The Honor of Light #2 (Waverly Stump and The 7 Realms)

Chapter One

A whole year passed in Lake Borough.

Waverly turned thirteen in the winter and Judson - fourteen earlier on. The pair spent a lot of the year together having blissful fun in any way they could. They would venture into the small forest located far behind HalfHyde's house just near the foot of the mountains - a place they nicknamed The Haven.

Judson regrew the empty fields near the forest into orchards because he wanted to make it easier for the smaller animals to find food there. He mastered a funny trick of turning most of the trees a different color at their roots. Whenever he did so, he and Waverly would hide and watch the rabbits, squirrels and other small animals inch cautiously out of their burrows to gaze bafflingly at the drastic yet interesting change.

Inside The Haven, Waverly felt safe and happy. She learned to climb trees and catch the falling snow on her finger tips in the winter and to carve small images out of timber and make food wrappings out of leaves during spring. She also learned to cook a few meals - a skill she learned from Judson. She devoted time to practicing how to fight better with Calaire (the magical crescent weapon that had once been a woolen bassinet from her childhood). She had received it as a sort of parting gift from her mother the year before.

HalfHyde taught her new sword skills with it since it was not a sword and Waverly had never learned to use any other weapon.

On such practice days, Judson would pretend to be an attacker. His only task though was to firmly hold up a large stick on which Waverly practiced new strikes. A lot of times she had kicked or struck with too much force that knocked him to the ground but they would laugh this off as long as he was not hurt.

As the year progressed, Waverly found that she subconsciously watched out for signs of a war; a disturbance, an attack, a missing townsperson- anything at all to indicate the beginning of her worst nightmare and the end of the almost perfect life she had now.

But nothing unusual ever happened.

The year before she had gone on a quest to rescue her mother and received a vision of an  impending war that would supposedly reflect the destruction of lives from the Great War over a thousand years ago.

Waverly worked hard in training as much as possible because she feared that the said war could begin at any time but on most of those training days when nothing looked to be wrong or out of place, she would spend time playing with Judson instead; taking hikes with him to the foot of the mountain where they would grow beautiful flowers to make the place look more homey or visit The Temple of Alluna; the place where her mother had lived with her father more than thirty years ago; the same place she had been conceived and born. Waverly held a great respect for the Temple even though it was ruined down to the very foundation.

On one particular gardening day, they had found a secret tunnel. After a purposeful search, they found more of these hidden tunnels scattered about the mountains. These passages, they learned, led directly into a wide forest that bordered Lake Borough from another town called Breighum and three more towns named Juven, Emponia and Everglade; each one about a few short miles away from the other.

Waverly made Judson promise he would never tell a soul about their discovery and she promised the same thing as well. She hated to think what HalfHyde would do if he found out that she had been sneaking into Breighum to buy more cotton sugar because the small town flourished in the production of it.

On other uneventful days, Waverly would visit the Elf Pepinguild and check on her old ship Estoso. She (Estoso) was still a marvel and people would still stare at her in awe until they bonked their faces against a tree or a perching street pole.

Waverly also took a lot of refresh lessons from HalfHyde. Her quest the previous year would have been a complete failure had she relied on her own intelligence. Thankfully, Judson had snuck along and saved her a couple of times. They had both discovered their parentage along the way. Judson was a son of Spring; a child of Juniper, the goddess of Nature; while Waverly was the daughter of Selene, goddess of the moon.