Thirty minutes later, Juniper was pacing her chambers, trying to figure out what to do. She'd asked Amber to give her a moment of privacy, and the demure lady's maid had stepped out into the first antechamber, while Juniper retreated into what she realized was her bedroom. It was a gorgeous room, with a massive fluffy bed, a variety of amenities, and a beautiful view looking out on the rest of the castle, which itself was far larger than any Juniper had ever seen. The tower she was in was only the second tallest, and it was at least 30 stories high. The whole gargantuan construction consisted of a main keep, a larger outer wall, many smaller ancillary buildings, various courtyards, and 7 soaring towers. Much of it was clad in a dusty rose stonework, and some of the structures looked like something straight out of a fantasy novel. If she had to estimate, the whole roughly circular complex might be more than a mile in diameter, but it was hard to judge without a good reference point. In the distance she could see a larger metropolis expanding down below the castle complex, certainly bigger than her home of Lakeview had been, even if it seemed to lack any skyscrapers that she'd normally associate with big cities.
They seemed to be sitting on a geographical high point over looking a sparkling harbor, with dozens of ships visible at the edge of her sight, tiny white sails plodding a course in or out of the channel. She thought it was maybe the Chesapeake, which Lakeview as only an hour's drive inland from, but none of the landmarks lined up beyond the vague shape of the coastline.
Juniper nervously bit her gloved thumb, "I need more information," she decided, still unused to the clear commanding woman's voice coming form her lips. Indeed, she was largely more concerned with the changes to the world around her, than the changes to herself for the moment. Even if she did think she was very pretty when she glanced in the mirror, 'is that vain to say if you've been transformed?
Eventually she turned to a well crafted bookshelf in the corner of the room, scanning the spines until she found a title that was promising. "Britannia's Empire: A History of our Triumph, Volume 1" Juniper muttered as she pulled out the gargantuan book. It purported to be a history and might help explain what had happened to the world around her, at least a little bit.
She sat and began reading, her eyes focused like sapphire daggers. (What she hadn't realized at this point was that her brain had changed along with her body, and Juniper was a good deal smarter, and more studious than Jon had been. Losing herself in a book was second nature.) She read in what felt like an incredibly fast manner, largely because it felt almost more like remembering than learning. Absently she tucked a long strand of brown hair behind her ear as she read and learned about the new world she'd landed in.
