“Cerys,” her friend said back. “I could hear you two talking.”

“I figured you could,” Cerys said with a sigh. “Is this too weird, us being here? It doesn’t seem quite possible.”

“I would suggest that it was a dream, but how can the four of us dream the same thing? We are really here, Cerys. As my mother would say, we should make the best of it.”

Sitting on a stool beside the tub, she groaned. “Sometimes it drives me crazy the way you always go with the flow. How can you be okay with being brought here against our will?”

“Would you have told him ‘no’ if you could have?” Himeko asked her. “If he had explained the situation and asked for your help?”

“I don’t know,” she sighed again.

“I remember earlier that you did not want to leave this land.”

“Maybe I did, but that was before I found out that we would have to go on some kind of quest to prevent murder and fight… well, who knows what!”

Himeko giggled, but stopped as soon as she saw that her friend was not amused. “He said to wait until tomorrow. I am inclined to agree. In the meantime, do you want the tub?”

“The way I’m tired, I would probably fall asleep and drown,” Cerys said, making her voice sound like it was going down beneath the water. “I’ll have my bath in the morning.”

“Good idea,” Himeko told her as she stood up and reached for a towel. “No use drowning when we have a king to look after.”

End of Chapter One

of

A Modern Legend