A shattered window. Scorch marks on the floor boards. The fire alarm goes off.
He leaves his apartment with his camping backpack.
Memories of campfires and hushed laughter flutter in her mind, like lost butterflies. She crushes them until they're dust and can no longer bother her.
So, he leaves his apartment with his camping backpack. He gets into his car and drives out of the city, to an abandoned cabin in the Henry Fodder Forest.
And then, nothing. No sign he went into the cabin, no sign he went further into the forest, he just…evaporated, pulled up into the clouds, never to be seen again.
Except for when it rains.
It's raining now. The rain used to have a calming effect on her, a pitter patter that soothed her soul.
Now, when it rains, she sees him. Sometimes, he's lying in a ditch, and it's hard to tell if it's really him, because his skin is bloated and there are black bugs crawling all over his body.
Sometimes, he's sitting on her couch, with his legs on the coffee table, smiling, beaming actually, like she's just told him the funniest joke in all of human history.
That's when it really hurts. When she knows that her imagination is the only place she'll ever see him again.
And, here come the tears again. She starts to shake, and breaths come in fitful gasps.
She runs to the shower and turns the water to scorching, letting it wash away her weakness.
People don't evaporate, she tells herself. Over and over again, she repeats it.
She'll search the forest again tomorrow. When she's searched the whole forest, she'll branch out to the surrounding towns, and then, eventually, back to the city.
Something happened to him that day, and she is going to keep searching for him, even though, deep down, she feels that 'something' may be much more horrible than she can imagine.
When sleep finally grasps hold of her mind, she dreams of a column of fire that follows her everywhere she goes.
She wakes at 4am, gets dressed, and double checks the contents of her backpack. Inside, she has the topographical map of the forest she's been marking for the past month, a basic first-aid kit, food and water, an emergency whistle, a knife, a compass, an extra battery pack for her phone, and extra clothes.
Before leaving, she checks her phone. There's a stream of never-ending notifications from friends, family, and work. She ignores them and texts her mother a picture of the map and the area of the forest she'll be searching today.
The clouds this morning are sleek and distant. A lackluster gray sky watches over her as she zips through the empty highways.
After 20 minutes, she leaves the city behind, and begins to pass rolling green hills where sleepy towns rest.
Finally, after an hour on the road, she reaches the cabin.
Despite the shade of the pine trees all around, it is much brighter compared to the city—less smog for the sun to cut through, she reasons.
If the smog of the city was here, she may have not immediately noticed it.
She gets out of the car quickly, leaving her backpack on the passenger seat, and walks towards the weed-filled clearing beside the cabin.
From afar, it could have been some strange refraction of light.
From just a few feet away…she has no idea what it is.
It's almost as if reality itself has been sliced open, and the rotating triangle of colors is the exposed layer that lies hidden beneath.
She looks around for a prism, a projector, anything that could be a logical explanation for the phenomenon, but finds nothing.
She walks a circle around the triangle. No matter the angle she takes, it retains the same floating two-dimensional shape, which makes even less sense.
Two questions arise to the forefront of her mind: Should I touch it? Should I tell someone about this?
She takes out her phone and opens the camera app. Even while pointing the camera directly at it, the clearing on her phone screen appears completely normal, as if the triangle does not exist.
If she wants to tell someone about it, she'll have to bring them here. That poses even more questions: who to bring, whether the triangle would still be there when she returns...
In the infinitely wise words of her brother, she says screw it and tries to touch the triangle with her hand.
*
*
*
It's dark. The only fraction of light filters in from a small arched entryway that seems to lead outside.
Her heartbeat rises frantically. Darkness, fear of the unknown within it, is a primal terror, and one that she often fought as a child.
She takes a quiet, steadying breath. The urge to run from the darkness and out of…wherever she is, is strong, immensely so, but she's developed an almost equally strong ability to repress unwanted emotions. That sort of ability is not always the best in making or maintaining relationships, but in certain situations, it can be useful.
It's raining. She can see a wall of water outside, and hear a hollow drumming as it strikes the structure she's standing in. The colorful triangle is gone. She's starting to reach a conclusion, one that seems completely ridiculous and utterly impossible—but—she does not jump to it just yet.
Painstakingly slowly—still not knowing whether there is someone in the darkness with her—she takes the phone out of her pocket.
In the next three seconds, she runs towards the entryway, turns on her flashlight, and whips back around, shining it into the darkness.
She lets out a weighted sigh of relief as her light shows she's alone, in a hut of some kind. The circular walls are made out of a smooth red clay, and there is room for perhaps three or four people to live inside.
Despite that, the only things in the hut, a large wicker chest, and a sleeping area consisting of a few brown animal pelts stacked on each other, suggest that only one person has ever lived inside.
She turns back towards the entryway and peers outside the hut.
It's a full moon and the rain is still coming down in white sheets. All together, she can hardly see anything. The hut is safe (for now) and dry, so she decides to stay (for now).
With nothing else to investigate, she opens the chest and shines her flashlight inside.
It is filled to the brim with jarred vegetables and fruits, most of which look almost familiar, but not quite.
Atop all the jars is a folded piece of yellow paper. Written on the paper in dark ink and flourishing script is one word: Valeria.
Her whole body becomes as tense as a steel knot.
She picks up the paper and unfolds it.
Valeria,
This hut is yours now. You may stay as long as you wish. There is enough food and water in the chest for 5 days.
There is a small bend in the Great River a quarter day's walk north. Jumping fish, among other creatures can be found there.
Imber is a land of rain. During the day, there is a gentle mist. During the night, a brutal downpour. Only for a short time, when the sun is rising, is there no rain.
Jackheads, large creatures of horns and teeth, roam freely here. Stay far away from them.
When you are ready for answers, eat the brown fruit in this chest.
Until then.
She reads the letter again. She reads it a third time. She tries to read it a fourth, but her eyes gloss over the words, not fully taking them in.
The conclusion she had left simmering on the back burner boils over.
I've gone through a portal. Possibly…to another world— well, let's just say another area, for now.
And the scarier thought: Someone left that portal for me to find. They brought me here for a purpose. They know my name. Did they do the same thing to him?
She sets the letter down, and begins taking out the various jars in the chest. Most of them are the size of mason jars, some are smaller, and a few much bigger. The mason sized jars seem to contain different kinds of fruit preserved in a thick yellowish-brown liquid that she assumes is honey. The smaller jars hold pickled green vegetables or water. The largest of the jars, which are almost the size of her head, contain red slabs of meat covered in heaps of salt.
At the bottom of the chest, in one of the medium sized jars, she finds the brown fruit. It's the only fruit in the chest with a brown color, and even though it is preserved in honey, it easily stands out from the rest due to the black seeds that form whirling patterns around its center.
It has an oblong shape like that of a slightly elongated apple.
She has never seen a fruit like it before, but there are probably thousands of different fruits or variations of a type of fruit she has never seen before.
She twists the lid off and takes a sniff. The scent of the honey is sickeningly sweet and overpowers anything else.
A migraine barges in and settles itself comfortably around her temples. She doesn't know what to do. The fruit or any of the food could be drugged or worse. The letter claimed eating the fruit would give her "answers." What does that mean? None of it made any sense.
The most sensible thing to do would be to wait until the rain stops, and look at her surroundings.
But, a strange logic, or possibly anti-logic, occurs to her: My entire situation is completely nonsensical. Should I be doing sensible things in such a ridiculous situation? Maybe to navigate this, I have to accept that I'm going to have to do crazy things.
She sticks her fingers into the jar, and pulls the brown fruit out, cringing at the sticky feeling of the honey.
She takes a large bite from the middle. The honey is sweet, but the fruit itself stings her gums as she chews and swallows the sour flesh…
She stares at the triangular rift of colors before her. If she puts her hand in, she'll be ending her life here. That…doesn't frighten her as much as it should. When she thinks about it, her life ended years ago, she just kept going through the motions, acting like she had a reason to. Maybe, this is a chance to start living again.
⌇
She is running for her life. Just as she is about to escape the dark tunnel, she trips and falls. The rasker launches itself on top of her. It's a thing of nightmares, drooling a foul ooze on her chest as she holds its mandibles back from ripping into her. She can't hold it for much longer. It snaps its jaws onto her arm and her mind goes red. In that second, a connection is formed between her brain and…something else. An orange blade of flames springs to life on her hand and she stabs it through the rasker's head.
⌇
She takes the smartphone out of her backpack and turns it on. 18 hours. It has only been 18 hours since she came to this world. When you're fighting for your survival, time seems to inch along so slowly. She's exhausted and lets sleep take her away from her dark thoughts.
⌇
The market is bustling with people and activity. Yet, the people are different, they've been worn down to nothing but skin and bones. They're weary, and eye her with suspicion.This world has probably been far crueler to them, than Earth ever was to her.
⌇
She feels…broken. She'll die in this prison cell. She should have never left Earth.
⌇
She walks out of the red glass dome with a tiny sliver of hope beating in her heart. Another miraculous escape from death. But things will be different now. She'll make them different…
The visions fade. The clatter of the rain against the clay hut returns.
She leans against the back wall and cries. The tears that dampen her cheeks aren't the same as the ones from yesterday, or all the other days in the past month.
She tells herself in a whisper so quiet even she cannot hear it: "He's alive."
"YES, VALERIA, DAVID LIVES."
The voice is as fierce as a wildfire that does not stop until it has consumed everything around it.