Things had gotten very nauseating in a very short amount of time. Sylvia was gone, the table gone, their cabin gone, Wisconsin gone, any semblance of, well, anything recognizable, gone. In its place were colors and sounds and movement, all too fast to make sense of. Whatever it was, it had her. She was moving, but everywhere in every direction all at once; falling and falling apart and stretched and pulled and twisted to a deafening melody of voices and waves crashing on vertical cliffs. She didn’t know what color it all was, she couldn’t see herself anymore, and Emily really, really wanted it to stop before she hurled. 

And suddenly it all leveled out to downward and consistently brownish, and she was falling in one direction instead of everywhere at once for half of a frantic heartbeat before her back slammed into something. Hard. She lay there dazedly, breathing hard and blinking. The back of her, aching and probably to-be-bruised in a few hours, lay on the ground. Emily knew it was ground because her open eyes looked up at a sliver of sky. Cloudless and blue between thatched roofs. Bluer than Nevis’s sunniest day. Bluer than she’d ever seen it. Bluer than she ever imagined it could be.

Could it be in Wisconsin? On Earth even? She wasn’t so sure. 

Emily propped herself up on her elbows. Something lightly hummed, a constant undercurrent. Wherever she was, she knew instinctively that this was silence.

She was in some kind of alley. At the end of it, nestled snugly between three buildings, all with backs turned to her. Emily pressed her palms into a ground of caked dirt and shifted onto her knees. The buildings looked… old. Old with chipped white plaster and old in the old, old sense. Ancient. Plaster in a checkerboard of wood beams. Paint-less and earth-toned. The buildings nearing the alleyway’s bright entrance seemed to be made in exactly the same way.

Sylvia wasn’t with her. All Emily could see was that last glimpse of her face, distraught with, what Emily now realized, must’ve been the realization that she wouldn’t be able to tell Emily what she’d meant to. That wherever Emily was, it had something to do with her grandmother and even then she’d never gotten her explanation. She’d never even been able to say goodbye. Something needed her, but what? How could she possibly help? The ghost of Sylvia’s face was all that remained no matter what direction Emily turned her head. Wherever Emily was now, Sylvia had been left behind. And when a pair of shutters opened somewhere above her head, the voice that escaped them was unfamiliar. A strange, lilting tone. It was familiar, somehow. Half-remembered. It wasn’t her grandmother’s though.

“Sylvia?” she asked. Just once. Just to be sure.

The voice hushed, and shutters creaked closed. Gods. Emily squeezed her eyes shut, digging the heels of her palms in. She hoped that Sylvia was okay. She sat there for a moment, then stood, thankful she hadn’t taken off her boots. Looking at the imprint her fall—time jump? dimension hop?—had made in the dirt, she felt utterly alone. Her grandmother’s name was almost on her lips once again before Emily reminded herself that it was futile. Wherever Sylvia was, it wasn’t here. And wherever here was, Emily had absolutely no idea. She also didn’t want the owner of the shutters coming back to investigate, because she hated eyes on her and there was that tiny detail about her having no idea where or when she was. But for as much anxiety that thought gave her, there was also an undercurrent. One of excitement. It was a guilty one, probably bred from too many books and too many conversations of hypotheticals with Claire. But hey, she’d just gone through some kind of portal to an alternate something, which wasn’t un-exciting—But, she reminded herself, this could also all be a hallucination. 

Which meant that she needed to investigate. Alone, unguided, and very confused. Great. 

Emily took one step, then another, carefully, quietly, padding towards the ally entrance. As she neared it, her first impression was that whatever lay beyond was… rushed. Noises—voices, creaking wood, dirt crunching underfoot... were those hooves?—flooded from the entrance. A figure—two—wearing rough-spun dresses or those same muted browns and reds momentarily blocked the light as they passed, then continued into what lay beyond. She stopped then, just within the alley, awestruck. The street beyond was narrow, definitely wider than the alleyway, but still barely wide enough for one car.

But she would be extremely surprised if any car had ever set… wheel in it. The passing horse and cart looked right at home. And so did the little stand set up against a building to her left, where a woman with tightly pleated hair was selling someone bread in exchange for bronze coins. And so did the group of men in honest-to-god armor walking quickly past her. 

Um. Okay, so either she’d just been teleported to some kind of renaissance fair, or to something much, much farther away. Well, it didn’t seem like she was in any immediate danger, fingers crossed. Hopefully, Sylvia knew that if she knew about “it” coming. The sun was fierce against Emily’s cheeks, and for a moment, she just stood. The excitement was welling up inside of her, something Sylvia wanted to act on in a heartbeat. She wanted to rush over to that shopkeeper with the pleated hair and ask her what year it was, she wanted to confront those armored men and ask if their swords were real and sharp, and she wanted to walk into the building across the way and find out what it was really selling because the sign looked like a potion. Most of all, she wished Claire were here to enjoy whatever this was with her, that Sylvia was here to guide her on whatever “journey” Emily was supposed to embark on.

The thought of Sylvia quickly sobered her. This wasn’t a fantasy story to enjoy, it was real (or a hallucination). In a movie, the hero would leap this divide—leave the alleyway—careless and confident and ready. In Nevis, Sylvia would encourage her to make those same leaps. But this wasn’t a movie or Nevis, and Sylvia wasn’t here. This wasn’t a page she was writing, and now her breaths came faster because she was scared. So when she made her leap, it wasn’t a leap at all. It was a hesitant (and very literal) toeing of the line, as she placed one foot beyond the alleyway, watching the light travel across it, and then the rest of her.