The world slowly starts to appear from within the darkness, and I see that I'm in Nya and Melody's room. Only Nya and Kai are around, but they both glance at each other, worried. A regular occurrence in the past few days, for currently unknown reasons. It has been three days since arriving in Ignicia and we've been to four of the surrounding villages, but we've had no luck in finding the one in my dream.

The village had a cliff past a big, city hall like building. The village wasn't big, but it was one I think I'd seen before. But when you're best friends with the mayor's daughter, you get to see a lot of the surrounding villages. And I never payed much attention to the names. I just hope that we find it soon, as well as the master of wind.

While my siblings are clueless as to my 'illness', I've learned to ignore it. The scrolls I read said that this has to do with how long it takes to find an elemental master. The closer to the final battle we get without them, the more serious these episodes will get. Which means the more my siblings -as well as everyone else- will worry over me. I just hope this doesn't get to the final stage. When the death threats are no longer just threats.

I shake those thoughts from my head and focus on what I was doing when I fell unconscious. Kai, Nya, and I decided to have a private game night while Cole and Melody watched the sunset together. Of course, Monopoly isn't typically a first choice game when you have limited amount of time, but we've never not finished a game. All three of us are competitive, so we actually get pretty far into the game within an hour. It'll probably take us three to four hours to finish tonight's game since I kinda passed out on them.

But our game is once again interrupted when Jay and Elisia appear at the door, Zane and Lloyd behind them.

"Sensei Wu told us to let you know that we are to depart in an hour." Elisia looks at all three of us and notices that Melody is not in here like she thought. "Zane and I will find the other two and let them know." We nod and they walk towards the deck together. Jay and Lloyd stay behind, clearly interested in our game.

"Monopoly? That game can take weeks!" Both boys decide to watch our game, and sit on Nya's bed. Kai tries to get out of jail -he always gets stuck there- and then defeatedly passes the dice to me.

"Nah. It'll only take a couple more hours." I roll a six and end up in jail with Kai. Nya giggles as she grabs the dice from me and gets ready to roll. "We've never had a game take more than three days. And the longest game was when we were younger and teaching Alex how to play."

Ten gets Nya to a chance card, which ends up a get out of jail free card. She hands the dice to Kai, offering to sell him the card. Declining, he rolls a five, puts money in the middle, takes his character out, and pushes the dice towards me.

"Awe man!" I got a three and Nya decides to offer to sell me the card. "I was hoping I could rub an instant double in Kai's face. But I refuse to buy that card." Jay chuckles as Nya rolls her eyes and the dice. It lands her on my most expensive property and I just smirk at her.

"How much for me to buy it from you?"

"Hmm... fifteen hundred and a week off of chores."

"Kai, it's your turn." She pays me rent and I organize it in my nice, neat piles. The game goes on like this for a while, the other four joining to watch us when they return. Jay leaves for a few minutes to set course, and then he's back cheering on his girlfriend and teasing Kai about being stuck in jail over and over.

We all have a blast, and four hours after we started the game, Nya and Jay cheer in victory. We all grab snacks and head to the game room where Cole pulls out our card table. It was decided that we play bologna. Or b.s. as some people call it. A card game about deception, one that Sensei also enjoys. Proven by the fact that he joined us for an hour or two.

These are the things I enjoy most about living with a whole bunch of other people. It's a carefree, dysfunctional family. And I couldn't be more grateful for them.
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At about midnight, after most had gone to bed, we made it to Turreh- strangely pronounced tore uh- a village that Kai and Nya visited once on a school field trip. It's bigger than it looks, filled with tall, stately mansions and many, many shops. Sensei allowed us two hours to play tourist, so we all split into groups of three. Jay, Zane and Lloyd went together to the shops, Cole, Melody, and Elisia decided to sightsee at the rich neighborhood, while my siblings and I just wandered around.

There were kids playing in the corn fields or kicking a ball around, teens were studying in the park filled with shade trees, and adults of all ages watching out for each other and their children. The atmosphere was very similar to what we grew up with, the main difference being the corn fields. Ignicia's weather wasn't very good for crops like corn or soy, but rice was abundant. But, just like here, everyone watched out for others. The only rude and selfish people you met were the middle and high schoolers.

We walked for at least half an hour before I saw anything familiar. It was the city hall. The most grand building of them all was standing in front of us, and it was even more beautiful than in my dream. Decorated with gold and a rich orange, the pillars stood tall and strong, their marbled white standing out against the streamers that wrapped them. The door had banners of gold with peonies in the same orange as the streamers in the center.

You could tell that they were preparing for a celebration. The excitement buzzed throughout the town center. But all I could think about was how close we were to our next teammate.

"This is the village." I whisper to my sister. Both she and Kai turned towards me with their eyebrows raised in question. "I saw this building in my dream. The cliff should be about a mile or two behind it." We decided to look for the others and let them know, since we still had time.

I notice a girl, a bit older than Nya I believe, staring at us and a little girl of about seven next to her. She pulls who I presume to be her sister closer to her and glares us down. Though her caring green eyes and curly brown hair make her much less intimidating.

We run into Cole, Melody, and Elisia -well, Melody actually ran into Kai first- and tell them the news. We agree to search for the other three together so we can hopefully find the master of wind by the time we were told to head back to the bounty.

It takes about forty-five minutes to find them, but when we do it was at a candy shop. No surprise there. What was surprising was that they seemed to be having a conversation with a young boy -probably eleven or twelve, so my age- about any strange occurrences. And video games, candy, action figures, etc.

Jay and Lloyd may not be the best at getting actual information, but they do help make people comfortable about talking. And they know their geeky stuff very well. The last thing the boy says before his mother calls him is something about a 'demon with deadly wings' having been seen heading towards the cliff. We all give a look, thank the boy, and head that way.

So maybe my dream had nothing to do with the next elemental master. Maybe it was warning me about trouble.

Well, I guess we're about to find out, aren't we?
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Hey! So, sorry about the missing author's notes. I haven't really had much to say lately. But I do now! So far, I finished a chapter that I had started a while ago and wrote this one, all in one day. I'm going to (hopefully) have a few ready to post over the next few weeks, and honestly, it won't be long before this book is complete. I think there will be ten to fifteen more chapters, though I'm kinda hoping there will be more.

Please let me know what you like about this book, any typos I may have missed in editing, little jokes, etc... in the comments. I would love to hear what you think! And feel free to share this with others if you really enjoy it!

I hope you all have a merry Christmas and remember this season that it's more than just gifts and decorations. The time we spend together is what matters most. Bye fwiens!!!