Worlds Apart Ch. 01

When I was whisked away, it had been another ordinary day. Gray sky, college classes, not seeing anyone outside of classes or the Wendy's I got my dinner from. It was so routine that I could only guess what day, or week, it could have been from the last lecture I remembered.

It was likely a Wednesday. I was the girl that prided herself as 'one of the guys,' but it was clear the guys in my group had all gone to another Discord server without me. I could say they were my group, but it was more like they made their own group and I tried to follow. Years ago, they were happy to include me in their adventures and welcomed me warmly when I joined their server calls.

Now? Well... yeah.

I never cried. I pitied myself, all to hell, but I never cried. Emma Howell doesn't cry. She just... she just.

The whisking away wasn't sudden. One moment I was doomscrolling on my phone, preparing for bed. The next, I was asleep. I dreamed. I never dream, and when I do, it's always simple, like one action.

Falling. I was falling. Looking back on it, it was such a cliché, but I felt like I was falling forever, except... I didn't wake up when I landed. I just landed, and felt... alone. Like I did in real life, I guess. Except in the dream, I was alone because nothing was around. In real life, I was alone despite all of the people around me. The dream was actually more comforting than reality.

Maybe I dreamed of myself falling while I actually was. Maybe my brain was just trying to rationalize what had happened to me. Maybe it was all a coincidence. The point was... I definitely wished to be thrown into another world, to some extent. Like we all do, from time to time. But I never imagined I'd be the one lucky enough to actually fall out of my own world.

Of course, it didn't feel like luck. My first thought when I opened my eyes was that I had been kidnapped. As soon as I saw trees and rocks when I should have seen my bedroom, I got up and started breathing heavily.

"Hey!" I called out, realizing afterwards that I shouldn't do that. I didn't sleepwalk or anything, my brain told me--I was brought out here. And worse...

My hands flew to my sides. No one sleeps with their phone in their pajama pocket. I was brought out here without my phone. I was brought out into some forest. Worst of all, an unfamiliar forest. I looked left, right, above and below. I couldn't figure out where I was.

The good news was, I wasn't restrained. I had a chance to save myself. I lived in a pretty packed city, so my first guess was that I was in a public park or something. There were trees all around, but it wasn't like a dense-dense forest. It was around the time of fall where the leaves, golden-orange, were falling, just enough so that one or two leaves were always falling at a time across my vision. The sight made me give pause, and take it in. I didn't go outside much. Maybe that would change when I got...

back. I had to get back. I was so thankful that I didn't actually need glasses yet. If genetics were going to play their part, I would probably need them soon, but waking up in a strange forest without my phone wearing my jimjams was disarming enough. The last thing I needed was to be half-blind while it happened.

Glasses would have completed the super-nerd look, anyway. Kinda frizzy dirty blond hair and a noticeable overbite were two parts of the Holy Triangle of Looking Like a Super Dork. Ooh, wait, braces. I didn't have braces. Maybe braces would have completed the effect.

Out of nowhere, I saw a figure disappear behind a tree. I realized it was probably a person, but the way they moved instantly made a chill run up my spine. People look like people. This looked like some kind of silhouette, like it knew exactly what it was doing, and what it was doing was no good for me. Worried, I followed suit, hiding behind a tree myself. Someone kidnapped me and took me to these woods. I needed to hide.

I had to be rational. I had to have a plan. Fuck quaking in my boots... boots I wasn't wearing. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself and ran in the opposite direction of where I thought the silhouette was.

I didn't stop running. Eventually, the woods had to end. A city, a river, a field, anything. I'd take it if it meant progress... and if it meant getting away from whatever weirdo placed me in the woods. Eventually, something that didn't just look like more trees caught my vision, and I slowed down and stopped.

It looked like... some kind of cottage. But an odd one. Old-styled, like it was where the Seven Dwarves lived or something, only newer. As if it were fashioned recently, out of better materials or something. You always see those buildings held together with rotting wood and mangled stone, but this cottage looked like it was made by a craftsperson, no doubt content with their work.

There must have been some kind of hobbyist living in these woods. As well, either they were breaking the law or I was not in a public park. That did very little to make me feel better, but I wasn't exactly feeling great anyways.

The snap of a twig behind me made me snap to attention and whip around. I was staring for too long and forgot the main reason I was being followed, and unfortunately, that reason caught up to me. I turned on my heels, already starting to back away before seeing anything, and stopped again when my eyes realized what they were looking at.

It was a very convincing cosplay of some kind of World of Warcraft character or something. She was very clearly done up to be an elf, and a very convincing one at that. She towered above me at at least six feet and had done up her skin to be a kind of lightish green, with yellows replacing the whites of her eyes, and pupils like a cat. Contrasting her skin was hair as red as fire, cascading down her neck and the beginning of her back, with none spilling across her face despite having clearly just ran. Her nose was the most peculiar--eerily small, practically inhumanly so. Either she was the perfect model for this cosplay or she had committed a little too hard to the character. It was enough to make me second-guess, if just for a moment.

"What the hell?" I mumbled, now only timidly taking a few steps back instead of running away like I had planned.

She clearly had some bow-like contraption affixed to her back and a small knife in her hand, which she appeared to brandish at me as she ran up to me, though she was now sheathing it. Although her left eye twitched, her stern face softened and she stood up straight. "Conniherteg sa graltach?" she appeared to ask me. Some kind of gibberish.

I could only stare at the cosplayer. "...What?" I finally managed.

"Conniherteg sa graltach?" she asked me again, not losing a now-curious face.

I slowly shook my head and shrugged.

She blinked a few times, waiting patiently and only then figuring out that whatever was going on, I didn't understand. "...Fannas alta frajarme?" she asked, in the exact same tone as the first time.

It felt like a different dialect of gibberish. I just shrugged and shook my head no again.

"Sprece þū Englisc?" she asked with the same tone again.

That made... more sense, at least. "English?" I asked. "Yes, I speak English."

"Gea?" she asked. "Hwanan cymst þū?"

I stared at her. "I don't speak... that, though. Just English. Do you know English?"

She seemed to grow bored of the conversation and slowly looked away. She looked out to the trees and rushed out, looking around their stumps. Mesmerized by her speed and apparently interest in the ground, I couldn't run away. My feet felt like they were made of clay.

She picked something up and rushed back over, holding it out to me in her hand. It looked like some sort of mushroom.

"Oh, very nice," I quietly told her.

She motioned forwards with her hand, urging me to take it. Timidly, I reached out and took the mushroom from her open hand, and with the same hand, she motioned to my mouth. I gave her a look of confusion, and she pointed to her own mouth and mimed chewing.

I was not ready to do shrooms with a cosplayer from Finland or wherever, so I simply shook my head. In response, her face darkened and she unsheathed her knife, motioning again to her mouth and miming a single chewing motion.

I stared at her for a few seconds. Was she threatening me? It didn't seem like I had much of a choice. Trying to keep the thoughts of what could happen to me out of my mind, I gently sniffed the mushroom, then slowly worked it into my mouth. It didn't taste like much apart from dirt, but at least the spongy texture was disgusting, so that was something.

Upon swallowing it, I retched a little, then looked up to see the cosplayer had gone back to looking at me with curiosity. "Have you poisoned me?" I thought out loud.

"I would never," she instantly replied, in perfect English, speaking with some kind of melodic tone.

"So you do speak English!" I protested.

She nodded. "And now, so do you. What was the language you were taught? It was most curious. It shares a path with English."

I stared at her for a few seconds. To anyone looking upon the situation, it may have seemed obvious, but my denial was working overtime. "Where am I?" I asked in a low voice.

She stared at me, seemingly a little miffed I ignored her question. "On the edge of The Lesser Dell. Look." She pointed at a part of the forest that looked like two hills meeting, like some kind of a small valley.

"Right, okay," I murmured. "And how far is the Lesser Dell from Toronto?"

"Toronto?" she asked.

"Yes, Toronto," I replied impatiently.

"Perhaps I need to find more of the Loquiroot, I have never heard of the word."

"I haven't heard of the Loquiroot before. Or any of the words you were saying before. Or dells."

She was gazing off towards the trees and gave me a sideways glance. "I had thought you were perhaps a more noble member of The Herd," she began. "A dell is a valley in the trees. I was trying to communicate with you in Classical, Heralded, and Herd English. The Loquiroot allows one to understand the Common Languages, though its permanence I cannot guarantee. If you do not speak Herd English, of what were you speaking?"

I don't know what it was, but something about her little speech made it sink in. My denial was weakening. This was... real. The nose, the house, the weird mushroom, the languages. Everything was real.

"Um... human English," I managed.

She smiled, and started to laugh. "You learned it from Humans, did you?" she asked humorously, giving me this look like she was sharing an inside joke with me.

"Fellow humans, yes, seeing as I am one..." I mumbled. "What species are you?"

She looked at me strangely. Her catlike eyes focused on mine. "You say the most wondrously strange things," she said softly.

"Okay, then let's start over," I replied. "What's your name?"

Strangely, this question got the biggest response from her. Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open, and she stared at me for a bit before starting to breathe more heavily. "M-my name?" she asked, starting to blush a little.

"Um, yes, if you're comfortable with that..." I replied sheepishly, not expecting this reaction.

"I shall have to think about it," she replied, looking me over. It was like she was scanning me. Her face broke out into a soft, vulnerable smile. "Very well. My name is Kaendeer. Shall I know of your name?"

I knew the tropes. I still was kind of in shock to everything that happened around me, but I knew from watching Avatar that if I said my last name in the introduction, people would just refer to me by my full name all of the time. "My name is Emma," I introduced myself.

"Emma," she repeated, her smile not disappearing. "It is an honor to know your name. Perhaps it would be most prudent for me to find you some accommodations firstly?"

"Um, sure, thank you," I mumbled, piecing things together. "I think I'm from the future or something." My cheeks burned. It felt so lame to say that, but everything that was happening still felt so surreal.

"From... the future?" she asked, an almost childlike wonder to her tone.

My cheeks were nearly the color of her hair. This just felt cheesy. "Yes, the future. Or you're just really good at pranking people."

Kaendeer gave me a strange smile, as if I was speaking in complete nonsense, and proceeded to start down a clear path in the forest. After a few steps, she looked back at me and gestured. "Come," she ordered. "It's a short walk to the closest settlement."

I grimaced at my lack of shoes. Whenever this happened in movies, at least the protagonist was gifted with some kind of insight, some clue of how to get back home. There was something I felt in that moment, like a denial of the crushing weight that this was it. This was my life now.

Nevertheless, I followed. There was nothing else to do. Kaendeer was good company, and asked me questions about my background. All of my answers had to be tempered to fit the world I was now in, and even then, judging by her reactions, I clearly kept screwing up. Eventually, the forest faded, replaced by a road through some kind of a field, with some kind of outpost in the distance.

"I guess that's the settlement?" I asked.

Kaendeer nodded. "Great Yield," she spoke softly. "You're lucky it's in such proximity. They say it's the most successful of the settlements so far."

"Successful at what?" I asked.

Kaendeer turned to me. "Producing food, of course," she answered. "That's why we gave the settlement its name. The fertile soil of the area allows us to produce such an abundance that food costs less than at most other settlements. Which is good, because even though you're one of the Herd, you don't look like you've done much labor before."

"Hey! I'll have you know I've been working hard my whole life." I felt my anger rising. My whole life I worked where I could, even throughout high school, knowing I didn't want to be saddled with debt all of my life. Even though working at places like Barnes & Noble, Radioshack and Walmart didn't account for much in this world, I wasn't just going to accept being lazy just because those things hadn't been invented yet.

With lightning speed, Kaendeer was back at my side, even though she had been ten paces ahead of me moments before. She grabbed my hands and stroked her thumbs across them. Unfamiliar with her delicate yet purposeful touch, I started to blush. I was such a "guy's girl" back at home that this touch was almost new. I didn't even know if this was unique to her, her species, or just all girls.

"Your hands are soft," she noted. "Not that of a worker. Certainly few materials were made with these hands. If you had to pay taxes, they were few." She turned my hands over and looked at them. "Full fingernails, no blemishes. Your diet has never suffered greatly."

"You can tell my diet from my fingernails?" I asked quietly. I had to admit, I guess that my diet was an advantage someone from the future had over anyone from these times.

I swallowed hard, realizing that I didn't have this advantage anymore.

"On the Herd specifically, white marks will often decorate the fingernails. The more white marks, the more their diet suffers. On you, no such marks." She gave me a polite smile and let go of my hands. "Even if you aren't noble, you may as well be. Perhaps it would be best just to say that you are. It could excuse the, shall I say, cultural differences."

"Yeah, speaking of, what is The Herd exactly?" I asked impatiently. "If you're going to insist on calling me that, I'd like to know what it is."

Kaendeer looked at me strangely, her cat eyes darkening in misunderstanding. "It is your species," she told me, her tone reflecting how weird she felt telling me that.

I let the words sink in. "So... but... you knew the word human..." I replied quietly.

She only nodded, so I pressed on. "What does the word human mean to you?"

"What does it mean?" she repeated. "It is... a human. You are all Herdkind, but some of them are humans and some of them are guardians." I gave her a blank look, so she looked off towards the distance in thought, eventually looking back at me. "Your mother is a guardian, and your father is a human. Your sister is a guardian, but your brother is a human. Does this make sense?"

"Oh, so it's like gender?" I asked, receiving a confused look and a shrug in return. "It's like... one's sex?"

"Sex, yes!" Kaendeer's eyes cutely lit up, clearly happy we were communicating. "I'm glad you know about sex. I was worried your world had nothing of ours."

"So you believe me?" I asked gingerly.

She gave me a smile. "There's clearly a constant sense of confusion to you. The Loquiroot handles differences of language but not differences of upbringing. Whether your world has instilled different values or really does come from another era, there is something genuine to you."

I guess that was nice to hear. Still, this world was going to insist on using dumb names that I would just have to learn. It was unlikely this world had invented the dictionary, so my guess was I was in for a painful few... weeks, or months. Or however long I was here. Normally the hero was aware of some magic portal or something by now.

"May I ask a dumb question?" I asked as we continued walking.

Kaendeer gave me a look. "I don't understand why you'd want to ask a question that would not give you anything of value," she answered.

I guess 'dumb' was lost in translation. How was sarcasm in the Middle Ages? If I could even compare this to the Middle Ages. "Oh, okay," I feigned understanding. "Then I'd like to ask a real question."

Her look of confusion didn't wane, but she nodded.

"Does magic exist?"

"Magic?"

I nodded. If this place was going to go full Middle Ages, I wanted to know which tropes I was in for.

She stared at me for the longest time, then faced the settlement again. "You really ask the strangest of questions," she lightly commented, pressing on.

"Is that a 'no'?" I asked.

But I got no such answer.

***

The settlement greeted me through the nose well before I even entered its parameters. Animals. Animals and feces were the first two smells to hit me, and they would stay with me for quite a while.

I don't know why it really only hit me when I went to the village, but I really only accepted that this was all real when I saw most of its inhabitants--its non-human inhabitants--were elves. Vaguely different colors of elves. I knew before now that it was real, but now, with the elves staring at me, I was feeling it. A lot of them gave pause when they saw me, looking me over and openly staring.

I blushed as I walked with Kaendeer. "They're staring at me," I mumbled.

Kaendeer merely looked at me, as if that in itself didn't deserve comment. We passed by animals pens, farms, barns and little huts galore, until we approached a large building near the edge of the settlement. Apart from the barns, it was the only one I saw so far to be two stories.

Kaendeer opened the door, greeted by the wood's creaking. She turned to me, a noticeably serious look on her face, and gestured inside. Blushing but not knowing why, I followed her indoors to see some kind of community center or church or something.

"This is new to me," I managed as I looked around the room. There was maybe one window in the place, which clearly was a section of the wall that was bashed at some parts of either the day or the year, depending on how easily it could be fixed. The section of wall sat next to the window. Apart from this, there were no sources of light, but that didn't seem to bother the locals that were gathered at a few tables.

A few of them were people. Humans. Or, I guess, "The Herd." They seemed more surprised to see me than the elves. All of them were gathered at tables, some with food and some not, but their tone definitely shifted when I entered.