I am SO SORRY that this took so long, I had actually gotten quite far along in the story and then the situation with Lu Han happened, and just as I was moving on from THAT the situation the thing with Jessica happened...and that really messed me up. I'm still not over that. But anyway I finished the first chapter and hopefully my muse is back, so let's get on with it.

Chapter 1 : A Discovery

“Today is the day,” Krystal whispered to her reflection. “Today I go see Jessica again.” She grinned and giggled to herself, and the wings on her back fluttered slightly. She gingerly touched the skin under the wings and winced when it throbbed. The open wounds had closed quickly, but they still hurt. It had only been three days since her wings had come out.

She’d woken up in the middle of the night, sweating all over, with pain unlike she’d ever felt before in her back. She rolled onto her stomach and screamed into her pillow, and then just as she felt her skin start to tear she passed out. When she woke up in the hospital, the first thing she saw was fluffy black feathers.

But she didn’t dwell on that memory. She knew she should probably feel a little upset about how the wings had come out, but now she was just excited. Krystal had gone home to pack her things and say goodbye to her parents, and now it was time to leave. Soon she would see her big sister again, and Jessica would see her wings. Jessica knew all along that Krystal was special like her, and that they should have gone to the Sanctuary together. But rules were rules, and the big Guardian who talked to her last time said that they really needed more proof before they could take Krystal with them. Unlike Jessica, Krystal didn’t have a weird symbol on her body. Well, -at the time she didn’t. But now she did—it was a dragon, with wide wings, and it was right on her wrist. She couldn’t wait to show it to her big sister.

A shiver went through Krystal’s body and she knew that her Guardian friend had arrived. She ran out of her room, down the stairs, and threw open the door before he could even knock. It was the same man from last time—he was tall and had wide shoulders, and huge black wings that almost touched the floor. Krystal could barely take her eyes off of them.

The man knelt down. “You can touch them, if you want.”

Last time Krystal had been too afraid, but now she eagerly raked her fingers through the feathers and tugged the wings open, so she could see how wide they were.

“Will mine get this big?” Krystal asked, and she grew even more excited at the thought.

“They might, it depends on how tall you get,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes!” Krystal shouted, and she ran upstairs to get her bags. She had two, and she was going to carry her stuffed bunny, Russell, because he couldn’t fit in her suitcase. She hugged her parents goodbye without much thought. She wouldn’t miss them.

When she walked out the door, she felt strange.

“Are you alright?”

Krystal nodded, hugging Russell tightly. “It just feels…big,” she said.

“I know,” the Guardian told her. “I felt the same way. It’s like, suddenly you can go anywhere you want, and you don’t know where you should start. It’s like you can’t even think.”

Krystal nodded again. “I want to see Jessica,” she said in a small voice. “I want my sister.”

“that’s where we’re going,” the man said. He led Jessica to a car and put her bags inside, and he said she could sit in the front seat.

“Do you remember my name?” He asked as he helped her buckle her seatbelt.

Krystal tried to remember. “Is it…Kris?”

He grinned at her. “Yes, it is! You have a very good memory.”

Krystal smiled proudly. “I’m the smartest little girl in the world.”

“You just might be,” Kris said. “But where you’re going, there are a lot of smart little girls.”

He started the car and they began to drive. “Is it very far?” Krystal asked.

“We should be there by dinner time,” Kris said. “Jessica told us that you like hamburgers and chocolate cake, so that’s what we’re going to have.”

Krystal suddenly felt like she was going to cry. “Sica remembers me?”

Kris reached over and held her hand. “She does, she never forgot about you. Didn’t you get her letters?”

“I did,” Krystal said, “But I didn’t know if she really remembered. She didn’t see me for so long, I thought she forgot.”

“She wanted us to come get you, but we didn’t know if you were one of the Guardians. We couldn’t take you away from your mommy and daddy until we knew for sure. We didn’t want to make a mistake, and hurt you and them.”

Krystal hugged her bunny tightly, hoping he would muffle the sound of her racing heart. “But I get to stay now, right? I don’t have to leave?”

“You get to stay,” Kris said, letting go of her hand to pat her wings. “These prove it. You’re a Guardian.”

A Guardian. The words sounded good, but scary. They were big, maybe too big for a little girl. But Jessica was a Guardian too, and as long as she was with her sister, Krystal knew she could do anything. She spent the whole ride asking Kris questions about her new home and what she would be doing. she would have to go to school, but it would be a better school where she could learn the things she really wanted to. She would live with eleven other girls and twelve boys, and some other people who Kris called “staff”. He said they were cooks and nurses, and things like that. Krystal wouldn’t spend much time with them, but she would need to respect them and treat them nicely.

Eventually Krystal fell asleep, and when she woke up it was because Kris was picking her up.

“Do you want to walk?” He asked.

Krystal shook her head and snuggled closer, covering her face with one small wing. It was bright out, and she was tired.

“Jessica is waiting for you.”

But she was asleep again.

The next time Krystal opened her eyes she found herself in a pink and white room, in a big bed. Russell was lying next to her, and she patted his head. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, and gasped.

“Jessica?”

Her sister sat at the foot of the bed, and she crawled forward and threw her arms around Krytal, hugging her tightly.

“Hi, Krystal,” She said. “I missed you so much.”

Krystal hugged her sister back twice as hard. “I missed you more!” She yelled, and then she started to cry. Jessica cried too, and for a long time all they did was hug and cry. When they stopped Jessica grabbed some tissues and carefully wiped Krystal’s face.

“No more crying,” she said firmly. “You’re here now and you’ll never leave, and neither will I. We’ll be together forever and ever.” She grinned widely, showing a gap in her front teeth. “You and I get to share a room! Look Krystal, isn’t it pretty? I got to pick the color myself, and I knew you liked pink too so it’s perfect! Are you hungry?”

Krystal nodded, and her stomach rumbled. Jessica giggled and slid off the bed, holding out her hand. “Come on, dinner is almost ready! We waited for you.”

The two of them skipped down the hall holding hands. The building they were in was an old palace, that much Krystal knew from Jessica’s letters. It was beautiful and big, and they had to go outside to get to the dining hall. The sun had just begun to set, and the whole sky was pink and orange. Krystal could smell hamburgers cooking, and she pulled ahead as she began to run faster. When the two of them burst through the doors, Krystal was surrounded by the smell of food and the sound of everyone talking all at once. The room was warm and cozy, and it already felt like home.

A few people saw Krystal and Jessica, and they waved. One little girl ran up and hugged Jessica, and then she hugged Krystal.

“I’m Yoona,” She said in a soft voice. “I was the last to arrive before you.”

Krystal took Yoona’s hand. “Then you can sit next to me and tell me who everyone is,” she said.

But introductions would have to wait until after dinner, because Krystal was starving. It was so nice to be with so many people, but especially with Jessica. As she ate, Krystal looked around the room at all the people. The boys were all older, and so were some of the girls, but a lot of the girls looked like they were Jessica’s age. For a while Krystal watched them, but she kept looking back to the older boys. Krystal had heard stories about them for as long as she could remember. She knew that a lot of them were married to each other, and as she watched them it was easy to pick out the couples. She didn’t know who Kris was married to, she was having a hard time deciding. There was one man with a pretty face and big eyes next to a tall man with big shoulders, and Krystal kept looking back at them. They almost seemed like twins, but she knew they weren’t. It was odd, but Krystal could almost feel something between them, the longer she looked.

“That’s Sehun and Lu Han,” Yoona whispered to her, following her gaze. “They’ve been married the longest. Their love story is legendary among the Guardians, but I don’t know all about it yet. They say they’ll tell me when I’m older.”

“How do you know that?” Krystal asked.

“Sehun is my mentor.” She pointed to an older girl. “That’s Amber, Lu Han is her mentor, which makes her my sister, kind of. Amber was the first Guardian in our Generation.”

“You know everything,” Krystal said, looking at Yoona in awe. “When will I know everything?”

Yoona shrugged. “I don’t know everything, not really. But I know a lot just from listening to everyone talk. You can pick up on a lot, if you know what to listen for. I’ll teach you someday.”

It was only her first day, but already Krystal had her sister, her mentor, and a new best friend. She was so excited to see what tomorrow would be like.

At ten years old Krystal was already an expert at flying. Even Kris was impressed with how good she had gotten, and he praised her focus and desire to learn. But it was flying, who wouldn’t be excited to learn? Ever since Kris had held Krystal in his arms and taken her for a short flight around the grounds, Krystal had been dying for the day when she would be able to fly like that all by herself. But now that she had mastered her gift, she had to learn to be a leader. That wasn’t so easy, and it was a lot less fun than flying.

Normally Krystal studied with Yoona, but Sehun had taken her on a trip so she could see a tornado. Krystal would have liked to study with the other girls, but for one thing everyone knew that if Jessica and Krystal were together, nothing would ever get done. And for another thing, Jessica studied with Tiffany, Sunny, and Hyoyeon, and they were all further along than Krystal was.

She sighed and looked down at the book she was supposed to be reading. She had to memorize all the laws of the Earth so that she would know when they were broken. It would take her years to do that, and she needed to start now. then when she was older, like Jinri’s age, she would study court cases. Sometimes she would know the crime, and sometimes she wouldn’t. Rolling her eyes at the book, Krystal slammed it shut and decided to go to the lakeside pavilion to meditate.

As she went past the kitchen she could smell hamburgers cooking and she stopped and closed her eyes. To this day, the smell always brought her back to the night she’d arrived at the Sanctuary. The happiest day of her life. So much had changed since then. She wasn’t a stranger anymore, and she’d come to love the Guardians as her extended family, each and every one of them. Her eleven older sisters, her three “dads” and her nine…she didn’t quite know what to call the other Guardians. Some of the girls called them uncles, or godfathers. But that didn’t sit right with Krystal. She couldn’t explain it, but they didn’t feel like that to her.

Krystal wondered if she would make that the topic of her meditation. She could think long and hard about that question and hopefully find an answer if she picked apart her feelings long enough. But she wasn’t alone at the pavilion—Minseok was there, too.

“I see someone is skipping her studies,” Minseok said with a frown, but Krystal knew he wasn’t angry.

She gave him her best pout and clasped her hands in front of her. “You won’t tell on me, will you? I’m meditating, that’s important too.”

Minseok grinned and ruffled her hair. “Alright, your secret is safe with me.”

Krystal cheered and swung her arms over the protective barrier, resting her head on them as she looked up at Minseok. “What are you doing out here?”

“Enjoying the view,” Minseok said. “I like to come here whenever I have time and just sit. Sometimes I talk to myself, sometimes someone will wander along and find me, and we’ll talk together. Even when I’m by myself, I never feel like I’m alone here.”

Krystal looked out at the lake. It was beautiful and peaceful, she could see why Minseok liked it. But as for the question of being alone…

“I feel alone,” she said.

She could tell that Minseok was surprised. “Really?”

She nodded. “The silence makes me feel like I’m alone. Even if there’s wind or birds, unless I can hear people I always feel like I’m the only person in the world.” She looked back at Minseok. “Have you ever felt that way?”

Minseok looked thoughtful. “Yes. But it was a long time ago. I don’t think I’ve felt like that since coming to the Palace.”

Krystal stayed silent for a few minutes. She looked back at the lake, her eyes darting between the water and the sky. The sun was just starting to set, the sky was still blue but somehow not. The air felt crisp and new, and there was a slight breeze blowing through the Pavilion.

Finally Krystal broke the silence. “Did you feel alone when you first got here? To this planet?”

She didn’t know why the Guardians had left their home, just that they had, and it was a long time ago. They saw the Great Leaving, as it was now called, and they wandered the Earth for a hundred years, thinking that they were the only people left.

“In a way,” Minseok said. “I had the other Guardians, so I never felt like I was truly alone. But I did feel sad, thinking about this big, empty planet.”

“Did you miss your home?”

Minseok hummed thoughtfully. “Pieces of it,” he said. “I missed our old Sanctuary, and our libraries, and our forests. And the people, of course. But I quickly realized that for me, home was wherever my brothers were.”

Krystal looked back up at the sky. “Where is your planet?” she asked.

Minseok chuckled. “You won’t be able to see it from here, especially not this time of year. During summer is when earth aligns with our planet, supposedly. I’m not much for the stars, but Sehun and Lu Han have studied them and they say that’s the direction of our planet.”

This was why Krystal liked talking to Minseok—Kris hardly ever talked about his home, she didn’t think he liked to, but Minseok would usually tell her a few things if she asked the right way. After Kris, Suho and Tao, Krystal liked Minseok best. Maybe it was because he was Jessica’s mentor.

“Do you think you’ll ever go back?” Krystal asked.

Minseok smiled and shrugged. “I hope so.” He ruffled her hair again. “Better get to meditating, kiddo, before Kris finds out what you’ve been doing. Mind if I join you?”

Krystal, of course, didn’t mind at all, and the two of them settled in to meditate. It didn’t take long for Krystal to clear her mind and enter into a relaxed state, but she’d forgotten her initial topic of meditation. Instead she found herself on an entirely different topic, one which kept her mind focused for longer than she intended. Eventually Minseok had to bring her out of her daze.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Minseok apologized, “But dinner is ready. I can save you something, if you would like.”

Krystal got to her feet. “I’ll go, I’m hungry anyway.”

She held Minseok’s hand as they walked to the dining hall. Since it was cooler, they weren’t going to eat in the Pavilion.

“You’re a lot like Kris,” Minseok said suddenly. “You’re able to slip into a meditation trance so easily. It’s never been that way for me. I’m jealous of you.”

Another little tidbit of information that Krystal wasn’t expecting. She grinned and walked with a new spring in her step, her free hand curled in a tight fist, as if she was literally holding on to her newly discovered knowledge.

But that night when Krystal was lying next to Jessica in their bed, she couldn’t ignore what had been on her mind for the last few hours. She was worried, and a little nervous, and she had to get it off her chest.

“Jessica?”

Her sister stirred. At fifteen she was becoming a young woman, beautiful and graceful, an ethereal creature that Krystal sometimes didn’t recognize as her own sister. When Jessica turned over, her hair in her face and her eyes half shut, Krystal calmed slightly. This was the human she remembered.

“Do you ever feel like we’re not being told something? Like, something really big?”

Jessica seemed more alert. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Krystal sat up, her brow furrowed, biting her lip. “It’s like I can feel it, sometimes. This thing between the older Guardians, something they all know, and it holds them back. Somehow. Sometimes I think they’re on the verge of saying something, but the secret pulls them back.” She looked at Jessica. “Do you ever feel like that?”

Jessica looked puzzled. “I don’t know. I guess so. But there’s lots of things they haven’t told us.”

“Like what?” Krystal asked.

“Well, it’s a secret, so I don’t know,” Jessica said. “But I guess like…how Lu Han sometimes wakes up before anyone else, and he has dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept all night. And how sometimes Chen looks at Kai like he’s scared, but then it goes away the second Kai hugs him or something.”

“But that secrets between them. This feels like something they’re purposely hiding just from us.”

Jessica frowned. “I really don’t know, Krystal. I can’t say I’ve ever felt that way, but it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong.”

It wasn’t the answer Krystal had been looking for, but she didn’t know how else she could try to convince her sister.

“Maybe I’ll be able to explain it better after I get some sleep,” Krystal muttered to herself. She laid down and Jessica snuggled up behind her and threw her arm over Krystal’s waist.

“Sleep well,” Jessica sighed.

Kris woke up at dawn with a shivery feeling down his spine. He sat up quickly, the feathers on his wings standing on end. Suho and Tao started to wake up, they looked at him sleepily.

“What’s the matter?” Tao asked, rubbing his eyes.

Kris shook his head. “I don’t know. Something is…off.”

That got Suho’s attention and he sat up as well. “Is it the girls?” He asked.

“No,” Kris said. “I mean, sort of. It’s Krystal.” He didn’t know how he knew, he just did. “I’m going to go find her.”

“Find her?” Tao echoed. “Isn’t she in bed?”

“No,” Kris said, standing up. “She’s not. I think she’s in the library.” Again, he didn’t know how he knew this. He threw a sweater on over his pajamas and put on his shoes, and then he took off running.

The library was a good distance away, and as soon as Kris was outside he threw out his wings and let them catch the chilly air. Now that he was out he was frantic, he knew Krystal needed him but he didn’t know if she was hurt, or scared, or even conscious. When he got to the library the door was open, and he ran inside. He strained his ears, and he caught the faint sound of hurried footsteps. He ran down the corridor, past dozens of shelves, and finally halted at one. He turned and saw Krystal at the other end of the aisle. She was pale and shaking, and her eyes were filled with tears. Kris started towards her but she got to him first. She threw herself into his arms and Kris just barely caught her.

“By the Tree,” Kris gasped, “You’re frozen!” She had to have been out here for hours, with how cold she was. Kris took off his sweater and wrapped around her, and he finally got a good look at her face. She looked terrified.

“What happened?” Kris asked. “Why are you out here?”

Krystal burst into tears. “I don’t know!” She wailed, “I w-woke up in here, and I w-was all alone! Except for this b-b-book…” She held it up, nearly whacking Kris in the face by accident. “It…it says something weird, I didn’t get a g-good look at it…”

Kris took the book and tucked Krystal against his chest. “It’s alright, darling,” he soothed, patting her back.

“I don’t know what happened,” Krystal sobbed. “I’m sorry!”

“It’s okay, you’re not in trouble,” Kris said quickly. “You’re not, I promise darling. You’re…” he caught sight of the page the book was open on and his blood ran cold. It was a copy of one of the books from their own planet—the very same book that Kris had found when he was Krystal’s age, the one that had first told him about Mama.

Kris somehow managed to get Krystal back inside. He brought her to the kitchen and made her hot chocolate, and sat with her by the fire until she warmed up. When Suho and Tao found them, Kris merely pointed to the book on the table and waited for their reactions. He saw their faces go white as they realized what Kris was still trying to come to terms with. Somehow, Krystal had sleepwalked her way to finding out about Mama, exactly the same way Kris had hundreds of years ago.

Eventually Krystal fell asleep, exhausted from the emotional upheaval she’d just had, and the first thing Kris said was, “This is too much to be mere coincidence.”

“But what does it mean?” Suho whispered. “Is it…is it here?”

“No,” Tao said, “That’s not it. I think it’s the Tree.”

“That’s not it either,” Kris said. He stared down at Krystal, flashing back to the little girl who demanded to be brought alone to the Sanctuary with her sister, who had sprouted wings early on, who it seemed had not waited for the magic to find her, but had called it to her. It really seemed like Krystal was the one who decided that she would be a Guardian, not the Tree’s magic.

“It’s her,” Kris said. “Somehow…it’s her and the magic.”

Tao and Suho gaped at him. “What do you mean?”

“She’s a special girl,” Kris murmured. “From the very beginning, she has been. She’s not like the others. Even for a Guardian she’s so smart, and she knows herself, she knows how to talk to others…” he trailed off.

“What do we do?” Tao asked.

Kris sighed. “We haven’t told Jessica and the other older girls yet, because we knew Jessica would tell Krystal right away. I say we tell them all now, get it done with all at once. Krystal knows anyway, she’s known for a while that something is up. They need to know about Mama, and about our mission.”

Krystal knew that she was being watched. Or rather, monitored. The older Guardians wanted to see how she was reacting to what they had recently told her. and Krystal also knew that she was not reacting the way they expected her to, but she didn’t know how else she was supposed to react. Maybe they expected her to be scared? But she wasn’t scared. She wasn’t worried, either. It wasn’t that she felt nothing, it was just that she didn’t know what she did feel.

“How can you be so calm?!” Yoona demanded, pacing around Krystal and Jessica’s room. “I’m freaking out!”

“I’m not calm,” Krystal said calmly. “Well, I am,” she amended at Yoona’s glare, “I guess the magnitude just hasn’t hit me yet.”

“It’s a dark force that’s basically swallowed an entire planet!” Yoona cried, “How could the magnitude not have hit you yet?”

Krystal shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’m kind of…relieved. They were hiding something from us after all, I wasn’t misreading or imagining things. I was right. I guess I feel…validated.”

Yoona plopped down on the floor. “But a dark force. That’s swallowed an entire planet.”

“Because the old Guardians gave into it,” Krystal said. “Come on, weren’t you listening to the Tree? It admitted it made a mistake, and it wasn’t solely at fault. The old Guardians never gave it a chance to explain.”

“How can we possibly beat it?” Yoona moaned. “What can we do?”

Krystal shrugged. “Face it head on and tell it that it has no power over us?”

Yoona threw a pillow at her head. “This isn’t Labyrinth and you’re not going up against David Bowe!”

“Yeah I couldn’t get that lucky,” Krystal mumbled.

But even Kris was worried about her reaction, or lack thereof. He kept trying to talk to her about it, even taking away from their lessons to do so.

“Is there anything you want to ask me about? Do you want to talk about this?”

Krystal shook her head. “No, I just want to get back to our flying lesson!”

Kris wasn’t ready to let it go. “Krystal, do you really understand what it is we’ve said?”

“Of course I do,” Krystal said angrily, “Look, I don’t know what you want from me. Do you want me to cry, or get angry at you for not telling me sooner? Do you want me to be scared, do you want me to curl up in a little ball and whine that I want to go home to my mommy and daddy? Because I’m not going to do any of that. Kris, I apparently sleepwalked into a library, took out a book and flipped to the page about Mama, and I don’t remember any of it. I already had my freak out over this, and honestly it’s not even the weirdest thing that’s happened to me, that would be the giant pair of wings that ripped out of my back in the middle of the night.”

She was breathing heavily by the end of her speech, and Kris was looking at her oddly. He looked…sad.

“I know,” he said quietly. “And I know how that feels. Because…because all of that happened to me, too.” He looked her dead in the eye. “All of it.”

Krystal’s jaw dropped and she fell to her knees. “Even…even the book?”

Kris sat next to her. “I was about your age, too.” Sad wasn’t the word for the look on his face. He looked haunted. “I’m just worried that history is going to repeat itself.”

Krystal shook her head. “It won’t,” she said fiercely. “We’ll beat this thing, I know we will! I don’t know why all this freaky stuff is going on, but maybe it’s not a bad sign. Maybe it’s a good sign, maybe it happened so that we could be better prepared than you and your Generation were.”

Kris finally started to smile. “Perhaps that is the case. You’re a very special girl, Krystal, I can feel it every time I look at you. It scares me, a little, because I want so badly to protect you at all costs.”

“You can’t protect me from everything.”

Kris sighed. “I know. And I’m afraid that you’ll get hurt because I can’t keep you safe.”

Krystal gasped. “Oh. This is a parenting thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Kris said, “And someday you’ll know what it feels like, but for now all I can do is tell you that I’m always going to worry about you, even after we’ve defeated Mama.”

“But you just said it,” Krystal said, “We will defeat it. And until we do, could you please try not to worry so much? I promise that if I need you, I’ll come to you and ask for your help.”

Kris smiled and finally seemed to relax. “Will you really?”

Krystal lunged at Kris and hugged him tightly. “Of course I will, because I love you and I know that I can always count on you.”

“Oh, Krystal,” Kris choked, “I love you too, sweetie. My little girl…you’re growing up so fast.”

“Not too fast,” Krystal said. “I still haven’t reached maturity yet.”

“Yes,” Kris agreed, leaning back to wipe his eyes. “I suppose there’s that.”

Happy Halloween, guys!