Academy and the Honey Stand

Dear Imena,

After becoming a queen at five years old, I started attending the Hybrid Academy with other hybrid children. There, we learn every type of magic, combat, and defense techniques that are known across all five realms. By the time I became queen, everyone knew I was trihybrid, but the fact that I was a powerful trihybrid who also held some authority terrified people. Especially classmates. The only ones who didn't fear me outside of family were the other council members. Being the youngest of the members, they all looked out for me in their own way.

The Aries King Adam is my cousin, and he became very protective over me when I started attending Academy. Two years my senior, he made it his job to make sure no one messed with me. The Capricorn King James was my first friend, as a matter of fact he's still my best friend, and he's another one that decided it was his job to watch over me. For my first two years that's just how it was, me and James are the same age so we had a lot of classes together and most of the time I only talked to him during school since all my other classmates were afraid of me. James and I did everything together and were almost always together. We had nicknames only we called each other, mostly because James didn't like being called Jamie and I refused to change it.

Along with academy in the Vail, my parents were raising me on earth as well, so I also attended elementary school in a small town on earth. I took a liking to learning and on my free time I did a lot of reading, most of it was fantasy, but I did do a lot of reading on the combat techniques I was learning at Academy as well.

Adam convinced my parents to build a gym behind the castle in my division and fill it with weapons and other training supplies so I can put my knowledge of combat into action. I've spent a lot of time training in there over the years.

I didn't make any other friends in the Vail until my third and fourth year at Academy. My third year, I remember I was around seven or eight at the time, James and I went to a farmers market in the Vail. Our parents worked full time jobs on earth, so they hired Ms. Charlotte to watch us when we we weren't at school. She was a small, green-eyed, black haired beauty. She took us to that farmers market and stopped to look at something so we stopped with her.

James and I saw two boys playing in the dirt near a honey stand and, since I wasn't very interested in what Ms. Charlotte was doing, I waddled off to say hello to the boys and James followed to make sure I knew how much trouble we could get into for wandering off.

"Hello" I said when I walked up to the boys. Two pairs of brown eyes looked up at me. The boys looked exactly the same. One stood up and put out his hand,

"Hi, I'm Lucas, and this is my brother Marcus. What's your name?" he said.

"I'm Spirit, and this is Jamie." I replied and shook his hand. I got a glare from James. "Lucas, why do you and Marcus look the same?" I asked and got another glare from James. Apparently I was being rude.

"We're twins. Haven't you ever seen twins before?" Marcus said. I shook my head no. It was quiet for a minute, then Lucas and Marcus looked at each other, shrugged, and Lucas said

"Do you want to play with us? We're trying to make sandcastles with the dirt." Keep in mind we were seven and had never actually been to the beach or made a sandcastle, we had no idea what we were doing. But we tried to make a sandcastle, failed, and ended up chasing and throwing dirt at each other. By the time Ms. Charlotte found us, the sun was setting and she was very angry that we had wandered off, but she was even more angry when she saw who James and I were playing with.

Apparently, the twins' family was very poor, and everyone but us kids knew about it. Ms. Charlotte told James and I that we shouldn't play with them since we are royalty, but I didn't like that, I liked being around other kids my age that weren't afraid of me. So I asked Ms. Charlotte why they were poor, she didn't have an answer.

The twin's mom had them next to her, she was watching us and Ms. Charlotte, and she was standing next to the honey stand.

"Lucas, are you guys the ones selling the honey at that stand?" I asked. Lucas nodded. I thought about that for a minute, then reached into the pockets of my dress and pulled out the $10 my parents gave me to spend at the market and waddled over to the twin's mom.

"Is this enough to buy some honey?" I asked her.

Surprised, she asked me why I wanted to buy honey. I told her I didn't want her and the twins to be poor anymore. She smiled at me, and had her husband bring a jar of honey out for me. They insisted it was ok that I don't pay, but I slipped the money into the mom's apron pocket anyway.

"So, now that you're not poor, will you guys be my friend?" I asked the twins, who happily said yes. So we made plans to play again tomorrow, then Jamie and I waved goodbye and waddled back to my castle with the jar of honey.

That's how I met the twins, and they're still some of my closest friends. They also still call James "Jamie" to annoy him.

- 𝒮. 𝑅𝑜𝓈𝑒