Chapter 5: Romana

~Three Months Later~

Since I was done with my chores I headed downstairs to the living room to read something. I closed my eyes, picked a random book, and sat down. 

I opened it to the middle and read the page. As it turned out, it was a poetry book about love. Since I didn't really enjoy love poems, I closed the book and sat back on the sofa to think. Nothing had come of the fire in the sink. I had learned to control what I called my  "fire powers" a little better. I still hadn't told Robert, I wanted to learn to control it a bit more before I told him. I didn't want to accidentally set him on fire or something. 

---

The next morning I was washing the dishes from breakfast when Robert snuck up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. "Oi, I need to talk to you." 

"Can I finish these dishes first?"

"No. You need to come right now." 

"Okay, okay." I left the uncleaned dishes in the sink and followed him up to the attic, a place where William never went and would not be able to find us. 

When we where there and seated on the mouldy sofa, Robert turned to me excitedly. "I fixed it! I fixed the teleport!!"

I grinned happily. "Can I see?" Robert passed it to me and I could see that the buttons were flashing like they should and it was no longer smoking. "So, when should we leave?" I asked him.

"Well, maybe tomorrow or the day after. After we've said goodbye to William."

I nodded. "Sounds good. Speaking of things we need to tell each other, I have something I need to show you." I walked over to the high chair and raised my hands.

Robert gaped at me. "How did you just do that? I know how to create fire with my wand but...I mean...like...how?"

"I dunno...I was cleaning the sink in the bathroom one day and I started a fire..."

"And nobody noticed?"

"Well, my fires kinda put themselves out."

"Mine don't. Watch this." Robert pulled out his wand and began a fire spell.

He managed to set fire to the floor, which he had to put out with his wand. He looked back at me and then stared down at his wand. "I wonder if I can do it. You know, start temporary fires without my wand." 

I shrugged. "I dunno, maybe...But I've never heard of anyone being able to do it before." 

Robert opened his mouth to say something, but got distracted by his watch. "Eek, William will be home in like an hour. Grace, you should probably finish those dishes. And I need to finish magically making fake shoes." 

"Yup, ok." I said, following Robert down the stairs. 

---

"Where is he? He was supposed to be home like two hours ago." said Robert, pacing back and forth.

"Maybe the party ran late." I said unconvincingly, with a huge yawn. "Whatever. I'm going to take a nap. Maybe he'll be back later."

---

Robert threw a pillow at my face. "Get uuuup. You've been asleep for hours."

"Wait, is William back yet?" I asked him sleepily.

"No...I don't know what's happened to him. It's eight in the morning, he's never come back this late."

"I suppose it's time to go then." I told him a bit sadly.

He simply nodded and picked up the teleport.

---

The first thing I noticed when we appeared on the side of a hill was that we were back in our old clothes again. I nudged Robert and pointed at our clothes.

Robert looked confused, but quite happy. "Wait, does this mean we're back in our own time again?"

I was about to answer him when I saw a red haired girl running towards us. "Hey, maybe she can tell us the time." I suggested, and then started walking towards her to get her attention.

I waved, and she came over. "Hi, I'm Romana. Who are you? I've never seen anyone else around here that are my age. Well apart from...nah, they don't count."

I smiled at her and introduced us. "Hi, I'm Grace and this is Robert. We're from Sunset Valley, and we're kinda lost. Where is this, and what is the date, exactly?"

She grinned. "No problem. You're at Ni-hay-sa-lu-kay-on-li. I've never heard of Sunset Valley. What's the address? Oh, and it's 2013."

"Ni-what-what-what?" asked Robert from behind me.

"Ni-hay-sa-lu-kay-on-li. You came through the gate, didn't you?"

"The what now?" asked Robert in a confused voice.

"Uh, Edward calls it the chappa'ai sometimes? Don't know why though."

The Chappa'ai...I knew that from somewhere. An image of a strange round gate appeared in my head, with symbols and red lights on the sides and a strange watery center. "No, we didn't actually. We came here by, um, accident." I told her, just as it started to rain.

Romana looked worriedly up at the sky. "Come on, you can stay at my house." she said, leading the way down the hill. "Oh, and is Sunset Valley your planet, or your village?"

"Village." I said quietly, following her. "Earth's our planet."

---

Romana knocked on a strange glowing red door, yelling. "Oi, Edward, come out here! We've got visitors! They're my age!"

Then she stepped back, and the door opened.

A green-skinned man walked out, with glowing yellow eyes and brown hair. Romana ran up to him excitedly. "Ed, these are my friends Grace and Robert. They're from Sunset Valley. Can they stay here for a while? Pleeeease?"

He stared at her and said simply, "Planet or Village?"

She grinned. "Village. Earth's the planet."

Edward slowly turned around and stared at us. For some reason I felt myself shiver.

He slowly turned back to Romana. "How dare you bring humans from Earth here! Did you even look at their clothing? And what have I said about talking to strangers?"

"Whoa, I didn't know, okay? Besides, what does them being form Earth have to do with anything?"

"Everything! They probably know you're mother, she's still trying to find you..."

"Wait what?" It was Romana who looked confused now.

I grabbed Robert's hand and hissed "Robert, I think it's time to go."

"Agreed." Robert whispered back, and reached into his pocket for the teleport.

Just as he was pushing it, Romana ran over and grabbed his arm. "Wait!"

Too late. We took Romana with us, leaving a fuming Edward.

~

Okay, so sorry for the long chapter, but I felt like I should because I haven't posted in a while. Sorry about that too. -_- Also, I'm sorry if the writing seemed a bit rushed for the last bit, my dad had been telling me to go to bed. :( (I know, a lot of "sorrys" XD)

But yay! I've introduced the third main character! I don't know how long it will take for her bio, so you might have to wait on that. :/

Anyway, I hope you liked the chapter! Comment please! ^-^

(Thanks to my little sister for coming up with the Romana character. :) Edward and her are both inspired from Stargate Atlantis)

Chapter 4: Sponges and Shoes

We ended up under a willow tree. There was a beautiful half moon, and it was really bright. I glanced down at the (now smoking) teleport. 

1852 A.D. 

"Well this is good." I told Robert with a smile. "We're in Victorian times now. At least people here speak English..." 

Robert looked even happier than I was. "And there's a HOUSE!!!!!"

"Huh?"

"A house. There."

Robert pointed. 

I slipped the teleport into my pocket. "Good enough for me. Let's go." I led the way, with Robert. We climbed a short flight of steps up to what looked like the front door. I took a deep breath, and knocked. 

The door was opened by a red haired man, who immediately invited us in. "Please, come in. You must be Zelda and Horace...I'm very sorry to hear about the fire. It's funny, just yesterday your older brother told me he had found another place for you. Oh well, you can stay here as soon as he can buy a house big enough for the three of you."

Robert looked at me, confused. I shrugged and, making sure the man didn't see me, mouthed "go with it" at him. We turned our attention back to the man, who was talking again. 

"I, of course, am William Charlwood. You can call me William. It's very late. You should really get some rest, I'll show you two to your room." Without waiting for us to answer, he led us up the stairs and into a small room off the hall. 

"You should be quite comfortable here. Come down to the Dining Room in the morning, for breakfast. We can talk more then. Have a good night." 

And with that, he left, without letting us say anything at all. I moved over to the bed, and sat down slowly. The bed was kind of...stiff. Robert interrupted my thoughts. "Is it just me, or did we just get somewhere to stay for the night...did he call me Horace? What are we going to tell him? That we go by our middle names? And are you Zelda? Or did I hear that wrong? And why was the teleport smoking like that? And I mean it-" 

"Shh. Wait a sec." I told him. He talked very fast when he was nervous. "Uh, going by our middle names sounds fine. And we'll just have to figure out our last names later." 

Robert interrupted me with a huge yawn. "On second thoughts, we can figure all of this out later. I'm going to bed." He gave another yawn and began digging through the large wardrobe in the corner, looking for some suitable pajamas.

---

The next morning, after we had finished eating breakfast, William gave us a quick explanation of what we would be doing here until we "got back to our family".

"I'm going to allow you to stay here, but you have to find work. I don't think I have the money to support two new children right now. You see, I inherited this estate from my grandmother.... Zelda, I believe your brother mentioned that you've had some experience with cleaning and cooking? And Horace, your brother said you were training to become a shoemaker? There is a shoe shop in town, and they are looking for workers. You should be able to get a job there."

I answered for the both of us. "Yes! I mean, I'm a rather terrible cook, but I can if I need to. And I suppose I can get work...cleaning...houses... And Horace really wants to be a shoemaker! Don't you, Horace?" I looked at Robert expectantly and kicked him under the table.

"What? Oh yeah, shoemaking is....great!! I love making shoes!" he said, with a huge fake grin.

---

Once William left the room, my eyes widened. "Robert, I've never cleaned anything in my life. At home we always used to clean things by magic."

Robert shrugged. "Do it by magic then. Just don't let William see you. I, on the other hand, have a bigger problem. I've never made a shoe in my life, and now I have to work at a shoe shop. Seriously, we need to get out of here."

"That's nice, Robert, but we can't. I'm pretty sure our teleport fried itself."

"We fried it." Robert corrected me with an out of place grin.

"Whatever. The point is, we can fix it, but it will probably take a while. Until then, we're stuck here."

"Stuck here? STUCK HERE?!" Robert yelped, jumping in surprise. "But we can't!! I hate Victorian times!!"

"Uh, calm down. Until then, we'll just have to play along....cleaning..."

"And shoemaking..." Robert pointed out to me, looking utterly terrified. "Why shoes, of all things?"

William's voice interrupted us, and his head poked through the door. "You two need anything? Zelda, I'm pretty sure there's an old servants uniform in the dresser in the attic. You can do chores around here until we find work for you. Horace, you as well. The shoe shop isn't hiring right now, so we'll just have to wait for a spot to open up." With that, his head disappeared and I could hear him whistling as he went upstairs.

---

I managed to find an incomplete servants outfit. I shook my head with a yawn and headed downstairs. William had told me there was a dirty sink in his bathroom. Great. My first chore.

I quietly scrubbed the sink while I thought about all that had happened. Just two days ago, I had been working on a math project. Now, I was servant in Victorian times. Funny, how things could change so fast. I finished scrubbing the first sink and had just started the other when I felt my hand get hot. The next thing I knew, the sink was on fire. 

 I dropped the sponge in surprise and just stared. What the hell had I just done?

~

Hope you enjoyed my latest chapter ^^ Sorry it took so long, school was busy and I couldn't get on Sims to take screenshots. I was going to put more in this one, but I decided it was long enough. Don't worry, William will get quite important eventually. :) I'm thinking of introducing the third main character in the next chapter or the chapter after that, tell me what you think! :D

Anyway, that's it for now, and have a very nice day! :3

OMG o.O

I just realized I have to create and introduce all of the characters without pictures on the characters page before I can even start the real story. This will be fun T.T 

~Lilja 

PS: Oh and if you think you recognize some of the TV shows that inspired some of the names, please comment on the characters page! ^^ Most of the characters are inspired from my favorite books and TV shows. :)