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How long ago did you start writing this?

Her name was Jess. Wreathed in a flickering veil of amber flames, her slight yet powerful body rested on two sticklike legs. She fluttered her wings a few more times after landing, as if trying to balance herself on the smooth, alien ground. Blinking, she regarded Moon, half-lidded eyes alight with odd charm, an odd charm that threatened to completely unnerve Moon. Although they had met many a time before, and many a time before Moon had looked deep into those crimson and mild eyes, she was still lost within them. Yet she had her impenetrable dignity, dignity that did not come easy; easy in the first thousand years, that it. Inclining her head ever so slightly, she looked at the lovely green grass but for a moment before once more combating Jess' eyes, trying to remember what it was she had so desperately to say, or perhaps... not so desperately. Yet at once, as the gnarled olive trees made their bending dome complete, and triangular leaves swirled around them in a timeless, beautiful whirlwind of half-grasped innuendo, Moon's conscience stirred and she took a step forward, staring deep into Jessâ eyes with purpose and fearlessness.

Hurray for boring exposition! *claps alone*

She really was beautiful, beautiful in a way that was only beautiful if you were like Moon, beautiful in a way that was terrible if you were anything but Moon. Jess preened at her smoldering wing as she stood facing Moon, her hurried journey to Cherrywort stilled so suddenly by its aura. Why was she here? She was here, Jess remembered quite proudly, because of Parliament. Because of Parliament, because in Parliament there were concerning things happening, things that Moon needed to know and address.
"I am not God, or a god." Moon said, as if reading the phoenix's mind. "As I've said before, the problems of Aetheron are their own, a result of the lifestyle they've lived as a whole."
"Yes, yes you're right, but what of those who haven't lived that lifestyle? Moon, you must do all you can to help. You must, for they are doing terrible things in Parliament." Jess blinked, covering up her eyes but for a moment, and her spell was fully broken. Not that Jess wasn't an all together alluring character, it was simply that her eyes, those eyes that burnt like melted gold, that had made her the phoenix she was today. Mentally? Physically? Spiritually? She didn't believe in that though. Yet it was because of the eyes that she was here now, informing Moon of the problems with Parliament. "You did, may I remind you, encourage me to come and let you know what's going on in... Parliament."
"Parliament." Moon laughed softly as she said it, the foul, tantalizing word rolling off her pink tongue. The fools in-"
"Please, oh please don't say it." Jess said ever so quietly, in a defeated voice that did not altogether match her eyes, and yet even those had lost some power since her arrival.
"Say what? Parliament?" Jess flinched. "Oh, sorry." Moon apologized without even the slightest hint of sincerity. "Now, what were you saying about, about you-know-what? After all, like you said, I DID request you keep me informed."
"Yes, yes of course." Jess gathered in a breath, small smoldering embers floating in the air around her beak as she inhaled, then exhaled. "They refuse to meet an agreement. Necriz has spent the last week making all sorts of speeches about the sincerity of the court, and how he knows the good people present would never let the-"
"Bla bla bla." Moon interrupted, sitting down with captivating grace, and with a languid hand motion, let Jess know it was time to continue. "Get to the good part."
"King Chodrax-"
"You donât have to call him that here."
"K-... Chodrax won't make a commitment one way or the other. He claims that he will reach a decision soon enough, although he's been showing up to less and less meeting lately; it's almost as if he doesn't care."
Moon laughed again, in a quiet and condescending way that made Jess almost want to apologize. "Chodrax cares. He cares very, very much."
"Yes, well, care or not, it isn't looking good. Necriz has every idiot in Aetheron convinced of his goodwill and conviction, and Xander just isn't handling things well. At least, not to the naked eye. He doesn't have much of a case either." She trailed off, and hung her head, flames dying down to a smolder. "Perhaps we just aren't right. Perhaps Necriz is right."
Moon hadn't laughed for years. She was too impressed at her own deep thoughts. Yet at these verbal musings of a time-vulnerable phoenix, she could not help but laugh, and enjoy doing it. She did it again now. "I may not know everything, Jess." At this she laughed once more. "Well, almost everything. But that's not my point. My point is, assuming what you have told me up to this point, that Necriz is NOT right. Necriz is wrong."
"Well, the issue won't be resolved by your own personal convictions concerning the matter." Jess said coldly, which was a strange thing to hear considering that she was on fire.
"Then tell me, if you will, when you think Chodrax will make a decision." Moon was standing again, arms crossed over her chest as she waited for a response.
"In the next few days, I should think. Although he hasn't spoken out one way or the other about it, I can tell he's grown tired of Xander's argument. For support, from the people I mean, he'll rule in favor of Necriz. It won't be but a few days now."
"But what about the thrones?" Moon blurted out, exasperated. "Sure, he'll gain support from the crowns for the ruling, but he is as good as splitting the land in two!"
"The land is already split in two." Jess said, voice quivering just above a whisper. "That's what this whole dispute is about, after all." Moon nodded in response. The phoenix was right, **** her. When Chodrax moved the border between Northern and Southern Aetheron down a few miles, as Jess predicted he would, Necriz would have a firm grasp on the small town of Hamels, which was split right down the middle by the current line. It was a hotbed for diplomatic relations, with more embassies than perhaps residencies. Of course, this caused a terrible amount of unrest among the people inhabiting opposite regions of the town. Chodrax would only aggravate matters with his ruling.

Necriz. Moon thought, disgusted. He was the leader of the crowns, the political party that dominated the politics of Northern Aetheron. Arrogant and self-possessed in his own dark religion, of which he was the patron, his use of Hamels would, no doubt, be nothing short of sinister. What had he said in Parliament that had swayed the once-wise Chodrax's judgement? Moon wished to know; yet Jess continued to speak.
"And yet I cannot help but think." Jess mused, startling Moon in the slightest way. "Sure, to move the border south would be to give too much power to Necriz, and yet, if Chodrax were to keep it in Hamels, would unrest in the North finally spill over? And if he were to move it North, would that give the South too much power?" She inhaled. "I can't help but think that my own residency in the South is affecting my viewpoint."
"Stop starting your sentences with 'and'." Moon reprimanded. She noticed the fiery light was completely out of Jess' eyes. "You've known Xander all your life, Jess. Would you not trust him with power?" Jess nodded sullenly. "You see? The South, contrary to the North, is not corrupt. And besides-" Jess raised an eyebrow and flashed a beaky smile. "Er, besides, Chodrax is king for a reason. He will mediate matters if they choose to escalate."
Jess pouted for a moment. "What is ruined by Parliament is fixed by the Monarchy." She laughed bitterly. Moon laughed like a cook chime.
"You'll see Jess." Jess' fire had dwindled to an autumn simmer, flames licking timidly only a few inches from her body.
"Itâs a... a pretty nice place you got here." Jess began, eager to stay, not to leave.
"Get out." Moon said without a second glance. "You say it'll be resolved in a few days? Then come back in a few days." Jess recoiled, hurt, but attempted to gather her dignity in a shower of lifted wings, sparks igniting the grass as she ascended, ascended over the hills and out of sight, a trail of black smoke spilling out behind her. But the grass on Cherrywort didn't burn. The olive trees creaked as they began to bow back, shaking free loose leaves and dropping the occasional cluster of olives. Jess, the phoenix, always thought of herself as a bird of few words, yet Moon knew that wasn't the case. But now that she was gone, glorious, enveloping silence permeated the hill. Now, she waited. Because before too long, she'd be back. And she'd bring the fate of Aetheron with her.
Stop making me start my sentences with 'and'!
Sorry. Jeez Moon, that was supposed to be a powerful delivery.
I don't care. I shall speak proper or I shan't speak at all.

What doth the phoenix on wing ponder? At the moment, one phoenix on wing doth was thinking about how much she hated Cherrywort. Looking up at the sun, she was fairly certain it hadn't budged since she'd been gone. The oddity of that fact only increased her fear of the hill. Moon didn't care, she saw now. That pompous little tinkerbell was content to sit on her hill and talk to squirrels until the world fell down around her. Well, she'll see. I won't be there for her then. Jess thought triumphantly. Yet her confidence faltered. Should she be spending so much time hating Moon? Or should she be helping Xander sway the unfathomable whims of the great king, Chodrax? Now that she thought about it, how long HAD he been king? How long had he been ALIVE?! Jess shook her fiery mane of a head. She needn't dwell on such things; she needed to reach the capitol.

Cherrywort Hill was, as I mentioned before, nestled within a chain of true hills, green all over with impressive size that rivaled that of their brothers, the mountains of the north. The chain actually evolved into a mountain as it ran farther up Aetheron, snowcapped and mysterious, the end of the land as its inhabitants knew it. The hills started nearer to the sea, little more than wooded downs surrounded by green pastures on all sides. As it went north, a recurring theme as far as the hills are concerned, it went at an almost ninety degree angle and increased in height and width until it evened out and smashed against the Northern Cataracts, upon which was perched the capitol of Northern Aetheron, New Armor. There were scientists in Aetheron that claimed the hills, while pushing against the cataracts, were actually lifting the system of waterfalls up higher into the air, but no one in Aetheron believed in science. And yet from there the hills kept its inspired journey, rising to touch the heavens as it tore a ragged trail northwest. Within these, the largest hills in the chain, Cherrywort rested. Who knows the inanimate machinations of the hills, yet we as sentient beings know it could have just ended there, ended there and have been perfect. But for some unknown reason, it turned back east until the mountains, all in all forming a sort of backwards-Z straight through Aetheron. When, so many years ago, Chodrax had brought the people of Endril across the sea and landed on the foreign shores of Aetheron, establishing their first settlement on the Isthmus of Song, it had seem quite simple to let those very hills separate the land into a Western and Eastern Aetheron. Why would they want to separate it into two nations, and separate the ingenious people that had together braved the sea to land here? That, my sympathetic readers, is a story for another time. When it was suggested, however, that the hills serve as the border for the two nations, the King of Games, sinister founder of the crowns, cried bloody murder, claiming that the hills could hide a potential attack against the ;good peoples' of then Western Aetheron. When he took the matter to Chodrax, and instigated the very first trail in the short history of Aetheron, he also pointed out that, by inhabiting Eastern Aetheron, the thrones inherited the lush plains of across the river (than ran on the other side of the hills) as well as the tributaries that emptied into the sea. Chodrax, who in those days was still in his mental and physical prime, had his hands tied to object. And so the winds blew, the water flowed, and the pink laced clouds crawled across amber skies like stuffed insects. Ten years later, Aetheron had been populated from sea to the Northern Mountains, dotted with settlements and spanning endlessly on, as far as the imaginations of its people.
This is unbearable.
Oh, sorry.
I've gotten a bit off topic. Now, back to why I brought the hill up anyway. In the first crook of the chain, between the lines that spanned to and from the cataracts, nestled up against the hill west of Cherrywort, was Oakvale, grand capitol of Aetheron. Completed exactly ten years after the ships first landed in the Gulf of Nova, it lay about a mile from the face of the hill. Due to its location and the irregular arc of the sun, Oakvale was almost always covered in a pleasant, light shade, except for very early in the morning and very late in the afternoon.