As soon as I saw the statue, I immediately felt better. There was no real reason, but it had brought me comfort to go there and pray in the past.

Of course, it wasn't the same statue --- or was it? I hadn't really understood yet what was illusion and what not.

"The last time we saw her, I didn't notice she was made of salt," Jonathan pointed out. 

"This one is," I confirmed. "It's quite a feat, if you think on it. She's as refined as if she was made of marble, but salt is definitely harder to sculpt."

"It makes you think," I added. "That maybe she wasn't sculpted."

I traced her tears with my fingers, caressed the garland of stars woven in her fine wavy hair. I was the kind of person who wouldn't be caught dead doing this to a real person, but I had no problem showing affection to what was to me a little more than an object.

Jonathan looked at me with a puzzled expression. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought he might have even appeared a little wistful.

"How do we know she is what we're looking for?" Jonathan asked her.

"That's why I'm touching her."

"Of course," he commented, but he seemed less confused now.

"It's harder here to make a connection. My powers are either draining, as Cora's did, or this dimension simply sucks," I shrugged.

Jonathan was too polite to say it, but we both knew it. I had to try harder. We had come so far, and we would be left with no other choice but trying to find help somewhere else, if this didn't work. Cora had already gone back home, and we didn't want to take the chance of not being able to make it back ourselves.

Please, I thought. Please, reveal yourself to me.

I thought it over and over, pressing so hard into her face I would have smudged her features, had they not been as hard as rock.

Just like in our home dimension, pressuring her made things worse.

I felt myself getting thrown back as if by an invisible force, and I felt a rib cracking as I landed.

This time, however, something unexpected happened. I saw an apparition that looked just like a real-life version of the statue glaring at me. As if my lovely friend had been some sort of ghost all along, only preserved in that form.

I had guessed at it, especially when I stated aloud she probably hadn't been sculpted, but I wasn't expecting her to really exist.

Now I couldn't help but wonder whether she thought of me as a friend (probably not), or how annoying my prayers had been, for that matter.

"Roman!" Jonathan screamed. "Are you alright?"

"I... I think so," I said, wincing when I tried to sit.

"You didn't ask for help," the apparition told me, looking surprised. Her features, which had been very expressive even encased in salt, now were very dynamic.

"Often, people come here," she explained. "They ask for things. And they usually don't have the nerve to touch me, but I'll forgive you --- I know it helps managing your powers."

I still couldn't help but blush as I recalled the ease with which I'd run my finger through her hair. That hadn't been necessary, but I could only explain it in one way. She was so powerful, I'd been drawn to it. I certainly knew that if I found her attractive, it was only remotely, as one would do with something untouchable, like the moon.

"You didn't ask me for anything that would benefit you or your friend," she went on. "You prayed that I would reveal myself. It's touching. If I were to answer your prayer, Prophet, it would give me freedom."

Jonathan and I didn't ask why or how. We figured it must have worked like it usually did with beings from the realm of the dead. Letting go of past grudges helped them move on.

We exchanged an alarmed look, however. If she had to help us, what was the right decision to make? Set her free, or don't? And could we stand to force her to remain imprisoned just for our sake?

However, it turned out it wasn't a problem.

"I will not grant your wish," she said. "I'm not sorry I threw you away and hurt you. You probably meant well, but I'm not taking chances. The last time I took a chance, it ended the way you can see. I turned into a statue of salt, forever unmoving, tears permanently plastered on face. I can only grant a few occasional visions to Prophets, and I am glad Roman has come to me for help before. But I will not help you now."

I was about to bite back, but Jonathan stopped me.

"Okay," he said agreeably. "We understand. We won't trouble you anymore."

Before I could add anything, he helped me up. 

"Let's go eat something," he told me. "If it's anything like the Solima of the demonic doubles, then all my favorite restaurants were actually there."

I didn't point out that this Solima seemed uninhabitated.

"I swear this berry isn't poisonous," Jonathan told me later, forcing it into my mouth. "Alexandra told me all the plants, berries and mushrooms one could eat. She used to say that perhaps one day we would have to be on the run, given the content we printed on our newspaper."

"If you didn't try to run every time the guard caught you," I protested. "I doubt you were planning to."

"Running from guards is exhausting and futile," Jonathan reasoned. "Especially if one plans to stay in the same headquarters, and print other news. I meant to say, running away from good. In case what we were doing would finally cross the fragile line between freedom of expression and illegality."

"Fine," I said. Then, since I apparently couldn't stop from making a fool out of myself, "Were you and Alexandra close?"

"We were friends," Jonathan said, plucking a mushroom nearby. "She liked girls."

"That's not what I meant," I replied hastily. I was starting to like Jonathan, but I couldn't get my hopes too high. Even if there wasn't Alexandra, there must have been somebody else.

And, anyway, I'd never had a real friend --- or somebody who actually cared about me. I didn't want to read into it more than I should have had.

"Why didn't we put up a fight back there?" I asked him. "Do you think she might not be able to help us?"

"No," Jonathan commented. "I think she is. But it was obviously useless to get on her nerves now. We need to come back with an actual plan."

"But should we let her tell her story?" I pondered. "What if, when she does, she just disappears, like Mira's sister?"

"You asked her to reveal herself because you wanted to know if she could give us an insight, right?"

I nodded.

"Then I think, since she liked your choice of words, that what she tells us will help us understand if she can, and why."

"It's not fair," I complained. "This journey has been hard enough without this problem. Nobody warned us that we could meet a supernatural being that could simply decide not to help us."

"To be fair," Jonathan corrected me. "Nobody either knew what we were going to meet, or they weren't going to tell us. Since we've come so far, I would like to remain optimistic."

"Okay," I agreed. "It's just that I have a feeling this cannot be solved by either our powers or our weapons, and I've never felt less suited for a task."

I understood that had been the reason why Jonathan had said we should come up with a plan. Neither of us had ever forced anybody to do our bidding after hearing them say no, both out of simple respect, and because we had been raised by people who'd never let us stood up to them when it came to our requests.

"Maybe you should try next time," I told him. "You said yourself you could talk your way out of any situation."

"I never exactly put it like that, but it's true that I have trained myself to be smooth," Jonathan admitted. "Maybe I could stand a chance, but I'd like to know more about the reasons why she said no. It would help me understand what she fears might come out from collaborating with us."

"It might take us some time," he added then, darkly. "We should find ourselves a place to sleep."

Since this Solima had really turned out to be deserted, but the buildings were still there, we could choose any of them.

"Maybe the warehouse we share with Minx?" Jonathan proposed.

"Anything is better than were I used to live before," I commented.

"As for me, I would not like to see the house without my friends in it," he replied sadly.

"Well," I grinned. "The sky's the limit, right?"

"We don't have to settle," I explained, when my friend raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"We could go to King Abraham's residence!"

I thought Jonathan would be overjoyed to get a taste of how the King was really living --- in fact, as we had previously discovered from hunting down his favorite restaurants, the city seemed to have been abandoned recently, leaving all the furniture there.

I liked to believe it was a strange illusion, because I did not want to ask myself if something had driven the people away, and what.

Jonathan, however, didn't seem convinced.

"We cannot possibly know if the residence is empty too," he shook his head. "The Royal family could be there, the Court..."

"What Royal family?" I asked, a bit savagely. "The King is on his own. And maybe if the Court was there, we could get answers."

The reality was simpler, but I would not utter it in fear of appearing the simple peasant that I was. I had always wanted to see the residence up close, let alone getting inside!

But since I had sworn I would not lie to Jonathan anymore, I was scraping for any other piece of truth I could find.

Apparently, Jonathan knew me better than I thought.

"You just want to go there, don't you?"

I blushed. "I simply think it's a waste if we don't. It's like waking up in a dollhouse and go to sleep in the stables."

"I don't think there is a dollhouse with stables anywhere," Jonathan grinned.

"Okay," he laughed then. "We'll rest there, if only for the thrill. But can you make the trip? It's rather far from here, and you have a broken rib."

I nodded. 

"I wish I had healing powers," Jonathan sighed. "It's just not right that you can heal me every time I get injured, and I can't do the same for you. I tried, when you had the fever, but I can't fix all kinds of damage."

"You don't have to," I said, taken aback. "You... you have different powers. Besides, while I can't heal myself, I have a pretty fast recovery process. Trust me, I used to get in all sorts of fights when I was a kid, and I was always back on my feet in no time."

Jonathan smiled, but his eyes were still dark. My reply would have to be enough, but he didn't look entirely satisfied.

I already knew King Abraham's accomodation was quite big, as everybody who lived in Solima could see easily see the castle upon the hill, but this was something different. Upon a closer look, I realized the royal palace took up even more ground than I'd remembered.

When Jonathan noticed my inquiring look, he simply commented, "There is still the East Wing. It didn't burn down here."

I never thought too much about the tragic fire that had killed so many innocent people seventeen years before. I was just a poor commoner with nothing in common with the royals, and I had never even tried to think too deeply about their lives or their feelings before. However, now, my circumstances had changed --- I had met many living beings of all kinds, and I had traveled further than most of them. I was on an important mission, and I had met prominent people.

What's more, before all of this, I could lie to myself and think all rich people were rotten, as I deeply believed that only an harsh upbringing could accentuate the best you had to give, but that was a false perception that Atticus had planted in me due to his situation. Now, I was aware that every being could be good or evil regardless of the situation, and many were neither.

"What's wrong?" Jonathan, always perceptive, must have noticed the sad look on my face.

"I guess I never realized until now how King Abraham must feel," I admitted. I knew the old King rarely left his apartments, and only met up with the remaining members of the Court, trying to find --- or so the people said --- a way to cultivate immortality in order not to have his line die out.

The real reason, however, because he rarely appeared in public wasn't his old age, but the well-known fact that he had never trusted people again, after some specialists in the field had declared the fire had not been accidental.

"Now I don't know where we should sleep," I said. "If we don't see King Abraham's apartment, I definitely doubt we'll ever get the chance again. But the East Wing, however... no one in our dimension could ever see it again, or has ever seen it."

"Let's go to the East Wing," Jonathan proposed. "Unless," he frowned. "Do you think this dimension is close enough to ours that you would be able to feel the pain the fire has caused in our Solima? In that case, I wouldn't want to put you through that."

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "But let's hope it's just going to be just for one night. And we're both too curious to miss out on seeing the East Wing."

So we settled for that. Luckily, the palace was open. I would have felt like a total moron if it wasn't.

The East Wing contained served as the living quarters for Prince Ze'ev and his family. The night of the fire, someone must have made a plan to make sure all the members of the Court would be there as well. 

It was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. It had different wallpaper on every wall, some in simple pastel colors, and others depicting more complicated scenes. Jonathan and I were both tired, so were looking for a place to sleep, but we kept stealing glances at the other rooms. 

"That table is too much," Jonathan joked. "How many more kids do you think they were planning to have?"

I frowned. "I think all these seats are meant for guests, perhaps even foreign politicians."

"Yeah," Jonathan kept on teasing. "Or the members of the Court, when they still used to be hundreds, more like!"

It might have seem tasteless on our part to joke about the dead members of the Court or the possible siblings of deceased Prince Cypress, but we didn't mean it like that. We were simply two people who had never seen so many beautiful and expensive things in one place, and could not refrain ourselves from commenting every now on then on the people who could live there, as if they were no more than characters from story we'd heard.

Besides, in this illusion, those people weren't dead. Most likely.

"I like the carpets," I admitted. "If it wasn't so uneducated of me, I would love to brush the texture with my bare feet."

It seemed to me like something I would have enjoyed even more as a child, but I didn't feel like asking whether Jonathan thought Prince Cypress would have liked it or not.

"You're right," Jonathan said. "And it's not just the texture either. They are dyed in so many beautiful colors."

I could see he was about to add something, but felt awkward about it. I felt the same. To call those colors red, brown or hot pink would not have done them justice, but we had no name for the exact shades.

Finally, we spotted the bedrooms.

"I'm so tired!" Jonathan exclaimed. "I'm sleeping in the first one we find, I don't even care if there's only one bed or it's Prince Cypress'!"

I silently prayed we could find a guest room with two beds, even though he thankfully hadn't mentioned sharing.

"If it's Prince Cypress', you'll have to fit yourself inside a cradle," I commented instead. "Though it would be a better fit for you than I," I teased him.

"I refuse to get offended when the comment is made by a person who's well over six feet," Jonathan pouted.

"Do you ever think..." he added then, more shyly. "What the monarchy would be like if Prince Ze'ev had survived? How would he rule, what kind of young man would Prince Cypress be? He'd be just a little older than us..."

Actually, I never had thoughts along the lines of 'What the monarchy would be like if...' but I wasn't going to admit it aloud.

"It would be strange," I could only say. It was indeed strange to me, being the first time the thought had entered my head.

"Maybe the beauty standards would be different," Jonathan mused, almost half-asleep. "Right now in Meglenia people look up to those who look like they are from the legends of old, like Atticus, but the royal family has darker skin and thicker hair. If Cypress grew up to be beautiful, people could want to be like him. Of course, his mother is from Càd Irr, and her DNA has to be taken into account..."

"Okay," I gritted my teeth. "Let's find you a room."

I would not give him time to ask for my opinion, because I didn't want to admit I didn't know what DNA was.

I pushed open a door, almost on autopilot, and all the color left my face.

Even Jonathan sobered up.

It looked like we had come to the bedroom of the royal couple. They had a luxurious bed with silk sheets that looked warm and cozy, but even that could not distract us from the wallpaper.

All the walls were covered in beautiful but salacious drawings of people of all genders enjoying promiscous acts.

"Do you think it's like a fertility thing?" Jonathan asked in a whisper. "Or is it something from the Other Side? It would hardly be the first dirty thing we'd seen."

"Somehow," I replied. "I think they must have had this sense of humor, and picked out the illustrations themselves."

"Let's... go to another room," Jonathan said nervously.

But a gust of wind shut the door behind us.

"Don't bother trying to open it," Alefpeneash's voice said from somewhere in the dark. "Even your powers wouldn't help you. Consider it my treat."