The Princesses Luna

Luna Keep.

In the highest room in the tallest tower, there slept a guard.

This guard was supposed to be awake, to be keeping watch for various signs of trouble: whether a signal fire from a neighboring kingdom, or the shadow on the horizon that would indicate that a neighboring kingdom was bored of the current peace.

Perhaps a storm on the other horizon, indicating that the ocean, overfull of life energy, had decided that a quick hurricane would be an entertaining outlet for its boredom.

Or maybe the people, bored of prosperity or – more likely – growing restless with the recent decline in food from the sea, would decide to torch a warehouse or two, or just have a good old-fashioned riot.

Hey, it could happen.

But instead, the guard, disappointed in having drawn the short straw and missing the testing of the princess new tutor, lashed out in the only way he really could, and upon climbing the 247 steps to the top of the tower, promptly sat down and fell asleep.

And so he wasn the first to note the return of the training units.

The Princess, meanwhile, was in another castle.

It wasn that Princess Lucine wasn interested in the selection of the new tutor for her three younger sisters. She genuinely hoped this one would prove up to the task of keeping up with them.

And she recognized the importance of ensuring that she would be able to aid in their defense of whatever troubles they might get into, with or without their reckless disregard for their own lives being involved.

And, truth be told, the books didn really have to be gone over right this very hour. Whatever the economic health of the kingdom, it would have happily remained more or less the same if she had decided to review them tomorrow instead of today.

No, the issue was something far darker.

The issue was dirt.

The five princesses of the kingdom of Luna had very different views on the stuff.

The youngest, Aadhira (by seven and a half whole minutes), couldn get enough of it. By the Light of the Moon, sometimes it seemed that she had the ability to generate the stuff out of nowhere. She certainly had the knack for finding it in the most unexpected places.

Lucine could just about believe that she could step out of a bath and still have a streak of dirt running from chin to–

For the oldest and heir apparent, Luna, dirt was just a part of the job. Second in command of the garrison (and only because she wanted to maintain a stable chain of command in the event the guards were needed in one place while the heir to the throne was needed elsewhere), Luna could easily be said to be the son their father never had.

She didn shy from dirt, but neither did she seek it out. And somehow – even Lucine had to admit, the dirty look suited her.

In any ranking of the princesses by affinity to dirt, it would be hard to decide which one to list next, for Mona and Selena had very different yet parallel relationships with it.

Whereas Mona was second only to Lucine in appreciation for the finer, silken things in life, Selena was not known for neglecting her appearance either. But her tastes ran to the simple rather than the extravagant.

In the temple regularly from a young age, she had chosen to follow the path of a healer. It was surely no mean feat to keep ones hair straight under a hood all day, yet Selena managed it.

But she abhorred adornment the way she abhorred dirt: yet her willingness to get her hands dirty to save a life could not be denied. And then her dirty hands would inevitably be wiped clean on her robes, for clean hands were more important to a healer than clean clothes.

Meanwhile, Mona genuinely mourned every dress ruined in her pursuit of martial excellence.

And yet!

Yet she was always willing – no, eager! – to jump into a fight no matter what she was wearing.

And her temper was second only to Aadhiras.

Truth be told, Lucine tended to believe a report she had heard once about a time Mona had been carousing with the guards after leaving some high society function or another.

She never changed out of her elegant dresses when doing such a thing. Had it been Aadhira, Lucine would have believed she had forgotten to change.

Not that Aadhira would have forgotten to change, of course – though reports about her being in such a hurry to be out of ”Princess gear ” that she had been spotted arriving at her quarters already nude were – well, not exactly denied, but encouraged not to leave the castle grounds.

But Mona?

Lucine had had a talk with her about wearing fine clothing to taverns once. It was a very enlightening talk, and she had settled somewhere between wanting to be recognized for her beauty (a view Lucine could very much appreciate) and thinking it unfair that only the wealthy got to experience the more expensive things in life (a view that Lucine had never quite been able to banish from her thoughts ever since).

But the story was told that some altercation in a tavern somewhere had resulted in a wine spilling on Monas dress. Mona, enraged, had proceeded to pummel the poor man that had spilled it senseless before the pair of guards that she always pretended not to notice never drank on these outings had managed to pull her off of him.

The ironic thing was, she had absolutely destroyed her dress herself in the process.

Lucine shook her head at the paper she was holding that confirmed that Mona had the highest clothing expenses of any of the princesses by far.

Interestingly enough, it was Aadhiras report that convinced Lucine that Mona wasn simply trying to destroy dresses out of disdain for wealth and ostentation.

She was one of Monas most common compatriots on her carousal sprees, and she had on occasion seen the look in her eyes on having one of her dresses damaged.

Suffice it to say, if Aadhira was scared of her, her anger had to have been real.

And then there was Lucine herself.

Lucines eyes narrowed as a bit of errant ink fell to the paper she was working on. This would have been easier had her talents run to water like Selenas did; still, she could manage.

A bit of sand went on the ink; and then, where most bookkeepers would have blown on it, she instead lifted the page and sent a touch of Air through the paper from behind, pushing the ink into the sand and the sand into a little ball that she promptly disposed of.

Lucines eyes ran over her hands in a practiced pattern, inspecting for any ink that might have made it to her skin. Not found, she went on to the next page.

It wasn that dirt – or ink – was really a problem for her. She could rid herself of it quick as even a water mage might, after all.

It was simply that she was a princess, and as a princess, she had an obligation to her parents, to the kingdom – to the people – to always look her best.

Smudges of ink on the nose – she glanced at the mirror next to her out of habit, and tucked back a rare errant strand of raven black hair – stains on the dress: these were not looking her best.

Why couldn her sisters see it?

Princess Lucine lifted her head as something touched on her awareness. Water might have had its advantages when it came to keeping oneself clean, but Air meant being able to listen to the signals being passed between magical mechanisms scattered around the city and castle.

Right now, one of the wards outside the city was reporting a group of people bearing weapons, approaching from the direction of Bloodfang Forest.

Four of them were wearing exposed royal amulets reporting the good health of their owners; the one belonging to Princess Mona was set to the Stag, indicating a successful venture.

Princess Lucine rose gracefully and walked to the window, casting a spell that gathered the light in front of her, increasing her range of vision.

There!

Princess Monas carriage, with three figures on the roof behind the driver. Mona, Aadhira, and the tutor, unless she missed her guess.

A troop of soldiers escorting them, led by three figures. Surely Luna, Selena, and General Hatha.

Lucine turned and curtsied to the booksmaster.

”My apologies, Master Fiduc. I would like to continue this with you, but it appears my sisters are returning from their afternoon exercise, and I would take supper with them. I will be sure to pass on the accuracy and good health of your reports to the king and queen. ”

The old man smiled and raised a bony hand in farewell.

”Please give them my best, ” he said. ”I hope to meet the new tutor soon so we can discuss how best to prepare them to assist us in this work. ”

”I will, ” Lucine replied. ”And I am sure it will be understood that the best help some of them might give you is to be somewhere else. ”

The booksmaster chuckled as she closed the door behind her. ”Perhaps, ” he muttered to himself, ”but on the other hand, it is so much more interesting when she is here. ”

Lucine glided along gracefully until she was out of sight of the guards outside the bookkeeping room.

Eyes quickly darting about to ensure that nobody saw her, she extended tendrils of Air before and behind her, past what she could see unaided.

Once satisfied, a wicked grin appeared on her face that would have made Aadhiras best efforts look positively angelic.

Air whirled around her as she picked up speed, locking in place every fold of her dress.

There was a secret of the five princesses of the kingdom Luna that few even suspected, that Lucine would have sooner died than let anyone know:

All of them, without exception, were madly in love with the glorious thrill of movement.

Two floors, she had, before she expected to see any other persons.

Two glorious floors, filled with obstacles both naturally there and placed by her over the years.

She raced through the rooms, tendrils of Air questing ahead for any unexpected eyes, more Air keeping her skirts pristine, as she ran, vaulted, rolled past her precious obstacles. One spot even set her up to do a backflip off of the wall, after which she threw a dagger nobody ever expected her to have at a small wooden target hidden between two jutting beams.

Satisfied at her accuracy, she collected the dagger and returned it to its hiding place as she came to a stop.

A strategically placed mirror allowed her to double check that there was no evidence of her exertion, and a quick swish of wind served to both carry away the sweat and lower her body temperature.

Another spell purified the air entering her lungs so as to quickly end the heaving of her breasts.

Only when she was satisfied that her mask was back firmly in place did she step out where the guards at the exit could see her.