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After waiting awhile, Rui thought that the girls wouldn’t wake up, so she summoned her wings, and flew out the window. A raven was waiting for her, and she gave the bird all the information she knew about the girls, but it wasn’t very much, seeing that she had been in their awake-selves for less than an hour. She assured the raven that more information would follow for the Master soon; but the Master would have to be patient, for there was no way to acquire a large amount on information in a short time as the Master needed, and asked for a month before having to report again.
Her Master, listening through the raven’s ears, told her that a month would be allowed, and the information must be in order by then.
Rui understood, and gave an affirmative. The raven flew off in the gray dawn of early morning.
A fierce light burned in Rui’s eyes. Soon, her sisters of the Hollow would be free; soon, she could go home at last; if she did this one job well.
~*~
The Lady of the Land smiled with pleasure. Soon, very soon the Plan would be in motion, thanks to Rui and the three other girls.
~*~
“Pass me the syrup, would you Amber?”
“No problemo Karen.”
“What’s syrup?”
The girls and elf were awake, and at Karen’s breakfast table. Karen’s mom and dad always slept in whenever Amber and Jenna came to sleep over, because Karen’s mom never had to cook breakfast.
The kitchen was cozy. It wasn’t really all that big, but big enough for a round table large enough to seat four, several oak-brown cupboards and counters, a stove, and two square windows. The aroma of cooking pancakes, a very homely and cozy smell, warmed up the kitchen, and the atmosphere relaxed, even though the girls were still rather tired.
The girls always insisted on making their own chocolate-chip pancakes, and Jenna was the best at that. Amber was good at making the batter, but when she flipped the pancakes, there would be a half circle of pancake left over. Karen could flip expertly, letting them fly and somersault in the air a couple times, and the pancake always landed in the pan on its other side, exactly where Karen wanted it to. As a matter of fact, Karen could cook just about anything, but pancake batter was the one thing that she always messed up on. The milk cup would overflow; there would be one egg too many; she accidentally poured the entire bag of chocolate chips in the batter once; and the twins never asked Karen to mix the batter, and for a good reason too. They did once, and then they never did again. The pancake handicap was odd in itself, because Karen normally never goofed up anything else she cooked, but every single time that Karen made the batter, chaos would reign. Jenna however, was the pancake queen. Although she couldn’t flip the pancakes the way Karen did, she flipped them with perfect accuracy, her pancakes were always in perfect circles, and they practically melted in your mouth. Her batter, though not as good as Amber’s, always had everything in just the right amount, and somehow, her chocolate chips never burned, but melted into the pancake.
Rui had her mouth smudged with chocolate, which she had never tasted before, but now she couldn’t stop eating it. The girls had given her four chocolate chips, and she had finished them off in record time for someone her size, and asked if there was more. It was Rui’s new game when Karen flipped, to jump on the cooked side of the pancake, ride the somersault while laughing with glee, and then fly quickly away just before the pancake landed. Karen was so surprised the first time that Rui did it that she yelled and went to save the little elf from becoming part of the pancake but succeeded in getting the pancake all over her hand. Rui darted out of the way, hovered near the ceiling, and laughed until tears came out of her cheeks. Amber and Jenna were laughing equally hard, and Karen joined in the laughter too. Rui, personally, hadn’t had so much fun since her sisters were caught…she caught herself, but not before she saw her older sisters in a net, struggling wildly, and heard the piercing shriek of her younger sisters, who were barely out of the flower bud.
Be patient and be brave for just a little longer, sisters. Rui thought, if she thought those words hard enough, she could send the words to her sisters.
Jenna caught the strained, forlorn look on Rui’s face, and it was so strained and faraway and something else that she couldn’t name, it didn’t seem like the laughing and playful Rui they had known at all.
“What’s the matter Rui?” Jenna asked. The other two whirled around fast enough to just barely see the face before it disappeared under a slightly shaky smile.
“Who me? Oh don’t worry, I’m fine. Just having a…um…unpleasant flashback.” That was true enough.
“What happened?” asked Amber.
Rui deflected the question by giving a little shrug, and asked, “So…what do pancakes taste like?”
The threesome shared looks, and in moments like these, they knew that their thoughts were the same. Their shared thought was that Rui did not want to be pressed about her past, however it had been spent. Rui saw the glances, and the bond between these girls. She pushed a bit with her magic, and saw that it was like a large, flexible iron bar between the friends, leading from heart to heart, and to her surprise, a thick string, but not as thick as the bar, was branching off the bar off of all three of the girls, and was latched to her own heart. The iron bands were different colors. Rui’s was purple, Karen was pearly white, Amber was a bright blue, and Jenna’s was glowing red. Wind, Water, and Fire. My own of course is multi-task, not limited to one element, so mine is a color not related in any firm way to any of the elements. Though the fact that their powers are the elements alone, makes them very powerful. I don’t know if there’s anyone else besides these girls who can control the elements. I doubt their powers have awakened yet, but they will soon.
“Pancakes are the best breakfast food in the world!” said Jenna.
“Well, yours are anyway Jen.”
“Hey, does it really take lots of effort to say the second syllable of my name Karen…or should I start calling you Kare?”
So with talk like this, the happy manner of the kitchen soon returned, but with just a small touch of unease.
Later, everyone was at the table, and chatting happily about the beautiful weather and the opportunities that it offered. Rui secretly wanted to take a look around, and get to know this strange world, although she never said so. It was fairly windy, and Jenna wanted to fly their kites, but Amber wanted to go to their tree house and work on their summer project of pressing leaves and flowers to make a collection, and hand in to their science teacher once school started. Karen, on another hand, wanted to go to the apple orchard, and climb the trees with a good book. Rui listened to all this and said nothing. Kites and tree houses were a mystery to her. The girls made a plan to roll what everyone wanted to do in one day. Since the wind might die down later, they decided to fly kites first, and then find plants and flowers to press while there was still light. Toward the end of the day, they would climb up the apple trees and read. They knew the owner of the apple trees, and he was their friend, so they could have all the apples that they wanted. Amber suddenly remembered that Rui didn’t say what she wanted to do.
“Rui, you haven’t said a single word. What do you want to do today?” asked Amber.
Rui blushed, and said that she didn’t care what they did today.
There were still some big questions waiting to be answered. Where had Rui come from, and why had she come? Was she all friendly as she had seemed? Well for now, the girls had no reservations on the last question, seeing that they had all become rather fond of the tiny elf with her strange attire. The other two unanswered questions, the girls sensed that Rui would tell them when she was ready, although they desperately wanted to know. They felt that it was really just curiosity to know what the answers were, but automatically assumed the answers would really have not much to do with them. How wrong they were.
The girls and elf had a great time with the kites. Of course, Rui had a certain reluctance to show herself to the outside world, so she rode in Karen’s pocket, hidden by the large, multicolored, flashy butterfly kite Karen was holding, softly stating now and then how bumpy it was. They went to an abandoned, grassy field, a favorite spot from the past, and launched the kites. Amber’s was in the shape of a large nimbus cloud, albeit a nimbus with colorful ribbons tied on various spots around it. Jenna’s kite was her pride and joy, because the kite was a traditional shape, she had made it herself, with a beautiful painting of a waterfall on it. Rui rode on the kites, whooping and shouting with glee as the kites dipped and rose with the breeze. She screamed when Amber’s kite went sharply down, with her on it, but it caught another tiny breeze which was enough to make the kite steady again.
Meanwhile, the girls were having fun, just watching their kites fly in the sky, but especially the little figure zooming on and off of the kites.
You could almost think that she’s never had fun before thought Karen. But it’s like the chocolate I guess. Once you have fun, you’ve got to get more. Karen thought of her deep green backpack. It was on the edge of the field, and held enough lunch for the four of them, and several full sized chocolate bars. Rui, for such a small size, ate almost as much as the girls did, and used up the nutrients just as fast too. Karen had convinced her mom to pack Rui’s share by saying “just in case we get hungrier than usual, then we can share it” and giving doe eyes. It worked every time.
When Rui got tired, the sun was high in the sky, and it was just about time for lunch. They brought the kites down gently, and hurried to the spot Karen’s backpack was. Amber suggested that they eat lunch in the tree house, but Jenna argued that they might spill food on their summer project, so the girls headed to a nearby pond instead. The pond was a lovely sight, with frogs croaking, and birds singing, with the sun slanting through the trees, and giving some clearance to the murky depths, and a fallen tree being a perfect picnic table.
Karen sighed with pleasure. “I just love coming here. It’s always so peaceful and quiet.”
“Oi, me too,” agreed Amber.
“Man, you two are always so sentimental,” whined Jenna.
“What are those?” asked Rui, pointing to a spot across the pond.
There in the water was a female mallard duck with eight little ducklings following her in single file. The girls gasped with delight and whispered to Rui what they were. Rui’s face held an odd expression as the ducks glided serenely across the pond.
“The small ones are just babies?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah; aren’t they just adorable?” squealed Karen.
Amber stared at the hovering Rui, who was staring at the ducks. “You have that face on again,” she informed Rui.
“What face?” asked Rui, looking a bit startled.
“The face you had on this morning, you know, when you said that you had that flashback?”
“Oh, I did?”
“Yeah. What’s up Rui? Is something wrong?”
“Oh, um…”
“Amber, Rui! There’s another duck over there sitting on her nest!” said Karen in a loud whisper.
“What’s a nest?” asked Rui.
“It’s a place where there are unborn babies inside eggs, and the mother sits on them to keep them warm. Then the babies come out of the eggs after they have grown inside the egg to what those baby ducks over there are,” explained Amber.
Rui didn’t put that face on again, but stared at the ducks with a deep sadness in her eyes.
Karen called, “Looks like they’re going back to shore, so let’s eat now.”
They all sat on the fallen tree, and began to eat the peanut butter and banana sandwiches with apples and water, and ate in silence, soaking in the peace that nature installed. Rui immensely enjoyed the peanut butter, and was surprised, then delighted when she bit into a banana. The water bottle at first was a sort of shower for Rui, but she didn’t mind, because water was new and somewhat unexpected. At home, she explained, they normally drank nectar from flowers, and were only allowed to drink from the water stream when they reached adulthood, in about seven years time for Rui. Or would have been, Rui thought bitterly, but she kept it to herself. She didn’t really like the apple peel so much, but when she realized that the interior of the apple was delicious, she just took the liberty of spitting out the apple peel, and was ecstatic to discover that there were two entire chocolate bars for her to enjoy all by herself.
“So,” said Rui, tracing down the last smears of chocolate on the corners of her mouth with her tongue, “what’s a tree house? A house you can live in that’s in a tree?”
“Well, I guess you could live in one if you wanted to, but nearby a pond like this, there would be lots of mosquitoes that would find out that they didn’t need to go hunt their quarry, but just make a quick flight up the tree to you,” Karen thoughtfully said.
“What’s a mosquito?”
All three girls answered at once.
“A bug that gives you itchy spots for a couple of days when it bites you,” said Amber.
“A bug that is a real little vampire because they suck your blood,” said Jenna.
“A bug that most people could do without,” said Karen.
The girls flashed each other quick grins.
Rui looked at them curiously, before asking yet another question. “So, how do you press flowers?”
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