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The Queen's Rooms in the palace in Amber are very grand, very golden, and very un-Amy. But they've only been hers for a month and a half, and she hasn't been here most of that time. She'll get around to getting them changed to suit her. What matters to her is that she's found the door to Milliways at the back of her wardrobe.

Which means she can have guests.

And who better to bring as a first guest in Ambergeldar than her princess protege?

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Ingress walks hand-in-hand with Amy into the room.

"Wow, is this all yours? It's pretty."

"Thank you," says Amy. "I'm still getting settled in."

But if Ingress looks, she'll find a certain china figure surveying the room from the dressing table.

"Welcome to Amber, Princess Ingress."

"I'm pleased to be here, your Highness." She curtseys and then giggles.

"Is it fun being a Queen?"

"I don't really know yet," says Amy. "I haven't been doing it very long, and Perry and I were away most of that time, so I didn't have to do a lot of Queen things. But I think it will be, though it's a lot of work, too. I'm figuring it out. And it's wonderful to finally be married to Perry."

"Door likes being married, too," she says matter-of-factly. "Even if she's not a queen. I never saw Queen Elspeth's bedchambers, but she said hello to me. She's pretty and nice, just like you."

"Thank you, Ingress," says Amy. "Now, what would you like to see, or do? I have no plans at all for the afternoon, other than visiting with you, so we shan't be hurried like we were the last time you came to visit."

"You said we'd have tea, so that's for later. Can we explore the castle? Ooh, I know - can we play dress up?"

"We can do all of those things," says Amy. "If you want to start with playing dress up, this is probably the best place for it, though," she adds, pushing open the door to her dressing room.

Amy is a queen. There are a multitude of frocks and shawls and gloves and odds and ends to sort through.

And rather a lot of jewelry.

A few minutes later, Ingress is dripping in dazzling jewels - two strands of pearls, an emerald necklace, a tiara, and a chunky bracelet on each wrist. She reaches for a silk scarf and drapes it over her head.

"You dress up, too!"

Amy settles a gold circlet on her head and necklace of amber around her neck, and wraps a shawl over her dress.

She was rather dressed up to begin with.

"You look perfectly princessy, Ingress," she says, finding a pair of elaborately embroidered slippers and offering them to Ingress.

They'll be too big, but that's part of the fun of dressing up.

She kicks off her trainers and slides her feet into the slippers. "Ooh, these are pretty. I had blue glitter shoes once, but my feet got too big for them. Lilly gave them to me, and Tom made them bigger a few times, but then they wore all the way out."

"Perhaps Lilly would know where you could get new ones," says Amy.

It's a safe bet, with the glitter and all.

"Or we could get you some like these, only smaller."

"I'd like that. I have some red glitter ones like Dorothy in the movie, but sometimes I don't want to wear glitter shoes."

You'd never know it from the sequinned shawl she drapes over her shoulders.

"Well, they don't go with everything," says Amy, practically.

She makes a note to speak to the Royal Cobbler.

"Who's Dorothy?"

"She's in the wizard movie, but it's not a wizard like Tom. She gets blown into Oz by a big, big storm, and her house falls on a mean witch, but Tom said that's not what real witches are like, just storybook ones, and I know because 'Dora doesn't have green skin or flying monkeys. So she finds her friends and one's a scarecrow and one's a scaredy cat lion and one's a tin man, and he's looking for a heart. And they follow the yellow brick road and sing, and Dororthy has red sparkly slippers. And the mean witch comes after her but they melt her with water. And then she clicks her slippers and gets to go home. It's a good movie."

"Some of that sounds vaguely familiar," says Amy, absently. "It certainly sounds like an exciting story."

She looks at Ingress' outfit and nods.

"Perfect. Are you ready to go exploring, Princess Ingress?"

"Okay!"

The tiara slips ovr her eyes when she starts walking, and the shawl slips off, but Ingress keeps going. She shuffles onward.

Just as a true princess should.

"I haven't lived here very long," says Amy, as the shuffle down the corridor. "So we'll truly be exploring."

She hasn't ever seen half the rooms here.

"Pick a door," she says, cheerfully.

She looks right and then left. Then she places her hand on the a crystal doorknob on the lefthand door. It opens with a 'snick' even though the doorknob does not move.

"Oops, I opened it by mistake."

"I don't think any harm's done," says Amy, and steps into a very grand state drawing room.

"Well," she says, "isn't this . . . formal?"

She looks around, and then starts to giggle, noticing a painting hung on the far wall.

If you stand very far away from it, and squint, and try very hard, you can sort of tell that it might possibly be meant to be a portrait of Amy.

If you have rather a lot of imagination.

"Who's that lady?"

Ingress has lots of imagination, but the painting doesn't look much like Amy at all.

Amy laughs. "Well, it's meant to be me," she says. "But I don't think she looks the least bit like me."

"Maybe she looks like your mummy," says Ingress with a nod of the head.

"What's this room? Is it for meetings or parties?"

"A little," says Amy. "Mostly she looks like my sister, but with slightly darker hair.

"It's for small receptions, or spending time with guests who are important, but who aren't good friends. Visiting ambassadors and their wives and the like. We don't use it very often. The best sort of guests are the ones who you can take to spend time in your room."

"We don't have guests in our house much. Sometimes Mummy and Daddy would have dinners with important people, and I had to be on my best manners when I said hello. Door sometimes has special people over, but not like Mummy and Daddy did. I don't mind. It's more fun to not mind your manners."

She walks around the room as she talks, running her hands on the smooth velvet upholstery of the chairs.