Eldora spent the next day attending to the king and in her down time, she asked Fraunt about all the different races on Lalookin. 

Fraunt had a book full of them, with descriptions of each. 

“This is a Jaain.” he pointed to an illustration of the turtlish creatures she kept seeing. “They typically live in or near water, but they know all the wealth is on land, so they migrate around to wherever the wealth is. It’s an odd thing… for whatever reason, they are obsessed with starting businesses. You would think they would want to live in nature as they can easily do so, but it doesn’t interest them.” 

Fraunt flipped the page. “This is an Elfkorn. That’s what they turned you into. We already discussed them, but they are compassionate creatures–nearly selfless–although somewhat cowardly. They love children and put them above themselves–probably because they can’t have their own.”

Eldora was uncomfortable by how well that description matched her situation, and decided to say nothing about it. 

Fraunt turned the page again. “This is a Haloquin. Mistress Pilinka is one of them. Haloquins are beautiful creatures, inside and out. They specialize in making serums and make excellent doctors. They are natural healers, and usually choose or are chosen for jobs where they make use of those talents.”

Fraunt flipped the page. The furry creature who Celina was turned into was on the next. Eldora gazed upon the small, four-foot tall creature with horns, black eyes, and arms that were longer than its legs. Eldora realized that Celina was supposed to be walking like an ape in her new form, but she instead walked on two-legs. 

“This is a Toomoun. They are peace loving creatures, but they do excel at combat due to their great strength. They make great soldiers or great performers of manual labor.” Fraunt said.

Fraunt went over ten more species, and Eldora was so exhausted that she began to drowsily blink her eyes, and eventually, she fell asleep. She was used to getting up early to teach, but getting up early to dress the king, make food, do the laundry, and learn with Fraunt was somehow so much more exhausting. Perhaps because it was a change in her routine, and perhaps because it was more physically laborious. It could have also been that she had had so much trouble sleeping since coming to Lalookin. She dreamed bizarre things. Of course, she had always dreamed bizarre things in her life. Some dreams repeated themselves every few months for some reason. When she had first met Claudius, he had taught her how to fire a gun to defend herself. She had had a terribly romantic dream on repeated every three months where he had defended her from an armed robber. 

But then she had dreams where she was unarmed, or didn’t know how to use a gun, and a robber had hit up her house and taken everything. She had had this odd, unsettling dream since she was a child. And lastly, she had had a dream where the ground was covered in lava and no one cared or noticed but her. 

Now that she was in this strange world, she had dreamed the same thing on repeat every three days. She dreamed that she was drowning, and Claudius wouldn’t save her. The one who ended up saving her was Adrian–or Dagonet, as he now called himself. Eldora was deeply disturbed by this dream. She had felt, at times, that her dreams were prophetic–that God was trying to tell her something–but she didn’t know what it was.

As sleep began to take her, the last thing she found herself thinking was, am I supposed to be encouraging my husband to save me, or do I need Adrian to save me?