Tales of the Five Nations 1-Scarblade

Chapter 1-And the Plan Begins

Alban sat on the roof of the veranda outside of her window, and watched the cars go by on the busy street of her adoptive family's apartment in Seattle, Washington. She wasn't supposed to sit here, 40 feet off the ground, on top of a veranda roof. No one knew that she sat here, or had these special Fire Powers in a Human World, except, of course, Feris, her best friend and companion through her entire life. She didn't consider Feris her brother, although she'd been living with him for seven years, he was still just a friend in her mind. Or—was he?

Alban thought about her home, a world away, the doorway so close, but seemed out of reach. She thought about her dead mother and father, only alive in her memories. I wish I could see them, just once, just one more time, she thought. Suddenly the door to her room inside, past the window, opened.

"Feris did it!" Alban yelled, startled, as she turned around on the sandpaper-like shingles of the roof.

"Nice to know that you'll stand up for me!" Feris yelled back in an exhausted, but sarcastic tone.

"You know I'd help you if Mr. Saucier had another lecture match again."

"Yeah—sure." Feris grunted as he awkwardly climbed through the window of Alban's room onto the roof of the veranda.

"Are you ever quiet for two seconds, or is that physically impossible for you?"

"That seems to be the case—" Feris sat next to Alban "—but the real reason I came here is to tell you that Mrs. Saucier has finished your concrete birthday cake and is ready for you to come down and eat her sludge soup, your favorite. But at least it's vegan, like everything in our world."

"Do I really have to eat their beloved birthday dinner? " Alban responded.

"Dinner of Doom," Feris breathed, looking up at the starlit sky, obviously distracted by its beauty that night.

"What? I haven't heard that one yet."

"Just made it up."

Then all was still, and all was quiet. Neither said a thing, and both friends stared up at the starry sky above them, which was an odd shade of navy blue.

"Tomorrow's the night of glory. We get to 'save the world'. By then you'll be fourteen and the spell would've broken by then. Nervous?"

"Not a bit."

"You pack the toiletries this time."

"Why, because last time you packed an entire 48 pack of toilet paper for a two-day trip to a funeral?" Alban began to giggle.

"We do not speak of these events," Feris said, smiling embarrassingly, blushing with his eyes wide.

They both laughed as they remembered the hilarious incident.

"Or that one time you licked cupcake icing off the kitchen floor, Alban. The floor!"

"Only the layers that weren't on the floor," Alban objected, smiling maliciously. Both companions laughed again, but laughing harder this time. Their wonderful moment was interrupted by Mrs. Saucier calling Alban and Feris for the "Dinner of Doom" from the kitchen across the hall.

Alban and Feris unfortunately heard their guardian's call for dinner, and sadly trudged back through the window, into Alban's room, down the stairs and to the end of the hallway, and at the end was the dinner table, which did not have the best reputation so far.

As they walked through Alban's room, Alban looked at the poster which held the written plan of their adventure to the Fire Nation on the back of the poster, in Alban's handwriting, of course, because Alban's handwriting had always been better than Feris'. Alban stopped walking, and set her hand on Feris' shoulder in front of her. They stopped, and faced each other.