Mirror of Dreams - Chapter 7

7

Nearly a year passed in the mirror world as I traveled back and forth. Even so, only about two months had passed in the real world. It was starting to get really frustrating! It felt like the mirror world was the real one and the real world was a dream since I had to spend weeks in one for every day I spent in the other. If I didn't my work would really pile up! Each day, I had done my absolute best to conform to the expectations of my advisers, and I'd like to think that I'd done a pretty good job so far.

After the initial six months that I had requested we wait, Nathan had asked about setting a date for our wedding, but I was reluctant. I still felt like I was going to wake up from the dream at any moment, and somehow, leaving a husband behind seemed far worse than leaving a fiancé. He took the evasion in stride, promising to wait however long it took for me to feel ready.

Watching him sleep, I felt a fierce rush of feelings! I wanted to throw my arms around him and squeeze him tight as I pressed a thousand kisses to his face! However, I restrained myself so that I wouldn't disturb his sleep. I settled for one soft kiss before sliding out of bed. His face puckered up in annoyance for a moment before he rolled over and got comfortable in his sleep again.

Sitting at the table, I sipped on some tea that the maids had left for me. They had magicked a pot to hold the tea at the perfect temperature all night long just so that I would have something to drink as I got up about a dozen times each night. Even better, it was a blend to help me sleep, which worked for a few minutes at a time. Sigh...

Getting up, I pulled out a large and beautiful leather bound book. It had been a gift from someone at some point – I think it was even as far back as my coronation, but I'm not certain. Opening it, I turned to a fresh page. Lord Antony had explained that it was intended to chronicle my life as Queen – officially, as in a scribe was supposed to write down everything I do in it. Instead, I kept it as a sort of journal.

I did write my thoughts down in it honestly, but I also wrote down plans for the Kingdom. Such as ways to secure that everlasting peace between Rolandia and Nibal. Tonight, I read through some of the things I had written over the past few months, smiling as I remembered the most recent interesting encounter with Lord Antony.

He had often proven himself to be a gentle and considerate lover. A night with him usually included candles and roses and chocolates and champagne. I sighed dreamily just thinking about it!

Another interesting passage caught my eye. I now knew exactly why Lady Leeza was so feared in the palace. She really did have a secret lair where she tortured people! But it was utterly kinky torture. It was a lot more fun that I had thought it would be!

Even kinkier, my four maids had taken a page out of her book and tied me up once or twice (or more, hee hee!) to have their way with me. I made sure to reward them all with kisses for their effort. They had a large wardrobe of sexy costumes, and also liked to play dress up with me. I see that cosplay had somehow made it to Rolandia!

Laughing softly at happy memories, I returned to the fresh page and wrote just one sentence. Can't sleep and it's driving me crazy! After that, I added: Dear Nathan, I'm going home for a while. Try not to miss me too much while I'm gone.

As promised, I now left him a note if I left in the middle of the night. I honestly didn't think about or care that the note was in my journal. I often left it out where he would see it and assumed that he had probably read it at some point. If he had, he hadn't said anything.

I kissed my mirror and looked around my room. Now that I was in the habit of traveling between worlds, I usually picked bedtime to go to Rolandia so that when I came back home – almost always exhausted – I could get a good night's sleep before I had to do anything.

In the morning, I was delighted to find Andrew cooking breakfast.

“Your mom let me in so that I could surprise you,” he informed me with a grin. I rewarded him with a kiss.

“I missed you!” I said even though – from his perspective – it had only been two days since I had last seen him. From mine, it had been closer to 20.

“I missed you too,” he whispered in my ear. “Hey, I've got something important to talk to you about.”

“What?” I wondered curiously.

“Well...” He hesitated for a moment. “I got the part! I'm going to be starring in my own TV show!”

“Congratulations!” I squealed, happy for him.

“Which means that we will have to move across country,” he added quickly, flinching as if expecting me to get angry.

“Okay...” I replied, not sure why he thought this was a bad thing.

Relieved, he smiled at me. “Good. You took that better than I thought you would. Here's the thing, filming starts in two weeks. I've already bought a house, so we won't need to worry about that, but...”

“But what?” I asked, curious.

“But I really want to get married before we move in with each other,” he explained.

I gasped in shock. “There's no time for that!”

“There is... if we do it this weekend,” he stated, clearly having given this a lot of thought.

I took a deep breath and thought this over. We had already obtained the necessary license and were only trying to settle on an appropriate date. Our biggest dilemma so far was conflicting schedules for important guests. If we simply set it for this weekend and some people couldn't make it, we could always have another reception later on.

Slowly, my head started nodding. “O...kay...” Smiling, I added: “We can do that. My mother will be beside herself, but I don't see a problem with it.”

“Great!” He exclaimed as he swept me off my feet and twirled me in a circle. “I actually warned your mother about my plan, so she's currently on a phone somewhere contacting guests and – I don't know... Ordering flowers and hiring a caterer?”

I blasted a short laugh. “Ha! Don't be fooled by her, she has a caterer on permanent salary! She could probably pull off an elaborate wedding by tomorrow if she had to, but it's better to do it this weekend.”

“Four days...” Andrew murmured. “I'll have my bachelor party on Friday night, and we can be married Saturday morning.”

“Afternoon,” I corrected him. “If you want me to look my best, I need time to have my hair and nails done, not to mention my makeup and –”

He cut me short with a laugh. “Afternoon then!”

“Say 2 PM?” I suggested and he nodded in agreement.

I walked over to the stairs that led to my mom's bedroom and office. “OH MOTHER!” I sang out at the top of my lungs. I waited only a moment – just long enough to hear her and my grandmother move around in response. “I'M GETTING MARRIED THIS SATURDAY AT TWO!”

She opened the door to her office and heaved a great sigh. “What am I ever going to do with you?! Imagine! Four days to plan a whole wedding!”

My grandmother emerged from her craft room. “Oh please, you're tickled pink to have such a challenge!”

“Ha!” My mother huffed before returning to her office.

“I'M GOING SHOPPING FOR A DRESS!” I called out so that they would hear me.

“Have fun!” Was the response in duplicate.

“I have things I need to do,” Andrew informed me. “Your mother insists that I have my portion of the guest list ready by tonight, which means that I have to go break the news to my mom... I am fairly sure she's not going to take the news even half as well as your mom! She wanted to plan the whole thing herself.”

I shrugged. “Have her call my mom. Maybe they can network and get everything done even faster.”

Andrew kissed me as a reward for such a smart suggestion. “Gotta go!”

“Love you!” I called after him. It was true, I did. Maybe not in the way that the fairy tales said I should, but enough that I had a good feeling about marrying him.

“Love you too,” he replied in a tone that suggested that it was a reflexive habit.

After he was gone, I called up Ian. “Hey... Are you free to go shopping for a dress with me today?”

Ian snorted in amusement. “What, your Royal Seamstress ran out of ideas?!”

“Uh...” I stammered in embarrassment. “I am not sure how I could ask her to make me a wedding dress for this groom...”

Ian was utterly silent for a moment. Then he chuckled. “Wedding dress, aha... I thought there'd be more time before we started shopping for that!”

I giggled. “Nope! We're getting married this weekend!”

“Everything is fast with you!” He stated, sounding like a harassed older brother. Even he must have made this correlation, because he asked: “Speaking of, when is your brother returning home from college?”

“I don't know,” I murmured sadly. “He's been frustratingly elusive ever since he turned 18 and left to attend a college across the country.”

“Don't worry, I'm sure your mom will get him here in time for your wedding if she has to threaten to cut him out of the will!” Ian assured me.

I laughed evilly. “She will, too!”

Ian sighed and sounded like he was scratching his head. “I have to shower, but then I'll come pick you up.”

“Don't worry about it, I'm already on my way to your house,” I informed him. Which was only half true. I had to grab something first, but then I'd be out the door. He lived close enough that I might even arrive before he finished his shower.

“See you in a few, then,” he said before hanging up.

Rushing upstairs, I grabbed my mirror. It was the size and shape of a 50 inch flat screen TV, but fortunately, I found it to be easy enough to carry. Securing it carefully in the back seat of my car, I drove over to Ian's.

Just as I thought, he was still in the shower, so I hauled my mirror into his bedroom and rested it against the wall in a way that it couldn't fall. I needed to see something important.

“What's going on?” Ian asked as he toweled his hair dry, another towel hanging off his hips like a teasing lover.

I stood in front of his mirror as I looked at him. “I need to know something important. You see, when I kissed your mirror –” which still had a perfect impression of my lips highlighted by lipstick, I kissed the mark again to make my point. “Nothing happened.”

I turned to face him and pointed to his closet. “Wear that sexy outfit I love,” I suggested and then wiggled my eyebrows at him as he let the towel around his hips drop to the floor.

“Only if you wear that dress you left here that drives me crazy!” He bargained.

“Deal!” I accepted, glad to have a reason to wear the dress again. “Anyway, Andrew bought a house near where he'll be filming his TV show, and so we'll be moving into it after we get married.”

Ian rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh. “Always so fast!”

“I know,” I stated with a shrug. “The problem is that I don't know if it's specifically this mirror that lets me travel, or if it can be any mirror so long as it's in my bedroom.”

Ian nodded sagely. “I can see the second being a real problem if you move away.”

“Exactly!” I agreed, throwing my hands out to emphasize the point.

So, I need to test it out, hence the reason I had dragged my mirror over here. Squatting in front of it, I crossed my fingers and prayed for a miracle.

“Hey!” Ian interrupted me, pulling me to my feet. “What will you do if it doesn't work?”

“I don't know...” I murmured helplessly. “I just can't abandon my Kingdom, no matter how much I initially wanted to. Slowly... the people of Rolandia are becoming my family and the mirror world feels more and more like the real world...”

“Huh...” Ian remarked in thought. He surprised me with a hug. “I hope that this works then.”

Returning his hug, I kissed him. “Me too.” He let me go and walked toward his closet. I watched him go with an appreciative smirk. He stopped to look at me curiously, probably wondering if I had done it yet.

Squatting in front of my mirror once more, I kissed it. To my utter relief, I was now in my Royal bedroom. Nathan sat up in bed in surprise, although the dim light through the window suggested that he had just gone to bed. He glared at me, probably mad that I had left in the middle of the night.

“I'll be back later, I just had to see something,” I told him, kissing the mirror again.

“It worked!” I exclaimed happily.

“I see that,” Ian murmured with a smile. “You must not have been gone long that time, you're still wearing the same thing.”

I shook my head. “Nope, just long enough to see that it worked. I'm too excited about today to wait!”

Chuckling, he beckoned me to come closer. “Your dress is in my closet.”

“Right!”

He located the outfit I wanted him to wear while I stripped out of the cute light pink dress I was wearing.

“This one?” He asked to make sure it was the right one.

“Yep,” I nodded, reaching to grab my kinky little red dress off the hangar.

He took longer to get dressed than I did, aside from the fact that I needed him to button up all the little buttons along my spine.

“Lady Leeza must be used to maids dressing her,” I muttered. “She puts these buttons on everything! Thankfully, I can usually get out of the dress while it's buttoned up, I just need...” I trailed off, pointing to my back.

“Yep yep,” he stated, promptly busying himself with the task.

When he was done, we inspected each other for loose threads and such. Satisfied that we both looked good, Ian offered me his arm, pretending to be a noble Lord.

“My lady,” he said, nodding his head.

I giggled, slipping my hand into the crook of his arm. We walked to my car and he even opened the door for me. I shook my head at his silliness, but this was a big part of the reason that we were best friends. We were always silly together!

It took the entire day and several shops, but finally, I found the perfect dress. It was a shimmering, opalescent sheath that hugged my body from my neck to my hips, and then flared out in a way that was reminiscent of a star burst. There were clear jewels sewn to the mesh-like top from the neck to the collar bone, and then more jewels sewn to the skirt.

“I want it!” I told the sales clerk as Ian clapped in congratulations. “The only way that I would love it any more is if it was that gorgeous dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in the movie Sabrina!”

The clerk gasped, her eyes going wide. “Are you serious? I love that dress!” She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the part of the shop that held the most expensive dresses of all. “We just so happen to have a replica of that dress!”

She wasn't kidding! My jaw dropped in astonishment. I grabbed Ian's hand and jumped in excitement.

“Oh Ian! I have to have it!” I declared.

The dress was an elegant, full-length white beauty with a full skirt embroidered with a delicate floral-like pattern using black thread. The only difference from this dress and the real one was that the real one was actually a full length sheath that had an attachable fluffy gown in the back. This one was all one piece with a wispy, flowing skirt.

“I love it, I love it, I love it!” I gushed, almost ready to faint.

“Try it on,” Ian encouraged. He really didn't have to tell me twice!

Disappointingly, it didn't quite fit my bust. As I felt tears well up in my eyes, the clerk hastily assured me that the dress could be altered to fit me.

“By Saturday?” I asked hopefully.

She flinched. “I don't know about that... Maybe...”

I sighed. “Fine. I'll buy both dresses with the understanding that this one is going to be altered by Saturday, but if it isn't finished in time, at least I'll have a backup.”

The clerk loved my plan, delighted to sell two dresses. I actually smiled at her giddiness. Even if this dress wasn't ready in time, the other dress was still gorgeous, and this dress could be worn at any fancy event... such as a TV awards ceremony.

All too soon, I was back in my original dress. The clerk stared at me admiringly. “Where'd you get that?”

“From a friend,” I replied with a smirk.

“I love it,” she whispered huskily, stroking the lace with her hand.

“Me too,” I purred softly.

Ian chuckled and put an arm around each of us. “Me three.”

The clerk laughed and stepped back. “Good thing your husband has a sense of humor!”

“He does,” I assured her, referring to Andrew. “But this isn't him.” I looked over at Ian and held up my hands. “Not saying that you don't have a sense of humor too!”

“Yeah yeah,” he muttered, holding his arm out to me. “You ready to go?”

Since I had already paid, there was no reason to stay. I took his arm and waved goodbye to the clerk. I heard her co-worker mooning as we left.

“If I had known that he wasn't her fiancé, I would have hit on him! Isn't he just gorgeous?!”

“I honestly preferred her,” my clerk stated.

I chuckled, kissing Ian on the cheek. “You hear that? You're gorgeous!”

“I know,” he stated, sounding both confident and shy.

In high spirits, we returned to his house. He made us dinner, and then we danced and sang to loudly blasted music.

“You have to plan my bachelorette party!” I insisted giddily.

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You think I didn't already know that!”

I giggled as he spun me around, confident that I could dance well at my wedding reception.

“I'm already planning to have it here. I'll send out an invitation via Facebook in a little bit. Do you want male or female strippers?” Ian asked, surprising me. I had to think about this for a minute.

“Both?” I asked.

He laughed. “I knew you'd say that!”

“But my friends would probably prefer a man,” I added.

He nodded, knowing that I was probably right.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, pushing him away. “I really have to go to the bathroom, and then I should probably return to my other world for a bit. Not that you'll notice me missing!”

He playfully pushed me toward the bathroom. “Go on! I'll look for a movie we haven't seen and make popcorn.”

“Perfect!” I agreed. Rushing off, I did my business – which took a few minutes because, you know, that time of the month – and then went to his room where my mirror was waiting for me. I kissed it happily, wishing that I could bring an entire band with me so I could dance for the rest of the night.

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