As Princess Aada grew, she looked more and more like her mother. In fact, some people had difficulty telling them apart.
She is a piece of me, the queen explained at Aada’s birthday celebration, just as we are all parts of each other. We are all facets cut onto the jewel of the universe. When you see your own reflection, you look into the faces of your ancestors. You are the one they have been waiting for. Like the whales that once swam below the soil, we swim through a sea of each other.
As she said this, the holograms which flooded the state room began to dance and shimmer in the air. A sinuously winding shadow fell across and through the wall, causing flashes of light that sparked and blazed within the serene images. This was unlike the common movement of the whales that circled in a gentle loop. Aada stepped out onto the balcony, followed by her mother and her birthday guests. At first, she saw nothing unusual. Suddenly, a red dragon rose up against the castle wall, just feet from the outdoor platform. Aada’s hair blew back, and she recoiled in the wind and heat from the enormous beast. A familiar cry rang through the air. It was a jubilant yell. When the dragon turned toward them, Aada saw her brother on its back.
Birthday blessings to you, sister, he called out. Here’s to many more happy days ahead!
Eeli! The princess shouted after him,

come and have some cake!

He was already a speck against the cobalt plateau by this time, and when he doubled back over the crimson plain, his dragon seemed to vanish, camouflaged, as it was the color of rubies.
The slightly disheveled group went back indoors, feeling even more relaxed and unceremonious.
When Eeli returned to his suite in the castle, he found a piece of cake on his pillow. The decoration showed the curling form of a dragon, piped in red frosting.

When Flash thought of his previous life on Earth, he thought of it the way Buffy and Skip thought of their life on Olo before the whales broke free. Theirs had been a dull existence, without vitality. Asking questions was frowned upon, and having fun was forbidden.
I told you a while back, that when Flash orbited Olo on his first descent, he looked for anything unusual, and that it was all unusual. I haven’t told you what he saw on the other side of the planet.
He saw an ocean. Because Olo is so much smaller than the Earth, you might call their ocean a lake. While it was smaller than Earth’s oceans, it was larger than any lake on Earth. Call it what you like, it was a huge body of water that fed the silver rivers and lakes I’ve told you about already.
All of this water was breathable to people like you and me. There were many structures deep below the surface. Like the castle, this how the crystals came together when everything settled. These depths were largely unpopulated, leaving many more wonders to be discovered in time.
I can’t be sure, but I think the water may have once been at Olo’s core before everything was turned inside out. Perhaps the whales lived in this dark subterranean sea beneath the soil, like earth’s blind cave fish. This also might explain their initial white appearance. Your guess is as good as mine. This isn’t a science book. Science was largely rejected in those early days when rules were most important. You get the point. I know you don’t need a brick wall to fall on your head. A stone wall. A wall of jewels. Again, you get the point.
Prince Eeli was one of the more adventurous ones, and he enjoyed being one of the first to explore beneath the waves. He’d originally gone there on whaleback. He found the dragons there, and they quickly became his preferred mode of transportation, being so much faster and more aerobatic than the whales.
He would ride the dragons into the depths where they looked like giant seahorses. The buildings at the bottom of the sea blazed in ribbons of colored light, and danced in the currents, which distorted their forms in a dreamy way. They shone against a dark background, and streams of bubbles rose from them like ropes of diamonds. Figurative statues appeared to move, and Eeli was sure they were communicating an urgent, but secret message in a yet uninterpreted sign language. They were colossal, yet inviting, arresting the prince in a quiet and respectful gaze.
Eeli traveled along just above the submerged structures, marveling at their beauty and intricacies, much the way he flew above the edifices on the crystal plain and castle above. Being less dense than the concentrated water on Earth, light traveled deep into the chasms and trenches, and the colors tended to be cool, primarily in blues, greens and purples. This only made the warm colors stand out more. The yellow of citrines and diamonds, the reds of rubies, garnets, even emeralds, and the oranges of carnelian, fire opal and topaz burned in the depths.
Rounding an undersea cliff, a surprise came into view. A fire blazed, fathoms below the surface. How could this be? White at its center, it faded to yellow. Flames danced in orange and red, flickering, and sending embers and smoke into the dark water around it. It reflected off the cliff wall, and Eeli was intrigued. Approaching the bonfire, he saw blue beneath the white, which dropped down between diagonal pillars of rock that resembled trunks and branches of trees. Even in Olo’s less dense water, fire would not burn.
Not until he was nearly on top of it, did Eeli see that this was made of huge shards of crystal that caught the light and projected holographic flames through and around it.
This was an eternal flame, so long as stars glowed in the universe.