2. ndi gasped and took off running.
âAndi!â Ryan called after her halfheartedly, then shook his head and grinned. âSheâs a pistol, huh
honey?â
âWhere ever does she get it from?â I answered sarcastically, though I was a bit distracted.
3. It seemed that everyone had shown up for the big unveiling of town square, but more than that, quite
frankly, I was impressed.
4. Iâd commissioned the new town square because I figured we were getting enough people in the town,
now, it would be nice to have a spot in the center of it all to gather and meet and greet and stuff. One of
my better ideas, I think.
We have four households in Clitheroe now⊠my family, the Lariels, the Renaisses, and a new peasant
woman named Evalyn ne Maeve. Clitheroe was growing pretty rapidly, actually.
5. I did have an ulterior motive. You can buy âfestival foodâ and âcostumesâ at the town square, too, under
those brilliantly bright awnings. That is to say, you can buy your groceries and all the clothes youâll
ever need here, plus some cheap small electronics like cell phones and MP3 players.
Of course, I wonât be shopping here again. I canât be seen buying royal robes from under a red awning!
This is mostly for the peasantsâ benefit. Iâll be shopping for my clothes at Imeldaâs posh Silver Bobbin,
thank you very much.
I did test these little stores out, though. They work!
6. âMommy.â
I turned from the young cashier to see the wide, solemn eyes of my daughter. She fixed me with her
straightest look and said, âCan we please go up to the top of the clock tower? I think fairies live in the
gears. I saw one.â
7. I smiled and reached down to brush some dirt off her dress. What had she managed to get into already?
âJust give me a moment, dear. I need to make a tiny little speech, and then we can go see if we can find
those fairies, okay?â
Andi nodded gravely. âOkay.â
8. âWell,â I said once everyone was corralled into the festival grounds. âI think thatâs everyone. Shall we
get started?â
âGERSHINABOP!â Imeldaâs young sonâGalain? Yeah, Galainâscreamed at the top of his lungs.
âThe same to you,â I replied seriously. Imelda turned bright red and leaned over to quiet him down.
Dienda snickered quietly.
9. âWell, then.â I glanced to Ryan, who was smiling brightly out at the crowd, soaking in the attention.
âWelcome to the new town square,â I said. âBut more than that, welcome to Clitheroe!â
10. âIt is nowâŠâ I glanced up at the clock tower. ââŠround four. I can tell that by reading a clock that is
programmed to hours and minutes, you see.â
I got some pity laughter out of the crowd. Better than nothing, I guess.
11. âWell.â I felt like I was repeating myself. âI am very impressed with all of you. I handmade you all,
after all, and I picked you out of the rest of the townies for a reason. You have very great potential to be,
well, great. So hereâs to Clitheroe, and hereâs to us, and hereâs to permanent peace in our paradisiacal
time.â
âConnor,â Imelda hissed in a quiet voice I suspected I wasnât supposed to hear. âPay attention to the
queen. Youâre distracting Shannath.â
âBut Mom, who are they?â Shannath, the little girl in the orange dress, demanded.
15. âMy nameâs Meslar.â He rose one hand into the air and grinned. âI come in peace. Live long and
prosper, Clitheroans.â
16. Little Shannath tapped her father on the shoulder. âWhatâs he mean, Dad?â
âWhat does he mean, Shannath,â Imelda corrected. âUse proper grammar in front of the gods, please.â
18. I felt a tug at my clothes, and turned to see my daughter, tears threatening in her eyes. âBut, but
Mommy⊠the clock tower⊠the fairiesâŠâ she whispered.
âWeâll come back another day, Andi, promise,â I said. I looked up past her at Ryan. âTake her home,
please?â
âWonât argue this one with you,â he agreed, and came up to take Andiâs hand. She sniffed.
19. Once my people had left, I turned to the two gods before me, painfully aware that they were both
winged and in full god-form, and I had given up all those powers for the next several rounds. Not the
way I would prefer to approach dealing with an alien god.
âWhy donât you join me in the garden over there, gentlemen,â I said loftily. âThereâs benches and
things available for our comfort.â
âGood idea,â Meslar agreed. âNice place youâve got here. Atmospheric. Cool rainbows.â
21. âYeah, I do,â he said without ceremony. He paused to consider, then said, âYou remember me, right?â
âYes,â I replied promptly. He was a little hard to forget. Meslar lived across the street, as it were, in the
Ether Glades. He was only running one world, and it was a place of magic and powerful beings. Also he
liked to crash parties.
22. âGreat. And you like me, right?â
âWell enough. Canât say we know each other all that well, but you seem nice.â I frowned. âMeslar,
where is this going?â
23. Meslar smiled widely. âI want a corner of Clitheroe to house some of my people in. Just a couple of
witches, a small werewolf pack, one demigod, maybe a vampire or two. You wonât even notice âem.â
25. Meslarâs smile melted. âMy people are dying,â he said quietly. âTheir magic has been corrupted. The
world itself has become toxic. People are mutating, being ripped apart from the inside, being driven
mad by their own pain and destroying one another. The only way I can stop it is by finding them a new
home. One that isnât tainted and corrupted.â
32. I sat back down on the bench, feeling the emptiness of the town square around me. My heart ached for
the plight of Meslarâs people, but what choice did I have? Welcoming his refugees to my kingdom
would almost certainly mean the destruction of my own people.
Still, I felt this ugly guilt. I sat alone for some time before standing and returning home.
33. It was just past noon when I got back to the castle. Andi was at school, and I found Ryan busily working
away at that flower-arranging badge, even though Dienda Renaisse had opened a flower shop at the end
of the last round.
âHey there darling,â he said cheerfully when I opened the door. âHowâd it go?â
34. âHey, um, would you mind stopping for a moment? I⊠I think I need a hug.â
35. And so Keika Rheingold, God-Queen of Clitheroe, Goddess of Life and Creation, Queen of the World
and of the Gods, cried on her mortal husbandâs shoulder for the death of a world.
36. Well, that was that, moving on.
I made myself a delicious home-made lunch and had a good think about what I wanted to accomplish
this round. Andi would be having her teen birthday on Sunday, which meant we would need to have a
coming-of-age ball for her. Not that any of the boys in town were close enough to her age to be teens at
the same time, but oh well. Ryan hoped to get his gold flower arranging badge this week. As for me, I
wanted to get Queensgold up to rank ten. Specifically, I wanted it up to max rank before Imelda Lariel
got the Silver Bobbin up there. I am the queen, after all. I suffer no competition.
37. The first step to getting Queensgold to rank ten? Chess.
Donât ask.
38. Andi came home from school while I was still working away at chess, so Ryan had the privilege of
taking her upstairs to teach her how to study. She barely needed the help, of course. My girl is a genius.
39. After a long afternoon and evening of chess, I was trudging upstairs to bed and heard laughing and
shouting from Andiâs room on my way past. I wonder what she could have been doing?
40. Ryan, the greatest of all kings, not only maxed out his enthusiasm in arts and crafts, but also reached his
gold flower arranging badge early Tuesday morning. He set to work making up an inventory full of
snapdragonsâŠ
41. âŠbut not before we had a celebratory date.
Really, when youâre married to someone like Ryan, anything is worthy of a celebratory date.
42. In the course of that date, Ryan gave me a very special gift heâd made while he was slaving away
downstairs over that crafting bench.
43. A bouquet of perfect red roses, my favorite flower. Theyâre gorgeousâIâm pretty well certain that these
are the most flawless roses that will ever grow in Clitheroe everâand I put them on the end table in the
royal bedchamber.
44. The next morning found Andi and I, in our pajamas, in the bathroom, dancing together with my
daughter on my feet. A weird moment to be sure, but not one Iâm about to forget any time soon.
45. I was on my way to visit Queensgold when⊠this happened.
We hadnât been planning on having any more princes or princesses, and Ryan and I had thought we
were playing it safe on our date yesterday⊠but I guess not. Well, the more the merrier! My only
concern at this point was that Ryan would see it the same way.
46. I went on to Queensgold anyway. It wasnât like I was planning on doing any work, after all! I was just
going to get the place up to rank ten!
Man, I look a lot more pregnant in this picture than I was.
47. Step one: placing Ryanâs snapdragons in strategic places around the building.
48. Step two: setting the price of admission down to $1 an hour.
Painful, that.
49. And then I opened the place up and sat down to meditate.
Alright, so maybe itâs not the most dignified way to run a business. It might even have been kind of
awkward for my customers to play poker with their pregnant god-queen sitting cross-legged on the
floor behind them. But hey, if it works!
50. Well, awkward or not, my being there didnât seem to bother them that much. Everyone gathered in the
upstairs poker roomâthis picture is one of the slower momentsâand practically threw loyalty stars at
my feet.
51. I finally came out of my trance-like meditation when some customer threw the last star. I donât know
who it was; I was, after all, meditating.
I couldâve gone home right away⊠but who am I to waste a perfectly good opportunity of an outing to
Queensgold?
52. I closed down, set the ticket price back to $9999, and then reopened for business.
Donât be so surprised by this very bland picture. The open/closed sign was hidden in a nook by the
stairs during last roundâs remodel. Nice and out of the way.
53. I couldnât do much work before becoming totally exhausted (pregnant, you know), but I did manage to
get two customers in before I retired to my tent. Good enough⊠itâs not like weâre really hurting for
money at the palace.
Thanks to the snapdragons, those two did stay quite a while, though. I went home with $644,000 in my
pocket, which is a little over double what I came with. Mission: success.
Also, Iâm slightly amused by seeing the roofs of the other buildings in Clitheroe over the hedges behind
Queensgold. Lovely, arenât they?
54. When I did finally come home at sunset, Ryan was waiting for me on the front step, arms crossed and
an unreadable expression on his face. As I started climbing the steps, he said, âSo, I heard from Connor
that youâre pregnant.â
Oh. I gulped. âSurprise!â I said, a goofy grin on my face, trying to diffuse the situation.
55. âWe have an awful lot of steps here,â I said, puffing, as I reached the top. Ryan was still standing there,
immutable.
56. When he still didnât say anything, I sighed and took him by the hand. âMaybe this wasnât part of the
plan, but Iâm excited for the new baby.â
âItâs not that,â he said, face finally relaxing into that characteristic easy smile that seemed to be Ryanâs
default expression. âItâs just, I shouldnât have to hear about my own wifeâs pregnancy through my best
friend, you know? Itâs not right.â
âI know. Iâm really sorry. I popped on my way to work, but I probably should have gone right home and
told you,â I apologized. âIâm sorry.â
57. Ryan wrapped his arms around me. I couldnât see his face, but it sounded like he was still smiling when
he said, âThink itâll be a boy this time?â
I made a good choice in kings.
58. Wednesday was family night. Andi showed us a new song sheâd been practicing on the piano, and Ryan
and I danced to it. She really is very good. A genius even, you might say. A child prodigy on the piano.
And every other subject.
59. Ryan and I are building up a bit of a collection in front of the unofficial front door (itâs underneath the
stairs leading up to the official front door, you know). Iâll have to remember to have these taken
upstairs. For now⊠yeah, canât be bothered.
60. âThat sounds lovely, Ryan,â I said Thursday morning.
âThank you,â he replied.
âMind getting up for a sec?â
âHold on, let me finish this song.â
âItâs a preeeesent⊠something youâve been Wishing for for a very, very long tiiiiimeâŠâ
61. I had a private bathhouse built into the back of the palace walls. It includes a hot tub (which Ryan really
had been Wishing for) and a sauna. Eventually I hope to have a large version of something like this
opened to the public for everyone to enjoy, but for now, I had this built as a present for Ryan.
He liked it.
62. Of course he wanted to try it out right away, and of course I couldnât get in the hot tub or sauna because
of the incoming prince or princess. So, I reclined on the royal couch and Ryan relaxed into the warm
bubbly water, and we had a good, long chat about nothing important. It was fabulous.
63. When I established a rudimentary school system for the children of Clitheroe, I of course also put
together a special program and curriculum for royal (and any future noble) children. For now they
attend classes in the same building, but eventually it would be nice if they were moved out to their own
school.
It was finally time to get Andi started in that program as the founding child, so I invited the townie I
intended to run it, Alan Evans, over for dinner.
Unfortunately, Ryan and I were napping when he arrived, so Andi greeted him at the door for us.
64. My precious girl even took the initiative and showed Alan around Godseat Palace (as Iâve chosen to call
itâspiffy, am I right?). We havenât actually had any visitors inside yet, so he was naturally impressed
and amazed in appropriate proportions.
65. Awake, showered, dressed, and fresh from my second pop, I finally met the two at the end of Andiâs
tour in the throne room, which was convenient, to say the least. I gave Alan Evans the official title of
Royal Headmaster right there.
And then we went downstairs for the hamburgers Ryan had just finished cooking. The dinner was
divine.
66. Over dinner, Headmaster Evans and our little royal family talked over what Andiâs curriculum would
be. It was a very serious and completely professional meal.
67. Friday morning gave us an opportunity for more impromptu family time before Andi was called to
school. I love these little moments, donât you?
68. And doesnât the princess look snazzy in her new private education uniform?
I hesitate to call it âroyal educationâ since I plan to include the wealthier sect of the kingdom in the
program, so âprivateâ it is. It works.
69. The baby was a few hours overdue, and I was beginning to worry that all the time I spent meditating at
Queensgold earlier in the round had somehow done something to it. But I really didnât have anything to
worry about; I was woken up Friday evening by the little one politely insisting it was ready to leave,
thank you very much.
70. Meet Prince Helyas Rheingold of Clitheroe, the boy Ryan wanted. Heâs a blond with royal purple eyes,
just like his sister and me, and I adore him.
His [nick]name shall be Lyas, and he shall be my Lyas.
71. Speaking of Ryan, he did make it upstairs for Lyasâs birth, donât worry. And he didnât even hide behind
the screen this timeâprogress!
72. It wasnât long after Lyasâs birth that I noticed Andi was sounding exceptionally good at that piano of
hers. She was already a genius, of course, but now sheâs downright brilliant. I wonder what the change
was?
73. Now that Lyas was born, the first thing Ryan and I did was try out the sauna and hot tub together.
75. My studious girl spent much of this week building her skills, first with the piano and then with these
cookbooks I randomly decided to stock on our living room bookshelves. Smartest girl in the kingdom,
Iâm telling you. Have I mentioned that already?
76. Andi told me all about the special daddy-daughter dinner she had with Ryan Saturday night. The salmon
was delicious, she said, and they talked all about what âbest friendsâ meant and how likely she is to see
a penguin in Clitheroe.
Very likely, if you ask me. Almost inevitable, in fact.
77. Sunday was a very special day for us. Prince Helyas was becoming a toddler (an event both looked
forward to and dreaded by his royal parents) and Princess Anduera would be making her curtsy to
Clitheroe as a teenager.
And I realized that morning that there was something very important we hadnât done yet.
78. âAnduera Rheingold,â I said, marching into her bedroom and placing my hands firmly on my hips.
âWhy are you not dressed yet?â
Andi broke her staring contest with the wall to glance up at me, confused. âUm⊠IâmâŠ
daydreamingâŠ? We never get dressed on weekends, MomâŠâ
I cleared my throat. âNever mind that.â
79. I grinned. âHere I was, getting all excited to take you out hunting for fairies, and youâre still in your
pajamas!â
80. We were in that clock tower and the surrounding town square for hours that day, and Andiâs voice was
hoarse from shouting and singing by the end of it. Unfortunately, we didnât see wing nor hair of any
fairy (since, you know, I didnât actually make any), but that wasnât really the point of the day, anyway.
82. With the kingdom scheduled to arrive for Andiâs coming of age party after sundown, the four of us held
a quick double-caking so she could be a teenager when they arrived.
85. Doesnât she just look the part of crown princess? *sniff* My girl is growing upâŠ
86. Andi was just putting the finishing touches on her outfit, I believe, when her guests started to arrive.
87. I was actually upstairs with Ryan.
âSoâŠâ I said, not sure how to broach the subject. âI hear youâre a king.â
âSo they tell me,â he teased, shutting the armoire doors.
âHm. Funny how you donât have a crown.â
88. âYou wouldnât believe how difficult it is to find one of those things for a man thatâs also dignified,â he
said. He smiled at the mirror. âI donât have any dinner in my teeth, do I?â
I smirked. âWhat if I told you Iâd found one?â
89. âHm. This thing isâŠâ
âMajestic?â I supplied.
âHeavy,â he said. âAnd vastly uncomfortable.â
90. âAndi thought so too,â I sighed. âWell, we really only have to wear these ones for special occasions.â
âNot that I donât appreciate the effortâŠâ Ryan began.
I shrugged. âIt does make you look very kingly, you know. Quite regal. I like it with that suit.â
91. King Ryan and I walked hand-in-hand into a bustling ballroom full of music and childrenâs laughter.
92. That laughter was on account of the two boys chatting in the center of the room, and mostly on the part
of Darion Renaisse. They seemed to be pointing and laughing at his father Howard, who was well
aware of the attention and hamming it up on the dance floor.
Meanwhile, Imelda and Connor Lariel were enjoying some time alone together, their daughter Shannath
was staring moodily into the crowd, and Evalyn ne Maeve had parked herself on the couch nearest the
stereo. Dienda seemed to be absent⊠now where could she have gotten off to?
93. Itâs been a long night and I have writerâs cramp from this stupidly long journal entry, so Iâll make this
short. Everyone was gathered together, and I personally announced the entrance ofâŠ
94. âŠher royal highness, the Crown Princess Anduera Rheingold of Clitheroe.
Gosh, that sounds awesome.
95. Imelda got awfully excited, for some reason. Howard back there looks he just zoned out.
96. After that I stepped back and let Andi handle her own party. It was a resounding success. She met
everyone in the kingdom, including the two boys I was most anxious for her to get to know. They may
look significantly younger than she is, but in fact Galain is only a day younger than her, and Darion is
only two. It was just unfortunate timing that the divide happened to land between rounds.
97. She got along with both of them wonderfully, which is great news for my evil plans for next roundâŠ
98. But this round is over, and I canât begin to tell you just how exhausted I am. First the ball, then three
hours writing this extra-long record for this extra-eventful week⊠I think Iâm just about dead at this
point.
Until round five, then. âŠvery late in the morning of round five. Iâm sleeping in so late.
Signed,
End of the royal Rheingold record of Round Four.