Princess Qerri and the RomantiQuest

Chapter 1 - Moonchild at Zero

PROLOGUE  

Long ago, in an ancient land known as Idyllion, a delightful princess was born in the uppermost spire of a castle precipitously situated on a craggy mountainside overlooking exquisite and expansive Loch Ness and the meandering valleys of the Scottish highlands.  Her name was Qerri, which means enchanted.

Her mother was the beautiful Princess Caitlin, wayward and famously licentious teenage daughter of the Celtic king of the province.  Her father, of even loftier nobility, was Alemanes, visiting king of Sisamati, a once thriving but, sadly, doomed civilization on the hidden face of the moon.  How those two got together and produced a daughter is a luscious story for a later chapter.  What is important right now for the purposes of our tale is this:  Princess Qerri was (and is) a most peculiar blend of lunar genetic qualities and earthly ones; and that manifests itself in the some pretty odd ways, hardly the least of which is her age, which is... well,  about twenty-four or so, give or take. 

You see, time passes many times faster up there than down here.  And, being blessed with a generous portion of her father's lunar genes, that means young Qerri, here on earth, has aged very, very, VERY slowly by our terrestrial way of reckoning.  Indeed, a thousand of our years would pass before she even reached puberty.  And that is why she is still around today,  a young woman barely out of her teens.  Exactly how far is a little uncertain.  She doesn't actually know how old she is; but, somewhere along the line she counted her ten fingers and her ten toes and then added on a random number and came up with "about 24."  So, she and Creek decided that was close enough.  Twenty-four it would be.

Qerri's physiology, too, is decidedly topsy-turvy.  Her lithe little body, being half earthling and half moonling, wound up a hybrid of girl features and boy features---but both stunted and underdeveloped.  And then there's her psychology, which can only be described as a scrambled mess of quirks and idiosyncrasies, most merely amusing and cute, but others ranging from irresponsible and erratic, to socially improper, to outright frightful.  Oh, she is astoundingly lovely to say the least, and the most wonderful, sweet, loving adoptive daughter a footloose young guy could ever dream of inheriting.  But, as Creek was to discover (and you will soon come to as well), the pixie maiden behind those big eyes, mischievous grin and dark flowing mane is unbelievably naïve, uninhibited and immature.  ...And she regresses like clockwork each month to a childlike state (drippy incontinence and all)! ...And, every so often, whenever the moon and her hormones happen to align themselves in just a certain way, hapless Qerri Anne, carefree boy-crazy, girl-crazy indy hippy chick suddenly develops superpowers and becomes her alter ego, Princess Qerri of the RomantiQuest, in pursuit of her calling, to do good and save someone's day.

Yes, our beloved princess is an old soul, a very old soul indeed; yet, at the same time, she is a clueless newbie at being a modern earth girl.   Okay, so honestly? Let's face it, she is a bit of a hot mess.  But Qerri will be just fine---and that is all because one moonlit wintry night she found her way into a pulsating disco dance club and into the safe, loving arms of the caregiving daddy of her destiny---a charming young bachelor named Creek.   And so our story begins.

CHAPTER 1

Creek glanced at the charge on his phone.  Nineteen percent and dropping.  The cousins had been chatting for nearly an hour, which was at least forty-five minutes longer than usual.  They were pretty close as cousins go, childhood buddies, in fact.  But Creek was not much of a phone person, even on a good day, and was hardly one for long, drawn-out chit-chats.  And this one had come at a most inopportune moment, just as he was wrangling with daughter issues...again. 

On this particular blustery winter's eve Creek's normally laid-back demeanor was already frazzled by having spent the day multitasking a whirlwind of multiple mini-crises, and his patience was thin when notoriously long-winded Marcus had called out of the blue to bend his ear with breaking news about something or other which had just occurred in their family, something which actually did sound interesting enough to pique Creek's attention.  It would seem that Marcus had caught wind of a sudden turn of events which, he was convinced, could lead to an unexpected windfall of sorts for the two of them.  But, as he spoke, Qerri was whining loudly from across the living room.