As the sun started to rise, lighting up the living room where the gang had taken residence in a warm orange glow, the teenagers finally started to feel tired. Anya had noticed that her phone hadn’t adjusted to the time on the wall clock, as it was still showing 8pm. She counted her blessings for having remembered her phone charger and only got bored a few times during the night. Carla had found a Wifi box which Anya found only a tad strange, but they had all prompty connected to it. The internet was slow, and not a single one of Felicity’s magic related Netflix downloads showed up, but they accepted it and counted their blessings for even having a connection in the first place.

Beside her on the couch, Lily and Sam were passed out in a pile, snoozing away without a care in the world. Carla and Felicity were sitting on the floor, leaning on the couch. As neither of them had a proper sleep schedule they had stayed up along with Anya. They had spent the night rewatching cartoons on Felicity’s phone together and without any of them noticing, the sun had slowly started creeping up.

Anya would be the first to admit they hadn’t listened to Katt’s command in the slightest. When Lily and Sam had still been awake the group had dedicated themselves to finding out as much information on the occupants of the house as they could on their own. That was largely complicated by no visible computers and the TV only showing static on every channel when turned on, but they tried. In a study, a separate room off to the side of the living room, Anya had found more than one book on magic and a few on history. While trying to interpret them in the dark room, one of the dolls on the shelves had seemingly moved, which made Anya immediately drop the book and run out of the room. The auburn-haired elf doll was left alone after that.

The only evidence that this all wasn’t an elaborate prank were the few pictures that Carla had found. One was of a family of four, a mom and dad and two children, an older boy and what looked like a 1-year-old, blonde version of Katt, and the other was of the boy from the first picture with a woman. He had grown up between the two pictures, as he appeared to be a teenager in the first one and was clearly an adult in the second. He had deep brown hair, unlike the rest of his blonde family, and glasses. In the second picture, with him kissing a brunette woman with a round baby belly, he had even grown some facial hair. He looked eerily familiar to Anya, but she couldn’t put a finger on why. The woman also looked familiar, but Anya couldn’t remember ever knowing anyone who had been pregnant when Anya had known them.

They quickly assumed the man was Katt’s brother, from her previous talk of a brother and the multicoloured eyes both siblings seemed to possess. From what they could see in the pictures, neither of the parents had the same rainbow eyes. But they seemed happy, openly hugging each other in the picture. Katt had a wide smile, showing off the one tooth she had at the time that the picture was taken. Anya couldn’t help but wonder what had happened there.

They spent around half an hour on placing the photo frames back where they were, as perfectly as they could. Since most of their discoveries were either confusing or gave no answers whatsoever, the group decided to end the search and just hang out on the sectional couch for the rest of the night. Sam and Lily had decided to try and sleep, as they had the capacity for a sleep schedule, but the rest watched cartoons and otherwise hung out.

Anya tried her very best to not worry too much about what was happening overall, but so many little things started to stand out. The fact that the streetlamps never turned on was odd. Around 7 am Anya expected to hear the signs of people going to work, like cars and people running down the stairs to catch the bus, but there was nothing. Anya didn’t dare check the window for people. Who knew how many people could have recognized her.

Katt finally reappeared right after 9am. She shuffled past the group in her fuzzy slippers without even as much as a hello. Her hair was a mess, Anya noted, as Katt went to the kitchen and turned on the coffee machine. Had she filled it the previous night? Did Katt seem like such a person?

Katt must have heard Anya open her mouth because she turned around with a much kinder look than yesterday.

“I would love to answer your questions but honestly I don’t know much either.”

“That’s okay, I’m sure you know more than me.” Anya said, getting up from the sofa and moving to sit at the kitchen island to be closer to Katt.

“Well, we’ll see. How much do you know?”

“I know there was some kind of war or fight or something, and that I have a cousin here.” Anya didn’t want to think about it too much, as the images of the shadows and fires plagued her mind whenever she thought about her old home.

“You’re correct on the war thing, and I wouldn’t know about the cousin situation since I barely knew you existed.” Katt leaned against the counter opposite to Anya, sparing glances towards the coffee machine as it rumbled to work.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we got the news about 13 years ago that the entire royal family was dead.” Katt tightened her hands around her robe that she had been fidgeting with. “And as you weren’t 13 and we didn’t know what you looked like, we couldn’t really believe otherwise.”

“But you knew?” Anya asked.

“I knew because I have a friend who gets random visions of the future and was dead set on you being alive and well on earth.” Just then, the coffee machine dinged, halting their conversation as Katt poured up two cups of coffee and came to sit next to Anya. Anya held the cup in her hands, letting the heat slip into her hands and body.

“You might wanna save some of the coffee, Lily and Sam over there have an unfortunate family addiction to it,” Anya commented with a laugh. Katt smiled and sipped her coffee.

“I take it you’re good friends?” Anya nodded. “That’s good, I’m glad you’ve had a good life until now.”

“Ominous, but thank you.” They both drank their coffee in silence. Anya noticed hers was almost cold but was not bothered by it. That’s just what drinking supposedly hot beverages was for her, had always been.

“How do you feel? Knowing about your past now?” Katt asked after a bit, seemingly genuinely curious.

“It feels… strange,” Anya took another sip of coffee before continuing. “It feels as if something was robbed from me, but at the same time I gained this responsibility for the lives of an entire fucking nation.”

“Yeah, I get you. This situation has been going on since I was a kid and theoretically I’ve never known anything else, but I still want the past back.” Katt’s words felt familiar and comforting. Anya let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, her body relaxing in relief. Anya knew she had friends who supported her, but they could never understand the situation she was in It was nice to know someone else wanted something done. It made her feel like part of the heavy responsibility on her shoulders was lifted.

“If you have any plans to get that past back, I’m more than happy to help you.”

“And your friends?”

“We’re a package deal,” Anya said, proudly.

Katt actually laughed at that, setting her cup down as not to spill coffee everywhere.

“That’s good, we need all the help we can get. I invited some of my friends over, so we can probably get answers for you and for us.”

“And overthrow the government?” Anya asked with a smirk. Katt’s face fell.

“Yes but also don’t say that out loud ever again if you don’t want you and your friends to die.” Katt whispered, getting up to clean away the mugs.

“Go wake up your friends if they want coffee, mine should be here in half an hour and they will drink the rest straight out of the pitcher.” Katt said as she cleaned. Anya mock saluted and ran to jump on the pile of Lily and Sam to wake them up. If she got kicked in the shin or if anyone got bruised, it wasn’t an important detail.

---

Katt’s friends arrived one by one half an hour later, just as she had said. The first one, a pink haired boy who quickly introduced himself as Leonard, went right to the coffee machine as Katt had previously suggested and emptied the pitcher in just a few gulps. The second one to enter, Ava, apologized to Katt and ran to stop Leonard almost knocking a very sleepy Sam off his feet. They started a conversation very fast after that, as they realised they looked very similar with the only difference being that Ava’s eyes were brown and their hair was a bit longer than Sam’s.

The third person to come was much taller than Anya expected, with short purple hair and dark skin. She made an impression by immediately having a five minute conversation with Katt in the doorway in sign language. Anya could figure out some words, but it was too fast and she wasn’t exactly the best at sign language yet. When the girl realised that most of the people in the apartment, including Leonard and Ava, were staring at her, she sheepishly waved and let Katt introduce her as Eliza. Anya waved back with a smile. Finally, her hyperfixation on sign language would help her to some degree.

People tuned into their own conversations after that, most likely very thankful that everyone knew English. Lily went to support Sam in his conversation with Ava, which had moved from unlikely twins to caffeine addictions. Carla and Felicity were still watching cartoons on the floor, completely tuned out from the world around them.

Anya was happy to find that Commonian sign language and ASL weren’t too different from each other and she could actually communicate with Eliza. Not as fast as Katt, but enough to keep up with the conversation even if her reading of Commonian was lacking.

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock on the door, signalling that the last person had finally arrived. Katt excused herself to go open the door, leaving Anya to continue her conversation with Eliza. Carla and Felicity half joined, as they couldn’t understand most of what was happening. Apparently the reason was that Felicity’s phone had ran out of battery and they had nothing better to do.

Anya was vaguely aware of footsteps coming from the hall towards the living area, but was too wrapped up in trying to sign the word portal so that Eliza could understand what the hell had started this whole mess.

“Anya?”

That made Anya look up, as it wasn’t every day people knew her name in a strange otherworld.

“Cora?”