[La Divina]: 115.Event?

Prologue: The Accidental Theft

It was called “Whispers in the Trees”. Most guessed it was because of the aspens on the grounds, but it could have been a deeper meaning. It was a fairly old castle, no longer occupied by anyone. Mostly thieves and hermits hid there. And it was there, in the dusty abandoned throne hall, where Riknueth d’Barra could be found, counting her precious pile of gold coins.
Of course, she wasn’t supposed to be there. Actually, the whole castle wasn’t really supposed to be there. But that wasn’t Riknueth’s fault. In fact, for once, Riknueth d’Barra was innocent.

Dana Wythe, however, was dead guilty. Not only that, he was in a state of panic. Hot blood was rushing thorough him, and he was racking his brains for a way to get out of this mess. Dana wasn’t experienced with messes like this. He’d never stolen anything before.
Ever.
Okay, so technically, this had been an accident. So it wasn’t premeditated theft. But this was serious. Even if the item in question was only a book.
Right.
Just a book.
Dana frowned at the thing. It wasn’t a traditional hardback book, either. No, it was some sort of electronic tome. It had a built-in light for reading under the covers, a soundtrack option, and holographic pictures that moved as you read aloud or moved your finger over the words. Some thirty years ago it would have been called an eBook. But it was a far more advanced eBook.
Now, the manner in which the eNovel had found its way into Dana’s satchel was quite interesting indeed.
He’d been walking through the city on his way back from his current job at the Galaxy Theatre. As always, he’d decided to drop in on his friend, Kara at her store, Unicorn Tech. He wasn’t too in tune with all the gadgets there, but he felt comfortable around Kara, as strange as she could be sometimes. She was friendly, though, and in the past months Dana had found himself dropping in more and more often. To the point where he was talked into buying a personal notebook for himself.
Well, on this day he’d happened to wander in to find her standing there, delicate frames on the end of her long nose, blond hair slanting to catch the light. Dana nearly tripped over the threshold, so taken was he. There were moments when Kara could be almost beautiful. She turned away from the eNovel display and fixed him with an amused look, the moment of beauty gone. She wore a long skirt patterned in flowers today, and as she walked over to help him pick up the things that had fallen out of his satchel, he had the impression of a walking garden. Her tennis shoes peeked out from underneath, and Dana smiled inwardly. He was always trying to convince her to let him make a nicer pair of shoes for her, but she always refused.
“I just got these in this morning,” she said, gesturing to the display with a slight frown. “I’m not sure how they’ll sell.”
Dana nodded, understanding. Kara herself loved books. She didn’t even own a plasma screen. But she was the only person Dana knew who didn’t. Who would want to read – even if it was a pretty cool book – when they could sit in front of a plasma screen instead?
He changed the subject immediately, trying to get her interested in the play going on at the Galaxy: “The Elves and the Shoemaker”. He was pretty excited about it, since he’d been promised a bonus and put in charge of a group of amateur cobblers to make shoes for the set. If the play did well, the shoes would be sold at auction later that spring. If those sold well and someone big admired Dana’s work, he might be able to get enough funding to open his own store. It was a nice dream.
While he talked to Kara about this, he helped arrange the display in what he convinced her would be a more interesting display.
He figured that while he was busy with this, Whispers in the Trees must have gotten mixed up in the drawings of shoes he’d been showing Kara. He must have put it into his satchel by mistake before he left the store.
That, in itself, wouldn’t have been so bad. He could have just walked back to Unicorn Tech and returned it, along with an explanation and an apology. As it was, Dana was sure no amount of apologies would console Kara Cloe. And how was he to explain how a castle had suddenly appeared in Golden Gate Park?

Part One: Rated for Violence

It was a lucky thing that he lived so close to the park, really. Had he not been so panicked about the whole thing, he might remember to be grateful that the thing fell out of his satchel as he was walking past what used to be the Japanese Tea Garden. (Currently being remodeled.) The personal notebook Dana carried was a simple thing, only programmed as a calendar and for storing his music. Needless to say, he wasn’t good with this sort of thing. So pushing all the buttons on the eNovel wasn’t exactly the best idea.
Dana would later retell the story a thousand times and then some, but he would never quite be able to explain how the castle came to be there. The best explanation he could come up with was the eNovel’s system suddenly changing the perimeters of the hologram. But that was the scientific part of it. Somehow the castle was a solid, real thing, and as soon as Dana’s beat-up black boots touched the first stone step, the music came.
Obviously the eNovel’s soundtrack had been activated. Completely disregarding the fact that was walking into an imaginary place, Dana walked on, intrigued. The expression on his face was akin to one having stumbled upon heaps of treasures. He wasn’t an avid reader, really. Hadn’t picked up a good book in years. But upon seeing the parchment-colored stone of the halls, the draped tapestries, the rusty armor gathering dust there, and the sound of the whispering aspen filling him, he suddenly remembered what it had been like to sit on his window seat with an adventure story.
Dana felt like the hero slowly walking through a maze to encounter the fire-breathing dragon and rescue the fair damsel...
“Halt, human filth.”
Dana blinked. Somehow he’d wandered into the throne room and the music of the place had changed from gentle whispers and elegant piano to an eerie stillness accented by short bursts of violin.
A woman sat at the foot of the crumbling stone throne. At first glance Dana knew right away she was no ordinary woman. Her skin was ebony night, her loose, flowing hair with braids interwoven white as harsh, unforgiving snow, and her eyes as gold and piercing as those of a hawk.
Dana felt like a mouse.
A cornered mouse.
In the time it took him to register the fact that the woman must be a character out of the story, he found himself staring into the barrel of a pistol.
“Drop to your knees and say nothing, human, or Isto will gladly take your pathetic life.”
He wasted no time in doing as he was told, hoping he wouldn’t piss himself. The woman smirked, lowered the pistol, and fired.
He heard the shot as though from far off, and when he finally realized what had happened, he felt a horrible shock run through him. He wondered if it was really supposed to feel like this. Dying.
He blinked and looked down at his chest. Why wasn’t he bleeding?
“Xsa!” the woman cried. “What are you?” She almost looked frightened for a moment. Almost.
Dana picked up the empty eNovel and read the story summary on the back. At the very bottom was a box with a capital letter “T”. Like video games of the past, eNovels were sometimes rated. “For violence and mild language”, read the copy underneath the capital “T”. Dana heaved a relieved sigh. What an idiot, he scolded himself, thinking you could get killed by a fictional pistol. He almost laughed. He would have laughed, surely, if the woman hadn’t been standing over him, gold eyes bright, the tangle of loose hair and braids making her look demonic.

Part Two: The Distressed Damsel

Kara Cloe was not usually a meticulous woman. Her little house on the corner of Bradbury Street was a grand mess. The house was filled with books, the floor strewn with trinkets. It was rare that the floor could be seen in her bedroom. The kitchen was sheer organized chaos. If you walked into Unicorn Tech you wouldn’t peg her for that type of person. Everything in the shop was in its place. The eNovels were alphabetized, the monitors of the display notebooks clean, the technical manuals and magazines spread out like glossy fans on the shelves. Nothing out of place.
So when she did an inventory check before heading out for lunch, she was shocked to see there was a copy of Whispers in the Trees missing from the eNovel display. She spent a good twenty minutes hunting for it before letting herself wonder if it had been stolen. Upon further investigation, she discovered the trigger alarm over the door was defective again.
“Fairy’s arse,” she muttered.