Note: Look at me, posting (almost) weekly! Sorry I didn't do it yesterday, but right now I seem to have someplace to go every single minute of every single day! Not in a bad way though, they're all things I chose to do, it's just a bit much all together. But enough about me! I hope you enjoy :)

As soon as he met her, he knew he felt differently about her than he did about anyone else. At first he wondered–could this be love? But he dismissed that thought quickly, laughing at himself even for having the idea. She was the thread-mage, after all. She wasn't just any normal girl. He had had fleeting crushes on girls at school when he was younger, and of course he had friends. But this wasn't like that. Granted, he didn't have any really close friends, and hadn't since he was young; he wasn't popular, exactly, and at school he'd been more of a class goofball, friendly with everyone but not taken seriously. Maybe, he thought, that was why he felt differently around her. She didn't know any of that, how he'd been at school, or how any of the others were. But he knew that wasn't really it.

No, it wasn't a crush, of course, he thought, and it wasn't just that he found her interesting, although he did. The way he felt about her was completely different than any of that. Almost like . . . almost like she subconsciously drew him in, sort of enchanted him. Maybe it was her thread-mage magic. But no, he hadn't heard anyone speak of such magic. No one else came back to the thread-mage's house week after week like he did. No one else felt so drawn to her.

He hadn't told anyone about how he felt, or about his weekly visits. It was getting harder and harder for him to slip away each week, however. Luckily, he no longer went to school, since he was seventeen and the eldest students there were at least a year younger than he was. But his parents still wanted him to study, and of course there were his chores at home, and after a few times, people started to notice him going off on his own. He had managed to convince his parents that he had simply taken to going on long walks around the village, and so far it had worked. After all, it was partially true. His family's land was on the opposite side of the village to the thread-mage's estate.

He looked forward to Mondays, and sometimes entertained the thought of visiting Nya more often. But he didn't want his parents to worry, and he didn't want to interrupt her when she was busy. He always visited her on Monday mornings, during the usual work and school hours, so no one was likely to be there.

While he waited for Mondays, he entertained himself with his books, his chores and errands, and most of all, his inventions. His parents were wheelwrights, and rather renowned for their skill in these parts, but their true passion was inventing, building, and collecting interesting junk. Their backyard was full of scrap metal, lone boards, and piles of wheels–both functional ones, and broken ones his parents had taken off of peoples' carriages and replaced with better ones. Jay had been making stuff with the scrap wheels for as long as he could remember, and recently his projects had become more sophisticated inventions, planned out and calculated and methodically tested. His dream was to invent something no one had ever thought of before–wings, maybe, or a carriage that moved without being pulled. But most of the things he built were either useless or improvements on something someone else had already invented.

Apart from his parents, no one seemed to care about Jay's inventions. In fact, most people were annoyed by them. So he had simply taken to keeping them secret. But one Monday, he woke up early to continue working on a little model of a mechanized wheel axle he had been making. When he went to visit Nya, he put it in his pocket. He had spent so long working on it that he had forgotten to pilfer something from his mother's kitchen to bring her, so he picked winter greenery to bring instead. The bright red berries would match her silk kimono, he thought.

When he got to Nya's house he handed her the bouquet, winning a slight smile. He always brought her something, and she always thanked him, and it had happened so many times now that he didn't even think of not bringing her something. They didn't have much to talk about that day, but she asked him about his studies, as she usually did, and he told her what he had learned.

"Do you study all the time?" She asked.

"I help my parents sometimes in their workshop." He said.

"Oh, that sounds fun!" She sounded surprisingly enthusiastic.

"I make things all the time, too." He said, pulling out his axle model and showing it to her. "This is what I'm working on right now."

"Wow!" She took the model and scrutinized it with genuine interest. "This is amazing. But . . . what's it for?"

"It's an axle for a horseless carriage." He explained, sounding sheepish for some reason. "I'm not sure how it would work yet, but I hear they have them in Ninjago City. But you know the Queen would never let those kinds of outrageous inventions into the kingdom. Too dangerous, and expensive, and all."

"Yes." She said. She had quite a few more things she wanted to say about the Queen, but of course she could not. It didn't matter so much if Jay criticized the Queen–nothing he said mattered much, probably. But she was such an esteemed figure that she had to watch carefully what she said.

"I think it'd work, if it was allowed." She said instead, handing the model back to him. "That would be amazing."

After Jay went home, the subject of the Queen stayed on Nya's mind. Truly, she hated her. Although they had never met, she had heard plenty of rumors. People said the Queen was a sorcerer, and that she believed that magic was always better than technology. However, she wanted to be the most powerful person in her kingdom–which was known as the Serpent Kingdom due to the shape of its border–and was so secretive about her magic that at this point it was hardly more than a rumor. To remain in power, she forced the rest of the kingdom into poverty. The kingdom hadn't advanced technologically for hundreds of years. It was as if they were stuck in the past. Nothing but words could leak through the high stone walls that surrounded the kingdom, and no one had been out in ages. But news still slipped in from the outside world, and Nya knew the rest of Ninjago was different.

First and foremost, the rest of Ninjago didn't rely on the powers of a little girl to decide their fates. Nya sighed. She almost wished she could leave. But that was impossible, of course. It wasn't so easy to just go–it wasn't like she could just take Jay and leave. Especially not considering who she was. But still, she could dream. She couldn't help but take her book of geography off the shelf, and study the maps inside.

The rest of the continent, as far as Nya knew, was split into several other separately governed regions. Just north of Nya's own kingdom was the largest of these. The Northern Empire, ruled fairly and justly by the famed Brother Emperors. Their border began at the northernmost tip of the Serpent Kingdom and stretched in a straight line, east to west, across the top of Ninjago. The Serpent Kingdom had several biomes, but was mainly temperate country full of small villages, rice fields, and farms, and a desert where the palace was located. There was also a dreary stretch of coastline, but there were guards posted along the coast to ensure that no one left or arrived by boat. Then there were several other scattered small kingdoms and city-states. There was also the famed underground kingdom–morbidly nicknamed the Tomb Kingdom–where the people were apparently all magical. Some said that the Queen of the Serpent Kingdom had come from the Tomb Kingdom, but no one knew for sure.

She wished she had Mei Tao here. She was so wise–perhaps she would've been able to answer Nya's questions. But she was gone. Nya was alone in the world. Except for her brother.

Yes, her brother. She would have to ask him. Kai still lived in the village they'd grown up in, which was closer to the border than Nya's estate. Maybe he or one of his friends would know something about the outside world.

Don't get your hopes up, Nya reminded herself. Even if Kai did know something, it wasn't like it would help anything past her fantasies. She was needed here–she mustn't forget that. It was not an exaggeration to say that if she left, the entire concept and many rules of appropriate courtship and marriage would come crashing down.

But oh how she hated those rules.