The place was just a room, smaller than my own rooms back in the castle. It was by far the oddest room I had ever seen though. The walls were not any kind of stone I had ever seen, and definitely not wood, as they were a pale gray color. The furniture in the room, though odd, was made of wood, mostly, with some odd material serving for handles on drawers and doors. The two beds were beds, certainly different than both the grand beds that my family slept upon and the tiny cots that the servants used, but they were still beds.

The frighteningly different things were the objects in the room that weren't furniture. They stood on the desks, and on the floor, and were mostly made of what seemed to be the same strange material that was used for the handles on the desks, but in differing colors. Many of the things had strange lights on them, some blinking, and one of the objects was displaying pictures of oddly proportioned people with odd hair colors and producing sounds in a language that I didn't recognize, but didn't sound magical in the slightest.

There was also clothing scattered about the floor, or rather, I assumed it was clothing. When I picked a few of the items up, they appeared to be cut to fit the human body, though they were not of any style I had ever seen. The room was a mess, and I could barely find free floor space in which to step, but I did, and I made my way to the window that was opposite the one wooden door.

The sight that greeted me outside the window was even stranger than the sight inside the window. I saw huge metal looking beasts lined up in rows in one part, and a little farther away, the beasts moved. I could see people inside of the beasts, which had transparent skin that looked to be made of glass. The land was bare, looking like it was all paved over with near-seamless stone, and looking quite dead to me. There were trees, but nowhere near as many as I was accustomed to, and certainly not the majestic ones that grew in the forest outside of my father's castle.

I quickly looked away from the window, feeling dizzy just watching the metal beasts flow on the dead land. I noted before I drew back that I was on a second floor, and that jumping from the window would end up in injuries. I also noted that it seemed to be early spring, even though I could not feel any hint of a chill in the room, and was instead a bit too warm. There was definitely no fire in the room, and I couldn't feel any magic heating the place.

My master had said I was to serve someone. I had assumed that that person would be present when I arrived in the sister dimension, but there was no one in the room with me. At that point, I had two options: I could exit the room, provided the door was not locked, and look for the one I was to serve, or I could wait for the person where I was. It seemed that the second option would be much more effective in the end, since I had no idea who I was looking for and no idea what was on the other side of the door.

So, I sat down on one of the two beds, which were set next to each other. There were chairs in the room, but they were covered with papers and more of the smaller odd objects, and I didn't want to move the things for fear they might be some sort of powerful magic. The bed I sat on was clear, but the other one was covered with more papers, books, and odd things. I amused myself by watching the odd pictures on the one object that seemed to be producing sound as well and listening to the sounds, which turned out to be odd music. Music, no matter whether one can understand the words or not, is always music.

I waited there for about a half hour before anything happened. Then, one of the other odd objects in the room, again made of the same material as most of the other odd things, started making a high pitched noise. It lasted a short time, then went silent and started up again right away. Then it went silent again for a longer time, and repeated the two trills. It frightened me, and I backed up on the bed, wanting to get away from the thing. I then immediately chastised myself, because I had gotten my shoes on the bed.

The noises continued for four times, until the object made a different, lower, noise and a person's voice started speaking. It was a young man's voice, around my age or older from the sound of it. It said, "Hey, you've reached Scott's room, but I don't seem to be here right now. If you leave a message after the beep I'll get back to you sometime this century, I think..." Then it repeated the lower sound again, and a different man's voice started.

"You're not back from classes yet man?" the voice said. "Damn... Well, I called to see when you want to get together this week. I would have sent you an ICQ, but Carrie's down right now and I don't know why. Come find me later today. Oh, and don't forget to turn that Jap crap of yours down in the morning. I thought you were still there when I stopped by earlier. See you." This was followed by another sound, and then the thing went silent again, leaving just the music.

It wasn't until then that my heart stopped racing. The loud high pitched sounds had frightened me, to my shame, and I hadn't been able to calm down until it had quieted. I felt like a fool for being afraid of something for no real reason, but when I thought about it a little more, I had every right to be afraid. After all, I was in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by things the likes of which I had never seen, and the owner of the place would probably think I had broken in when he or she returned. It would be more foolish to be blindly unafraid in that situation than it would to be afraid and aware of why.

Still, it didn't make me feel any better when I rationalized my fear. I had always prided myself on never been afraid simply because something was different. All of the other children were afraid of demons because their mothers or nurses told them scary stories about how they would eat them up and steal their souls. I was wary of demons because my master had taught me about them and I knew what they could actually do to a person. Demons were not fun. In much the same way, I knew why I was afraid of what I was afraid of, and it wasn't just because the things were different than my normal experience. Having an unexplained fear in this situation made me angry with myself.

I could not do anything about it except meditate, though, so that was what I did for the next hour or so. I let my mind drift, seeking the state of meditation that would allow me access to the magical reserves around me. I was drained from the trip between dimensions, as I hadn't felt since I had just gained access to my own powers. Back then I was headstrong, and I thought I was near invincible just because I could make a small flame appear in my hand. I had easily overextended, leaving myself feeling like a sick puppy, and that was how I felt after traveling between dimensions.

The relaxed state was easy to achieve, just as it had been since the first time I figured out the trick. Finding a pool of power nearby, however, was not. I searched for most of an hour without finding anything except for small trickles of power, the kind I had found in the blasted forest my master had taken me to when I was younger where almost no magic worked. The place I had been sent to seemed to be just as magically void as that place, and that started to worry me.

I was so busy trying to find some pool of power I could tap to restore my reserves that when the person I was meant to serve finally returned I didn't notice it. I never even heard the sound of the door being unlocked, or the muttered curses of the person unlocking the door when his key stuck and wouldn't come out of the lock. I was too worried about the magical state of the land around me.

I finally did notice when he opened the door, flung a bag into the room, and then stopped to stare at me. I mostly noticed because he shouted something along the lines of "Who the hell are you?" when he saw me. This jolted me out of my meditation, and I immediately jumped off of the bed and bowed.

I gave him about as much respect as I did to my master or my father. He may have been the one I was supposed to serve for a year, but I was still royalty. I would not abase myself to anyone.

"Please excuse my intrusion," I said as formally as I could manage. "My name is Shimike. I was sent here from my home to serve you for one year as part of my final training."

I rose from my bow to see his reaction to my words, and to get a decent look at him. I couldn't quite place his age, but he looked like he wasn't too much older than I was at the time, maybe around eighteen years old. He had the type of body that seemed to be the latest fashion among the young nobles of the court at home, slim with delicate features, but not feminine looking in the slightest. Even with that delicate body type, he stood a good five or six inches taller than I did, so I had to look up to see his face.

He had short cut sandy blonde hair, of a shade that I had never quite seen before. From what my master had taught me, I knew that there were tribes and kingdoms elsewhere where everyone had hair like that. But still, my people were dark haired and dark eyed, and my master, my mother, and me were the only ones who weren't. Like my mother, I had light eyes, and no one was quite sure what was natural for my master.

To go with his light hair, the man standing in front of me had blue-gray eyes. The color of them was clear, even through the glasses perched on his nose. They were eyes that looked like they were much more used to a smiling expression than the startled frown and glare he had on his face at that time.

"Great, I've gone insane," he said, putting a hand to his head and falling down to the heap of clothing right beneath him with a muffled thud. "The stress of trying to keep up must have finally gotten to me. I'm hallucinating."

"Please," I said. "I'm not a vision or a delusion. I truly am here."

"Sure you are," he said, half hysterical laughter creeping into his voice. He closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the ceiling. "I'm just gonna close my eyes now, and when I open them up again I won't be hallucinating. I need to stay sane through finals week. I can't afford to fail because I've gone bonkers."

I sat back down on the bed behind me. I had no idea what to do. I hadn't expected to be thought of as a hallucination. I should have considered it, that the people on our sister world would be unfamiliar enough with magic that the idea would be inconceivable. So I just sat and watched as he muttered toward the ceiling, saying something that sounded like a prayer.

After a few minutes, he opened his eyes and looked back in my direction. He groaned when he saw me. "You're still there?" he asked. "You were supposed to disappear!"

"I really am not an illusion," I replied. "I swear on my father's line that I am telling the truth. I am from this dimension's sister dimension, a place of magic. I was sent here to serve you for a year as my final test to prove my right to inherit my father's throne."

But he ignored me. Instead of making any sort of indication that he had heard me, he headed over to the strange object that was putting out the music and pressed a part of it, which silenced the noise. Then he went over to the object that had talked earlier and picked up a part of it. It was then that I realized that the first voice that had come from the object had been his voice.

He pushed at various places on the object and then held it to his head. I watched him curiously and noticed that he kept glancing over at me. But, every time he actually looked at me, especially when he noticed me watching him, he jerked his head back around and stared fixedly at some other part of the room. Then, after a few seconds of standing there with the object held to his head, he started speaking.

"Hey, Lisa, it's Scott," he said. "Listen, you didn't do anything weird to the drink I had at your place, did you? Like spike it, or slip some kind of drug in?" He paused, as if listening to the other side of a conversation, though I couldn't hear another voice.

"Okay, okay, I trust you!" he exclaimed, his voice defensive. "It's just that I'm hallucinating, and I wanted to make sure it didn't have some physical cause before I decided that I'd gone insane. That's all." He paused again.

"A cute guy in my room, claiming he was sent here to serve me for a year," he said, glancing over at me again. "Wait, scratch that. He's not cute, he's somewhere between beautiful and handsome." He paused again, then laughed.

"Why would he care that I'm talking about him if he's just a figment of my imagination?" he asked. "Yeah, he's just sitting there on the bed, watching me. It's kinda weird. I never thought a hallucination would make me feel so uncomfortable." A concerned look crossed his face as he paused again.

"You don't need to do that, Lisa," he said. "I'm just gonna get some sleep and see if that fixes it. I've been pulling too many all-nighters recently." He frowned, then sighed.

"Fine, if you insist," he said. "I'll leave the door unlocked, so just come on in. Meanwhile I'm gonna try to get some sleep. Ja ne."

Then he put the object back where he had separated it from its other half. He sighed and then removed his shirt and glasses. He folded the glasses up and placed them on the desk, next to the object that had been making the music. Then he walked over to the bed and climbed into it.

I hurriedly jumped off the bed to get out of his way. I tried to get clear of the mess on the floor as I did so, but there were not enough clear spots for me to make it to one in a single jump. Instead I missed. I landed off balance, my injured ankle twisting painfully beneath me, and ended up falling flat on my face, taking him down with me.

He stared at me, his eyes wide. I had landed right on top of him when we both fell. Despite his being so much taller than I, I was heavy enough to pin him down. It took him a few moments to realize that he was stuck until I moved, but when he did he started struggling more than I thought he would.

"You're...you're..." he stammered. I levered myself up.

"I'm real," I said. "And I'm very sorry about that."

He just gave me a slightly frightened look. Then he leapt into the bed and pulled the blankets over his head. A moment later he stuck his head back out and looked at me. "Be a good figment of my imagination and don't bug me while I sleep, okay?"

"Is there something you would like me to do?" I asked. "To be helpful?"

"If you really think that a hallucination, a very complex hallucination, but still a hallucination, can do it, my room could use cleaning," he said. "I would do it, but I don't really have the time. Now I'm going to take my nap. Hopefully you'll be gone when I wake up."

Then he retreated back under the blankets, and shortly afterward his breathing steadied and slowed to the pace of a sleeping person. I looked around the room again. He had told me to clean up. Even though he didn't actually expect it to happen, I planned on trying my best to at least partially clean up the room. Unfortunately, I didn't think I could clean it the way he would want it, since I didn't even know what half the things in the room were.

I spotted a type of basket, made out of a strange material but still a basket, with what looked like dirty clothing in it. I assumed it was dirty because there were other pieces of clothing sitting in the wardrobe that weren't wrinkled and were hung up. Hoping that I was right about the dirty clothing, I started picking up the clothing strewn around the room and depositing it in the basket.

I would have washed the clothing, but I had no idea where I might find somewhere to do so. I could have summoned a minor water elemental, I hoped, to do it, but I didn't see anything that looked like it could serve as a tub to keep the water in. Instead, I kept putting clothing in the basket, and then on the floor next to the basket so it at least wasn't spread out around the room.

There were still papers all over the room once I finished with the clothing. I gathered them into a pile, which I then placed on a desk. As I did this all I realized that there wasn't too much more I could do. Things would have gone much better if I had known what I could possibly throw out, but I didn't know what might be important.

Just as I finished picking up the papers on the floor, a knock came on the door. It didn't wake him up. I thought for a moment of going to answer the door, but I decided not to. Then, I heard a female voice outside of the door, the one who had knocked talking to herself.

"Hmmm, no music..." she said. "He must be asleep. Oh well, he said he'd leave the door open, so I'll just take a peek."

Then she opened the door. I had heard her say that she was going to look inside, so I wasn't surprised. Still, I had no idea what to do when she came in, so I just sat in a nearby chair and tried to look inoffensive.

She was just as odd looking to me as he had been. Her look was different from his though, and I had seen one person vaguely like her before. A visiting prince from one of our neighbors had brought a slave boy from far away with him once. The boy had been exotic, with honey colored skin and slanted eyes. He had been quite popular with the women of my land, because of his odd features.

The woman who opened the door at that moment looked much like him. She had the same skin, the color of warm honey, and the same slightly slanted dark eyes. She looked to be about the same height as I was, which made her around average for most women, with a slim, healthy figure.

The oddest thing about her was her hair though. She had her hair cut short, almost as short as most warriors from my kingdom kept their hair. I had never seen any women, except the very, very few who dedicated their lives to the God of Battles and renounced their womanhood, who wore her hair short. But this woman, who looked to be more than a few years older than I, had her glossy black hair cut to hang down just above her chin.

"Well, I guess Scott was wrong when he said he was hallucinating," she said softly when she saw me. I nodded. She jerked her head toward the door. "Why don't we talk, out there? I don't want to wake Sleeping Beauty over there."

I nodded again, and she stepped out the door. I followed her out, after glancing over at the lump under the blankets to make sure that he was still asleep. She closed the door behind me and turned to talk to me.

She started to talk, but stopped when she noticed that I wasn't paying attention yet. I was too busy staring at the hallway around us. It was stark, and just as impersonal as the hallways of my father's castle, but in a different way. The walls were made of the same not-quite-stone material that his room was. There were doors identical to the one the woman had just shut all up and down the hallway.

Finally, I tore my gaze away from the hallway, especially the area at the end where the doors disappeared and it seemed to open up, and looked at the woman. She had a puzzled expression on her face, but she shook her head, as if to clear it. "Are you done staring at the hall now?"

"Yes," I said.

"Who are you?" she asked. "And why does Scott think he's hallucinating you?"

"My name is Shimike," I said formally, not even bowing my head to her. "Just as I told him, I was sent here to serve him for a year as my final training. If I complete this task successfully I will be named heir to my father's throne."

She stared at me. She clearly didn't believe me, and she didn't look like she wanted to believe it either. "Yeah, right," she said. The tone of her voice matched her expression. "Like I'll believe that. Why don't you tell me the truth? You're really some cosplay freak who wanted to play a trick on Scott and got your friend at the front desk to help you, aren't you?"

That annoyed me. I didn't have to tell her who I was and why I was there. She wasn't the one I was to serve. But I had told her, and it was very rude of her to assume I was lying after I did that. I looked her straight in the eyes and glared at her.

"I assure you, I am not lying," I said stiffly. "And I find it very insulting that you just assume that I am not telling the truth after I was good enough to answer your question, even though I did not have to explain myself to the likes of you."

Her face darkened, and she narrowed her eyes to glare right back at me. I stood my ground. After facing my master's fury more than once in the past, her anger was nothing. I continued to stare back at her, letting my pride hold me in place. Then, she laughed.

"You really think you're a prince, don't you?" she asked, her voice light with amusement.

"I do not think I am," I said softly. "But that is because I am not yet a prince. Still, I am royalty."

She stopped laughing and stared at me with a serious look on her face. "Can you prove it?" she asked. "Can you prove that what you are claiming is true?"

"Why should I prove it to you?" I asked.

"Because Scott is my friend," she said, narrowing her eyes at me. "And I won't let anyone, especially not you, hurt him. You aren't getting back in that room unless I let you."

"My things are in there," I said. Despite the fact that she stood in front of the door, blocking my way into the room, I was not worried. I knew that I would be able to get back into the room eventually, whether it was because the woman in front of me believed me and let me through or because I forced my way in.

"I can get them for you," she said. "But you still aren't getting past me until I see some proof that you are who you say you are."

I wondered briefly if she would actually believe me if I could prove myself to her, or if she would continue to be skeptical. I was still more than a little angry at her rudeness, but at the same time, I understood what she was trying to do. I realized, as I watched her a little more closely, that she had the feel of a magic user. She had the aura, but it was so faint that I could barely sense it, clearly the sign of one either untrained or very weak, most likely both.

That was what made up my mind to try and convince her rather than force my way into the room. "I cannot prove my royal birth to you," I said after thinking for a few more moments. "I have nothing to prove it except my own word. But, I have been trained in magic, and I believe I could prove my ability to use it. Would that be sufficient to convince you of the truth of my words?"

She watched me with more than a little disbelief in her eyes, but then she nodded mutely. I sighed in relief, taking a breath that I didn't know I had been holding in.

"Could we go somewhere else?" I asked, looking around the hallway. "I don't feel comfortable here, and if most of the people of your dimension are as skeptical as you have been I would prefer not to do anything where someone else can see."

She thought for a moment, absently chewing on her lower lip. "Sure," she finally said. "We can go in the study lounge. I'm pretty sure there's no one in there at the moment, and the only other convenient place is Scott's room. Follow me."

She led me down the hall toward the area where it opened up. We passed through that area, which seemed to join the hallway we had just been in to another one much like it. After we passed some sets of strange metal doors in the joining area she ushered me through the second door on the left in the new hallway.

Inside was a mostly bare room which was more or less similar to the hallway and the room I had appeared in. A great sheet of some strange white material adorned one wall. It was covered with what appeared to be equations, though the mathematics involved were far beyond anything I had learned.

The only other things in the room were two tables and several chairs. The woman seated herself in one of the chairs and motioned for me to do the same. I chose to stay standing, and walked over to the opposite side of the room, where the wall was made completely of glass and offered a view of a tall building across from the one we were in, as well as the ground below, where more of the metal monsters I had seen before waited.

"Well, you said you could show me some magic," the woman said. "This is the most private place you're gonna get unless we leave the dorm, so you might as well start with the magic. And if you're gonna do that, I'd suggest you move away from the window."

"Very well," I said.

I moved back across the room to the door, which she had closed behind her as soon as we were both in. Then, I sat down on the floor in front of the door and crossed my legs in front of me, assuming my preferred meditation position. I normally did not need meditation to do magic, but I was worried about the severe lack of magic in the land I found myself in. I did not want to waste any more of my own power than I needed to at that time, since I wasn't sure when I would be able to get it back.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I placed my hands palms up in front of me, the right one lending support for my shaking left hand. It only took me a few moments to bring my mind to a state where the magic flowed freely. Once I had achieved that state, I did the first thing that came to mind. I called fire.

Summoning a flame was the first trick I mastered. It was not the simplest of magics, but it was the one that came easiest to me. Usually I could do it almost without thinking, which was most of the reason that my master claimed I was fire-aligned, just like him. That day though, in that magically bare land, I encountered resistance calling the flame to me. It wasn't significant, and I had the feeling that any other magic would be similarly impeded, but it was enough to make me nervous about what I was getting into.

Despite the resistance, I smiled as a tiny flame appeared over my hand. I could feel its warmth as it danced there above my open palm. It did not actually touch my hand. I knew that, even though I had called the flame, it would still burn me if I let it touch me. My smile widened as I heard the woman in front of me gasp.

"Is this sufficient?" I asked her, moving my hand up slowly so she could get a better look at the flame. She started to poke her finger forward, as if she didn't really believe it was there, and I drew my hand back quickly so she wouldn't get burned.

"Is it real?" she asked, her voice soft with what I thought was amazement.

"Yes," I said. "And just like any other fire, it can burn. Do you believe me now?"

"I suppose so," she said.

I muttered a few words to a simple spell and closed my hand. Just before my flesh touched the flame, it disappeared, and I felt the slight drain it was placing on my energy reserves cut off. She watched me the whole time, her face covered with an expression of amazement and wonder. I stood up, breaking the almost-trance she seemed to have fallen in as I dispelled my magic.

"You act like you've never seen magic before," I said.

"I haven't," she replied.

"You have the aura of a magic user."

"Obaasan is a sort of witch," she said. "She's been trying to teach me to follow in her footsteps ever since I was a little girl, but I'm not very good at it. Her magic isn't really something you see, so even though I've been there when she works magic, and even helped her, I haven't really seen any magic before."

"Oh," I said.

She then stood up and motioned for me to step aside so she could open the door. Silently, she led me through the hallway again and back into the room where I had arrived. The man, Scott, woke up as she shut the door behind her gently. He sat up in the bed slowly, but groaned as he looked around him and noticed that I was there.

"Don't tell me I woke you up by closing the door!" the woman said. Her voice had an odd edge to it.

"No..." Scott replied. "I was almost awake before that. You just jolted me back to awareness."

"How was your nap?" she asked.

"Not long enough, obviously," he said. "I'm still hallucinating."

"No you aren't," she said as she moved over to the singled chair in the room and sat down. "He's quite real. I can see him too, and I'm even satisfied that his story's at least partially true."

"You can't be serious!" he exclaimed, throwing a panicked look at me. I continued to stand not too far inside the door, where I had stopped as soon as I saw he was beginning to wake.

"Scott, I'm completely serious," she said. "Anyway, why would a hallucination limp like he has a sprained, or at least twisted, ankle?"

Her comment caused me to flush. I had been trying to ignore the pain in my ankle, which had only been aggravated by the fall when I jumped off of Scott's bed. For the most part I had succeeded in putting the pain out of my mind, but when she mentioned it, it came back to me in a rush. I could feel the ankle start throbbing dully, and I knew that I needed to concentrate more magic on healing it, or I would need the attention of someone who could treat it in a more mundane fashion.

"Huh?" Scott asked. His face had blanked, and he clearly had no idea what the woman was referring to. Instead of explaining, she merely smiled at him.

"Never mind," she said. "Just suffice to say that I more or less believe what he's claming. And now, I have classes to be at, so he's all yours to deal with. I'll call later, but don't expect to see much of me for a while. I have some projects that need finishing. Your call earlier interrupted one of my last bits of free time for the next week or so. Bye-bye!"

She rose from the chair and made a mad dash for the door. Scott leapt out of bed with a cry of, "Wait!" to try and catch her, but she made it to and out the door before he even made it halfway across the room. As the door shut heavily behind her he continued forward as if unable to stop, until he was just a bit past where I was. Then, he turned to face me, a look of resignation on his face.

"Well, it looks like I'm stuck with you," he said dully. I nodded, and a pained expression crossed his face. Finally, he sighed and started walking back to his bed. He sat down heavily and then looked at me again. "What did you say your name was?"

"Shimike."