-Hana

Daeryong frowned when he saw me, “What happened? You look exhausted.”

“Bad dream…” I muttered. Daeryong looked worriedly, but didn’t say more.

“Hello History Mistress,” I greeted my first tutor for the day.

“Hana, you look dead!” she frowned.

I sighed, “I had a really bad dream last night…”

“Do you think you’ll be okay for classes today?” she asked.

I nodded, “I’ll be fine. What’re we doing today?”

“We’ll be studying something new,” History Mistress smiled, pulling out two scrolls. She handed one to me.

When I unfurled it, I was surprised to see an old bedtime story, The Story of Agonia.

“We’re going to study a children’s story?” I frowned. I knew the story almost by heart. It had been my favorite story when I was young, and Grandma was especially good at telling it.

“Yes,” History Mistress said, a slight smile on her thin lips. Wrinkles formed at the corners of her eyes as she smiled, “We will be studying this famous bedtime story to see what it means.”

“What it means?” I raised an eyebrow. “It’s just an old myth about Agonia.”

“Well, could you tell me the story then?” she asked.

“In the story, this country once belonged to dragons, but the king’s younger brother and an evil magician worked together to overthrow the king and kill the other dragons. They succeed, but at the last moment, the magician kills the dragon and takes the throne for himself. The queen’s the only one who survived-”

“You label the magician as a male,” History Mistress observed. “Does it say so in the text?”

I looked down at my scroll, wondering why she was being so picky. After a quick read, I saw that there was no reference to the magician’s gender.

“Okay, then I guess the magician could be a man or woman, although I feel like most people assume him to be a man,” I said.

History Mistress nodded her head slowly, “Okay continue.”

“Well, the dragon queen escaped with her two eggs and guarded them until she died,” I said, scanning the scroll for other details. “Oh, and she made a spell that would keep them from hatching until the darkest day.”

“What do you think the author meant by the darkest day?” History Mistress inquired.

I was still confused about why exactly we were analyzing this bedtime story, but I didn’t argue.

“Um… a cloudy day? Or maybe a rainy day when the sun doesn’t come out?” I guessed.

“You’re on the right track. When the sun doesn’t come out… what can block the sun even more effectively than clouds?” History Mistress asked.

I frowned, unsure of what exactly she was talking about.

“Hana, have you ever heard of a solar eclipse?” she asked.

I raked my mind for any knowledge on the topic. I finally remembered something Grandma had told me a long time ago. “Isn't that when the moon blocks out the sun? Oh, you were talking about the moon, History Mistress?”

She nodded.

I looked back down at the scroll, “So I guess the author meant that the two eggs will be born during a solar eclipse.”

“And how were they to be born?”

“To a human mother,” I read from the scroll. “And they’ll look like humans.”

“Hana, if two baby’s are born at the same time, what do you call them?” History Mistress asked.

“Twins,” I answered.

She nodded with satisfaction and told me to continue.

I read the next line of the story, “Despite all odds, the two would meet twice. I never understood this part since I was young. I mean… they’re twins, so wouldn’t they grow up together? I don’t get the ‘meet twice’ part.”

“Well, what do you think Hana?”

I rested my chin on my hand and thought. “One of them dies?”

History Mistress shook her head no, “If one of them died, they wouldn’t be able to meet twice.”

“That’s true…” I said. “Then one of them gets lost…? As in, loses their mom?”

“Hm, that could work, couldn’t it?” she smiled. “Alright, we’re halfway done. Let’s do the rest.”

“Well, the two are gonna fight the people for revenge, right? Because of what the human did to the dragons,” I said. “And the moon… is going to kill the ‘old queen’.”

Maybe the moon was going to do what it did to me last night…

“And the rest is just a happily ever after,” I finished.

“Hm, Hana,” History Mistress said. “If I were to say this is a true story. Would you say everything in this story has already happened? As in, we are currently living in that happily ever after?”

I thought for a moment. “I would like to think so… but some things don’t match up. For example, the ‘dragon, human, and magic will sit in harmony’ line, there is no dragon or magic in our kingdom.” Then, I remembered something. “Oh, History Mistress, do you know when the last solar eclipse was? Maybe that could help.”

She gave me an amused look, “The last solar eclipse? Fairly recently, actually. 19 years ago, two years before you were born.”

I frowned, “Do solar eclipses happen often?”

“Depends on what kind of solar eclipse you are talking about,” History Mistress smiled. “There are partial solar eclipses and total solar eclipses. In a partial, only a part of the sun is blocked out, but in a total solar eclipse, the moon and the sun line up perfectly and the whole sun is blocked out entirely.”

“Oh…” I said, thinking. “Then I guess I would have to ask about total solar eclipses.”

“They happen very rarely,” she said. “Partials happen quite often, around a couple a decade, but a true total solar eclipse is very rare.”

“The one 19 years ago was a partial then?” I asked.

She shook her head no, “It was a total. The one before that was maybe 700 years ago, I believe.”

I let that sink in.

“Wait, History Mistress, I have a question,” I said. “How do you know so much about astrology when you’re a history teacher?”

She chuckled, “Ask any of your mistresses about astrology. We all know a lot about it.”

***

“Grandma,” I said, sitting besides her in front of the fire. She was knitting again while mumbling something to herself. “I learned about solar eclipses today. I heard there was one 19 years ago. Did you see it?”

An amused look flashed in her eyes. “You learned about it in class today? Ah, of course I saw it 19 years ago.”

“What was it like?” I asked excitedly.

“I remember… it happened a little past lunch time,” Grandma said, setting down her knitting needles. “A slow shadow was getting closer, so I thought a cloud was passing by the sun. But when I looked up, it wasn’t a cloud, but the moon that was slowly moving in front of the sun until it block the sun out completely, turning day into night.” She sighed, a distant look in her eyes. “It was a day that the moon was more powerful than the sun.”

i literally just abandoned all my other stories for this one... AHAHAHAH OMGGG TASTY TASTY TASTYYYY