Liberty Palace is perfect. It really is. After all, it was made with sympathetic magic to be the perfect home for its two occupants, a place of peace and healing after centuries of pain and struggle. And yet… some nights the beds are a little too soft or the marble floors too still, the halls too silent. No matter how Mage tosses and turns, she just can’t sleep. Her restless blood sets all her limbs twitching and her senses strain against the quiet darkness. Eventually she abandons hope of real slumber, throws on a cloak, and lets her feet take her where they will. Better than staring up at the ceiling until dawn.

One clear night Alice finds her on the roof of the observatory, crouched on the ledge with her knees drawn up against her chest. “The moons are beautiful tonight,” she comments as she sits down beside Mage, letting her long legs dangle over the edge. The women pass some time in companionable silence as they gaze up at Liberty’s star-strewn sky. One moon slips toward the horizon while another climbs higher over their heads. A cool breeze carries the heady scent of night-blooming flowers from the nearby gardens.

“I miss it,” Mage says finally, breaking the silence as she gazes out across the dark landscape. “The ship. It was the first place I felt like I truly belonged. Like it was really mine. I never felt that way on the island, not even in the good times before everything went down. But the ship…” She shrugs, a wry smile pulling at one side of her mouth, half sad and half making mockery of her own feelings. “It was home. I didn’t even realize I had grown so used to all the little things, you know? The sound of wind in the rigging, the snap of the sails, the creak of the timbers; the constant sway and roll of the deck under my feet. But now they’re gone and sometimes I feel their absence like a hole in my heart.” Her eyes flick self consciously over to Ali and then she turns her head away to hide the flush burning her cheeks, muttering, “It’s stupid, I know.”

A soft laugh from her companion makes Mage wince until Ali rests her head on her shoulder. “It’s not stupid,” the other woman sighs. “Sometimes I can’t sleep because I keep waiting for the bright pulse from the lighthouse to wash through the room. That damned thing was broken for years and yet I still find myself longing for the comfort of its steady rhythm, even after all that’s happened and despite all it represents now. Because it was home.” She tilts her head so her cheek is pressed against the curve of Mage’s neck. Mage can feel the flutter of long lashes as Alice closes her eyes and murmurs, “It will pass. We’ll fill this place with new memories and it will become a home too. Our home.”

Liberty Palace had several rooms that the Lighthouse didn’t … mainly the Wings in each cardinal direction. Ali liked the East and Mage liked the West, and they shared the other Wings between themselves.

Unlike the three other Wings, the West Wing wasn’t technically a wing at all. Its hallway from the main atrium looked like the others, yet instead of leading into a grand room it ended at an archway beneath which wide stone stairs descended deep into the earth. These stairs lead to what Ali and Mage called the West Wing – a vast network of interconnected caverns filled with all manner of stones and crystals. The walls of some “rooms” were held up by massive quartz columns while others were covered with countless tiny crystals that glittered in their own light. Stalactites and stalagmites turned some caverns into gaping beast mouths; layers of smooth, rippled calcite transformed other walls into frozen waterfalls. Many crystals were familiar – amethyst, citrine, fluorite, smoky quartz, malachite, tourmaline in a hundred colorful variations – while others were like nothing found on any other world. 

Mage spent hours wandering the labyrinthine paths of the West Wing. It was she who discovered the underground river which fed the pool in the East Wing, and a great chamber in which a ring of crystal towers made a perfect casting circle. So too did she discover the chain of hot springs, where heat and mineral water worked to soak away her pains after a long day in the gardens or a few rounds in the armory. Now that the centuries of battle and vengeance were past, Mage found her long lack of self-care catching up with her. Immortal she might be, and capable of wielding frighteningly powerful magic, but that did not make her immune to exhaustion’s lasting effects. And cold! She had been so cold for so long she had forgotten how wonderful it felt to be warm through to your bones. Ali would join her from time to time, and in between leave little packets of herbs and oils on a nearby stone ledge as a surprise.