• It was an ordinary day on the planet Sheshosha. The weather was sunny and mild, but the occasional cool breeze betrayed the coming winter months. As High Queen of the planet, Anandera found herself walking home from yet another diplomatic meeting called by the lords of the lesser kingdoms of the planet. As dictated by the government traditions set forth by her ancestors, it was the duty of the High Ruler to preside over such meetings and make sure everything remained orderly. This tedious task was a small price to pay to keep the peace and prosperity the planet had experienced over the last few centuries. Even so, Anandera was never thrilled about that part of her job.

    ‘Those squabbling morons could not do a thing on their own,’ Anandera thought as she exited the northeastern kingdom of Junon. ‘If I were not here to keep them in line they would tear this planet apart with their petty disagreements.'

    As she left the kingdom, still deep in thought, she bumped into a cloaked stranger, knocking her hood off and revealing the crown atop her head. To those standing by, it would have seemed as though the stranger willed himself to bump into the woman. When he bumped into the woman, her cloak parted slightly, enough for one to see her travel attire. She wore an ankle length red shirt made of a thick, but comfortable, and wind resistant material; a decorative gold stripe ran down each side of her thigh until they reached the end of the skirt where one could see a pair of leather walking boots, made from the think hide of the Aregonai and coated in wax to protect her feet from any water. Her top was red as well and long-sleeved to protect her arms from the cold wind of the coming winter months as she made the long trek home. Over the shirt she wore a decorative gilded breastplate lined in silver that connected to the shoulder armor, which helped hook her cloak shut at her neck. Her hair was braided down her back and reached the back of her thighs. She found that her hair was far easier to deal with it when it was braided.

    Her brush with the cloaked stranger brought her out of her thoughts with a start. Acting upon instinct and years of running into bandits along the long road home, she drew her cleverly hidden sword from beneath her cloak and held its tip to the throat of the stranger, the look in her eyes demanding and unwavering.

    “Speak now and speak truthfully, for deceit will earn you a date with my blade,” she commanded in a stern voice. “Who are you?”

    The startled stranger held his hands up defensively, his cloak still disguising his face, and then bowed slightly to the side, cautiously avoiding the point of Anandera’s sword.

    “Pardon me,” a man’s voice courteously replied. “I did not mean to startle you. I was just on my way out of this city, and I must have tripped over something.”

    Anandera looked at the man warily. He was about six feet tall and wore a black cloak lined in red. His voice was deep, revealing his age, but smooth, like that an elf’s voice. She found his demeanor strangely familiar.

    ‘That voice… why… does it seem…so very familiar?’ she thought. She eyed the man carefully.

    “Have we met before, Stranger?” she questioned cautiously.

    “N-no, Milady” the stranger replied nervously. “I am certain that I would remember meeting someone as important as you. And as beautiful, if I may be so bold to add.”

    Ignoring the man’s statement, Anandera reluctantly withdrew her sword and sheathed it. She pulled her hood back over her head and continued walking out of the kingdom. The stranger began following close behind, his stride quickly falling into Anandera’s.

    ‘The way he walks…’ her thoughts wandered to this as her sideward glance caught his stride. ‘It is very strange, how he walks like…him…'

    The man was now walking beside her.

    “May I know your name, Milady?” he asked. Anandera stopped, rather startled by the man’s question.

    “You mean…you do not know?” she asked. “How can you…not know who I am?”

    The man looked down at her and tilted his head slightly.

    “Should…I?” he asked.

    ‘This… does not seem right…something is amiss, but I cannot tell what…’ she though briefly. Could it be...? No. No way... he died many years ago on some isolated planet. It must be a coincidence... or maybe even his kin...'

    “Well…” she said slowly. “I am… pretty well known around the planet. Important… is an understatement. Where are you from that you have not heard of me?”

    “Oh, I live on my own, in the nearby mountains,” the man said with a nervous laugh. “I only come into town to sell some of my goods and buy food. I have no affiliation with politics. Why complicate things?”

    “Hmmm…” Anandera mused. “On Earth you would be known as a modern-day Thoreau, removing one’s self from the restrictions of government in order to prove that can be done, even in a modern setting.”

    “You have been to Earth?” the man asked, astonished. Anandera laughed softly. Despite her foreboding feeling, she found the conversation entertaining.

    ‘There are actually people in this world that do not know my name,’ she thought, truly tickled by the idea.

    “I lived there for almost forty years,” she answered, matter-of-factly.

    “Oh, well then, you must have learned a lot about their culture,” the man said. “I just love hearing traveler’s stories. May I hear your story?”

    Anandera smiled beneath her cloak.

    “I suppose it would not hurt to tell you,” she said, grinning almost smugly beneath her cloak. “I hope you have a lot of time to burn. It is… a very long story.”

    “Oh, I do not mind,” the man politely replied. “I have nothing but time and would be happy to hear your story. Please, start from the beginning.”

    Anandera smiled, flattered by the stranger’s inquiry of her long, strange past.

    “Well,” Anandera began, continuing her walk home, the stranger walking alongside her. “It all began almost four thousand years ago at the signing of the peace treaty that ended the Millennia War, a war, if you recall from elementary history, which raged between our planet and the planet Saynia for nearly three thousand years. Queen Lilan, my ancestor, came to the king of Saynia, King Tommeson, and offered peace through a political marriage. A vision from several nights before revealed to her that the youngest prince of Saynia and I would marry even without the treaty, but they could use this inevitability to establish and maintain peaceful relations with one another. So, the treaty was signed and four generations later, I was born. My name is Anandera Sakurasa Akaselloso, eldest of my mother’s nine children and High Queen of the Imperial Sheshoshian Realm, including the Inner Realms of Sheshosha. I am the leader of the entire planet, but despite this, I am merely an ordinary woman with extraordinary talents.”

    “What do you mean by extraordinary?” the stranger asked, inquisitively. Anandera smiled.

    “At the time of this planet’s foundation there was a tree known as the Tree of Kazakuzal. No commoner could have possibly known what this tree was or what it could do, but everyone knew that there was something odd about the tree. It was as if it had its own aura, its own life force,” Anandera explained. “While on a journey home from a diplomatic meeting much like the one I am coming from, the second ruler of our great planetary kingdom decided to stop for a rest beneath the strange-looking tree. Suddenly, he noticed that the tree was singing. The tree, which was equally surprised that anyone could hear her, thanked the king for his company and explained that only one with a pure heart and soul can hear her. As gratitude for being so pure, she gave the man the fabled Fruit of Eternity, a fruit that only blossomed every ten thousand years. This particular fruit granted my ancestor a great power. This power passed down for generations to the eldest children of my ancestors. The other children, if in fact there were any, received only bits and pieces of the power. Since I am the eldest of my siblings, I was granted the full gift, as well as rites to the throne. But many do not realize that just because I am royalty and I have this great gift, it does not mean that I do not have the same or even worse troubles than most common people. For example, when it came time for me to marry and take my Father’s place as high ruler, there were several complications that made taking the throne an unnecessarily long and over-due process.”

    “What happened to cause this?” the man asked. Anandera laughed softly.

    “The ambitions of a jealous ex-boyfriend,” Anandera answered. Just as she said this, the man tensed beneath his cloak, as if her words had irritated him.

    “Oh, how interesting,” he said, hiding his irritation as he spoke.

    “I know how silly that sounds, but as silly as it is, it is true,” Anandera continued, unaware of the man’s aggravation. “It happened almost a thousand years ago on the day of my twenty-first birthday. The day after that was the day I was supposed to marry Dananian, the youngest prince of Saynia and my fiancé of almost four years. Unfortunately, the next day did not come, not for several hundred years anyway.”

    “How is that even possible?” the man asked, feigning astonishment.

    “Patients, my friend,” Anandera replied, smiling. “I was just getting to that part. I once knew a wonderful man, an elfish man known by the name Lei-Yu Sqwall. He was a young, handsome, and very intelligent man. He and I met beneath the Tree of Kazakuzal, which is in the open field in front of my castle. He was…simply…amazing! He had the purest heart of anyone I ever knew. He also was one of the few friends I had that could communicate with the Tree. We would sit beneath her and listen to her many stories and songs. The time in which I knew him was definitely one of my treasured memories…”

    Anandera’s thoughts began to wander back to those days as a deep seated feeling of nostalgia swept over her.

    “Well, what happened between you two” the man asked, urging her to continue her story.

    “Oh!” Anandera said. “I am sorry. I must have been caught up in the moment.”

    “Do not worry about it,” the man replied with a smile. “Please, do go on.”

    “As I was saying,” Anandera continued. “He and I dated for some time, but it did not end well. He began to keep his distance from the Tree, and spent more and more time in his lab working on his experiments. I consulted with the Tree, only to hear from her that Lei-Yu could no longer hear her voice. It broke my heart to hear this, for it was the one thing that kept me and Lei-Yu connected. I decided to break my personal ties to Lei-Yu and travel with my younger brother for a year. I left the day after my seventeenth birthday.

    “Several months later, I met Dananian. He and I hit it off so well that I could hardly believe that he was the snobby little kid I had met when I was younger. He and I returned to Sheshosha together after my year of travel was over and announced our engagement to my parents. They were apprehensive about it, but accepted Dananian in the end. I was studying the texts in the royal library when I found out about the treaty that had arranged Dananian’s and my wedding two thousand years before we were born. Everyone had forgotten about the treaty, but we thought that that was the final sign that we were meant to be together. The engagement became public only a few weeks later and Lei-Yu did not take it well at all. He vowed to kill me and my family for betraying him. I tried to explain, but he just would not listen to me. He disappeared before we could apprehend him and was not seen again for almost four years. During that time, Dananian and I got to know each other better. I fell deeply in love with him. He was sweet and gentle, yet forceful only when he needed to be. He was very intelligent, well mannered, funny, and much more mature than the young men his age. Such is to be expected from a prince, I suppose.”

    Anandera paused, allowing a feeling of nostalgia to wash over her once more. She took a deep breath and continued her story.

    “Dananian and I were set to marry the day after I turned twenty-one,” she continued. “But the day of my birthday, Lei-Yu returned in hopes of fulfilling his threat. With him was his creation. We named him Skullatulla because of the tale-tell bull’s skull he had for a head. We then knew what it was Lei-Yu had been working on for so long in his lab, what it was that tainted his heart. He was researching human alchemy and the process of creating life. His research had tainted his heart and soul in such a way that he could no longer hear the voice of the Tree. Human alchemy is a mixture of the science of making a human body and the magic of weaving a human soul. But, like in most alchemy, you have to give in order to receive. To receive a human soul, to weave one together, one must first take the lives of countless people. It is likely that Lei-Yu used an entire planet just to create Skullatulla, which was a failed creation, as indicated by the fact that it did not have a human’s head.”

    “How do you suppose that happened?” the man asked, irritated again by her words.

    “I… I do not know,” Anandera replied. “I have never researched that kind of Alchemy, for it is a sin against nature. As stated by the laws of this planet, human alchemy is branded as a crime against humanity, due to the sacrifice needed to do it. Lei-Yu’s creation massacred many people in the kingdom on its way to me. My mother died fighting the creature and just before it reached us, my father activated a spell from the Book of Ages. This spell sent us three hundred years into the future to a planet called Earth where we were ‘reborn,’ our memories and powers suppressed, and given new identities to hide us from Lei-Yu and his creation. On Earth I was known by the name Amanda Haney and I lived in a place called Dallas, Texas. For thirteen years I had been under the assumption that I was an ordinary person. Then, in the year 2000, I learned of my true identity, my true destiny. That day, my life changed forever. I would never look in the mirror and see who I thought I had seen for so many years. That was when the real fun began.”

    Anandera stopped and looked up at the man.

    “Are you sure you want me to continue?” she asked. “This is only the beginning of my long, strange story.”

    “Strange, indeed!” the man said, rather excited. “Please, I must hear more!”

    Anandera smiled beneath her cloak, pleased the stranger’s eager reply.

    “Now where was I?”