Shaking my head, I looked around and couldn't quite make sense of what my eyes were seeing. One moment I had been walking through the gates of the university with its manicured lawn and just a few people milling about. The next, well, I was pummeled with voices, visions and smells that were completely strange and unfamiliar. Everywhere around me was filled with action. To my left was a small booth with a haggard-looking old man selling various creepy-crawlies, spiders, small mice and a variety of other odd insects and animals. Clearly, I was seeing things-- what on earth had just happened. Ever since arriving in Ireland, strange things had been happening.
I could brush off most of it as my overactive imagination-- maybe some kind of hallucinations, but this was completely different--could you actually hallucinate smells? I wasn't entirely sure, but I figured I should probably get off of the ground and try to figure out what I'd wandered--or fell? into.
No one seemed to even notice that I'd just *appeared* amidst their strange market--nor that I was lying on the ground, feeling as if I'd just been teleported to the moon. I couldn't sit here all day, though, and I needed to make my way to the registration building so I could get my library card and begin researching the strange messages I had received, and begin to understand this supposed "magical" element of Ireland.
"Hooooooo, hooooooo, hooooooooooo--- what do we have here?" a booming voice said in Russian--which I did not speak and was confused as I could understand it anyway. I looked up to see a young man with tawny-brown hair and glinting silver--actual silver--eyes looking down at me. He offered his hand to me, which I accepted and he pulled me up.
"You must be new to this," he quipped with a chuckle, seeing the obvious confusion that must've overtaken my face.
"Uh, well..." I began, stammering, "I'm not exactly sure what *this* is but I'm definitely new to it."
"Welcome to Salthill Market!" he proclaimed happily--as if that had answered any of my implied questions, "How did you arrive here today? Who gave you the passcode to pass through our portal, if you don't mind me asking"
"Passcode? Portal... Er... I... " I was still having trouble understanding just what was going on--and what I was seeing around me was still completely unbelievable.
"Hmm... you seem a bit out of sorts, to which clan do you hail?" he asked pointedly, looking at me interestedly.
"Clan? What even *is* this place--this Salthill Market?" I asked, clearly trying to get him to fill in the blanks. He adjusted his posture and narrowed his eyes at me.
He eyed me suspiciously and his posture indicated he was becoming irritated at what he thought was insolence but was actually complete bewilderment. "Wait, you're not some kind of human, are you? That is impossible, there are multiple wards... And besides, no human can enter the portal regardless," he was saying, mostly to himself and answering his own questions. By then, several others had turned to look at me and stopped their excited shopping. It was becoming obvious that I was having some kind of nightmare--like when you're in front of your class in your underwear--except I was fully conscious.
"Look, I'm not sure where I am--or how I seem to have arrived in this market--I was only trying to get my student ID--I'm studying in Ireland for the next year--"
"Oh shit," he said and fell silent. Everyone around him did the same-- even those who were too far away to have heard our conversation. After a moment's pause, he looked to me urgently.
Whispering now--though that didn't seem to make much difference to all of the people around us, "it's YOU." With that, he came closer to me and placed his arm around my shoulders and just as suddenly as I'd arrived in the market, the argent-eyed man whisked me into his embrace. Apparently, he had created some kind of sound-proof barrier-- but that hadn't stopped the peculiar onlookers from gawking. He spoke slowly and his jovial nature had abruptly become serious and said, "you're the heir." As the words left his mouth, chaos erupted amidst the muted crowd outside of the boundary he had created, with the emotion of the crowd appearing to turn a mix of agitation and complete bliss.
"I've got to get you out of here--somewhere safe," he spoke softly and reassuringly to me. Suddenly the world around me blurred again, and though I was still able to see what was happening around me, I couldn't actually make my body react in any way. Unable to protest--or even question what was happing, the man and I were surrounded by complete blackness as our bodies whirled in the emptiness that had appeared around us.