"Ah'm not exactly sure… Ah remember bein' in this clear tube that lifted, an' there was Myki, Daivi, an' Piyteur there too… Then this guy asked us our names… he was really phreaky… Then he told us that we were 'Monkee Number One' or 'Monkee Number Two' up through 'Monkee Number Four'… Then… ah don't remember much beyond then…" Maik said seriously.
     "That sounds a whole lot like 33 1/3!" exclaimed Naomi. "That's a Monkees TV special… Don't ask."
     "I didn't," Blake answered.
     "Wahl, Ah don't know where the others were and/or are… Guess all we can do is trah to git out of here…"
     Blake glanced at Maik with a hopeless expression. "This is a hole. The only way out is up… an' that means going up the slide…"
     "Wahl, Ah guess we could try mah harmonica… Maybe if we play DAGE instayd of EGAD, it mahght take us away from here. We just gotta be touching." He played the prescribed notes while Blake and Naomi reached for his shoulders. As the last note faded, they vanished.
     When they reappeared, they were in a giant room. A diet (assembly) of ants sat conferring at a large round table. A parabola was talking to a perch (fish) wearing a tutu and a bowler hat with a petunia. Hate decided that it hated itself, so it committed suicide.
     "Umm… We musta taken a wrong turn… But hey! There's a giant round door with funky desahgns on it… We could see where it leads…" suggested Maik. The three followed his advice. They entered into a room with designs like two arrows intersecting all over the walls. There were three-dimensional models of this symbol (actually, it was the Anglo-Saxon rune for NG) coming out of the floor, walls, and ceilings, and some just hanging in midair. Behind Maik, Naomi, and Blake, the door that they had come from was tie-dyed with designs similar to those that were on the other side of the door and the NG symbol every where in the room. There was a door opposite it. It was round as well, but in addition to the symbols, there was a foreign language written on it. The door was made of plain red colored wood. In another part of the room was a tall, black door. It had flickering runes written upon it. The three entered this room. It had a sole candle flickering psychedelically near one black wall. "
     This is familiar…" whispered Blake.
     "Why are you whispering?" Naomi whispered back.
     "I don't know… It feels like you're supposed to whisper in this place… or say something philosophical…" Blake answered, still whispering.
     "This is like the Black Box!" Naomi exclaimed. "'Cept the Monkees aren't here…"
     "Wahl, since no one's in here," facilitated the older man, "whah don't we check out the other room? Maybe someone's in thar."
     The three left the Black Box and returned to the NG room. They went through the red door. Beyond this door was a stone room. Tapestries hung from the walls. Swords and rapiers hung from wall holders. There was a round table with seats around it. A troop of dragons was playing cards in a corner. An isosceles triangle sat at a computer. On the screen was a sprig of mint and a paintbrush. A pot of shamrocks was talking on the phone with a potted daffodil.
     "This isn't much better than the first room," groaned Blake.
     "Wahl, one thang left to do." Maik pulled out his harmonica and repeated the riff.
     They reappeared in a room with four glass tubes, much like those which Maik had described. In three of them were Myki, Daivi, and Piyteur. Maik went over to a panel and pressed a button. The tubes lifted off the other men.
     "'Kay. Now that we're all together, we'd best trah to fahnd the others," their leader said. (Their leader being Maik.) Maik DAGE'd. (That's a new verb that means to play the notes D-A-G-E. Cool, isn't it?)
     Next, the six found themselves standing next to a cage, in which stood Elisay and Daphne. "Whoah… I won't ask you how you guys got here," stated Daphne, "but I do want to know how to get out of here!"
     "Did you trah the hole in the top of the cage?" suggested Maik.
     "Well," she answered gesturing to the hole two feet above her head.
     "Give me a boost," ordered Maik. Myki and Piyteur provided the needed boost, and Maik climbed onto the top of the cage. He pulled up Elisay and then Daphne. "There you go, ma'am," he said, winking yet another swoon-worthy wink at Daphne. ::sigh:: When everyone was back on the ground, Maik proceeded to play the appropriate notes.
     The eight people stood on the edge of a great pit. Across from this pit, Ianthe and Aubrey were perched on a small ledge. A cold draft came up from the abyss, so the two were cuddled together for warmth and lack of space. (Or just because…*g*)"What is this place?" asked Myki.
     "It's an oubliette," answered Aubrey.
     "A place for forgetting, in French," Ianthe translated.
     "You see that wooden bridge? Well, if you swing it around, we can get back over to you," Aubrey instructed.
     "How do you know about 'oubliettes'?" asked Daivi.
     Ianthe answered. "Oubliettes are medieval. And they're French. That's kinda how…"
     "Who could have done this?" asked Piyteur.
     "Glick?" Naomi suggested, with a grin at Blake. Blake groaned as Naomi giggled.
     Once the ten were together again, standing in an "artistic cluster" on the edge of the pit, Maik prepared to DAGE yet again. "Y'all got a hold of each other?" he asked.
     Naomi and Ianthe grinned at each other as each pressed close to their respective guys. "Yup!"
     "Wahl, here goes," Maik said, then DAGE'd. The group disappeared from the cliff, and reappeared…
     "Oh no," Blake groaned. "Do I want this one explained?"
     Naomi grinned up at him. "Prob'ly not… but I don't know if even I could? Can you, Ianthe?"
     "Well, probably, but it might be a little weird," Ianthe replied, giggling.
     "Nothing is ever just a little weird, coming from you!" Daphne mockingly accused.
     "I wanna go home," Blake moaned.
     "No you don't! C'mon, admit it, you're enjoying all this," Naomi reprimanded, a twinkle in her eye (from the stars, of course *g*) as she looked up at him.
     "Well… maybe… just a little…"
     "C'mon, you guys! Enough talking, let's go explore!" Elisay exclaimed, grabbing Daphne's arm and pulling her with her, as she headed off towards… the sunset. ("With tears in our eyes, we drove off into the sunset, lookin' fer another place to put the garbage." Sorry, a little Arlo Guthrie slipped in!) It was beautiful. A little ways ahead was a pond where the setting sun shone on it. They all decided to sit down and watch. They ended up in a formation of Naomi and Blake, Maik and Daphne, Elisay and Piyteur, and Myki and Daivi all on one side of the pond, and Ianthe and Aubrey way on the other side, far from everyone else.
     Ianthe was very pleased… nothing better than a beautiful sunset and sharing with an "Irish fencer". Ianthe got closer to Aubrey and he freely accepted. The two snuggled close together.
     Blake didn't like to show it but he was having the best time. He really enjoyed being with Naomi although he wouldn't let her know. Of course Naomi was pleased and tried to get Blake to snuggle with her. (Uh, wow, have I gotten forward…!)
     Myki was talking to Daivi about where to go next. Obviously Daivi was paying no attention. He was daydreaming about the girls back home.
     Daphne was really interested in Maik's harmonica especially after what happened today. She also was a little interested in Maik.
     Elisay was having quite some time with her head on Piyteur's shoulder. "Why do things have to end?" Elisay questioned.
     Piyteur had the perfect answer. "So they can start again."
     "Will this trip ever end?" she wondered.
     "If it does, hopefully it will be just so it can start back up again!" He smiled down at her. She smiled back. She could barely see his soft milky (?!) freckles. (Lol! When I edited this in HTML, it looked like "soft milky font color", because Daffodil broke in with her "?!") She wanted to sit there all night.
     Meanwhile, across the other side of the pond, Ianthe and Aubrey were enjoying themselves.
     "I lost track of time and space," Ianthe said.
     "I've done that in the school cafeteria before." Aubrey replied. (Huh?) "Let's see if we can both do it at the same time." He looked her in the eyes, lifted her chin, and they both were lost in a passionate kiss.
     "Look! I found the first star," Naomi told Blake.
     "Where? I don't see it!" Blake said.
     "See the tallest tree that way?" she pointed. "Well, just a little higher up and to the right is where it is," she explained.
     "Oh… I… see it now…" His voice trailed off and Naomi realized that he was staring straight at her face and now deep in her eyes.
     "How do you do that thing again?" Daphne wanted to know.
     "Here. I'll show you again and then help you."
     "Okay!" she replied. He showed her one more time on the harmonica and then climbed behind her and helped her finger it. He looked down at her. They both smiled at each other before gazing at the stars.
     "Do you think by the end of this trip we'll have a bunch of couples?" Daivi wondered out loud.
     "You weren't paying any attention, were you Daivi?!" Myki said. "But the answer to your question… I don't know, if we did we could go into business and our motto could be, 'We'll make a couple out of you'!" Myki joked.
     Pastel twilight streaked across the sky, and deepened into a sapphire blue. Daphne fell into reverie, imagining that she could touch the stars, that she could see the world she left behind when she boarded the Applebus. She wondered if time was different in this world, or if her parents would come home and realize she wasn't there. She thought of space and time, and life and happiness and love…
     Love. Suddenly her thoughts came to a screeching halt. Ianthe had come with Aubrey, and Naomi with Blake. But what about Bryan? Bryan was a boy who Daphne had adored for almost a year. They'd had a school class together the year before, and they'd been accused of being a "couple". Bryan himself had never denied it, telling the others just to shut up. But late in the year, under pressure, Daphne had denied liking him--in the presence of Bryan himself. Bryan slowly slacked off in talking to her, and although they were still friendly, it had never been the same. She still liked him, and they had talked a few times this year, too… but here, now, she had been thinking thoughts of Maik in place of her wished-for Bryan. She felt a fluttery feeling prick her stomach. She felt traitorous. She felt feelings for Bryan and an intense longing to sit by him, talk to him, her red-haired crush of old.
     Maik looked at her and cocked his head, noticing a troubled expression on her face. "Hey, what's up? Ya look strange - tense. Feel okay?"
     Daphne returned to the starry dusk, blinking her eyes. "Oh… I'm okay. Sorry. I just zoned for a minute." She looked from Ianthe and Aubrey to Naomi and Blake, and to Elisay and Piyteur, then back again. She sighed. "I just zoned," she repeated, fingering a pigtail and seeing Bryan's smile in her mind. She noticed a dandelion a few feet away, moved over to it as if to examine it. Maik didn't follow - she didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. At the moment, it was a mixture of both. (Note much later: Sorry so cheesy--reading this about a year later, it sounds so melodramatic... Nah...'least, if that *is* overly melodramatic, then so'm I..on any given day!...)
     As the blue darkened from sapphire to navy, fireflies began to flit around. Aubrey and Ianthe emerged from a kiss (not the first one, or so we hope) and noticed them. Aubrey caught one between cupped hands and let Ianthe peek through his fingers at it. Naomi and Blake simply talked, lost to the world. Piyteur and Elisay were lying on their backs, looking for constellations. Maik had moved back over to Daphne and had begun to talk to her. Myki and Daivi looked on, amused at the others, trying to create a song with harmony.
     Suddenly a voice seemed to whisper in their ears. The water… behold me… the water…
     "Did you hear that?" asked Myki. Daivi nodded.
     "I heard it, too," called Daphne. "What was that?"
     "Heard what?" asked Ianthe.
     Behold me… came the whisper-voice.
     "That!" said everyone else in unison.
     "Follow the directions," ordered Maik.
     "How?" asked Myki.
     "Look in the water!"
     Everyone crowded around the pond and stared into it. All at once the water seemed to become gel, and it gathered into the shape of a featureless being. It had no face, no eyes, no mouth. It emerged from the pond, leaving an empty hole where the water had been. It seemed to speak through telepathy. It walked along the circle, and spoke a message to each person, which everyone heard, but nobody understood.

     To Aubrey - Not only one loves you. But the love is not the same as what you know now. More care for you than you know.
     Ianthe - Your eyes will twice fill with tears--once in sorrow, once in joy.
     Naomi - Be wary and wily; a test lies before you.
     Blake - Let go, for you are too wary. Spontaneity will be the key to your desire.
     Maik - BADE. This is not a riff. BADE.
     Daphne - You also will be tested. You know more than you think.
     Elisay - You will change within; do not be afraid.
     Piyteur - You will speak too quickly and fall into danger. But you will have to speak even more quickly to escape.
     Daivi - Apple juice. I repeat, apple juice.
     Myki - Be not entangled by secret thoughts. They are troublesome.
     (Note: The messages weren't meant to reflect real life.)
     It finished, and gave one more look round. It had no eyes, but each felt as though they were being examined.
     This is well, it said. I leave you now.
     It stepped back into the dirt hole and turned back into liquid. Everyone shivered.
     "Whoa," said Naomi. "It isn't just a fun little day trip anymore, is it?"
 

Chapter Notes

On to the fulfillment of the first prophesy...