Chapter 6: The Sun Comes Home

In the end, it was the princess who wrote the treaty, on the back of Arjun's terrible map.

SuarJ would return every stolen bell to its temple and every golden plate to its kitchen. In exchange, the people of Kesaripur would hold a new festival every year on the harvest morning: the Festival of Two Suns. On that day every lamp, mirror and polished pot in the kingdom would be carried up to the city walls to shine toward the Burning Peak.

"So I'll know I'm not alone," SuarJ said, reading it over with one enormous golden eye.

"So everyone will know you're not a story," Meera corrected.

They flew home together, the princess riding on the dragon's neck, the knight clinging nervously to a spike near the tail, and Biscuit the horse dangling from SuarJ's claws, complaining the entire way.

When the city saw the sun-dragon coming, the walls filled with screaming. Then they saw the princess waving, and the screaming turned into the loudest cheer Kesaripur had ever heard.

The king offered Sir Arjun a medal, a castle, and his daughter's hand in marriage.

Arjun accepted the medal, politely declined the castle, and said the last part was entirely up to the princess.

Meera laughed, took his sooty hand, and said she would think about it over tea, which she finally got to drink.

And every harvest morning after that, the sun rose twice over Kesaripur: once in the east, pink and gentle, and once from the west, golden and glad, circling the city three times before landing in the square to be greeted by a thousand shining mirrors and one small, grinning knight.

*The End.*