The Two Worlds of Arabella

Chapter 17 - The Palace and The Book

Overwhelmed. This was easily the perfect word to explain how I was feeling at that point. In the past 16 or so hours, I had woken up to find a new tattoo of a sun on my wrist, quit the job I had for many years, and left behind the man of my dreams to leave town with two people I barely knew who claimed I was the Promised One of their world. After driving for many hours, we made to a house in the middle of nowhere, where I proceeded to go to bed, only to wake up in this alien world and be greeted by the twin of the man I had just left in my own world. Memories of the years I had already spent in this world came rushing back into my head in a period of a few seconds, and then I meet with seven people who want me to do something that sounds like a suicide mission. Yes, overwhelmed was exactly what I was. 

Aidan seemed to understand this without either one of us saying anything. We left the council hall and began walking, our hoods back up as was only proper, and Aidan silently guided me through the hallways. It was good that he was here for me because, as I thought back to the memories that were new to my mind, in the years I had spent on N'day, most of it was not spent at the Palace. There were many hallways and stairs winding between countless rooms and I easily would have been lost without a guide.  

He led me to one of the few places that I recognized: the front entrance where I had sat after I passed the test Icarus had set for me. A few hours ago, sitting here had been only part of a dream to me, but now everything I saw here made my memories more clear. "I thought you might like to walk the grounds alone for a while," Aidan said as he stopped at the top of the steps. I didn't feel like saying anything, afraid that my voice would give how nervous I was, and instead, kept walking down the stairs. 

Both suns were visible in the sky, as I stepped off of the large stone path that led away from the palace. Sarian, the yellow sun, was almost directly overhead, while Fallin, the purple sun, had just appeared over the horizon. Seeing the two suns together made think about telling time as I walked over the cut grass that spread out from the palace on three of its sides, remembering a conversation that I must have had with Aidan just after I first came to N'day.  

The N'dayians used Sarian as the basis of their calendar and time system, a system that was explained to them in the book. The book had explained that it took their planet approximately 300 days to travel around the suns. Instead of the twenty-four hours in a day I was used to, they only had ten, which was divided up into one hundred minutes, and those into one hundred seconds. The days were grouped together into 15 months, which consisted of 20 days.  

As I continued thinking about this, there were a few things I thought of, a couple of which bothered me a bit. First, even though there were only 10 hours in a day here, the amount of minutes and seconds in each made the days a few hours longer than a normal Earth hour. However, because earth takes so many more days to circle its sun, that full year actually takes more time than a N'dayian year. Second, how was it that this alien planet measured it's time in the same way earth does, in days, hours, minutes, seconds? Are there even more alien planets out there, and do they all measure time in the same concepts? This was the first thought that bothered me. Third, and even more bothersome than the last, why do they speak the same language as me? Is there some link between our planets that neither of us know about? 

I had allowed my thoughts to wander through my memory of learning about time and the questions I had begun thinking of as a way of trying to allow myself to be distracted from what I should have been focusing on. Instead of the overwhelming feeling disappearing, as I had hoped would happen, I was beginning to feel more agitated. Pushing these thoughts from my mind, I tried to focus on my surrounds. 

In the distance I could hear the Foylas River running and birds chirping. The day was warm and the slight breeze felt amazing as I pushed my hood down and felt the wind on my face. Enormous trees sprouted up at random places in the field, getting bigger the closer they were to the woods that came off the back of the palace. Stone benches surrounded each of the lone trees, and more benches were spread out amongst the grass, giving a person the choice to enjoy either sun or shade. However, I wasn't ready to sit in either place.