A Girl, her Wings, and Everything in between

Chapter 70: A Week of Claire

That night, Claire was given a bedroom to sleep in. It was a large bedroom, probably intended for Henry, but it was never used, so it was given to Claire as her own room. It had a large table in a corner, a mirror, and an antique wardrobe with words Claire did not know how to read.

There was a book on the table. Claire picked it up.

"The World below Hell, or above Heaven," read Claire. "That's a nice title!"

It was a large novel. To pass her time, Claire read the book.

"Half of my time, I was in heaven, healing myself so that I could fight the creatures below the flaming earth again. During those times, I wonder where the dark magic that stained me went to. Do they just disappear? I doubt so. In Mathematics, there are four classes of numbers: positive numbers, nullified numbers, negative numbers and imaginary numbers. If heaven represents positive numbers, the normal universe represents nullified numbers and hell represents negative numbers, then what represents imaginary numbers?"

The door of the room then creaked open. "Claire?"

"Hello, Harry!" Claire said while closing the book she was reading.

"What are you reading just now?"

"The book on the desk. It's nice," said Claire.

The book's gold lettering gleamed a bit.

"Hmmm... that book... Someone gave it to me when I was four. It's probably a story from Crepetown hundreds of years ago. Do you want me to give you spoilers?"

"Nope, I'm fine, thank you."

Harry picked up the book. "Do you know where the story came from?"

Claire looked at the author's name. "From the name of the author, it looks like it came from northeastern Shafterlands."

"Have you been there?" Harry asked again while pushing Claire onto the bed.

"Yes..." Claire said while yawning. "I'm very tired. Can you please let me sleep?"

"I'll be glad to."

Harry switched off the lights in the room and left.

*****

In the morning, Claire found herself hugging a cute and cuddly object. She sniffed it.

"This feels warm..."

She let go and found a toy creeper on the bed. Picking up the creeper, she went out of the room and turned right, thinking that the dining hall was on the right.

"Claire, breakfast's on the left," said Harry, suddenly appearing behind her in a club car. "Hop in."

Claire sat down beside Harry, who was driving the club car.

"Claire, remember what I said a few months back?"

"The flower in the forest?"

"Whenever you're in trouble, just go there."

***

Soon, the duo reached the dining hall, where breakfast was prepared. They sat down together and waited for the food to arrive.

It was quite a long wait. The King of Aquaria was no good at waking up early, so the chef did not know what to cook. Meanwhile, Harry introduced Claire to the Eleven Knights and chatted with them with an appalling informality.

"As you can see, Claire, they're called the Eleven Knights because there are eleven of them. By the way, I was the one who appointed most of them because Dad couldn't find eleven males with exemplary conduct."