The desert princess

Still exhausted from the long hike and my experience with that girl, I'm lying in the bed next to Frederik.

Why are you so lazy? We're in a huge town, shouldn't we go outside and have fun?
I'm sure this place has a fun night life.

Oh no, I had enough for today.

Me, too. Besides that, I know how you behave when drunk. I don't want to see you like that again.

So she molested you, too?

Hmm...?

Whatever, then I'll be out alone.

I think, we should accompany her, what do you think, Frederik?

Yeah, we can't just leave her alone, can we?

So you'll accompany me?

I get up, and so does Frederik.

We go outside and walk through the streets. It's already getting dark.
A few pubs seem to be opened, and a few streets seem to be very lively with a lot of decoration and lighting.

Frederik stops. He must have noticed something.

Hey, I just saw there is an important event in the palace tonight.
Their princess will be there.
I think we should go to this place.

Yeah, sounds interesting.

Really? You want to go to some traditional bullshit like this?

We nod eagerly and innocetly.

If you want, you can go there, but I'll stay somewhere around here. Everyone seems to have fun.

Can we really leave her alone?

I don't know, but I don't want to miss this event. It might be something special.

Fine, I'll go with Frederik, and you do whatever you want.
But when we don't find you, when our ship leaves, we won't wait for you.

Yeah!

Don't worry. I'm older than you and I got along very well for most of my life.

We leave Penina and head to the palace.

The palace main entry is directly at the end of the street.
But guests are not allowed to enter there.
We have to enter it using a special guest entry at the side.

The entry leads through a dark corridor up some stairs.
Then we find ourself outside again and walk along some elevated path, probably on some castle wall. The path is mostly straight and soon we reach the real entrance of the palace.

We end up in a only slightly illuminated room. We're standing on some long balcony and can look down into the lower floor of that room.

People are already murmuring about the ceremony that is about to begin.

In the lower floor, there are a bunch of girls kneeling on the ground in two rows facing each other, forming a path between them.
They are all wearing the same clothes, the ones on the left side in a red color, the ones on the right side in blue.
All of them have smooth brown hair tied in the same way.

And at the end of the path there is a small rise on which a girl is standing, who is dressed in a similar way, but much more noble.
Her trousers widen toward the bottom and are tied at her ankles.
At her upper body she wears only two scarves that cross over at her chest, similar to suspenders, each made of thin, magenta-colored fabric. They just barely hide her breasts.
Otherwise she resembles the other girls. I'm sure, she's the princess.

After a while a muscular man enters the room.
He wears pretty noble, traditional looking clothing.
He slowly walks down the path toward the princess. The girls bow down as he crosses, one pair after the other, causing a nice looking coreography.

The man and the princess greet each other and then they start to dance.
They are getting very close to each other.
The man begins to stroke his bulky hands along her body. She grins insecurely and her movement gets less and less dynamic.

Suddenly, she looks right into my direction, directly at my face. She has a determined look. I have a really bad feeling about this and start to move toward the exit. The last time I had a similar feeling something terrible happened.
Frederik doesn't know, what's going on, but he just follows me.

Before I leave the room, I look down and see the man lying on the floor, unconscious and covered in blood.

I immediately leave the room. And just after that, the entrance collapses. Frederik didn't get out in time.
I hope he is fine...

I think about helping him using my new magic abilities, but I fear causing more harm than good.
What if I make the building break? I would squish him and kill him.
I should probably just get out myself and hope for the best.
Maybe he will find another exit.

So I just keep walking along the wall and down the stairs until I'm completely outside.
I really hope Frederik is fine, but when seeing the bad condition of the building I already expect the worst.

And just after leaving, the earth already begins to shake and sand begins to swirl through the air. I notice Penina being the only person running toward the palace, not fleeing.

I run toward her.

What happened to Frederik?

He's still inside.

Can't you do anything? You can use magic after all.

I don't know. I...
Let's get safe first.

But where?

Uhm...
The port!
Let's go to the port. I'm sure the ships are going to leave this place soon. Maybe we'll get inside.

Okay!

As we run toward the port, we lose each other in the crowds.
This is really gettin scary. What's happening here?
At least the earthquake and the sandstorm are getting weaker again.

When I arrive at the port, there are already several ships ready to leave, and the inhabitants of the kingdom are forming a crowd in front of the ships to get on board.
After a while I manage to squeeze into a ship just before it closes and departs. I hope my friends also made it in time.

It's quite uncomfortable in the crowded ship. And we have to stay like this for a while.
But the ship already left.

Having to wait in such a place is the worst.
But at least the ship will bring us somewhere else.

A few hours later, the ship finally stops for the first time and most people leave.
I don't know where we are, but it's definitely not a proper village, so I stay in here for now.
And it's in the middle of the night.

The ship keeps sailing along the coast. This must be the mainland.
If it keeps going like this, we should reach the harbor village.
I'm really tired. But I'm too nervous too sleep. Besides that, it's still too crowded to sleep. At least to me. Some people are already sleeping.

I go to a wall I can lean against and keep standing there, hoping I will reach the desired goal eventually.
If I just keep standing here. By ship I'll probably be back home in less than a day. Maybe already tomorrow evening.
Even if everything goes well, I will have to stay awake for almost a whole day at least. It's still very much.

But there's on use in worrying about that now. I'm already happy when I safely reach the harbor village.
And so I keep standing there for hours.
Once in a while the ship stops. I should still be on the right path, but it's still some time until we're there.

The sun is already starting to raise.
And the ship almost is empty.
I just want to be there already.
The next stop might be it.

And when it stops I look outside and I realize it really is the harbor village.
At least that's how I imagined it. I've never actually been there after all.
I'm back! Finally back home! I'll never leave this place again!

I get out of the ship and sit down on a bench to wait for my friends. I hope, they're really coming.

After sitting there for a while, I notice Penina sitting around waiting as well.
I immediately run toward her and sit down next to her.

I'm so happy you're doing well.
Any sign of Frederik?

Penina just shakes her head.
She seems pretty sad.
I hug her.

Don't worry. I'm sure he will be fine.
He's a tough guy, right?

Penina starts to smile.

Yeah, I hope, you're right.

I sit down next to her.

So... you really wanted to accompany me to my village?

Sure, where else would I go now?

Yeah...

I'm looking forward to finally get to know your other friends.

She really seems excited already.
Maybe just a try to hide her sadness, but one that works at least.

But maybe we should get a place to sleep here first.

You have enough money with you?

I hope so.

She shows me some bag of money.
It looks like she has enough.

Yeah, it's probably better if we stay here.

I lean against her, feeling like I can relax now.
And I immediately fall asleep.