Lunamay stared around in wonder as she appeared in another world in her own body. Even with the advanced immersion system Clarice had developed for visiting simulations, there was something noticeably different when visiting a world in her own body. She smiled excitedly as she viewed Yggdrasil and the beautiful land around the lake. There were fauns, elves, leprechauns, and fairies scattered throughout the area.
Before she had a chance to marvel at the beautiful fairy ring for more than a few seconds, a tall, pretty blond woman tackled her in a tight embrace, lifting the short elf off the ground.
"Lunamay!" The woman she assumed was Arturiel cried out in delight. "Oh Lunamay, I missed you so much!"
Lunamay returned Arturiel's embrace as she felt tears sting her eyes. She felt an odd disconnect as she tried to reconcile the pretty blond woman with her image of Arturiel. She could still feel Arturiel's soul inside the human body though, burning brightly with innocence and purity.
Arturiel's shoulders shook as she clung to Lunamay. She could tell that Arturiel was experiencing a kind of re-run of her life since they had seen each other. Lunamay felt her heart break as she remembered the horrors Harnketi had hinted at that Arturiel had suffered. Her grip on Arturiel tightened as she tried to pour all her love into the other woman—to let her know how much she wanted to take her pain away.
Harnketi was watching the two of them with a tender smile. Lunamay felt a sudden premonition as she stared at Harnketi. Why had Rhapsody brought Harnketi to visit her instead of Arturiel? She could see the same love in Harnketi's eyes she knew was in her own eyes.
She leaned her head back to stare into Arturiel's bright blue eyes. "I know you've only been gone for an hour, but I've missed you."
Arturiel beamed at her through her tears, a smile filled with love and adoration. "Words can't even describe how much I've missed you, Lunamay. I feel like I just regained the use of a missing limb."
"I'll be your arms any time you need me to be," Lunamay teased with an impish smile. She glanced over at the silently watching Harnketi before continuing. "Would you like to tell me about Harnketi? I've only heard a little bit about her from Rhapsody."
Arturiel's smile faded to be replaced by a more forced expression of cheerfulness. "Yeah, I'd love to tell you about her. She came with me into the dreamworld where Rhapsody helped me get through some childhood trauma. I'm not sure what I would have done without her."
Lunamay could feel the anxiety rippling through Arturiel, confirming her suspicions. She reached up and fondly placed the back of her hand on Arturiel's cheek.
"Are you and Harnketi close?" Lunamay asked quietly, watching Arturiel intently.
"Yes," Arturiel whispered, her eyes full of apprehension. "I didn't remember our relationship when I met her."
"Do you still feel the same, now that your memories are back?" Lunamay asked carefully.
Arturiel nodded silently as her eyes filled with more tears. Lunamay felt like a knife was twisting in her heart as she witnessed the pain and worry in Arturiel's eyes. How could she let her angel suffer more than she already had? She felt a small knot of stinginess at the thought of sharing Arturiel with anyone, but as she looked back at the love and concern in Harnketi's eyes, the feeling of selfishness passed. She smiled warmly at Arturiel and leaned forward until her lips were touching Arturiel's.
"I'm willing to try," Lunamay spoke quietly against Arturiel's lips. "For you."
Arturiel's eyes widened at Lunamay's words, a look of hope replacing the apprehension. Arturiel kissed her gently as the tears that had been building finally leaked down her cheeks.
"Thank you, Lunamay," Arturiel whispered, her eyes full of love. "I don't know what I did to deserve someone as wonderful as you."
"Now you're just being silly," Lunamay told her chidingly. "I'm the lucky one here. Now, how about we get to know Harnketi better. I want to know all about her."
"Okay," Arturiel agreed with a radiant smile. "I love you, Lunamay."
"And apparently you have too much love for one woman," Lunamay told her with a mischievous grin. "I love you too, Arturiel."
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"Well, that's taken care of," Rhapsody commented in notes of intense satisfaction.
"You never cease to amaze me, Rhapsody," Harmony declared admiringly. "We're going to have to nickname you 'The Matchmaker' from now on."
"I've been called worse," Rhapsody shrugged with a smirk. "I seem to recall you calling me a horny adult actress once. It was right before we blew up the moon above Earth."
"Because I said you were a goose that should have gone into theater?" Harmony asked in amusement. "Because all gooses are horny or they wouldn't honk so much, right?"
"Yep, you got it," Rhapsody agreed cheerfully.
"I wonder how Michael and Jessica are getting along," Mystery murmured thoughtfully.
"Well, we're already spying, so let's move on to them," Rhapsody suggested with a wink. She flicked a finger at the ceiling and a holowindow appeared, looking down on Jessica and Michael.
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"So, you don't care about retrieving your soul memory?" Jessica asked Michael curiously as they strolled down into the lake, hand-in-hand.
"Not anymore," Michael shrugged with a wry smile. "I remembered what Rhapsody said about games getting boring when you max everything out. I think I'd rather take life slower and not use cheats."
"Me too," Jessica agreed with a satisfied smile. "What are your plans now that your sister is becoming a world tree and you are essentially immortal?"
"I'm going to become a magician," Michael declared, striking a heroic pose. "I'll be a wizard with a staff that has a nob on the end."
"Oh, I see we have a Terry Pratchett fan," Jessica commented with a laugh.
"I think 'fan' might be too tame of a word," Michael replied with a worshipful look in his eyes. "If only Rhapsody would have brought him here and pumped him full of Yuccas Fitter so that he could entertain us for eternity."
Jessica threw her head back and laughed delightedly. "You have such a descriptive way of speaking."
"So I've been told," Michael grinned back at her. "What do you think the President is going to do, now that he is back from his spirit journey?"
"Hopefully something less reckless than last time," Jessica replied dryly. "I'm sure we'll find out by tomorrow. I think Rhapsody has scared off any of the subcontractors that they would use to cause trouble. The fact that she goes straight to the source of the troublemakers seems to have made a lasting impression in the black ops community."
"I'm curious to see what happens when the other world trees are restored and people can start using magic again."
"That's going to be a whole can of worms," Jessica noted thoughtfully. "Depending on how much it affects things like energy and manufacturing. From what Selindria said of the last civilization that used magic, they were able to achieve the same kind of technology we have today with magic—without all of the pollution. I wonder how supply chains will hold up if magic starts making large swathes of our industry obsolete."
"Hopefully there is a way for people to magic food into existence," Michael added pensively. "Our centralized distribution system turns any kind of disruption into a global crisis."
"I have a feeling Rhapsody will make sure things go smoothly," Jessica said confidently, her face shining with conviction. "She wouldn't go to all of the trouble of saving this world just to let everyone starve to death when the supply chain breaks down."
"How's Shelley doing?" Michael asked curiously. "Is she still attached at the hip to Selindria?"
"More or less," Jessica replied with an indulgent smile. "I'm not sure where that relationship is going. Shelley was always the more coolheaded between us, so it's kind of funny seeing her so smitten."
"Yeah, Selindria seems kind of like a free soul, so I hope Shelley's not looking for long-term commitment," Michael cautioned lightly.
"I think she'll take whatever she can get," Jessica replied with a short laugh. "I'm just glad she found someone fun to be with, however short it turns out to be."
They had finally reached the end of the path, several hundred feet beneath the water with a clear view of the mermaid den at the bottom of the lake. Jessica turned and faced Michael, staring up into his eyes through her lashes.
"I think I'd like to kiss you now, Michael," Jessica informed him in a sultry voice. "You're either going to need to bend down here, or I'm going to have to climb you the way Rhapsody climbs Harmony."
Michael's face flushed as he stared down at her, unmoving, with a kind of deer-in-the-headlights expression.
"I guess we'll do it the Rhapsody way," Jessica decided with a playful grin. She leapt into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist, finally snapping him out of his daze in time for her lips to find his. That seemed to wake him up. His arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her up tight as he let his passion out of its cage.
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"Well, it looks like she's got everything under control," Harmony observed with a giggle.
"I've never seen Michael so flustered around a woman before," Mystery commented with an affectionate smile. "He must know who she is on a subconscious level."
"I'm totally digging the new terminology," Rhapsody declared with a wide grin. "The Rhapsody Way."
"I'm not gonna lie," Harmony murmured with a small smile. "I really like the Rhapsody Way myself."
"Yeah, it's pretty hot," Mystery agreed warmly, turning her head on the pillow to look at Rhapsody. "Especially when Harmony joins us."
"Insatiable," Rhapsody murmured fondly.
She flicked her finger at the ceiling and the view changed from Michael and Jessica to Joline and Aurora. They were on Nidhogg's head as they rose high up into the branches of the world tree.
"You see, there is actually a fruit produced by Yggdrasil," Nidhogg was informing them. "It only appears once every thousand years and it only produces ten of them on the highest branch."
"What do they taste like?" Aurora asked in fascination. "And how big are they?"
"They're the size of a small melon and I'm not sure what they taste like," Nidhogg answered wistfully. "As a magical creature, I do not actually eat food. There are very few people who have ever had one, as you can imagine with how rare they are. I thought Aurora might like to try one and let us know what they taste like."
"He's such a softy," Rhapsody murmured affectionately.
"Shhh…" Harmony and Mystery shushed her.
"Hey, I will not be shushed," Rhapsody objected indignantly. "It's not like they can hear us. I'll have you know—"
She cut off as Mystery's lips silenced her, soft and lingering.
"Shush," Mystery whispered with a smile full of promise. "Or you will be shushed."
"I wanna be shushed some more," Rhapsody begged, her eyes pleading.
"Who's insatiable now?" Harmony asked archly.
"I never said that I wasn't," Rhapsody retorted playfully.
Rhapsody ran her fingers up her own thigh, sending a shiver through Harmony as she felt ghostly fingers running up her thigh.
"I think it's time to play 'what am I touching?' again," Rhapsody murmured silkily. "If you can answer in a normal voice, I'll go further. And… you have to guess which one of us is doing the touching."
Harmony felt fiery desire erupt inside of her like an inferno at Rhapsody's words. It was going to be a very enjoyable day.
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Harmony stood in the blistering heat of the Sahara Desert, impervious to the heat. Rhapsody, Mystery, Melody, and Joline stood with her, their faces full of anticipation.
"Are you ready for me to remove your magic limiter?" Rhapsody asked Harmony expectantly.
"Yep," Harmony grinned back at the fairy. "Let's make a world tree."
Harmony felt the trickle of power connecting her to the world nodes suddenly surge into a flood of energy that would have swept her mind away if she had still had her memories locked away. She calmly corralled the power and shaped it before redirecting it back into the earth. The node below the surface began to hum as the tidal wave of power rapidly charged it. There was a siphon-like effect as Harmony pushed her power into the node before pulling it back out quickly. The planetary meridian that had been leaking a tiny trickle of energy suddenly expanded and erupted with power as it reconnected with the main root system.
Harmony shaped the power into the ethereal form of the new world tree, towering high up into low earth orbit. Once the shape was in place, she sent the command to the physical realm to let it know that its data was out of sync with the ethereal realm. A moment later, a fully formed world tree appeared in the physical realm. The Earth shook as the immense body weighed down on the continent, causing the ground to sink by several thousand feet. It was like a bowling ball on a trampoline as the desert sand flooded toward the tree, leaving a depression a hundred miles in diameter. Water gushed up from underground in a torrent and began to create a lake in front of the tree. Harmony built the ethereal walls of the circle next, then activated them in the physical realm. Then she folded space around the new Circle of Dominion, turning it into a wrinkle in reality. What looked like a stone ring a mile in diameter from the outside took up over a hundred miles on the inside.
Flora began erupting from the desert sand around the ring in an expanding wave of green. Large springs gushed water out of the ground, creating new rivers throughout that part of the continent.
Harmony sighed in relief as the raging torrent of power flooding through her stabilized with the completed formation of the circle and world tree.
"One down," Rhapsody announced brightly. "Three more to go."
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The world reels as four new fairy circles appear around the world
Residents all over Africa, Australia, and Asia were stunned as four new fairy rings appeared. Shelley Black, the world government representative to Rhapsody at the original fairy ring in Northern California, had announced to the world that the new fairy rings would be appearing today, but it is still hard to believe how much has changed since the fairy rings were re-made. The once barren deserts in those locations are now flourishing green forests and wetlands.
We're not sure which event has been more impactful—the rise of four additional fairy rings, or the ability for humans to use magic now. As soon as the fourth fairy ring was completed, every human on earth felt the new magic field that saturated the world. As you can imagine, life has become very chaotic as billions of humans immediately started experimenting with magic.
The scientific community is at a loss to explain what magic is or how it works but are nonetheless very eager to begin studying it. Shelley Black and Jessica Monroe have both explained in interviews to the world press that magic will be capable of replacing most of our modern technology—albeit, without the pollution. The stock market has plunged to it's lowest day in fifty years as speculation runs wild regarding the future of modern industry now that magic is available to everyone. Several people have already posted examples online of how to make food out of magic, making some of the most difficult problems that have plagued humanity disappear—almost overnight.
Shelley Black also indicated that there will be two additional world trees by the end of the next decade, when Serenity and Aurora have reached adulthood.
Now if you'll excuse us, we have some magic to go practice.
Check back here at theshadowearth dot com to continue learning more about the mysterious fairy rings and the magic they have unleashed on the world.
THE END