The Key Between Stranger Realms - Day Nine

On this strange morning, I awake with sudden purpose. I must find the king who remains nameless. By the cafe where I first saw him, I idle. The Man Who Can’t Be Moved plays in my mind. I don’t yet know why, but the king means so much more to me, to the realms, than that one moment we shared in the forest.

When I see him and his striped hound in the distance, I sprint.

“There you are!” I declare.

He remains silent and seems rightfully confused. He clearly doesn't have the skill of shifting so easily between the realms.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, my fingertips brushing against his wrist.

And through a disoriented haze, I am taken to the other realm, not the present or future in Harmony’s tower, but the past, the day before he left me in the forest.

“I am certain we will find your horse,” he says.

Leon. That is his name. Tamri, his tigress companion, stalks a butterfly in the distance, and I laugh. Of course, that is his name.

“We must before she finds us,” I remind him.

That is right. The knight with the shambolic armor has been hunting us for weeks. We had been traveling on horseback. Leon’s horse took a dirt nap a few days back: bandits, burning arrows, chaos. My horse survived and fled.

We thought he was gone, but we saw him just that morning grazing not far off. He was too skittish to come back and ran away again. I have half a mind to let him be free, but I know we need the speed; We cannot let this determined woman catch us.

“The sun sets,” he says, beckoning for Tamri to join us in rest.

No fire tonight. He settles beside a tree trunk and outstretches his arm. I curl beneath his embrace, Tamri warming our feet.

This … is real, isn’t it?

Memories return like flashes of lightning throughout the night.

First we locked eyes in a castle kingdoms away, his sister, the queen, had just vanished from thin air. He was frozen, unreachable. I helped him escape the wrath of a people who didn't understand the strangeness between our realms. But Leon did — he had seen it.

We kept visiting the Oracle, trying to find answers about interlopers. She had no idea what happened to the queen. Neither did I. She was not dead. Just gone. Each time we came closer to answers, the knight with the shambolic armor found us, and we had to run.

“Let me eat her!” Tamri would beg.

But Leon wouldn't allow it. He was a king. And he knew the knight, loyal to his family, didn't deserve to die for wanting to avenge their queen. We just needed answers. And we searched for them, in the woods, by the rivers, out at sea. Land to land, queendom to kingdom, we could not find his sister. I had known her before Leon, but I still cannot recall her name.

As the days grew shorter and the nights colder, I always wound up here, in his embrace.

“For all of this chaos, I am grateful. It brought us here,” he says as we gaze out at the fireflies speckling the night’s misty air.

My mind awakes again, not in his arms, but kneeling beside the spring, a weightless stingray balancing on my open palm.

What in the strangest realm?

Leon and Tamri wade in the center of the crystalline water. Sorrow has stained his eyes crimson.

“Find us again, Key,” he begs.

“I promise.”

But I am not yet sure what this means.

***

Hello, wanderer!

This is a part of a daily series. You can start reading here:

Check in tomorrow for the next chapter in Key's journey.

If you are enjoying this fantasy mini-series so far, you may also like to read the Queen of the Gulls collection:

xoxo,

for now,

-your friend, lost in thought