(Takes place when the twins are 4)

Simone and Lewis carried the tuckered Janus and Lila into their bedroom. “You guys had a fun day in Adeluna didn’t you?”

“Best day,” Lila yawned as she snuggled into Lewis.

“Ever,” Janus finished the sentence for her as he snuggled Simone.

“Okay, off to dreamland,” Simone and Lewis said as they tucked the twins in and kissed them both. “Good night kids.”

“Nini Mommy and Daddy,” they breathlessly answered as they shut their little eyes and rolled on their sides.

Simone blew out the candle and shut the door behind her. It only took a few hours before Janus and Lila had their eyes pop open.

“Hey,” Lila stood up on her bed and looked over at her brother. “I had the best idea.”

The twins had a strange, magical trait that gave them a rather obnoxious amount of energy at any given time. What was worse, was that they had their own form of mini resonance that allowed this energy to be shared between the two at any given moment. This created a rather intense loop. Most of the time, it was Lila who held most of the energy.

It was one of the reasons that Janus napped so much. It was his ‘excuse’ to be lazy, and snuggle up to his mother so much. But, at times like this when their parents were away, the energy was split close to even. So when Lila opened her eyes, her mind whirring with ideas, Janus’ eyes opened as well.

“Your ideas are bad,” Janus said as he rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Fun. But bad.” He stretched and looked around sleepily. Despite the rush of energy, he really just wanted to go back to sleep. It was his favorite thing to do. Better than play with a potato. He loved Glyn, but…a potato, really? All of the power that they…and Glyn liked potatoes.

Lila climbed down from her bed and came over to where Janus was laying. She picked up his blanket and climbed into the bed with him. “It’s a great fun bad idea.” Lila had a smirk on her face and her azure eyes were almost full grinning with her face.

“Let’s go back to Adeluna~ We can use the portal. Brother Rez isn’t there right now. I heard Mommy telling Silva. But we shouldn’t just go by ourselves~ We should go get Myrri. Uncle Xeik is too stuffy. He doesn’t let Myrri do fun things. It would be easy…”

That was right… No… Her eyes glowed azure, “It would be a challenge to get Myrri out of Elysia while Grandma is there… but she’s sleeping which means she isn’t fully conscious. Let’s go steal Myrri and show him the best thing ever.”

Janus made another yawn, and fell back into his bed. Of course it was Myrri. His own thoughts had been flooded over the Eraphim’s only child because of his sister’s obsession over the boy. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been annoying.

“Boring,” Janus replied as he rolled back over. It wasn’t that Myrri wasn’t smart. He was pretty well acclimated for his age. The problem was that Janus and Lila were so far ahead. Their unnatural birth was to thank for that. The power and intelligence they had far exceeded their age. He thought about it for a moment longer, feeling Lila’s pouting eyes.

“Fine. Lila and Myrri…” He sat up with a coy smile. “Sittin’ in a tree…K-i-s…” He paused. “K. I. …dunno how to spell it.” He pouted as he climbed out of his bed and started to get haphazardly dressed. His idea was just putting on a warm coat over his sleepy time clothes.

“Race to the portal!”

Lila was already up and putting on her coat as he teased her, “You know how to spell it…” She made a pout as she called him out. Though it was probably only from sitting with their mother as she wrote her more child-friendly romance novels.

From their room, the twins silently raced down the hallway to the portal that linked their house to the many houses they had. It also could link to Elysia. “Just gotta tune it,” she said as she moved it about. Finally, they got into the portal.

Avoiding the clergy was easy and sure enough, the goddess was asleep from the whispers. They made it to where Myrri was and peeked over him. “Myrri wake up.”

“Lil-!” Myrri was surprised but Lila covered his mouth and put a finger to her lips.

“Don’t yell… Wanna come see the most awesome thing ever?” It wasn’t too hard to get him dressed and get him back into the portal.

Once they were in the Adeluna house all they had to do was go through the city. Once they got to their destination Myrri’s eyes got wide. “This is the biggest playground ever!”

“IT’S THE BEST PLAYGROUND! Mommy and Daddy showed it to us today!!! Let’s go play!”

Janus was a little surprised at how easy it all was to sneak into Elysia, not fully understanding that the place was in fact well guarded against actual threats. Two children were hardly a need for concern, and as such, the wards never bothered alerting anyone to their presence.

They slipped out with Myrri, and soon arrived at the playground. Out of all of them, this was perhaps the biggest and best that they had seen. Of course, it was still second to the absolutely amazing one that was at Uncle Raile’s place, but there wasn’t exactly an easy way to get there. But this was definitely the biggest one that they could easily access.

Myrri’s eyes were wide as he looked at what was basically a palace in his eyes, and ran over to the swingset. “Push me Lila!?” he asked as he hopped on.

Janus smirked, “-s-s-i-n-g,” he finished from earlier, taunting his sister.



—

Xeik groaned, sitting up in bed. He had a hell of a headache, and his lips were dry. It had been like this for some time, where he was always deathly thirsty in the middle of the night. He looked over to his sleeping wife and smiled, wincing in pain for a moment before turning to his bedside table to drink the ever present glass of water. He chugged it without mercy, and put the glass down with a hearty sigh.

He stood up and walked around for a moment, yawning. Sleep was hard to come by when he was growing up, and he developed some terrible habits around it. He knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep without doing a quick round. He walked over to Myrri’s room, and paused. There wasn’t the usual sounds of his sleeping.

“Myrri?” he asked as he looked around. Nothing. Myrri was missing.

“Myrri!?” His voice raised a little. Still no response. “Mia? Myrri’s missing!”

“I KNEW IT!” Lila startled Myrri but soon they were all playing. Their laughter filled the air.

–

Mia snapped upright as soon as Xeik came storming in about Myrri. She threw the blankets off and catapulted herself off the bed. She was almost like an animal as she got down in Myrri’s room and began to sniff. Getting up she wrote out. “I smell Night Phoenixes.”

Xeik and Mia held the same look as they went into the Terrowin’s castle. A race from the portal to Simone and Lewis’s bedroom. It was a bit of a reaction as Mia kicked in the door. She was flailing her arms.

Lewis threw Simone off of him, she had been sleeping on top of him. The female night phoenix was sitting there in shock on the floor. “MIA WHAT THE FUCK?!”

Mia was stomping around and flailing her arms. She was pulling her hair and silently screaming.

“Xeik, fucking explain now!”

Xeik was equally as furious at the whole situation, and it took a few moments to get him to calm down enough to explain what was happening. Lewis was quick on the uptake, and walked out to wake up the responsible kids and staff for a quick sweep of the whole castle and island. It didn’t take long for everyone to scour the entire castle, even checking the potato bins just be sure.

“Janus and Lila are gone,” Lewis said as they all centered around the now roaring fireplace in the commons area. It was pretty easy to figure out who had Myrri. It was a literal coin toss on whether or not that was a good thing or a bad thing. “Simone can feel that Janus and Lila are safe, so we can assume that they aren’t in any danger.” Which, in itself was a problem. Janus and Lila could be playing with a full grown dragon and feel safe, so that didn’t equate for much.

“Darren says the island is clear,” Lewis said as he closed his eyes to think.

“Simone…Janus and Lila can find us, right? Because of the resonance. What…happens if we just reverse that process?”

Simone was running around with her head cut off trying to find her children. She wasn’t panicked since the twins could handle most anything by themselves but she was worried about Myrri. “We should be able to… They’ve never done anything like this before.”

“It’s possible they don’t know what they did is wrong…” Ezili said innocently.

“No, they know what they did is bad and they don’t care,” Simone had a look on her face. “And I’m going to beat their asses when I find them. We’re lucky they didn’t think Damond and Remy could go with them… Or Glyn.”

The mother rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Let’s concentrate on trying to pinpoint where they could be.” Mone and Lewis took hold of each other and focused their resonance. They grabbed hold of the strings that led to the twins and followed it.

It was blocked no doubt by the terrible twosome but… It did have one thing to say. “Play,” Simone said aloud. “PLAY! Lewis! Are you thinking what I am?”

The word play bounced around in Lewis’ and Simone’s heads as they tried to find their children, and though the location was blocked, it was quite easy to tell where they were based on that alone. “It’s the only lead we have,” he replied as he opened his eyes and threw his hand out. A gate opened in front of them, and Lewis pulled Simone through, with Xeik and Mia following behind.

They were met with a beautiful, starry night sky with the two moons high in the sky, illuminating the grand playground of Adeluna that they had visited hours before. The sounds of laughter filled the air as the parents approached, and soon they were cut off as Lila and Janus noticed their presence.

“Uh oh,” Janus said as he stopped playing on the see-saw, using himself to teleport to each side. “Not good. Bad. Was Lila’s idea.”