Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Hammerstein is at the cusp of finishing high school in his hometown of Los Alamos, NM. He has a seemingly ideal life and is blessed with loving parents, a cute baby sister, and great friends. Nicholas is a gifted student and martial artist who has dreams of leaving for college at the end of his senior year. But, living in a world of Emergent humans, he will soon find his life turned upside down as his life and the fate of a kingdom hang in the balance. His future and theirs will be determined by how he navigates the drastic changes in his body and the magical and superpowered Mergent population he joins.

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The Legal Stuff: Emerald Princess © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016-2023 By Sofia Hammerstein. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Chapter 5: Emerald Castle

‘UMM...’ I THOUGHT in my head. ‘Who are you?’

‘I told you last night, Caireen.’

‘And… you’re inside my head?’

‘Your body. You bonded with me last night.’

‘Oh...’ I thought. ‘So, I guess I’m an avatar?’

‘I believe that’s what your people call it,’ she agreed, and somehow, I could sense she was nodding.

‘So you can act without me wanting you to?’ I asked.

‘Most of the time, no, but right now, I couldn’t help myself. In fact,’ I felt Caireen do something, and suddenly my walls, bed, desk, dresser, and clothes all seemed to transform. The walls became a light purple with some beautiful scrolling leaves and flowers in some sort of mirror paint. My bed became a crib, the dresser a changing table, and the room straightened everything to a neat order. It was a prettier nursery than Mom had done for Lily - which had taken us months to do!

“Sofia Elizabeth,” Mom said to me while looking stunned.

‘How am I going to prove I didn’t do this!?!’

‘Let me talk to her...’

There was something akin to a light switch thrown, and I felt like I was now watching my body. “Sofia did not do this, Mrs. Hammerstein,” came from my body with a much more mature voice somehow coming from my vocal cords.

“What did you do to my daughter?” Mom asked, panicked, “Is she okay?”

“She’s perfectly fine. You may call me Caireen. Your daughter and I bonded last night… I saw she would die without my help, but she has so much potential I decided I had to help her… In the process, she and I ended up bonding.” I felt my eyes move around, “She’s going to take back over now; I just don’t want her to get in trouble. She really needed a pretty nursery, though.”

I felt myself take back over again and, at the same time, could still feel her presence. ‘You’re still here?’ I asked.

‘Until you die, sweet pea,’ she said with a voice that seemed to smile. ‘I’ll talk to you later; your mommy is worried sick.’

“Sofia, are you okay?”

I nodded, “I am; it’s exactly like she said happened.”

“You’re not trying to get out of trouble?”

“I wish I could be this imaginative to get out of trouble,” I sighed.

Mom had a scared and shaken look that she managed to shake her head and ask in a mostly normal voice, “Well… still want your bottle?”

I nodded. Mom carried me to the rocking chair, positioned me in her arm’s crook, handed me the warm bottle, and then began to read the story. “Once upon a time...” I stayed awake for half of the story. I had to rely upon my memory of telling Lily to remember how it ended!

ALMOST AS SOON as I fell asleep, I was standing in a green meadow with flowers and gigantic, beautiful butterflies everywhere. It was a spectacular view when I turned around and saw a stone castle that looked even prettier than anything in a Disney fairytale movie! “Like it?” I heard her ask.

“It’s beautiful!” I told her as I looked up to view a beautiful red-headed lady with emerald green eyes like mine. Her eyes had a twinkle to them that said she was friendly but with just a hint of mischievousness concealed beneath. She seemed like a giant compared to my size, but I guessed she was probably under six feet tall. I recognized the voice as Caireen’s and knew this must be her. “Where are we?”

“Ireland,” she said with a smile, and I finally caught the accent I had somehow overlooked in all of the weirdness from the previous night.

“Are we really here?”

She shook her head, “This is real, but it’s in your dreams. There are some Native American tribes here in America that have similar ideas, but this is where I’ve always come to relax and meet with others in the past.” She paused.

“So… umm… Who or what exactly are you?” I asked.

She reached down and picked me up. I noticed I was wearing a beautiful green dress from sometime before the 1900s. Actually, it wasn’t too far removed from what Merida’s dress in Brave looked like. As she picked me up, I could still tell there was thicker underwear on me. I sighed at that.

She took her finger and brought my face to look up at hers, “Don’t be sad. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to get to that stage of maturity or not again myself, but even if you don’t, at least it looks normal for you to be wearing diapers.”

Caireen carried me towards the castle, and I once again asked, “Who are you?”

“Well, that’s complicated,” she stalled, “but I was known in ancient Ireland as the Goddess and Protector of Children.”

I sat there and mentally thought, ‘oh shit!’

“It’s okay, Sofia; I will not harm you.”

“Joining with you caused me to become a baby?” I asked timidly.

“No, you were on your way to that on your own. But, I sensed you calling for someone to help and couldn’t help but fall in love with the baby girl I saw you would become.” She smiled at me as we crossed through the gates of the castle.

“So…?”

“So I saw you needed my help to survive both your change and your future. I also saw that in doing so, you would help me save many children from suffering in the future. You are the kind of person I have encountered only a few times in my existence.”

“How long have you existed?” I asked her timidly.

She smiled, “You should know better than to ask a girl how old she is!” Her voice said she was amused and not angry… even though she didn’t answer the question.

As we passed through the castle, it felt weird that there were no people there, even though it appeared as if an army of servants were at work at all times maintaining it. She eventually reached a massive hall door and walked through with me. Next, she climbed a spiraling staircase that was terrifying to me in my current size. They seemed to go on forever. Eventually, she opened a wooden doorway that opened to a nursery. A round crib and other decorations for a baby in the past decorated the room. She then sat me down on a table that had to be a changing table.

“Hold your skirts here, sweetie,” she told me, and I had my view blocked by the very puffy skirts and underskirts. She unpinned the diapers and pinned a new one on me before setting me on the ground and joining me on a bearskin rug.

“So, what are we doing here?”

“Well, in the future, you and I will be doing some training here.”

“What kind of training?” I asked.

“Magic, of course, silly,” she told me while touching my nose affectionately. “There will be teachers for you in your world, especially if you can go to that school, Bechtel, but our magic operates differently from most of your kind. The only kind that is very similar is the Faerie.”

“The Faerie?” I asked.

We sat talking for what seemed a long time as she told me about the crazy world that existed out there. Eventually, she saw me sucking on my thumb and said, “Oh my dear, we’ve been going a long time. It’s time for you to take your nap!”

For the first time in my life, I didn’t remember arguing about a nap. She picked me up and laid me down in the pretty crib. “Sleep well, princess.”

I WOKE UP with sunlight coming into the room. I could tell it was extraordinarily bright due to the snow outside, which had mostly been a forgotten thing to me. I sat up and freaked out for a moment. ‘Why are there bars around me?’ I thought and then realized, ‘oh...’ I stood up and wondered what I should do when the door opened and Mom came in.

“Oh, so the sleepyhead decided to wake up finally?” She asked me.

“Huh?”

“It’s nearly eleven,” she told me.

“Really?”

“Your sister wanted to wake you up to play, but I told her you needed to recover.”

“I probably did,” I admitted. Then, I put my hands up in the air, “Can you get me out of this cage, please?”

She laughed. I noticed that the crib seemed taller than Lily’s old one by a couple inches. I could just graze the top of the rails with my fingertips, but I would have to jump to grab on. She reached down, picked me up, and immediately took me over to the changing table that had appeared last night. “You know I’m probably the only girl in existence that sleeps in a crib, but her baby sister doesn’t?”

Mom laughed at me again. “Do you think Caireen would let you sleep in a regular bed?”

‘No,’ I heard.

I sighed, “No, she won’t.”

“Well then… I guess that’ll just be the first thing your baby sister does before you.” She admitted as she unzipped my sleeper. “Sit up,” she said, and I was stripped from the outfit down to my diaper. My very wet diaper.

I sighed, “This is embarrassing.” As I woke up, it really was becoming increasingly annoying to me.

“Here, maybe this will help,” she said and put a pacifier in my mouth.

I would have loved to have claimed it wasn’t helping, but the truth was that it did. Mom quickly and efficiently changed me into a dry diaper and asked, “So, what do you want to wear today?”

I shrugged and said around the pacifier, “What are my options?” It sort of sounded like that was enough for Mom to interpret.

She picked me up and walked to the closet, where I learned Caireen had been very efficient. My entire wardrobe was filled with adorable dresses that I suspected would be sized perfectly for me. I noticed a green one that looked like the one in my dream last night, or whatever that was, and pointed at it. “Dat one!” She pulled the hanger down, and we discovered it had a matching diaper cover.

“Probably should have some tights too,” mom said and went looking for some tights to match in a dresser drawer that had obviously also been a target for Caireen. She looked for a few moments before deciding on a set of black tights. They had some sort of leaves in a shiny gold stitch embroidered.

Mom sat me back down on the changing table edge and began helping put my toes in the tights. Then, she had me lay back down before she pulled them the rest of the way up over my diaper and set me down on the ground. “Okay, let’s step into these panties,” she told me.

“Mom, it’s a diaper cover, not even real panties,” I groaned.

She smirked at me, “Well, at least between the tights and the cover, you might not have your diaper seen later?” I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Okay, now arms like a ballerina!” She smiled at me, and I couldn’t help but giggle a little that she kept saying that to make me smile. Once she lowered the dress onto my body, I discovered it had a petticoat built in to puff it out. Mom tied a bow on the sash in the back, then went back to the dresser for some ribbons, and had me sit on her lap in the rocking chair. She looked at my hair, trying to decide what to do. Finally, her hands took off and made a simple set of braided pigtails with bows.

“You just need a tiara,” Mom said with a smile as she looked at me.

‘I can’t see myself getting one of those...’ I thought to myself.

‘But of course, you will.’ I heard in my head.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I called you princess last night; that wasn’t the endearment term used here in your modern world.’

“What?” I asked, stunned, dropping my pacifier from my mouth.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Mom asked in alarm.

“Umm… just something Caireen said, Mom, don’t worry about it.”

‘So, I have a tiara in that world?’

‘Actually, you should have it here too; let me just bring it out.’

There was another flash, and then in my hands, I held a beautiful me-sized tiara. It looked to be a material like silver, but somehow, I guessed it wasn’t really silver… A large emerald rested in the middle, with two slightly smaller emeralds on either side. Intricate curves and flowers with pearls decorated the rest of it. Mom gasped.

“What is that?”

I sighed, “Apparently, you may call Lily and I ‘princesses’ mom, but I really AM a princess. Still trying to figure out how that one works, though.”

‘I have a feeling this is priceless?’

‘Yes, Sofia, it is very priceless. It has been in the royal family for forty-five of your human generations.’

‘You can tell me the story tonight?’ I asked.

‘Certainly, now try it on?’

I handed it to my mom, “Would you please put it on me?”

She held it for a moment and examined it. “This isn’t a toy, is it?”

I shook my head, “Caireen’s words were that it’s priceless.”

“Maybe we should just put it somewhere safe…?”

‘Tell your mother that as long as you have it on your head, it will never unwillingly come off. Also, it will reappear to you if it ever gets lost or stolen.’

‘Cool!’

“Mom, Caireen says don’t worry about it… basically, you can’t remove it from my head if I don’t want you to, and if someone does steal it, I’ll get it back later.”

“O...okay,” Mom said, and she did put it on me. She instantly gasped and hugged me. “You’re beautiful, sweetheart!”

“Can you take me to the bathroom so I can see?” I asked.

“Shoes first!” she said. She carried me to the closet on her hip and found some black Mary Janes that would go with the dress well. She set me down and helped me into them, picked me back up, and then I was standing in front of the mirror on the bathroom counter, looking at my reflection.

“Oh my god...dess,” I decided I should add the last part at this point.

‘You do look perfect, princess,’ I heard Caireen say.

I was the picture-perfect toddler and tiara girl, but I wasn’t fake with it. I looked like I legitimately belonged to a royal family and was being taken somewhere formal with the family. The tiara shone from my head, and I couldn’t help but smile at how pretty I was. I turned around and hugged Mom. “Thank you for doing my hair.”

“Well, in the future, we’ll have to do something different with your tiara. It’s not a formal enough style. Let’s go down and show your sister?” She asked me.

I kind of froze for a moment but nodded. “Lily’s going to be jealous, though,” I said.

“Not to worry,” Mom said as she carried me through my sister’s room and picked up one of her play tiaras. “She won’t notice the difference, I hope!”

She carried me downstairs to the first floor, where my sister was coloring in the living room with the TV on the toddler channel. Mom sat me down on my feet, and I walked over to Lily, “Hi, Lily,” I said, “whatcha coloring?”

“Just a princess picture,” she said and then looked up at me. I watched my sister’s mouth open. “You playing princess today?!?!” She asked excitedly and clapped her hands together.

“Sure,” I said. Mom placed her tiara on her head, and I couldn’t help but feel a little bad that hers wasn’t real. ‘No, don’t go doing anything, Caireen!’ I thought.

‘You’re no fun,’ she griped.

“You two can play for a few minutes, but we need to get lunch in your tummies!” Then, as if to emphasize it, my stomach growled.

Mom left me to Lily’s devices, and we practiced our curtseys until Mom called us. I walked into the kitchen and waited for her to put my sister in her high chair, and then she lifted me up. “I know you don’t want to wear a bib normally, Sofia… but that dress…?” Mom pleaded.

I turned red but nodded, “I don’t want to get it messy either!”

Mom smiled, returned with a bib covered in butterflies and flowers, and velcroed it around my neck. “What’s for lunch?” I asked her as she put one on my sister too.

“Grilled cheese,” Mom said.

She watched as I held the sandwich with my hands, which I hated doing, and began eating. I finished the first sandwich, and she looked at me incredulously before making me a second. “Where are you putting that?” She asked me.

I grimaced, “Probably in my diaper later.”

She laughed at me, sat me down on the ground, and pulled the bib off. Then, as she wiped my face with a wipe, she asked, “Do you need changed?”

I lifted my skirt, felt my diaper, and nodded. “Okay, let’s change the two baby girls and then maybe take a nap?”

“I’m not sleepy,” I told her honestly.

She whispered in my ear, “Maybe a pretend nap for your sister’s sake, and you can get on your phone?”

“Okay,” I said.

Mom grabbed a hand from each of us and led us up the stairs. Lily was changed, given her bottle, and then Mom closed the door. We walked to my room, and I just hoped Caireen had not gotten rid of my cell phone during her act yesterday.

‘I didn’t; I know how you teenagers are addicted to them.’ I could practically hear her shaking her head.

Mom quickly changed my diaper before she found my cell phone and sat me down in my crib. “Can you take my dress off, so I don’t wrinkle it?” I suggested.

‘Don’t worry, it won’t wrinkle,’ I heard.

I shrugged, “Never mind, apparently that won’t happen.”

Mom gave me a look. “At some point, you and I are going to have to have a talk Caireen.”

‘Tell her tonight we’ll talk,’ Caireen told me.

“I think that will happen tonight, Mom.”

“Okay,” she said. “Be quiet, and don’t get out of your crib until I come for you.”

“Okay, I be good girl!” I told her with a smile.

“You want a bottle too?”

I hesitated for a second and nodded. Mom returned a moment later with a bottle filled with milk and then closed the door. I got on my phone and sucked at the bottle for a while and then noticed I was kind of sleepy. So I lay down and wondered why I was tired after sleeping as long as I had!

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