Emma and Lilly found themselves in their tent, sitting on their beds. Berk had his people bring beds for them as he was sure that they weren’t used to sleeping on the ground. While it was true that they weren’t used to it, they wouldn’t have minded it at all. They were very thankful though, happy to be able to sleep in an actual bed once again.

  At first they were sitting in silence. Emma because she was thinking about what he mother said and Lilly because she didn’t want to bother her sister. If she wanted to talk, she would begin the conversation.

  The silence didn’t last long as the voices of Jackson and Medi slowly became louder, ending up in front of their tent. Before they could ask to be let in, Lilly already had gotten up and opened the tent for them, stepping to the side.

  They hesitated for a bit before coming in. The tent set up for them was rather big, allowing many people inside if needed. Jackson and Medi stayed at the entrance though, giving the girls some space.

  Emma looked at them, not sure whether to be angry or annoyed that they showed up now. While Emma was sulking, Lilly would try to find a way to cheer her up.

  “Berk looks like a rather reasonable man. Do you really think he will give you away to marry Emma?”

  Jackson looked up Lilly talked, giving her a warm smile but slowly shaking his head. “While you’re not wrong about Berk being a stand up guy, we’re not his to give away. In case you didn’t notice it yet, he’s a satyr and we’re centaurs. We’re not from the same family. And our father would be crazy to let a chance like this slide. His son marrying the most important bloodline of the humans?” Jackson laughed, shaking his head as he could already see it happen.

  This didn’t really help Emma. She groaned, almost scratching her eyes out as she lie down on her bed. “So what you’re saying is that we’re basically already married?”

  The smile disappeared from Jackson’s face, looking down at the ground. “Sadly enough… yes…” He now also shut up, trying to imagine a normal life with Emma. He wasn’t really able to imagine it, shaking his head.

  As they were sitting here in silence, a new group of people seemed to approach the tent although unlike Jackson and Medi did they not stop here. As they passed by, Emma could hear Lucas his voice. She would get up, walking to the entrance. “I’m going to talk to Lucas. I haven’t apologized yet for almost killing him.”

  Lilly got up as well, following her to the entrance as Jackson and Medi did the same. Jackson and Medi didn’t have any business being in this tent of neither of the princesses weren’t here.

  As the four went after the other group, they followed them going downhill towards a river. Emma being a bit in front of the others due to leaving the tent sooner.

  The group consisted of Lucas, Demmie and Gurgen having his chicken on his shoulder, being asleep. Emma would suddenly stop in her tracks, diving behind a bush out of sight of the three. They stopped right next to a lake, looking over the water downstream. The others also quickly dove behind the bushes with Jackson and Medi having to sit down on some stinging branches, softly complaining. “What are you doing?” Asked one of them, getting shut up by Emma motioning.

  “What do you mean leaving?” Asked Demmie looking at Lucas. “You told me yourself that you’re trying to stay hidden from your god and now you want to go back at him?”

  “No, it’s not like that. Listen to me. I think I’m losing it. That burned guy, I keep seeing him over and over again. He doesn’t appear more often but the creep just keeps showing up. Almost always at the same distance away from me.”

  “Lucas tell Gurgen where man. Gurgen make sure Lucas not see man again.” Gurgen towered above the other two, looking down at Lucas.

  “Don’t bother Gurgen. Nobody else but me can see him. I tried so many things to get to him. I tried not blinking as I approached him but he just disappears. I watched people walk through him.”

  Demmie was silent for a bit, thinking about what else he could do. “Have you tried shooting him?”

  “Well yes but that also didn’t work. Mostly because I can’t shoot that far and hit.” He picked up a flat rock, trying to make it bounce on skip the rock.

  “Is he still here?” Demmie picked up a rock as well, holding out for Lucas to grab and try again.

  He grabbed the rock before looking around. “Yeah… To our left next to the tree. Don’t worry about trying to see if he leaves footprints. Already tried everything.”

  “I would say you’re becoming insane but the fact that there’s a prophecy…” He would pick up another rock, this time trying himself. “Magic happens constantly. Seems like you have some kind of curse on you. Getting rid of him might need some other magical person.”

  “Magical person? Like who? Santa claus?”

  “Santa who?”

  “Santa cl… Oh yeah… You never learned of him did you? Well… in my dreamworld there we many different creatures but as in fiction. One of those was Santa Claus. He lives on the North Pole and every year goes around giving children gifts.”

  Demmie gave him a confused look and tilted his head.

  “Forget it… Who were you thinking off then?”

  “Well… Before Gurgen took me here by accident, I went to find this guy who lived in The House Dolphania. I was told that he lived for thousands of years so I hoped he had an answer for my problem, maybe even make me normal. Apparently he too was a dreamchild.”

  “Hah, hearing you talk about your generation makes it sound like you all were forced to live horrible lives.”

  Demmie gave him a slap on his arm, shaking his head. “First of all, not funny. Secondly, I don’t have a personal ghost stalker after me.”

  “Hmmm, touché.”

  “Well, if you want to then we can leave now? Perhaps if we used the time machine then the ghost won’t be able to follow?”

  “No, not now. If we leave then I might not have to worry about what happens next here but I’ve already survived for thousands of years myself taking care of those death candles. This time I can actually do something to perhaps save people. I have a choice now.” Saying this made him feel good, smiling a bit. “We’ll leave after the war. If I die then leave without me. I don’t want you to be the next to have this ghost after you and I have the feeling it targets outsiders like us.”

  Hearing that made Demmie a bit nervous, looking to see if he could see some kind of creepy man. “If that’s the case…” He suddenly had to yawn, sighing afterwards as he blinked a couple of times. “Listen, I’m going to bed. Try to get some sleep yourself. We’re invited tomorrow to help Berk with military stuff so… make sure you slept well.”

  Gurgen grumbled a bit as he too had been invited, grabbing Idi and starting to pat her as she nuzzled her face in between his arm and chest. “Gurgen make great plan.”

  Having said that, Gurgen and Demmie left Lucas alone. He staired at the water for a while, watching it go past him as he was lost in his thoughts.

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  As he was now alone, Emma got up, walking straight towards him. She was interested but also a bit hurt with him considering leaving.

  At first he didn’t notice that she was even there, that was until he heard a bunch of people approach. He turned around to see Emma being almost already in his face. He quickly backed off, still a bit scared of her after what happened.

  “We heard you talking.” She said after getting into his face.

  He took another step back, realizing he was getting close to the water and couldn’t take more steps away from her. “Okay? And…?”

  “You’re going to abandon us?” She sounded upset and mad, making him more uncomfortable.

  “Why is that even a problem for you? Didn’t you try to kill me a couple of weeks back?” He felt a bit of anger himself. He had done his job and kept her alive, now he didn’t want to talk to her again. Lilly was alright as she didn’t put her hands around his throat.

  To that she indeed didn’t really have reason. She huffed, looking away for a second. “Okay then… could you at least explain who this Demmie guy is to us?”

  “Demmie… what do you want to know about him?”

  “You said that you came from another world. You also said that he was from the same world. Now you said that he’s from a different world? And what’s that about generations?”

  While Jackson and Medi haven’t heard as much from Lucas and Demmie, they still were interested hearing about other worlds. Although they were much less aggressive about it with Jackson even going to Emma and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Easy there.”

  Emma seemed to cool down a bit but and even backed up a bit, giving Lucas some space.

  Jackson chose his words very carefully, trying to not offend her and hoping to help her with her feelings. “Emma… Could it be that you’re mad at your mother for her offering you up for marriage? Maybe let Lucas off the hook? From what I heard he too went through a lot.”

  She seemed to realize that she was indeed taking her anger out on other people. She took a deep breath and nodded slowly, turning back to Lucas. “Please?”

  He shrugged, turning back to look at the water and sat down. “Fine I’ll tell you. “You’re still better company than mr burned to ashes over there.” He gestured to the man that they couldn’t see, having a laugh with the situation.

  He picked up another rock, this time just throwing it in the water. “I figure that Jackson and Medi both heard me talk about him? Doesn’t matter really. So when I said that we’re from the same world, yes that’s true. We both were born on the same world where there was no fantasy or at least very little fantasy. People could still invent things but things like magic or mythical creatures or even gods didn’t exist.”

  “One night teenagers like me got a dream. And this was a couple of years ago off course. I’m not a teenager anymore. Anyway, some teenagers got a dream where they were someone else. Of living in another world where there are different things. In my dream I was a halfgod, living for thousands of years in service of my god back then.”

  “I watched over the death candles meaning whenever someone died their candle would go out and I had to replace it for the next person. An exponentially growing job and very exhausting and boring. Whenever I woke up from that dream, I still remembered everything from that other world. Later we found out that we got those dreams because our world was behind in progress.”

  “We got powers in order to unlock the potential in human minds and make them start inventing other stories than reality novels. We were the dream children as there were more people like me. Later when we met up, we didn’t know Demmie existed until he just showed up. Apparently he and a couple others were also dream children but from thousands of years before us, apparently failing in their job of inspiring others and unlocking their potential. But the more I learn about his generation dream children, the worse his generation seems to be.”

  “You have Demmie, the person that ages a full year every day and loses a year of his life whenever he dies and comes back.”

  “There’s Barbaro the handmonster. He lives a normal full life but every time he dies he comes back as a teenager with a hand attached to his body, wrist attached. Last we saw him, he had around a thousand hands and multiple scars of spots where he chopped off hands.”

  “There’s the old man of which I don’t know the name who lives in The House Dolphania or something. I don’t know what his deal is but he is apparently also extremely old and most likely with his own curse.”

  “There might be more but I haven’t asked Demmie about his generation. Although no wait, there was another that I know about. There was this guy who just like Demmie aged a full year in a day. He had super speed and when he ran for around one hour, he would lose a year. He’s dead though.”

  “When one of the evil dream children from my generation decided to try and capture us all, he put us in some kind of specially designed rooms. That guy was put in a room where he couldn’t run at all. He was stuck there for around sixty days with David… Sorry, that bad guy checking up on him. He didn’t realize that he would de-age when running and since he kept him unconscious so he wouldn’t be able to use his power, he accidentally killed him. The others don’t know this though… I’m the only one that does.”

  “When becoming the dream child, I got access to a certain amount of death candles, all with a name. When we escaped and I looked at the candles, his candles wasn’t burning anymore.”

  Saying that, Lucas would wave his hand in the air. Out of nowhere suddenly appeared floating small little candles in front of him. An ability he hadn’t used before, not even when they needed to make fire. There were around a total of twenty lit candles floating in front of him with only two being doused.

  He grabbed one of them and looked at it before showing it to the others. “This was him.” The name engraved in the candle said Billy. He then grabbed another doused candle and looked at it. “This one was from an unfortunate soul from my generation. His name was Connor. He turned into a zombie but unlike the zombies here, he was more dangerous.”

  “From what I’ve been told, your zombies don’t infect others when biting someone. If he were to bite someone, then that person would turn into a zombie as well. His sister and some guy named Jonas trapped him in a tree where he would be eaten up by insects. When we found out what was happening, it was already too late.”

  He waved his hand through the air once more making them disappear. “The candles are only for me to interact with and can’t influence the physical world.” He got up and smiled to Emma, seemingly being sad as in the moonlight a tear could be seen. “I hope that I satiated your appetite for knowledge.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he walked away up the hill, leaving them alone.

  Even though he was don’t talking, she still had some questions but after seeing him almost break, she would not try and call him back.

  Medi watched him leave before turning to Emma. “You can’t blame him for wanting to be left alone.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah.” Emma sighed and looked up at the moon, his words still in her head.

  Lilly would look up as well but unlike her sister it was to guess how late it was. “I’m going back to the tent. When mother returns I can tell her that you’re out on a walk with Jackson so she doesn’t think you ran off.”

  Medi looked at his brother before nodding as well. “I’ll come with. Perhaps she will be more prone to believe us when I’m there as well.”

  She would hug her sister before walking off, letting Emma cool off some steam as it was too soon for her to return to the tent in case their mother came back.

  As Medi quickly came after him, he would chuckle a bit. “Do you play cards by any chance?”

  Their voices slowly disappeared as Emma and Jackson were left behind at the river. There was a light breeze which made Emma shiver as she wasn’t dressed all too warmly. Jackson noticed this and moved in front of her to block the wind. For a while they stood there, Emma looking at the moon and lost in her thoughts with Jackson trying to find a way to break the silence.

  Eventually it was Emma who spoke first, looking down at Jackson and finally noticing that he was protecting her from the wind. “What are your thoughts about this?”

  Jackson looked up when she spoke, hesitating a bit as he hadn’t really thought about it that much. He wasn’t too bothered about it as he hadn’t taken it too serious until this very moment. “I don’t know. My father will take this deal gladly. We could always get married but have actual partners behind the scenes? We wouldn’t be the first royals to have affairs.”

  Emma laughed but it sounded like it was a forced laugh. “Yeah, might be the best option.”

  “Or we could actually try and make it work?” Said Jackson as he looked up at her, trying to convince not only her but also himself that this was possible. “I mean… if we do then you never need a horse again.” He chuckled after saying this, trying to get a genuine laugh out of her.

  “What are you saying? That I should put a saddle on you and put a horse bit in your mouth?” She gave him a grin as she saw that he appreciated her attempt to joke with him.

  “Hah, if that’s what you’re into?”

  Emma sighed as she looked at the ground and turned facing the hill. “Alright, I cooled down, let’s go back.”

  Jackson nodded, letting her decide when to go back and following her back up the hill.

  As they made their way up, Jackson would lose his footing even though he had four legs. His weight was the problems as he felt the ground underneath him move as he stood on muds.

  As he fell down, Emma tried to grab his arm to help him stay up, forgetting that he wasn’t a normal person. His weight pulled her down as well, making her fall on top of him as they slid down.

  Once they stopped moving and were lying still, she was with her face very close to his. His face was lit up in the moon with her hair softly going in the wind. Jackson was surprised with how they were right now and seemed to be enamored by her hair before his eyes shifted to hers.

  After a couple of seconds of looking at each other, Emma would hold her finger between him and her face. “If you kiss me, I’ll cut off your balls.”