Star Darlings; the Other 12

The Eye of the Storm

"Piper..." Nicholas' voice snapped her out of her trance.

She was sitting at a desk in the girl's sleeping room, writing. It was nighttime, and everyone else was already asleep.

"Piper!" Nicholas said from the window. "Come on! You said you wanted some alone time."

"Nicholas!" Piper whispered. "I forgot. Let me grab my coat."

"Alright."

Piper grabbed her coat and went outside. Nicholas was waiting for her.

"Where are we going?" Piper asked, putting a hand on Nicholas' shoulder.

Nicholas smiled. "I do. Just follow my lead."

"Ok," Piper asked, tip-toeing up to kiss him. Nicholas was a lot taller than her now.

"Come on," Nicholas said.

Piper followed Nicholas, walking silently through the small town. It was midnight; no one's awake. They plunged into the mountains, deeper than anyone else dared to go. But Nicholas was most familiar with these mountains and hills; he'd been here multiple times before.

"So where are we going exactly?" Piper asked, holding Nicholas' hand.

"My grandpa's refuge I spent most of my time at," Nicholas said, his finger tightening around Piper's.

They stopped in front of one of the mountains, one of the tallest in the region. The rest were too deep into the heart for them to reach in time.

"The refuge is at the top of the mountain," Nicholas said.

"We need to climb that?" Piper asked.

"No; we take the elevator." Nicholas smiled. He pressed a snow-covered button, and a door swung open.

"CODE!" a speaker boomed.

"Oculus Tempestate!" Nicholas yelled back. The voice disappeared, and a small platform was lowered down.

"How was this made?" Piper asked.

"Grandpa was an aspiring engineer and designer; the works he'd thought of over the years can very well be the best in millennia," Nicholas explained as the elevator went up. "He puts them in the paper. Not even holograms. Physical paper. His notebook is the size of a room."

"What does the real paper look like anyway?"

"I don't know how to describe it." Nicholas laughed.

"Hmm." Piper mused. "I would want to" she was interrupted by a loud shaking in the elevator. It rocked back and forth, left and right.

Nicholas stood like nothing's wrong. "You'll get used to it." He assured her when the rocking stopped.

"Is that normal?"

"Yeah; it's just that when this thing goes up, sometimes it'll rock like that. There's no problem; it's just with the design, it'll rock from time to time. Perfectly safe." Nicholas said. "It's a problem with the freezing issue; the system doesn't have enough antifreeze at times and miss a couple of random spots; those spots will grow frost on them and the rocking occurs."

"Yeah..." Piper said. "You have to live with that almost all the time?"

"Yeah; it's worse when I'm not expecting it."

The elevator stopped. "There's our stop," Nicholas said. "Come on," he said, the door opening. Instead of the cold, chilling air Piper expected, warm, summer-like winds hit her in the face.

Before they were a football field of land, housing a modest farm, a large cabin, and a little playground. There was a little glass skywalk-Esq platform at the far end of the field.