Charles yawns as he looks out over the Gala guests dancing and drinking, the fancy gowns moving by in a rainbow blur of color broken only by the black and white of their dates’ suits. His father was always throwing grand balls and gala events because he liked to show off just how rich they were. Of course, he had to have every wealthy person in the kingdom at all of his parties, so Charles knows everybody present barring the few females who were invited as a plus one. He also knows that striking up a conversation with most of them would be even more boring than standing alone on the edge of the dance floor and watching the swirl of colors.

With another sigh of boredom, Charles gets up to go for a walk and backs his chair straight into someone. He immediately begins to apologize before looking up to see that the person he had backed into was a woman he had never seen before. She is wearing a red velvet ball gown of a design that Charles has never seen before. It drapes down just short of her ankle, cinching at the waist and then flaring out. The sleeves were cinched with black lace and the bosom was raised conservatively to her neck. “No, no,” she says with a voice that almost squeaks, “it’s my fault, I wasn’t paying attention. All the colors on the dance floor, they’re quite dazzling.”

Charles shakes his head and smiles before replying. “Yes, they are. My name is Charles Ward,” he introduces himself with a slight bow, as he raises her hand to his lips, “I don’t think we’ve met.”

The woman smiles politely, her eyes shimmering to match the smile, “I don’t think we have. My name is Laurel.”

“And how came you to be here, Lady Laurel? I thought for sure I would know everybody at this party.” Charles asked, releasing her hand. Laurel gets a slight look of panic on her face and Charles laughs, “A crasher then? Well, I can’t say I blame you, everybody wants to be at my father’s parties, I personally find them to be rather dull.”

“You aren’t going to have me arrested?” Laurel whispered so softly that Charles could barely hear her.

"Not at all, my lady. In fact, I was hoping you would go for a walk with me. I’ve grown bored watching all these people dancing, and for lack of conversation.” Charles moves towards the front door, looking back to see if Laurel was following, giving her a smile when he sees her standing still with shock. He holds his hand out and she snaps out of it, placing her hand in his and letting him lead her to the outdoor gardens.

Once outside, Charles takes a deep breath of fresh air and Laurel looks at him curiously. “You seem like you don’t enjoy these parties, why is that? I always thought they were pretty magical, all the pretty clothes and the music and the dancing.” She looks lost in thought as these words pour out of her. Charles looks at her amusedly, “They can be all of that and more, but when you’ve been to as many as I have, they get pretty mundane.” Charles sighs, “I usually have my best friend to help me get through it but he couldn’t make it tonight.”

Laurel gives a mischievous smile and asks “Well, what would you and your friend be doing right now if he were here?”

Charles laughs thinking about last weeks’ party. “He likes to use magic illusions to trick the party goers. Just last week he used an illusion to make one of my father’s friends think he was talking to a beautiful woman and when he leaned in to kiss her the illusion dropped and he was left kissing a column!”

Laurel giggles at the image, “That poor man must have thought he had lost his mind.”

“I think he left shortly after, mumbling something about too much wine,” Charles replied with a light-hearted laugh. “I could never quite master illusions myself, I was born with a natural affinity for earth magic.” Charles reaches out to a closed flower bud on a nearby bush, brushing it with his fingers and the flower blooms spectacularly, he nimbly plucked it from the bush and presented it to Laurel, who accepted it with a blush, her eyes extended downward.

“It’s beautiful,” she says with an air of awe in her voice.

“They’re called morning blossoms because they only bloom for a couple of hours after the sun rises,” explains Charles.

“I bet you know everything there is to know about every plant in this garden,” Laurel teases with a knowing smile.

“You would win that bet, I planted this garden myself and it’s my magic that makes it grow and bloom even in the winter. There are few things as precious to me as this garden,” replies Charles, his eyes glazing over as he recalls long nights and longer days bringing his garden into being, carefully molding each bush and tree to perfection, coaxing each new blossom into life.

“Tell me about them?” asks Laurel, her arms wrapped around Charles’ arm. Needing no further encouragement, Charles leads her through the garden pointing out each new flower blooming, each tree lovingly tended, telling her everything he knows about each one. From the roses of every color and their meanings in the language of flowers to the apple tree at the center of the garden that sprouts a different type of apple every year. From the Morning Blossoms blooming with the rise of the sun to the Winter Daisies that bloom in the freshly fallen snow. The longer Charles goes on, the more Laurel can see the love he holds in his heart for all things brought forth from the earth.

As they near the end of the garden tour, Charles realizes that he has been monopolizing the conversation, so he turns the conversation towards Laurel. “I’m afraid I’ve been a terrible host, spending all this time talking about me and my garden, I never thought to ask anything of you,” he exclaims. “Besides being a party crasher, how did you come to be here?”

Laurel looks away, apparently lost in deep thought. Finally, she speaks up with “My parents don’t know I’m here, and if they did, they would not approve. That’s why I had to sneak in, I just really wanted to dance!”

“Well then, perhaps we should get you back inside so you can get a dance in before the Gala is ended,” declares Charles. Arm in arm, he leads her back towards the entrance of the gardens and as they’re passing through he hears a ripping sound. He looks back to see the look of horror in Laurel’s eyes as she looks down at her newly ripped dress snagged on a bush. He drops down in front of her and looks at the tear. It’s not entirely through to her legs and he exclaims as such to her, “My nana can fix this no problem.”

He leads her through the front entrance and up some stairs down the hallway, away from the ballroom. He knocks on a door and an elderly woman with a kind smile opens the door. When she sees Charles she looks surprised, “Shouldn’t you be at the Gala with everyone else dear heart?” she asks.

Charles replies, “We were headed back to the ballroom when we had a dress emergency, my new friend’s gown was torn by a bush in the gardens.” He pushes Laurel to the front so that the woman can get a good look at the tear.

“Oh dear, oh dear, that is an emergency, and such a nice dress too,” the woman tsks. “Come in child and have a seat, I’ll have this sewn up in no time at all.” The woman goes searching in her closet for her sewing kit while Laurel takes a seat in a chair next to the bed. Charles kneels down beside her and looks up into her eyes with an apologetic look, “I’m so sorry about this, I should have known better than to take a ball gown into a garden.”

Laurel places her hand on Charles’ cheek and gives a light laugh, “You couldn’t have known I would catch that bush and besides, I’ve had a good time tonight. Listening to you talk about your plants, it reminded me of my best friend. You’re so passionate about the things you love that you could talk all day and I wouldn’t get bored.”

“Tell me a little about yourself while nana sews you up? With all the time we spent in the garden, you barely spoke, so content you were listening to me,” asks Charles.

Just as last time he asked, Laurel hesitated. She grew a look of contemplation as though trying to decide how much to tell him. Finally, she looks back at him and says, “There’s not much to tell really, I come from the next town over, Attlesburgh. My family is not entirely wealthy, having grown up poor, but they worked for what they have. I had to make this dress myself because they would never buy me one.”

“That’s a real shame,” replies Charles. “You look amazing in a dress. And this dress, in particular, is one of the best I’ve seen. You must be really talented with a needle.” With that, the elderly woman interrupts with, “All done child, and may I say that Charles is quite right, the stitch work on this dress is immaculate. Laurel looks down with a blush and whispers softly, “Thank you.”

“You two had best get back to the ballroom, the Gala will be ending soon,” says the woman with a knowing smile as she looks at Charles slyly. “You might have time to get one dance in if you hurry.”

Charles stands and holds a hand out for Laurel who places her hand in his and follows him out into the hallway, calling back into the room with a “Thank you, for fixing my dress.”

“No problem dear, come back anytime,” the woman calls back.

Charles leads Laurel back to the ballroom where the band has just announced this will be the last song of the night. As they strike up a familiar slow tune, Charles looks over at Laurel and asks, “May I have this dance?”

Laurel gives an affirmative nod and a smile as Charles leads her on to the dance floor. He places his hands on her hips and she places her arms around his neck, linking her hands behind him. Holding this position, they dance in time to the song as the night winds down. While Charles shows himself to be quite the dancer, Laurel steps on his toes more than once. Charles doesn't mind though. “I hope you have enjoyed this night,” whispers Charles. Laurel whispers back, “It was better than I could have hoped.”

The song comes to an end and the guests begin to disperse through the front entrance. Charles holds Laurels hand as they exit with the rest of the guests. At the front gate, Laurel hails a taxi and turns back to Charles to give him a kiss on the cheek before climbing in. Charles calls out to her, “When will I get to see you again?” He receives no answer as the carriage pulls away.

The next morning, Charles wakes up with a bright smile thinking of the night before. It wasn’t the first time he had shown off his garden but it was the first time a girl had shown actual interest in it. And Laurel, she was so beautiful and attentive. His only regret is not getting to know her better. After going to the kitchens and grabbing some bread and cheese, Charles hurried out the door and down the road. There was only one person he wanted to talk to right now, his best friend Edwin Nyte.

Edwin’s family are not as rich as Charles’ family, but they owned an estate that was quite a bit larger than most families in the area. Where most families own small houses and, in some cases, large fields, Charles’ family owns a large estate with servants’ quarters, an outdoor garden, several ballrooms, and 3 floors. Comparatively, Edwin’s home is much smaller, only a 2 story home with 6 bedrooms and a large, sprawling lawn.

Charles walks to Edwin’s home, eating the bread and cheese that he brought along and thinking about Laurel. Before he knows it, he’s walking up the path to Edwin’s house. In true best friend fashion, he knocks on the door and lets himself in any way. He finds Edwin in the kitchen with his own breakfast: eggs, bacon, and toasted bread. Edwin looks at Chares surprisedly, “What brings you here so early Charles?”

“I couldn’t wait to tell you what happened last night! I met this amazing woman!” exclaims Charles.

“Did you bed her?” asks Edwin with a sly grin.

Charles look aghast at the thought. “She is most certainly not that type of woman,” he declares, “She is thoughtful and attentive and oh is she beautiful.

Edwin looks at his friend with a look akin to shock but it is quickly wiped from his face, as though it were never there. “So you met a beautiful woman, and likely for the first time ever, you did not even consider sleeping with her? Why I do declare it is love at first sight!”

Charles’ grin slips off his face, “Surely you jest my friend. I do not believe in such nonsense as love at first sight, leave that to the poets. But oh she was pretty, and when I showed her the garden she asked me to tell her about the plants, and she didn’t ask it in a way that was meant to placate me, she was truly interested in what I had to say. If only I could see her again,” Charles bemoans.

“Did she truly not tell you where she lived? Then perhaps she is not the woman you believed her to be,” declared Edwin with a slight frown. “Come, let us go into town and find some amusement.”

Charles agrees, snagging a piece of toasted bread off Edwin’s plate and taking a bite. Charles’ mouth is filled with the taste of cinnamon and he looks with surprise at Edwin, “Cinnamon toasted into the bread? What a delightful thought.”

Together, the two friends walk the distance into the main town, talking and laughing about the strange things they see, such as a duck and swan apparently arguing on the shore of a nearby lake. As they reach the main thoroughfare on the edge of the lake, they see a group of three girls in 2 piece bathing suits swimming in the lake, splashing water, and generally having a good time. “Hey, Edwin, what say we take a swim? Perhaps we can get those girls to fawn over us.”

“I-“ started Edwin before rethinking what he was going to say, “Yeah, sure, sounds like fun.” The two of them strip down to their shorts, leaving their shirts on the shore as they dashed into the water. Charles gets out to where he can barely touch the bottom and begins diving down beneath the water, coming up to breath and then diving back down only to resurface a little farther out. Edwin, meanwhile, lies on his back and leisurely pushes his way out into the water. The sun beating down on his face, Edwin lets out a sigh of contentment. “Swimming was definitely a good idea, thanks Charles,” he declares.

Charles surfaces and looks over at the girls who aren’t paying them any attention. “Hey Edwin, you should go talk to them. Maybe we can get them to hang out with us,” he suggests.

“I don’t know, they look like they’re having fun without us interfering,” eludes Edwin. “Let’s just enjoy the day.”

“Come on! What are you, queer?” taunts Charles and Edwin gets a look of disdain on his face. Edwin closes his eyes as if ignoring Charles and suddenly Charles sees something poking out of the water between him and the girls he was just pointing to. A shark! Charles calls out loudly to warn the girls, “Shark!”

The girls scream and quickly get back to shore, Charles following behind. Edwin, however, stays out in the water, swimming as though nothing were wrong. The shark fin moves around Edwin, circling a couple of times before sinking below the water. Edwin swims back to shore, a crazy grin on his face. The girls go swarming over to him talking at a rapid-fire pace.

“Weren’t you scared?”

“Oh my Goddess, you’re so brave!”

“Didn’t you think it might eat you?”

The girls were crawling all over Edwin as Charles grew a look of dawning realization. He went up to his friend and whispered in his ear, “That was an illusion, wasn’t it? There was no shark. Well played my friend.”

“Girls, girls, a shark won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt them,” Edwin declares, “I left him alone and he left me alone.”

The girls look at him with awe until Charles inserts himself and says “We should go, Edwin, it’s getting late and we have a walk back to your place.”

The two of them say farewell to the girls, snatch up their shirts from where they left them, and start heading back towards Edwin’s home. “You are the girl whisperer Edwin! You always know exactly how to get the girls to pay attention to you, why is that?”

Edwin shrugs noncommittally, “I guess I just know what a girl is looking for in a guy. It’s not hard to read, girls are every bit as straight-forward as guys are.”

Charles shakes his head, “One of these days Edwin, you’re gonna have to teach me your secret.”

“I don’t know,” teases Edwin, “It sounds to me like you had that girl last night eating out of the palm of your hand.”

“Mmm, I think I might go looking for her,” declares Charles. “She mentioned that she was from Attlesburgh, if I go there and look around, I may find her.”

Edwin looks at his friend with a look he can’t quite comprehend, “Maybe you will, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up, Attlesburgh is a big town, not like our own town of Polis.”

The two of them continue on to reach Edwin’s home and they both head up to his bedroom to get changed from their damp clothes. Edwin’s room has always been very sparse, he doesn’t like a lot of stuff crowding his room, so he keeps his bed in the center, a dresser next to his closet, and a mirror on the back of the closet door. Other than that, his walls are bare and he keeps almost nothing in his room. As Edwin goes into his drawers and pulls out a couple pairs of shorts, Charles looks around and notices something out of place. The mirror on the closet is shattered. “What happened to your mirror, Edwin?” he asks.

“Oh, it’s no big deal, while I was stumbling around this morning I accidentally knocked it off its hook and it shattered. Dad said he’ll just buy another one when he goes into town tomorrow,” explains Edwin with a stressed look, as he throws a spare pair of shorts at Charles. Edwin walks over to his closet and hides behind his door as he changes, coming back out as Charles is pulling the shorts up. “So, tell me, what’s your plan to find this mysterious woman of yours, Laurel, was her name?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t exactly tell me her address, or her last name even, if she has one. She mentioned that her parents are self-made, so it’s possible she doesn’t have a last name. Maybe I’ll just go the market in Attlesburgh and ask around, surely someone as pretty as she is will have been noticed by the vendors there,” rambles Charles.

“Well I think you’re being a bit foolish chasing after a girl you’ve barely met, but love is love,” teases Edwin with a sly grin.

“We shall see, my friend, we shall see.”

Unseen, a young girl takes a horse out of the streets of Polis in the early morning light, heading towards Attlesburg. She is going to see him again. Her heart thumps at the thought. She thought to disappear after that night, surely he would not want to see her again. But then why wouldn’t he? They had a magical evening together, and he didn’t know her secret. She made sure of that. But now the web is getting tangled and she’s not sure if she can keep the threads from breaking.

She arrives at the Attlesburg market just as all the stalls are opening. She finds a stable for her horse and a restroom to change into her day clothes. She couldn’t go walking around the market in her riding habit, especially knowing that he was going to be coming. Once in the restroom with the door locked, she drops her pack on the ground and digs out a cute little sundress in a sky blue with a white flower print on it. Quickly changing her clothes in the corner away from the mirror, she drops her riding habit into her pack and stores it in the stall with her horse, taking only a small purse with her.

Now in her day clothes, the girl walks out into the market streets. She stops at a few stalls to look at their wares and chat with the merchants, all the while looking around, hoping to see him, yet terrified at the same time. After an hour of this, she starts to give up hope. Then she sees him talking with a merchant she had just been past a little bit ago. The merchant sees her and points him to her. When he sees her, he calls out, “Laurel!”

Hearing her name come from his lips, Laurel is suddenly too frightened to continue, she turns and runs, her dress flapping around her upper thigh. Looking back she sees him still following and, in a desperate attempt to escape, she recalls the endless nights studying illusion magic, the many failed attempts and the massive headaches, and she uses the thoughts to throw an illusion behind and around her, cloaking her as she disappears down an alley and giving Charles something to follow for the next block.

Having lost her tail, Laurel returns to the stable where she had left her horse, barely holding back her tears. I’m so stupid! She thought to herself. I should have never allowed any of this to happen, someone like him could never love someone like me. Changing back into her riding habit, Laurel takes off on her horse at a slow gallop, taking the long way home.

~o~O~o~

Charles arrived in Attlesburg with no trouble but finding the elusive Laurel proved more difficult than he had expected. However, after asking around to a couple shopkeepers, he was able to find one who pointed him in the direction that a girl matching Laurels description had just recently gone, and a little farther down the road, he found her.

The moment he saw her, Charles felt a stirring of happiness in his chest. He called her name and, when she saw him, she ran. Doesn’t she recognize me? He asked himself. He ran after her, calling out her name and pushing through the crowded streets. If he could just get her to stop and talk with him, he knew he could work out whatever the problem was. But then he saw something happen, something unexpected. Charles saw the tell-tale shimmer of an illusion around Laurel, just before she disappeared.

Charles stops and looks around, then he remembers a trick his mother had taught him years ago, but he had never had a reason to use it until now. Charles closes his eyes and reaches out with his own magic, poking around at the ether, and when he finds what he’s looking for, his eyes shoot open in shock. He hurries back to where he had left the carriage and the driver, and with a quick command, they are off, hurrying back to Polis.

~o~O~o~

When Charles arrives back in Polis, the first place he stops is at his best friend’s house. Walking right in, as he always does, he goes straight to Edwin’s room. The first thing he notices upon walking in is that the mirror on the closet door has been replaced. Walking into the closet, he digs through to the very back and that’s where he sees it: a red velvet ball gown of an original design, the likes of which Charles had only seen once before.

Charles collapses onto the ground, the dress falling into his lap. “How?” he asks out loud, not expecting a response. But then from behind him, he hears a voice, a familiar voice, the voice of his best friend. His best friend who had been lying to him for years. “Charles, I can explain.”

“If I turn around now, who will I see?” Charles asks. “My best friend Edwin? Laurel, who I spent an entire evening showing around my garden? Who are you?”

“Charles, I’m just me. I am both Edwin and Laurel. Most importantly, I am your best friend, and you are mine.” Edwin pleads with Charles. “Please just look at me, see me for who I am.”

Charles’ gaze snaps to the person behind him, his gaze running red with anger. “If you were truly my best friend you wouldn’t have lied to me! You betrayed me! You tricked me! I don’t even know you! This is just perverse!” Charles screams at him. “I can’t even bear to look at you right now!”

Charles hurries out of the room and down the stairs, running out to his waiting coach and ordering the driver to take him home. He could barely hear the voice calling out to him as the coach traversed down the drive and onto the street.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter is unusually short and extremely late but it's something of a transition so I hope you can forgive me. I'm reworking my life to accommodate more time for the things I love (which includes writing) so hopefully, I will have longer chapters and a shorter time between chapters.

After posting this chapter, I've been convinced that I need a rewrite to repair the flaws in my characterization and style before I get any farther in and it becomes too late to correct it. The next chapter I post will be in addition to a rework of all previous chapters.