?" Diane asked, both of her hands now on the cup.

Thomas looked to the side quickly. "Nothing... I went to your room to give you the tea but... The window was open so..."

Diane put the cup down because her fingers turned red. "Sit." Then, as Thomas sat far enough from her for her sword not to be able to dig holes in his ribcage, she took the cup again, sniffed the black liquid, and made a sour face. "I hate tea."

"Oh... I see," Thomas replied with a shy smile. Not that Diane cared enough to notice it.

But sitting almost next to his queen didn't make Thomas feel uncomfortable, though he was nervous like never before. Having acknowledged the princess's determination to become his guest, Thomas had decided that pushing her status aside would make his life much easier. It never crossed his mind that it could have been anything but a coincidence: a few of them, maybe, large and determined. To ruin his life maybe. Or save the world. Or everything in between.

"So, you said your mother is my subject?" Diane asked.

"Yes. I inherited my ability to control fire from my father. He was a Flamer,” Thomas replied at once. They were not looking at each other.

"Do you remember him?"

Thomas was taken aback. "No, I don’t. At all. Not a single snippet…"

"What did he do for a living?"

"I... uhm... I think he worked at a magic stone mine."

"What kind of magic stone?"

"Light, I think. They are the most common in Crystalia..."

"Why was he in Crystalia? There are magic stones in Flamus too."

"I think it's because he fell in love with mom..."

"You think?" Diane's voice was sharper with each word and her hand closer to her sword. She could not tell for sure what the cause of her uneasiness was, but she was determined never to fail a mission again.

"W-Well, m-my mother... uhm... she... uhm..."

"Speak up."

"My mother doesn't like talking about him."

"And you were never curious enough to ask?

"Why are you asking me so many questions?" Thomas replied, breathless. “You don’t have to sleep here, you know,” he mumbled.

Diane looked away, silent. If she had accidentally stumbled upon one of the people she had been looking for, and that was, in the case of Thomas Hammer, almost certain, then she was still in Her favor. If not, her every word could obliterate the future.

“Do you believe in destiny, Thomas Hammer?” she asked.

Thomas chuckled. “Is that a trick question?”

“Do you?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“No.”

“That’s certainly odd. We learned about it at school. About how Her Majesty The First Queen left behind a letter saying she had traded the rest of her life to become destiny so she could always look after her people,” Thomas replied, proud of his knowledge of the world.

Diane snickered. "A will."

"What?"

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"She left behind her will, not a letter," she replied with disgust written all over her face.

"Well, that's more or less the same," he replied with a smile. Diane's face was still stuck in her past. “Are you not a believer?” he asked, baffled by her reaction.

“I am,” Diane replied, though the frequency of her voice carried a curse rather than a prayer. Then she turned her head back to the stars.

But the tingle in Thomas's fingers didn't allow him to stay silent for long. Something new, yet awfully familiar had awakened deep inside of him when his eyes landed on his future queen. She called it the future, but to him, it was a wonder.

"Do you feel uncomfortable?" Diane asked out of the blue.

Thomas shifted. "Strangely, no." Then he coughed quickly and said: "Unless I am supposed to. In that case, yes, very."

Diane smiled a bit, then continued observing the trees and dark clouds. Thomas kept drumming his fingers against the tiles underneath him. Regardless of how he looked at it, the girl sitting next to him couldn't have been a Hunster, let alone Diane Hunster. Diane Hunster was a monster who killed her friends without batting an eye, spat on her people, and laughed at their misery; a person peasants like himself could never lay eyes on as her face was never in the papers. This Raven could never have been such a remarkable person.

“Do you think our encounter was the work of destiny?” Diane asked him, still looking at the stars.

“Aren’t all encounters?” When she didn’t reply, he continued: “Destiny binds. It gives people the opportunity to make a choice.”

“Only fools believe in choices,” Diane bit back.

“But…”

“I do not wish to talk about this anymore. I apologize for being noisy.”

For a while, they sat in silence, both in their own world. She could feel the heat radiating from the boy next to her, warming her body in the cold night that swallowed their side of the planet.

"May I ask you something?' Thomas asked shyly.

"Only if it will make sense," Diane replied.

"Who is George Brown?"

Diane let a few gushes of wind take her sighs to the other side of the world before replying: "A friend. I am going to see him tomorrow."

"I thought you didn't know where he lived," Thomas muttered; he didn't seem to think raising his voice was appropriate.

"I never said that."

Diane could see Thomas's eyes narrow. "Indeed."

Diane tilted her head slightly and said: "His father was my personal guard. We grew up together. I haven't seen him in a long time."

"Why?" Thomas asked.

"A queen," Diane replied after a short break, "can't simply do as she wishes. Especially a queen people like to talk about."

"Oh..." he let out.

"You load flour for a living?" she asked after a short break.

"I do."

"Why?"

Thomas chuckled. "What do you mean why?"

"I mean, why didn't you join the Ravens?"

Thomas laughed out loud, then remembered his mother was asleep in the house. "Me? A Raven?" he whispered, still laughing, only quietly. "Ravens are the most powerful people in the world! How could someone like me join them?!" Diane looked deep inside his eyes like she didn't believe him. Like she knew the truth. The truth that he didn't know. "Besides I have no interest in saving the world. I like my life as it is. I don't want to change anything."

"And if you had to?"

"What?"

"Save the world?"

He shrugged. "I would refuse. But it won't happen, so..."

They breathed in the nightly air and silence, the clouds above sheltering them from the decaying universe. There was nothing but the wind and the smell of blueberry tea.

"It's really peaceful here," Diane commented.

Thomas nodded. "Would you believe it if I told you this was my first time staying up for so long? Not to mention sitting on a roof!"

The princess smiled. "I would, actually."

Thomas leaned towards her slightly. "I hope that was a compliment."

Diane pulled her knees closer to her chest. "You decide."

Thomas opened his mouth to say what was on his mind multiple times but silently closed them without as much as a sigh. Diane noticed but did not do anything to encourage him to speak until a golden thread crossed her mind.

"Peace is so rickety, don't you think?" she blurted out suddenly, then blushed.

Thomas felt electricity round down his spine. "What do you mean?"

Diane sighed. She wanted to bite off her own tongue yet kept talking. She must have seen that thread again or heard the whisper of the future; it was there, to be sure. "It's like a house of cards; it only needs a little bit of wind to blow from the wrong side and it will disappear without a trace." Her brown eyes looked into his. Thomas saw a hint of a once-happy and fulfilled girl, now broken into as many pieces as the house she spoke of. "Why do we constantly seek something so unstable?" she asked him.

Diane didn't expect him to give it a thought. And even less to reply. Maybe it wasn't him she asked; maybe it was Her.

"Let's see...I think it's the security it brings," Thomas replied.

"Security?" she asked.

"Well, you see, this house of cards you talked about allows people like me to live an ordinary life where every day is just like the one before: filled with hard work but embellished by the people we care about."

"It sounds boring."

"It probably is. But it's warm."

He kept talking, but Diane couldn't hear a word. She tried to imagine the life he described: smiling faces every time she opened the door, the smell of dinner prepared with love and care, warm fingers of her mother's embracing her small body and freeing her from exhaustion and stress. But the world was cruel. There was only ice that surrounded her.

The puppet of The King of Stone.

The killer bathed in silk.

The monster covered in blood.

"I’m going inside. It's getting cold here," Diane said and stood up. She brushed the dust off her uniform and, perfectly confident, went back inside her new room. She left the window open in case the midnight wind carried a message or a golden thread.

Thomas sat there a little longer. He found it frustrating how he never imagined the world could spread before him so; and it was all from the roof of his house. In the distance, he could hear a faint whisper; a woman was talking, desperate to reach the ears of her disinterested listener. Thomas would have never blocked such a pleasant voice. He would have let it guide him, tell him stories of the future and the past; somewhere in that void hid ancient vows he could never fully comprehend, vows that brought a princess to a small town in the west of Crystalia.

George Brown. What an unfamiliar name.