Kate opened her eyes. Someone had turned on her lights. She groaned and rolled over, throwing an arm over her eyes and reached for her music to turn it up a little louder. She wasn't ready for school yet.

She groaned as the lights refused to go out, and she pulled the covers over her head. They were softer than they had felt last night. That was a little weird. She opened her eyes under the covers and noticed they were kind of silky white instead of the dark blue pinstripes she usually had.

"Mom!" she called. "Did you change my sheets?"

She received no answer.

"MOM!"

Still no answer.

Kate considered this for a very long moment before throwing the sheets back and seeing a four-poster bed upon a dais, giant windows streaming with sunlight, and beyond them, trees and green fields and a quaint peasant village. A small flotilla of skycars zoomed merrily about the sky.

Kate did what any self-respecting teenager would do in this predicament.

She screamed.

Kate stared at herself in the mirror. "I have boobs!" she whined, pushing her breasts up high even as some woman tried to sew her into a dress. "Don't you have something in pants?" she asked, eyeing the woman carefully.

The woman seemed used to this sort of abuse and just shook her head in exasperation and threaded her needle.

"I didn't have boobs yesterday." Kate couldn't help but whimper. "And I'm really tallll."

"Lady Kate, if you're going to continue to flail about aimlessly, you're going to get stabbed by a needle," the woman said.

"How do you know me, but I don't know you?" Kate asked, glancing over her shoulder.

"Please stand still, Lady Kate," the woman sighed.

"Why do I need a dress again?"

The woman sighed and rolled her eyes, climbing a stepping stool to reach the middle of Kate's back to continue to sew her up. "It is tradition for the Punjaro of Eklitia to wear the embroidered cloths of office," she intoned wearily, as if she'd said this same thing thousands of times.

Kate's ears perked. "W-w-w-w-wait," she snapped. "Did you just say Punjaro?"

"That's exactly what I said, Lady Palm," the butler said, delivering her breakfast in bed. Palm stared down at a body that wasn't hers and she wrinkled her nose. She scratched behind her ear and felt four bumps in a straight line coming down from it.

"Is something the matter, Lady Palm?" the butler asked.

"So I'm a Punjaro?" she asked quietly.

"For several years now. Is something the matter?"

"No," she said quietly. "At least, I don't think so..."

"I mean, it could be the matter if I made it the matter, couldn't it?" Gavin asked as he tossed something that looked really expensive and priceless into the air and caught it several times.

The servants looked at him as if he'd gone insane. Someone had given him a smart military-esque uniform to wear, complete with epaulettes and brassy buttons. He wore it gladly, as well as the silly hat that had also been laid out, and the gaudy necklace he'd woken up wearing.

"But let's not make a big stink out of things." He glanced around at the high vaulted ceilings, the stained glass and the colors everywhere. As well as the giant tree in the middle of the courtyard outside that was covered with ribbons. "So, these are my digs, huh?" He nodded. "Okay," he said. "I can live with that."

He put the object back on the stand it had come from, and the servants all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Lucinda brushed a wave of blonde hair from her face as she opened her eyes, surprised she wasn't hearing Rachel thrashing around out in the hallway.

She blinked as she stared around.

She knew this room.

This .... this.... this..... .... This was probably not a good thing.

She got up, and she stared at herself in the mirror. Instead of the brown hair and the green eyes she knew, her face dotted with freckles, and her short, kind of dumpy figure, she found instead long, flowing platinum blonde hair, crystal blue eyes, and long, tapering fingers with long, tapering nails.

She immediately rolled up her nightgown and stared at the inside of her thigh, where there was a series of moles that could be connected with lines and form a star.

She felt light-headed, and she stared out the window to the Wishing Tree, full of red and violet ribbons.

She blacked out, and she only woke up when someone was tapping her face lightly.

"Lady Amity! Lady Amity!" they called.

Lucinda batted the hand from her face and wrinkled her forehead, which felt utterly unfamiliar with the position of muscles. "No," she said quietly. She woke up completely and stared around. The room was easily tall enough to stack twelve people on top of each other. It was full of colors and sunlight and windows and open space.

She felt a cold squeeze in her stomach. This... wasn't good. This couldn't be good.

"Lady Amity, you must get dressed," the person said. "The Lord Chamberlain is here to see you, to hope you'll grant his wish."

Lucinda stared around. "Lord... Uh..." she wracked her brain and found the name, "Marcus Exekius?"

"Yes, Lady Amity. There is no other Lord Chamberlain."

Lucinda stared around. This was... so alien, so insane. She must be dreaming.

"Faraaq," she said to her servant.

"Yes, Lady?"

"Pinch me."

As it turned out, she wasn't dreaming. She wasn't dreaming at all.

Lord Chamberlain sat opposite her at her breakfast table as she tried to explain pancakes to the poor servants. When she couldn't, she allowed them to bring what they had, and she dined on cold cuts and runny eggs. Why she ever EVER modelled this story after middle-ages Europe, she had no idea.

Dear universe and fate and luck and wishes and everything else, she thought as the Lord Chamberlain droned on about things that she had meant for Amity to sit through and hear, I've learned my lesson. I'll be careful what I wish for. Can I go home?

"Which brings us to the final matter," the Lord Chamberlain said, sipping his tea delicately.

"Yes, Lord Chamberlain?"

"We have at length located a dragon for you."

The fork dropped out of Lucinda's hand and her jaw dropped like a stone. A slice of some meat or another hung out between her teeth.

He cleared his throat, and she composed herself, brushing the platinum blonde (dammit!) hair out of her face and demurely tapping at her mouth with her napkin.

"She is a gentle soul, as befits you, I am sure. She is prone to flying and she is quite large, though nothing, I am certain, that cannot possibly be contained by the palace here."

"Of course," Lucinda said quietly.

A dragon?

She wanted to hide! The dragon she had intended Amity to get wasn't huge, she was MASSIVELY GIGANTICALLY THE BIGGEST DRAGON that Lucinda could FIND!

And she wasn't exactly the most pleasant disposition...

"Her name is Maria, and we are expecting her through the transportation circle in the King's Palace any hour now. We are certain you and she will get along just fine."

Lucinda made a small noise in the back of her throat. This... Wasn't going to be fun. She could just feel it in her bones.

I'm going to get fried, she thought bitterly. Someone, please let me just go home...