THEN I SAID EUREKA!

6 FEBRUARY, SATURDAY, LATER

Once satisfied of Mate's true Disney Princess identity, I felt good enough about my decision making skills to take a bath. Sinking into the Sakura smelling foam, I watched my knees pop in and out, like mountains surrounded by clouds...

And then I had the most incredible idea - what if instead of building up, we built the Princess Town down? What if we didn't cut any of the trees? What if we made an underground city?

There was a book about this. I got out of the the tub, nearly sliding onto my naked butt but I caught the sink and seriously! Why didn't I think of that sooner?

It's like that human guy who jumped out of the bath shouting Eureka. Suddenly I understood the meaning of the word.

Eureka! I've got it. I shifted and shook out and shifted out to my room and pulled on my clothes. I barely had time to marvel at the way the crop cardigan fitted exactly, covering my arms and shoulder and the exposed part of my back. If I didn't take it off, you wouldn't know it was a halter.

Then I grabbed my leather jacket, stepped into the matching short black boots, and ran downstairs. Pulling open the glass door I ran out across the lawn, slipping sliding down the icy muddy sections like an action movie and running into the packhouse before the warrior stationed there could get the door for me. I raced up the stairs to the library and slowed at the shelves of books.

It should be around here somewhere. I was sure of it. There was a book here about the green mountain.

The Green Mountain was the Mountain where rogue wolves originally ran to. But over time, they formed their own packs and grew rather powerful. They had hidden their power in the form of hidden villages. From the top they looked like poor wooden huts grouped together for weak bands of rogues. But these were only hidden doors to the vast underground and technologically advanced (and somewhat shady) cities they had built below it.

At the beginning, every hut had a trap door because they were just bands of weak rogues with no where else to go. If the Gyaras (the magical wild beasts in the Mountains) attacked, or another rogue pack attacked, they would hide underground.

But later, these underground hideouts evolved to join into central carvans, and then to hold medical and food supplies, and then to hide treasures, secret communication based, etc. Little by little the wolves in the Green Mountain carved out the entire mountain and fashioned it into a metropolis with an underground train and logistics rail system and many other wonderous things.

There were some paintings, but most of the words were in ancient lycan, so I let my lucky sense of direction find it.

I found it, in a yellow leather binding. Why? It was a Green Mountain book, shouldn't it be green? Yellow was the color for Rogues in the Colored Mountains, or worse, Hyenas. Hyenas were rogues so twisted that they were not even considered wolves anymore.

I guess maybe that's why the Gold Packlands didn't like the color yellow.

Unlike the Colored Mountains where the colour of the mountain was named after certain characteristics of the place or wolves there, the colors of the packlands was done in random.

The story went that the greatest alphas gathered after the great war to divide up the packlands, and they used whatever colored pens they had to draw on the boundaries. So they of course had a blue pen, black pen, green pen, and red pen. The Grey Packlands was the land marked out with pencil. White was drawn in correction tape. And I remembered yellow was a highlighter.

Now the Colored Mountains didn't get drawn on an old map. The Colored Mountains were born by magic, one after another. And named as they were born.

Like the Black, Grey, and White Mountains were named after the dominant color of the wolves who lived there.

Red Mountain was home to the brown wolves, but the strongest and largest wolves on the mountain were known for their rusty red colouring - which was why I felt quite sure that Harvey was some direct descendant of a pretty big shot Red Mountain Wolf.

Green Mountain wolves were of mixed colours and heritage but their mountain was the greenest all year around.

Orange Mountain was due to the orange trees. It was the newest mountain civilization.

Or at least the newest one from the time some of the wolves left the Colored Mountains and started living in the plains. We had no newer books to tell us what happened in the Colored Mountains after that.

It was like the Color Mountains disappeared. I mean the Mountains were physically still there, but the magic around them was like a dense mist and despite several attempts to find the great wolf civilizations via statalite cameras etc, nothing could be found.

Those who tried to find it the good old fashioned way never returned to tell about it.

Dad had said that if you wanted to go to the Colored Mountains, there was only one way in and one way out. You needed to go through Gate City.

Not our Gate City. The real one on the Mountains. If you followed the map in some of our books, (Dad had collected quite a number of them,) there were accounts and careful instructions concerning how to go there. It's a dangerous journey. It's easy to leave but hard to return. Only a true heart would find it. (Wth is a true heart? Let me know if you figure it out.)

It's said the ruling wolf king would sit on the throne in their Gate City once a week to listen to the appeals of the visitors there. If you could get to Gate City, you could ask him anything.

There was no record saying that he would necessarily give what you asked for... It just said you could ask anything.

When you read ancient Lycan you have to pay attention, not just of what was written, but what was not written too.

And if there was a painting, it was part of the words too.

It's very frustrating to study, but it can also be very rewarding.

I'm just saying all the stuff that Mrs Beta, Beta Lucas, and Dad had told me while trying to teach it to me.

Only Alphas read and wrote the language now. Beta Lucas had learned with Dad while they were growing up.

Mrs Beta was from a scholar family. It's like a wolf lineage that were predominantly scholars and teachers. They travelled a lot and offered tutorlege to alpha families around the continent. Mrs Beta only saw them once every two years when they gathered for a reunion.

I heard that Mrs Beta's dad used to teach a special Alpha literacy class in the Black Forest Academy. They still had Ancient Lycan as a subject there but only open to beta and alpha families.

Why bother? I've always wondered. It's not like any of us were going to go back to the Mountains.

Okay, so Dad was planning to.

And I guess if I could, I would try to go back one day too. Just to look for Heller, and the girl, Adelina. And if Fluffy were still with me, I'd bring him too.

I wondered how on earth was Heller planning to come here, and how did he plan to take Fluffy home?

I went over to the library balcony. The row of evergreen trees blocked most of the hill where the Princess Town will reside.

Maybe the top part will be like Orange Mountain. We would build a very pretty town with a lovely park, cafes, shopping, entertainment, and then the rest of the town underground, like Green Mountain.

What? You thought I was going to build shabby wooden huts? Hahaha. That might be my dad's retirement dream once upon a time, but I'm with Mum on this one. A secluded hut without running water or electricity wasn't my idea of a nice place to live either.

Paper... Or something... I tooked the yellow binded book over to the desk in the library, rummaging in the drawer, I found a pen without a cap, and some recycled paper. Tearing up the paper into long strips, I used them to mark the pages with the underground city information. Then I found the book about the picturesque Orange City of Orange Mountain, home of the artisans and farmers. Actually, that sounded like a nice description for Night Forest too.

Okay, photocopy!

I went to the copier room on the third floor. The offices were strangely quiet. Weird... I know it's Saturday, but lately with the mess in the Red Packlands etc, our admin office worked Saturdays. Maybe the mess cleared up enough for them to go home. Either that or its past six...

I looked up at the clock above a copier. Guess what time it was? I'll give you a clue. It was past 6.

Actually it was nearly 7.

I finished the copy and checked on the mindlinks, naturally the Beta channel was on fire. (Mainly Ben though.)

KI: Pop! I can't believe you lost the goddess again.

BEN: I can always...

HARV: We've talked about this Ben. We do not force open a mindlink with the Alpha except for emergencies.

BEN: But...

KI: You had one job, Beta.

BEN: Shut up dog.

KI: No, I'm not shutting up, Beta. I had to cook dinner, entertain the guests, and deal with this popping red tree issue. What the pop is with the trees suddenly?

HARV: Calm down. One thing at a time. Ben hunt down the princess. I'll make the excuse and help serve. Ki, finish up in the kitchen.

BEN: I found her. She's on the link, watching us freak out.

...

I guess I was found out, but I wasn't watching them freak out on purpose. I was just trying to figure out what the commotion was about.

BEN: Where are you Sam?

ME: Don't worry! I'm coming!

I sprinted back to the library, jammed the Orange Mountain Reference back into the shelf. Slotted the photocopy of the Orange City into the yellow binded book about Green Mountain, and then sprinted back home.

Ben opened the sliding door for me from the living room. I rushed through and followed him, we jumped over the sofa in our way and crashed into the dining room.

"Princess is here." Ben announced.

The dining room table had a pull out and was now expanded to sit all our guest. Savy was here too, I noticed at once she had on the red halter, but with a white jacket over. It looked nice.

"Sam, where were you?" Mum sighed, "Nevermind, come sit down."

Ben pulled out a chair for me.

I sat down. Ki served my canapé and poured the water for me before retreating back to the kitchen where the betas were sitting on barstools across the kitchen counter with their own meals.

And the conversation resumed around the table. Mum was a gracious and delightful hostess. Savy and Sabre quietly ate their food - mostly because they were not quite at home with so many new faces, but it gave them the effect of a pair of perfect doll daughters.

"It's something the matter, Sam?" Mum asked when she noticed I hadn't touched my main course, "The wings are boneless."

I'm not Savy! I didn't mind the bones.

"Sorry, I was just thinking about other things." I muttered.

"Actually, you've been out of it since you ran off just now." Henry said, "Anything I can help?"

"You'll just tell me to do what earns more money." I sulked and poked at my wing.

"Try me." Henry said.

"I was thinking of moving the Princess Town partially underground." I said, "So we won't have to dam up the stream or cut down so many trees."

Henry made a face, "Why? Are the trees valuable?"

I face palmed, "Yes, you can use them to make paper... to print money on."

Henry laughed at that, but then he said more seriously, "Underground building isn't straightforward. You need specialists to come do a reading of the ground. And even so, there aren't any guarantees. It could end up costing you a lot more, especially if your digging work unearth an underground spring or a sandy patch that is unstable, or worse, hard rock that would be costly to break through."

"You seemed to know a lot about digging underground." I eyed him suspiciously. I wondered if there were other packs who had tried to emulate Green Mountain blueprints.

Henry shook his head, "I only heard some interesting stories about a pack that was building too deep underground would end up needing to borrow huge amounts of money at very high interest. It's literally being caught between a rock and a hard place, Sam."

Henry laughed at his own joke.

I supposed Henry's pack were the generous lender.

I sighed. So much for my Eureka moment.

"Plus, you'd still have to unearth the trees you know." Marcus informed me, "I mean, logically you need to clear a space enough to make a giant crater before building up from the bottom."

I imagined making a giant crater in the prettiest hill. But that wasn't how Green Mountain was built.

Suddenly I felt like a little girl clutching to a book of nusury rhythms and insisting that we could find a goose large enough to fly on.

"Cheer up, Sam. We could plant new trees after the town is built." Mum tried to console me, "At any rate, you have plenty of time to worry about the trees tomorrow. Your friends are here today. The girls were just saying how much they were looking forward to the party later."

Oh yeah. I must be the worst kind of terrible host, leaving my friends to my betas and then showing up late for dinner all gloomy.

"Ok! Party!" I yelled and ate one of the chicken wings. Oh it's so yum, my mouth was happy to be alive.

Mum sighed, "Is she like this in school too?"

My friends looked at me and then nodded.

"She's always day dreaming and then saying something weird." Zara told Mum.

"Zara! Don't say it like that!" Krystal scolded. To my mum, Krystal tried to amend Zara's comment, "She isn't always day dreaming, Mrs King."

"Uh, yeah." Zara quickly agreed, "Sometimes she's also reading manga."

"I didn't know school was so relaxing nowadays!" Mum mused.