Chapter 1

Alana and Sibilius sat in the park, enjoying the music being played on the nearby stage. Things seemed to be going well. The six young girls who could psychically use the Goddess' powers against their perceived male 'enemies' were safely back on Earth, thirty-five thousand years in the past, along with about three hundred others who wished to explore prehistoric Earth and perhaps set up a colony in what the Praetor called Mesopotamia. According to the Praetor, that was about the time humankind appeared on Earth in their 'present' evolved form, and Alana couldn't help but giggle as she thought of all the years scientists and archeologists had spent trying to find the 'missing link' – that evolutionary tidbit to tie up all their theories into one, neat package. Those scientists had no idea that there simply wasn't one.

In setting up the new colony, Alana and Sibilius had decreed that no modern technology would be permitted. If anyone in Earth's history ever unearthed a tractor or a modern tool, it could throw a wrench into the unfolding of history. She didn't know that such items (not the size of a tractor, of course) had already been discovered, then had been thoroughly debunked as fakes throughout mankind's history.

She also didn't know that 'her' people would come to populate the Middle East and Africa en masse and, with advanced technology which they developed over the millennia, would nearly destroy the planet warring amongst themselves twelve thousand years before she, as Hethemtima, arrived in ancient Ur. It was all ancient history, carefully recorded and protected by the Praetors, whose real, unknown purpose was to protect the timeline in which New Eden would come to exist.

Frank and Tanya had visited the day before, reminding Alana that Murielle and Miranda had been lost in time when Elaine had forced her Seeker's Circle to close the wormhole and seal it from ever being opened again. She was still upset about that, but Elaine was convinced that New Eden's survival depended on never returning to that time period, and she'd learned not to argue with a Seeker's vision. Tia and Tara, still upset about what had happened, had already returned to the Phoenix Preserve after Michael's wedding to console themselves by teaching the new arrivals how to become Phoenix girls.

Frank and Tanya had been concerned that they had been unable to locate their son, Frank, Jr. and his new bride. Everyone was convinced that the newlywed pair had hidden themselves away to explore each other without the possibility of being interrupted, but it had been almost a month without a word from either of them. Alana was beginning to worry as well. Frank Jr. had an active medical practice in the palace, attending the occasional injuries of the local populace of Garden City. It was unlike him to neglect his duties for this long a time, but three weeks – for two lovers – could go by in a flash, Alana knew. She had sometimes spent months secluded with a man she'd fallen for, ignoring the rest of the world entirely until hunger and a male's sense of 'duty' drove them back into the land of the living. Those were memories she treasured – even as much as she treasured her memories of Jake.

As she lay in the grass, warmed by the twin crystal suns, enjoying the play of Sy's fingers on her stomach and hips, a shadow appeared, blocking the warming rays of the closer, Northern crystal sun. Alana opened her eyes to see Haley, one of the six girls, three sets of twins that Lisa had recruited to become Phoenixes almost a century earlier. Holly and Haley had gone with the group of pioneers to Mesopotamia to guide and protect them with their powers from whatever menace the local fauna – cavemen, mastodons and saber-toothed tigers – might produce. Now she was back and she looked upset.

"Where's Holly?" the queen asked as she sat up, "Is everything alright?"

Wordlessly, Haley dropped to her knees and held out her hands for the queen to grasp. Alana reached forward and was immediately flooded with what was in Haley's mind.

"It seems that Morgan and the other girls were the target of the raid," Haley gasped, still overwhelmed with the events of the past twelve hours, "for when the flying creatures surrounded them, they all disappeared into a swirling vortex of light and the other attackers ran off. Even the tigers."

'A swirling vortex ... tiny creatures made of light ... Fairies? In Mesopotamia?'

Haley caught the queen's memory and gasped, not having previously known of Alana's encounter, over five hundred years earlier, of a swarm of fairies that had surrounded her, then refused to take her with them into... the vortex that led to their home world!