Friends of Aelita and strangers from your past

“Thanks for coming, since you are for Aelita, please sit on the left,” you say to the pregnant Ruby Rose and her owner whose name you already forgot.

“Thank you and congrats for finally popping the question to Aelita, she's been waiting for awhile,” Ruby said as she shook your hand rapidly. “I was worried that you were going to leave her all alone when she said you got lost on a trash world. I bet you were all woosh, kablamo, oosh until all the bad guys were beaten and you were on your way home with everything exploding in your wake!”

She pantomimed explosions and fighting as much as she could in her state. Her owner/baby-daddy just chuckled and guided her away to mingle with other guests.

You chuckled as the Ruby Rose started “talking” with a He-Man with several weapons strapped to his body. You turned your attention back to the guests coming in while refreshing the flowers in your pocket. Smiling, you shook hands with a vaguely familiar woman with an Indiana Jones carrying a small box.

“My, you have grown so much James,” she said as she gave you a once over.

“Hello, I’m sorry but while you look familiar, I don’t remember–” you apologize awkwardly. Thankfully, your mom was passing by and came to your rescue.

“Come on Cuddlebuggie, you remember Miss Lindale…your kindergarten teacher, the only Prime Worlder teacher you had for a full year before ‘graduating’,” your mom said while nudging you with her elbow. You tried to recall but all you remember were all the teachers you had for maybe a week at most before you completed the ‘adventure’ and graduated early from those schools.

While the adventure style of teaching is fun (with lesson plans tailored to help the students work through a guided adventure and teach them valuable skills and sometimes other stuff), graduating because you speedrun the adventure wasn’t that great. Getting an education on the Enterprise-D was pretty sweet though not as good in some areas (like magic and money).

“Right, Miss Lindale, didn’t you have pink hair?” You say as a random guess while you look at her long blonde hair.

“I knew you would remember!” Miss Lindale beamed at you while you still couldn’t recall much except for a flash of a nap time and of a storytime. “Indy if you will?”

“Here you go kid,” Indiana Jones said before he handed you a box about three textbooks thick and had a gift bow on it.

“Open it,” Miss Lindale said, looking at you and the box eagerly.

“If it's a wedding gift, shouldn’t I wait for the reception,” you look at her and your mom unsure on what was appropriate to do.

“I don’t think it matters, you can open it now and we’ll have a Toad put it away after. It's just a gift for him, correct?” Your mom asked.

“Yes.” On that reply, you shrug your shoulders and remove the ribbon and open the box. Inside you found, as you shifted the items inside, several children's books all part of the Lost Princesses book series. The Lost Princesses book series were a collection of very simple children's books about several princess characters winding up lost and making their way home through different places to either a kind owner or a new nicer owner. The series has been banned and unbanned in schools over the years, a factoid you vaguely recall.

It was mostly to teach kids that they should grow up to be kind and generous or something like that.

“I remember reading them all the time,” you chuckle as you nudge a book open to a drawn picture of Princess Jasmine ‘taming’ a wild ATV to get her to safety after she and her owner got lost in the mountains.

“I was so surprised you never turned these books in to complete the adventure, everyone else turned in the ‘Royal Books’ even by accident,” Miss Lindale sighed fondly, likely recalling your kindergarten class.

“I guess I never made the connection that these were what I needed to find,” you say as childhood memories of sneaking the books out to the playground surfaced. You looked at Miss Lindale with a grateful smile. “Thank you for these.”

“I figured you deserved to complete your collection of ‘graduation’ trophies to go with the others,” Miss Lindale said, “All the teachers in the city know how you managed to ‘graduate’ from all the schools early by solving the adventure extremely early and then taking the quest items home.”

“It was mostly luck and my Uncle Walt’s training though some were just setup badly,” you said as a Toad came up to accept the box of books. “Thank you, I’ll treasure them.”

“My pleasure, and congratulations on the wedding,” Miss Lindale said before walking away to mingle with guests before the ceremony. Indiana Jones tipped his hat and followed her.

“That was…interesting,” you say as you carefully pack up the box and instruct the Toad to take it to the guest house you have been staying at. “I barely remembered her…”

“It's been quite a while and yet you still have more flashes from the past coming up,” your mom laughed as she drew your attention at who just walked in.