Moonstones

Prologue

When you look at the moon, what do you see? A big white and grey sphere in the sky with craters etched in it? However, that isn't all there is to it.

Just beneath the rocky surface was a world unimaginable. Magic creatures unheard of on Earth yet so similar, floating water pools and waterfalls as well as a gravity defying flowing river winding all around the moon. The beautiful homes floating on little islands and town carved out of the inner crust with floating, blue, paper lanterns floating throughout the moon, shining brighter than any light on Earth. But, the jewel above them all is the Moon Palace.

As the largest structure, the palace is the moon's core center. Of course, every palace has a king and every king has children. King Belleraphon, however, only had one daughter, his pride and joy: Lunette.

Beautiful, graceful, sweet, creative, lazy, whiny, loud, and rambunctious was what Lunette was mainly composed of. Silver hair that runs down her back in the traditional princess braid, purple eyes to reflect the moon's inner light and a smile that lights up the kingdom. Yes, Lunette Artemis Silver was, mostly, the picture perfect princess.

Yet, princesses cannot grow up carefree forever. King Belleraphon grew very ill. He had fragile health from birth but it began to subtly get worse as he got older, one reason why he couldn't produce only one child making his daughter all the more precious.

Lunette would soon become queen and take her father's place. As she approaches her coronation, a slight unmentioned detail was brought up: In order for Princess Lunette to gain the throne, she must collect all twelve celestial moonstones.

To make matters more stressful for her, her marriage to the prince of the Sun Kingdom steadily drew nearer.

I, Derward, magistrate of the Moon Kingdom, keeper of the moonstones and the personal guardian of the princess, have been charged with accompanying her on her journey despite her headstrong, overly confident yet lackadaisical self.

We began our journey and found our first moonstone on Pluto, a planet that had been forgotten and disbanded as just a large rock in the heavens. The stone was the Lyre moonstone. Its power was to resonate an imperceptible hum that helped to keep the moon's essence calm but it also strengthened the queen's fluid movement in everything she did, especially used in battle.

Yet another, was found floating among the rings of Saturn. It was the Crying moonstone which controlled the water balance on the moon.

Most unexpectedly, the other ten were all scattered across the planet called Earth, a little over two thousand miles away, the only planet that had inhabitants on it. Princess Lunette and I had traveled there and have slowly gotten acquainted with their strange, amusing and annoying ways.

I have hidden Lunette as a rich orphan living in a foster home on Earth, but it is really a host home. It is not unusual for those of the Sun and Moon Kingdom to make a home on Earth and Lunette's host home was comprised of a family from our Moon Kingdom.

We are suppose to be seeking the moonstones, but the sun overpowers most of Earth's days where we are staying, emanating pulses of light dulling the locations of the moonstones. Poor Princess Lunette has to parade around as a high school girl in order to stay safe. That seems simple enough, I thought, but the sun dominates the earthlings live and move under it, sleeping at night. That is when Lunette must search for the moonstones, for only with moon's light can she sense the moonstone's presence. So far it has been unsuccessful.