He breathed in sharply, lifting his head upwards, gasping as he tried to balance himself. He was scared to death. The cold water in the bucket caught him by surprise and paralysed his body for that moment because of the shock caused.
"What happened? Have you lost all your strength?" asked a girl sitting nearby. Her hair was as white as just-fallen snow, and she wrapped herself in so many layers of cloth that she looked like some sort of impatient mummy, more than ready to shed her wrappings. Her eyes, a piercing white, lanced into him, a mix of amusement and irritation playing on her features.
The young man stared at her, the thumping of his heart before he could take in the scene around him; it was not his room, nor his city area. He was in a small cabin-thin space that barely lighted; walls were of wood and looked well past their prime. Even the floor is coarse and cold on his naked feet, and in the damp earth and pine fragrance brewed aromas filled the air. A winking fire in the hearth cast dancing shadows across the room, and his eyes grew wide with confusion as he searched for any landmark even remotely familiar.
The girl with the white hair sighed heavily, clearly unimpressed by his reaction. "You're not going to sit there gaping all day, are you?" she asked, annoyance inflecting her tone.
Her words brought him back to himself, and he scanned the area once more, his attention this time settling on the youth in red and black. There was something piercing in the stranger's gaze, with eyes that blazed like rubies in their fierce red color exactly matching the suit. His stance was balanced, as if a predator was measuring up its prey. The young man involuntarily reached out to touch the sword at his hip, but there was only the damp tunic to his touch.
The girl with green hair sat quietly in the corner. Her emerald eyes watched him with an unnerving serenity. Her clothes were indeed green, of leaves and vines intricately woven into clothing, as if she'd been plucked straight from the forest. The way she sat there, almost into the shadows, suggested some sort of comfort in her surroundings that he couldn't fathom.
And as he looked about in amazement, he shook his head in denial. The wooden cabin wasn't a place he knew anything about, but it felt almost surreal. A warm, inviting glow, from the fire dancing across the room, was stark contrast to the chill of the space: at least this marked him well and told him he was most certainly not in his own world. Cracking embers were the only sound that broke the tension-that echoed off the ancient wooden walls. The cabin was sparsely furnished, with only some meagre pieces which seemed to have been put together by one's own hands. There were a table, a quill and parchment, a few storied bookshelves with worn out books on the shelves. There were some stools scattered in the room. The floorboards groaned beneath his weight as if the very structure was speaking to him, asking him to leave.
He knew he had to be dreaming. This had to be some kind of twisted nightmare born of his own vivid imagination. But as he pinched his arm, it hurt; so did the chill creeping into his bones from the water that had soaked his clothes. The characters in the room stared at him, expressions a mix of curiosity and skepticism.
"Where. where am I?" he stuttered, his voice croaking from the cold. The white-haired girl rolled her eyes. "You're in my cabin, obviously. Did you hit your head or something?"
The young man took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to comprehend what was happening. His mind whirled, scouring the annals of his own imagination for a place that matched this weird reality. The words of the girl were ringing in his mind when, in a jolt, he realized that this cabin was not randomly located in some random world. What had been an adventure story, a tale of magic, was now coming alive; he had somehow found his way into it. His heart started thumping within his chest, like a drum announcing a battle. This was what he had created to run away from an ordinary life-this he was living now.