I felt a hand gently shaking my shoulder. I groaned, feeling my entire body aching in protest. My clothes felt heavy, no doubt weighed down by water. Still, at least I survived. For a second there, I thought I was a goner. Sitting on the edge of a crumbling pier the one time there were strong winds blowing over the river, just how stupid was I? God, how did I even make it into college.
The hand shook me again. Then it pressed into my stomach, perhaps trying to get me to cough up water. Surprisingly, nothing came out. I must have already cleared my lungs. I groaned to let the other person know I was conscious, and then I pressed my hands into the soggy ground to try to get up. My eyes were caked with mud, so I couldn't see a thing. The other person helped me sit up, then tried to clear my eyes, but their hands were muddy too so it only made things worse.
"Thanks," I said as I began washing the mud from my face. "Did you call campus health already? I think I might need to get checked for pneumonia or something. Though I feel fine, all things considered. Could use a drink, maybe, or some painkillers. Oh yeah, the name's Cas, short for Caspian. Parents honeymooned near the Caspian Sea so they—"
I stopped my meandering explanation because I had this strange feeling in the back of my head like something wasn't quite right. It took me a second, but I realized it was my voice. It was higher-pitched, but oddly familiar. Like the echo from a badly recorded home video. I sounded like I was ten years old again. And another thing, while washing my face, I noticed that my hands and face were both smaller. My face was rounder too, and there was no stubble. Oh, and the base of my ears were smaller too.
I splashed more water on my face, and blinked until I could vaguely make out shapes and colors again. I stared straight down into the water, hoping to catch my reflection, but the rational part of my brain reminded me that it was late and there was no moon tonight, so I wouldn't be able to see anything. But when I finally managed to open my eyes, I had to blink some more, just to make sure I was really seeing what I was seeing.
A bright, silver disc hung like a halo around my reflection. It was a full moon. My reflection betrayed my confusion at seeing not just the moon, but an image of myself, ten years younger, and with long, wet hair. Poking out of the hair were a pair of pointy ears. I looked up.
A young girl, probably ten, eleven years old, stared back at me. She was kneeling on the ground a few feet in front of me, just on the edge of the pond I was in. Her eyes and hair were a startling silver that melted into the moon in the sky, like a material poetic sibilance. Her ears stuck out of the melded hair-moon disk, and I noted that they were pointy, like mine apparently were. She wore a loose brown tunic, possibly made out of rough animal hide. The furs wrapped around her feet were probably shoes, but I was sure they wouldn't be of much help over rocks and pebbles.
While wondering about the girl's clothes, I cast my eyes down to my own body. I was naked, although fortunately, my lower body was hidden by the water. I grabbed a leafy branch which was dangling over the pond. I asked the girl to hand me some of the reeds jutting out from the edge of the pond near her. She seemed to understand, but I wasn't sure if she had understood what I was saying or if she'd grabbed the reeds because I had been pointing at them. She handed me the reeds and I fashioned a crude skirt by breaking the branch in two, packing the leaves as tightly together as I could, and then binding both halves of the branch around my waist with long reeds. It wasn't much, but at least I could step out of the pond.
"Hi," I said, "you wouldn't happen to be a figment of my imagination, would you? Or a character in a really, really vivid dream?"
The girl blinked a couple of times. "No, my name is Noel, and I'm real. What about you, are you real?"
"Yeah, I think I am," I said. "And like I said, the name's Cas."
"Nice to meet you Cas. I've never seen you around here before. What are you doing in the Forest of Three?" she asked.
"I don't know. I didn't even know this was the Forest of Three," I said. "That's a strange name for a forest, by the way. Why do they call it that?"
She looked away. "That's… not important. You should get out of here, this place is dangerous."
Dangerous? I didn't like the shifty way she said that.
"Right, well, I'd love to go back, but I don't know how I got here in the first place. You wouldn't happen to know the way to the Charles river, would you? God, it would be amazing if you're just a weeaboo in cosplay." I chuckled, weakly. "Would totally make my day."
"Charles river? Weeaboo? Cosplay? I'm sorry, I have never heard of those things before," said Noel.
"I wouldn't be mad if this was a bit, by the way. Like, I'd totally go with you to an anime convention while pretending to be an isekai protagonist. Anything would be better than me being transported to a real god damned fantasy world."
Noel looked at me in confusion. I sighed. Yeah, I was just trying to use humor to help me deal with reality. I couldn't actually deny the fact that my body had shrunk and that the two of us had pointy elven ears.
Still, couldn't hurt to check. "Hey Noel," I said, "are you an elf?"
Noel nodded. "Aren't you one too?"
Well, guess I couldn't even deny it as a joke now. I had somehow been transported to a fantasy world as a ten year old elf. Wait, if I was an elf…
"Er, weird question, Noel, but how old do you think I am?"
Noel seriously considered the question. "One hundred and nineteen winters." she finally said.
Great. Elves were probably immortal or something in this world. Also, I didn't like how she was counting the years by the seasons. It made me think those crudely made articles of clothing weren't the result of living in the wilderness for a while. She probably lived in the sticks. All the fantasy stories I'd read back home said elves rejected technology and lived in the wilderness. I was not looking forward to becoming one with nature or whatever. Still, any society was better than no society. I had to convince her to take me back to her people. But first.
"Why one hundred and nineteen? That's such a specific number" I said.
"Because," she began as she smiled, brightly, "I became one hundred and twenty today!"
"Ah, I see," I deadpanned.
"Also," Noel continued, "the moon just crossed the red star, so it must be your birthday now. Congratulations, you're one hundred and twenty, like me. Just remember you're younger than me, okay?"
"Wait," I said, "why is it my birthday now?"
Noel furrowed her brows. "Because, why else would you be in the Forest of Three? You must have come here for the same reason I did, right?"
"No, like I said, I don't know where I am or how I got here."
Noel stepped closer. We were both on the ground at the edge of the pond. "You can stop pretending, Cas. I won't judge you. We're the same."
What was she talking about? "No, Noel, I think you're misunderstanding something. I'm not lying to you, I really don't know how I got here."
Noel narrowed her eyes. "Fine, we can both keep pretending." She turned back. "But of course, if you aren't here because you ran away from The Terrible, then you'd want to go back to your tribe, right away, wouldn't you?" She smirked.
"Sure, but I don't know where my tribe is. Could you take me to your tribe instead?" I said.
"Wait, that's so clever!" said Noel. "You can go to my tribe and I can go to yours. Then we can both pretend like we've already passed the judgment of The Terrible! You're a genius, Cas!"
I frowned. It sounded like 'the judgment of The Terrible' was some sort of ritual that Noel had run away from. With a name like 'The Terrible,' I couldn't blame her for running away, and her plan for us to swap tribes could've worked out. If I had a tribe, that is.
"That won't work, Noel," I said. "My tribe doesn't believe in The Terrible. And they don't like strangers."
Noel said something I didn't quite catch. A swear word, maybe? It sounded like gibberish to me. Still, I was in quite a predicament here. If Noel had run away from her tribe, she wouldn't be able to lead me back to it. And I couldn't just ask her for directions and leave her here alone. Not only would it weigh on my conscience, her tribe might not welcome me without her support. And so, there was only one thing to do.
"Hey Noel," I said, "let's go to The Terrible together."