Adam Wilson was by no means an extraordinary man, at least by his own reckoning. That wasn’t to say he thought himself talentless or dull. On the contrary, he considered himself a very talented craftsman. He was also by all accounts, especially his own, a dab hand with a longsword. Admittedly, swordsmanship is not exactly a skill one would expect to find in a tailor, but it was one of the few childhood interests that had stayed with him as he grew up, and he took almost as much pride in his skill with the blade as he did in the quality of his work. What most people didn’t know about Adam Wilson was that he had once driven his parents to exasperation with his constant stories of adventures in some kind of magical world. No-one had ever believed him, of course, and as time passed he had stopped believing it himself. Once he started thinking it over logically it all seemed like a ridiculous fantasy, even to him. Besides, he had read plenty of studies that showed childhood memories were often inaccurate or even downright wrong. These days Adam barely ever thought of his supposed adventures, and when he did, he dismissed whatever faint memories he might dredge up as mere illusions his brain had constructed around some childhood game. The only memories that could still perplex him were memories of three other children he remembered spending a lot of time with, yet had never found any evidence of in his parents’ old photo albums… But perhaps they had simply been his imaginary friends. After all, all children had imaginary friends at one point or another, right? The day started just like any other day. Adam woke up at seven sharp from the alarm blaring in his earplugs and got out of bed quietly. He was careful not to wake his beloved Evangeline, who worked the night shift at the local museum of the arts as a guard and hadn’t had more than an hour or two of sleep at this point. He put on a robe and went into the bathroom to clean up and get ready for the day. As always, he took great care in combing his short, dark-brown hair and checked to see that he had no blemishes or unsightly bags under his eyes. It wouldn’t do to risk driving his customers away by showing up at work looking messy or tired. Next, he knocked on the door to his daughter’s room to wake her up and told her to get ready for school. He left for a few minutes to prepare breakfast for the both of them, and then went back up to wake his daughter once more, as she would almost always go back to sleep after the first time. With that done, it was time for him to get dressed. He slipped out of his robe and started neatly and efficiently donning his suit. Custom tailored, of course, because who would want to do business with a tailor in an ill-fitting suit? He ate his breakfast together with his still-drowsy daughter and made sure she had everything she needed before driving her to school. Once she was safely dropped off, he turned the car around and began the long commute to work. The route he took always made him feel slightly nostalgic, as it took him past a park where he used to play when he was little. He always looked at it as he drove by, each time smiling a little when he saw that the park had remained mostly unchanged since his childhood days. Admittedly, being a grown man of 32 he sometimes felt a tad sheepish about this daily bit of nostalgia, but it was his habit of many years and he wasn’t going to change it just because it seemed a little silly. Today, though, he was sure he saw something atop the small hill near the centre of the park. He couldn’t make it out very well from the road, but it looked like some kind of flickering blue light. He decided it was probably just a kid playing with a flashlight or something and drove on, but no matter how much he tried to put it out of his mind, his thoughts kept returning to that blue light. It was a relatively slow day at work, and he spent most of the morning working on a dress for Missis Potts, one of the shop’s oldest customers. He personally felt the design was rather “young” for a woman her age, but it was what she wanted and the customer was always right. Besides, Missis Potts was a regular. The woman had been coming here since long before he had taken an apprenticeship at the shop, and had continued to visit after he had bought the business from the retiring former owner. He made sure he did his very best work on this dress, because it was old regulars like Potts that had helped the shop keep its good reputation after the change in ownership. However, no matter how much he tried to focus, he occasionally found his thoughts drifting back to the flickering light he had seen in the park. Most days he would make himself lunch in the kitchenette attached to the shop and eat it there. Today, however, he felt strangely restless, so he hung up the ‘out for lunch’ sign and went out to find a nice restaurant. He had barely gotten more than halfway down the street before an odd object seemed to come right through a wall. The object looked like a doorway made of shifting blue light, and it seemed to be moving towards him. The wall it had come out of seemed intact, and none of the other people on the street seemed to notice it at all, so Adam rubbed his eyes, thinking it might be some sort of optical illusion or perhaps even a hallucination. However, when he looked again the doorway was still there, and seemed to be a good deal closer. The startled tailor turned and walked away, but after turning a corner and stopping to look back, he found the doorway curving its way through the fast-food store he had just walked around. He could see it in the windows of the building, passing harmlessly through objects and customers alike, all the while moving relentlessly towards him. The strange portal seemed somehow familiar to him, but its seemingly unstoppable pursuit still made him feel something akin to panic. And as if that wasn’t enough, the mysterious light seemed to be constantly speeding up. With a half-strangled yelp he turned to run, but he could feel the thing drawing closer to him, could see its eerie light reflected on the street below him. As it drew ever closer he started hearing an odd, warbling noise emanating from the gateway. He put on a final burst of speed, sweat pouring down his back as he ran as fast as his legs could carry him. But it was all for naught, and soon he was fully enveloped in the blue light of the portal. With a gut-churning feeling of falling and spinning despite standing stock still, he helplessly watched the world pull away from him. Adam landed hard on a stone floor, and his exhausted legs crumpled beneath him. It took him a few minutes to gather his wits enough to get up off the floor, but when he did rise and took stock of his surroundings, his jaw dropped. He was in a large hall that seemed to be made entirely of polished grey marble. On the walls and from great wooden beams near the ceiling hung banners that seemed incredibly familiar, like an almost forgotten memory. Each banner was divided in four fields, blue, yellow, green and red, and in the centre of each field was an image. A water droplet in the blue field, a cloud in the yellow field, a crystal or gemstone in the green field and a flame in the red. In the exact centre of each banner, where all the fields met, was a stylized image of a star. So entranced was he that he that he didn’t even notice that someone was walking up behind him until they spoke. “I am glad to see you again, prince of Water.” He recognized the voice. The clear, airy notes, like she was singing even when she spoke. Feeling more than a little lost, her turned around… And there was no mistaking the person behind him. The skin as black as the deepest night. The long, silky hair as pale and as radiant as the moon. The gentle, sparkling eyes. The flowing, diamond-speckled dress that shifted in indigo and deep, deep blue and shimmered like a field of stars. The perfect smile that filled you with a sense of comfort and protection… It was impossible, completely and utterly impossible, and yet there was no denying it. He was standing face to face with the Starlit Goddess.