Oracle (Book I)

The Ancestors

"What took you?" Bossa asked from her hammock as Caprice walked into their room. Fritter lay curled in Nezzle's blankets and Nezzle was standing on the edge of the bed, rearranging her the books on the top bed of her canopy.

"I was looking for Juri," Caprice said, putting her books and potions things on the edge of her bed, "or I was going to. I met a boy. He said his name was Merlin. Do you know him?"

"What does he look like?"

Caprice shrugged. "White. Dark hair."

"That could be anybody," Bossa chuckled. "Was he at least cute?"

Caprice shrugged again. "But he did tell me that the star shepherds got moved to special lessons."

"Is that so," Nezzle said curiously. She looked over her shoulder at Bossa. "Special lessons, you say. Must be the Honor's Society."

"What is it?"

"It's just that no one really sees the Honor's students that much," Nezzle explained. "They might as well live on a different planet from the rest of us. Is the boy you met related to the Headmaster? That is a pretty distinguished name for your average wizard."

"I asked if he was, he said no."

"They offered Nezzle Bookworm a spot with the exceptional, oh-so-elite students too, you know," Bossa said. "In her first year, too."

"You didn't accept?" Caprice said, a little surprised. It was easy to imagine Nezzle in especially advanced lessons among a small, distinguished bunch.

"I could've. But I didn't."

"You stayed with Bossa," Caprice smiled.

Finding the volume she wanted, Nezzle expeditiously re-stacked the books in her bed-top library and climbed down.

"She'd be lost without me."

"No I wouldn't! Sort of..." Bossa grumbled to herself while they all got ready for bed.

~

That night, Caprice dreamed she was in the catacombs standing before Rock again.

"Will you find Ester?" Just like before as she had said her own name, Rock's voice slowed and grew garbled and distorted.

Caprice nodded and said, "I will but who is—"

As she thought of who Ester might be, she was surrounded by fragrant flowers and grass. Blinking against the sunlight and bright sky, she found herself in one of the gardens on the Plains, furthest from the castle.

A sinuous, cloud-like smoke wove its way around her. It spread out, blanketing the garden in something heavier than mist. Neither cloud, vapor, smoke, nor mist but somehow all in appearance and motion, it was alive, just like Rock's colossus.

"You're Ester," Caprice said. Shimmering, the soft, gray smoke and its silvery threads wound around her and as it did the voice followed it as if it was inside. The smoke was speaking.

"I am...Ester." The distortion in her voice clawed at the insides of Caprice's ears as the voice spoke its name. The disturbance eased as the voice continued, "You need only think of me and I will find you. I will help you in the only way I can in this diminished form. And you must find her, too, quickly." The more she listened to Ester's voice, the more Caprice heard. There were other voices inside of hers, echoing and whispering faintly in the background of her words as if giving her voice substance and strength.

Before thinking better of it, Caprice asked, "Find who?"

Instantly, she was in the empty, eerily silent Main Hall standing before the Grand Hall doors.