"Are you okay?" Salvatore asks me as he walks me back through the garden.

"Why wouldn't I be?" I answer with a question of my own, trying to replay what happened a few moments ago in my mind.

My first encounter with the Violet Queen was ... unusual. First, she asked me a bunch of questions I didn't know the answer to, then she cut me with a thorn with one of her roses - the same rose that's in my hand right now - and then she made me walk around a tree and when my blood dripped on the red side, it livened up. Like I said, unusual.

"Because that wasn't how that was supposed to go," Salvatore answers.

"What do you mean?"

"She wasn't supposed to act like that," he says, me still being confused. "SHe was just ... nervous to to see you."

"But," I say, "why? I mean, I'm not special or anything - at least not that I know of."

"It was your eyes, she thought that ..." His voice trails off.

"She thought what?"

"That you were," he says, before looking at me for the first time suring our entire conversation, "Someone."

Well that's really specific.

"Someone ..."

"Someone that could help her find her sister."

I raised my eyebrow, what does he mean, find her sister? "What happened to her sister?"

"It's forbidden to speak about her. We have a new queen now, and we don't need to think about the previous rulers," he says in a somewhat harsh tone.

"Oh," I say, kicking a couple stray pebbles. For the rest of the way, we don't talk, we just walk. Finally, we reach the entrance to Mystical Academy, when Salvatore says something.

"It's hard to talk about her."

"It's okay," I say, and I mean it, "I guess I'm just trying to find out more about this world."

He smiles, but it doesn't quite meet his eyes, "Don't worry, most kids in there don't even know about Queen Violet's older sister, so just don't bring it up, okay?"

"Okay," I agree, "Prince Salvatore."

"You don't have to call me Prince Salvatore, just Salvatore will do."

"Okay," I say again, "Salvatore."

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"Interesting." That's all Vixen had to say about my little meeting with the Violet Queen. Interesting.

"You don't seem too surprised by that," I point out.

"It's not that surprising," he says. "At least she didn't whack you upside the head for pulling a tiny prank on her."

I gave him a look, "How'd you prank her?"

"Um ..." he drags on, "I may have said that there was a spider in her hair."

I smack his shoulder for every word I say, "You. Don't. Say. There's. A. Spider. In. Someone's. Hair!"

"Ow, okay, okay!" he says, trying to block himself from me. "I get it, sheesh."

"You do anything like that to me, and you'll get worse," I threaten him.

He puts his hands up in surrender, "I have no doubt about that. It's not like I do it all the time anyways, I was just bored when I did that."

"When did you do it?"

"What' year's it again?" he asks, but immediately counts on his fingers, probably because he remembered what year it was. How do you forget the year? "About four or five months ago."

I just give him the are-you-kidding-me look. "Why'd you need to know the year if it was only four months ago?"

He smiles, "Cause."

I roll my eyes at him, then notice how he's cleaned up the room. As soon as I walked through the door, he asked me what happened, and I told him, without giving much thought to my surroundings. There wasn't any more garbage on the floor or tables, you can tell that the floor is supposed to be a light grey and not a darker grey like how it was before. All his stuff was now on the right side of the room and there was just a dresser, and a plain bed on the other side with a bunch of space. I notice a couple of boxes on the side of the bed.

"Oh, I was able to get your stuff from your human school," he says after noticing where I put my attention, "it's not much though, so I'm not sure if I got everything or not."

I get up off the couch we were sitting on, and walk over to my new bed. It was a big double mattress bed, the kind I'm not used to. I bend down and open one of five boxes. This box had my clothes in it, so did the next two. The next box had my school supplies in it, I noticed it had my binder in it, which I remember forgetting in my Humanities class. The last box was small, and had my personal stuff in it. Just a couple pictures, silly awards and my journals that I wrote random stuff in, including my dreams.

"This is all of it," I tell him, not exactly happy about it. I flip through the bigger journal, it had all my small rants about my teachers and people at the school. I smile, the entries at the very beginning were from years and years ago, when I was just learning how to write. I haven't read through it in a while, always too busy to do so. The other journal was smaller, and had barely half of the pages used. They were my strange dreams that I've had about the Red Queen.

Before I could read more, Vixen said, "Well, you'll get a lot more stuff at the store, besides, you need to get a few uniforms and-"

"Uniforms?"

"Yeah, pretty much what I'm wearing, except less comfortable," responds with a smile.

"Why do we need uniforms, and do we have to wear it all the time?" I ask, even at my school, we didn't get uniforms. Though, what I wore might as well have been, since it was all I would wear. Dark skinny jeans ripped at the knees, a dark red long sleeved shirt with a small, faded golden crown in the center of the back (all clothes we got had a crown on it to symbolize Castle Orphanage-like we'd be proud to show we're orphans on the rare chance we leave the school) and an over-sized black hoodie, the crown in the same position. It's what I'm wearing now, and I like it. Though, if I get to see Vixen in a tight shirt all the time, maybe it won't be so bad.

The cafeteria. That's where we went. The school cafeteria.

It wasn't like a normal human school cafeteria though. There were windows on all large sixteen – I think – sides, I don't know how there are windows on all sides that shows the sun setting when the cafeteria is in the center of the school, but that's magic logic for you. The ceiling gave off orange, pink, and blue light, like the color of the sky during sunset in Summer. There were comfy-looking couches and chairs surrounding floating boards of wood that I'm assuming are just tables without legs. The walls – at least the parts that weren't covered in windows – were violet at the bottom, then faded into red at the top, I think I know what that symbolizes. The café had grey tiles to line the floor. There was a large counter separating the rest of the café from where I'm assuming the food gets made and ordered.

I saw kids that ranged from about ten to twenty all hanging out, laughing and having a good time.

"Not what you were expecting, huh?" Vixen assumes when he sees me taking in the beauty of the place.

"Not at all," I agree, "This place is ... amazing."

He smiles, and as I was looking at the sinking sun, I realized how fast the day went by. It feels like years and years ago when I woke up to get ready for school this morning.

"Come on, let's go get some food," he says, and I follow him to the counter.

We see a pretty lady with light olive skin and long straight black hair with highlights at the end greet us with what looks like a forced smile, her bright amber eyes sparkling when they see Vixen, "How may I treat you today, Traitor?"

He laughs, "Are you still upset about that, Andrea?"

Her expression gets more serious, "We were on the same team! And you used your magic against me, to get the win for the other team."

"It was just a game, besides, I know which is the winning side, and I always win."

Andrea just rolls her eyes, "Maybe if you didn't betray the team you were assigned, we could've won."

"Details, details," he responds, "Now, can we get some food, I'm starving, and I'm sure Eva here-" he wraps his arm around me "-is hungry too."

Andrea noticed me for the first time, her intense amber eyes studying mine. Green eyes, why just why did I end up with green eyes, why can't I be normal for once?

Finally, she asks, "What'd you want? Name anything."

"Uh ..." I mumbled, not sure what she means be 'anything,' "Macaroni and Cheese?"

"And what do you want as your dessert?"

"Chocolate Smoothie?"

"And what do you want for your drink?"

"Dr. Pepper."

"And what do you want as an appetizer?"

"Fries?"

"Okay, that should be ready in a couple minutes" she says, and turns to Vixen, "And I know what you want."

He looks a little worried, "Uhh, is Troy going to be preparing my food?"

She grins, "Yep."

"Great," Vixen says sarcastically, "Just, no live animals, okay? Anything, but live animals."

Her grin becomes wider, "Got it."

Vixen takes my arm and turns me around, and finds us a couch facing the window at the opposite side of the cafe. A minute later, food pops up on the "table" in front of us and makes me jump. Vixen chuckles slightly, and ... I smack him.

"It's not funny," I say, trying to hide my own smile, and reach out for my big bowl of Mac & Cheese. I take it, and lean back on the couch, and start devouring it.

Vixen hesitantly looks at his food. I think it was a burger with fries, but I'm not sure, since in between the buns were droopy and liquid-like vegetable-looking stuff. He shrugs, grabs it, and takes a large bite out of it, then immediately starts gagging.

I couldn't help but laugh, almost choking on my Macaroni. I turn back and see Andrea trying her best not to laugh.

"Why's your food like that?" I ask in between laughs.

"Well, I sorta turned on my team during a game of Capture the Flag, and Andrea's partner, Troy, the cook, is mad at me about it," Vixen says. "Usually, when the cook is mad at me, they put ants or bugs in my food or something. This time, Troy must've put rotten vegetables from the worst farms around the world in my burger."

"Sounds like this happens a lot," I notice.

"Not as often as you'd think," he says, and mutters something in Latin that made the disgusting burger look appetizing with good vegetables. "Just when I annoy them."

"Which is ..."

"About once a week."

"Which is," I say, "not as often I thought. I thought it would be at least once a day."

He grins, and takes a huge bite out of his burger, and with his mouth full of food, I was able to catch, "I'hmve grwmhn ought wof it."

I nod my head unsurely, "I can see that."

He swallows, "So, what other questions do you have? I mean, I'm sure there a a billion floating in your head right now."

I hesitate, not sure of what to ask. He's right, I have a gajillion questions, but there's too many to keep track of that I forget them. I finally remember one, "What to the other orphans at castle think of me right now? Are they ... Have they noticed me missing?"

"Oh, that's an easy one," he says, "they think you got adopted. Or at least, that's what the magic has them thinking."

"Oh," I say, not sure of what else to say, it's weird how the people that I've spent most of - no, all of - my life with just think I got adopted. If they didn't like me before, well they certainly hate me now for getting a new family. "What did you mean by lovesick?"

"What?"

"When you were ... telling me about how Prince Salvatore is your cousin, you described him as lovesick."

"Oh," he says, probably regretting his choice of words. "I'm not sure who, but I do know that he once loved someone. And that she disappeared or something. He's devoted to finding her, no matter what."

The Red Queen. He loved the Red Queen, and she's gone missing. Which makes sense, Vixen seventeen, he wouldn't really remember the Red Queen, and in my dreams they loved each other, but ... Why are the hot ones always taken? I mean, it's just not fair!

"Andrea is an apprentice right? WIth her partner, Troy?" I ask, and he nods, confirming it. "Then how come they're serving the food?"

"We all get jobs," he starts to explain. "As extra credit, and there aren't that many witches in the world. Maybe about a few hundred or so, but that's it. So they don't have spare people to work kitchen duty, or cleaning duty, we're lucky we have mentors to teach us, there's just a lot of work to do in the world to restore it."

"A few hundred?" I exaggerate, there were only a few hundred? THat might seem like a lot, but compared to seven billion humans, that's a lot less than the population of most American cities. "How many elves are there?"

"A few thousand or so," he says casually, taking a large sip out of his drink.

"That's ..."

"Not very much," he finishes for me, "I know, but considering our life spans, it's enough."

My eyes widen, "Life spans? How long do we live?"

"Well, elves and witches live for tens of thousands of thousands of years, unless they die of unnatural causes. Other species differentiate."

Tens of thousands? Big numbers, very, very, very big. "How old is the oldest person alive?"

"About a thousand-ish. Mystica isn't perfect, we still have wars - minor wars - where lots of innocent lives are taken, but we haven't had one for many years."

"Wow," is all I can think of to say. It's going to take me a long time to get used to that.

"Anything else you want to know?" he asks. I think for a minute. I think about the wars, and my dreams, and feel like they're connected somehow. I think about the scene Stefan and I wrote - it makes sense how he has the exact same details now - about the Red Queen finding out about the Renegades. If my dreams are accurate - which I'm assuming they are - Mystica is on the brink of war. "How close is Mystica to a major war?"

Vixen stiffens, "Hopefully, not for a very long time. If there was one now, especially with ... well things won't be good, for either side."

"If there was one," I start my question, thinking about earlier when he said he knows which side wins, "who do you think would win?"

His grey eyes turn stormy, "You just better hope there isn't one."

My big bowl of Mac & Cheese didn't look very appetizing anymore, or any other food. When we went back to our dormitory, Vixen promised that tomorrow we would get more stuff for me and personalize my side of the room. Then handed me some pajamas and told me to go change in the bathroom and go to bed.

I was trying to fall asleep now, but one thing kept nagging at me, keeping me awake. I couldn't stop thinking about how Vixen said Mystica wasn't perfect. And what was wrong with Mystica now? When he trailed off before, If there was one now, especially with ... well things won't be good, for either side. What would help Mystica win the war? And if we better hope there isn't one, how bad are the Renegades?

Mystica just got a whole lot more terrifying for me.

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A/N: I updated, yay! I'm thinking about making the uploading schedule on the weekends // when I finish the chapter ... which is usually on the weekends. As usual, thank you for reading my story, it means a lot and please, please, please comment your thoughts. I love reading what you thought, what I could improve on and most importantly, your predictions. It's fun to read what you think will happen in the story, and to see how close or far you are. :)

Your Author,GingerNuela <3 

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Written: February 2017
Edited: 
Words: 2,850

~Nuela