CONFUSION/GATHERING
I was awoken by a shining light that pierced my sleeping eyes. I felt like I hadn’t even been to sleep at all, which was strange because I distinctly remember falling onto my bed with the intention of doing so. This actually opens up another question I have: why the hell is my bed so hard?
I moved my left hand from off of my stomach and unto the mysterious surface I was sleeping on and, moved my right hand to cover up my eyes from whatever was super bright while I sat up. My left hand collided with the ‘cold hard’ surface I was laying on and, I have a correction; whatever I was laying on wasn’t cold or hard at all, rather it was warm and dusty.
“Ok that’s it, I’m opening my—” My train of thought was ended, more-so, crashed into yet another new roadblock. ok this is a real issue right here, I’m perfectly fine waking in a park somewhere but, why the hell does my voice sound so different. I finally decided to actually open my eyes:
The whole of my eyesight was consumed by light for a few seconds, it took of my willpower to ignore the pain in my eyes and focus on my new voice instead. If someone were to walk by me, they’d probably think I was a crazy person repeating the same two phrases over and over again.
When my eyesight became clear, I had a better idea of where I was, that being, a forest: nowhere near my house. That was the most concerning thing, but it wasn’t the only issue at all. The first; and most noticeable one, was that I felt like I was in a totally different body, I mean, if the paler skin, long blonde hair, and Higher pitched voice was anything to go by.
Speaking (Heh) of the voice, it was that of a child’s yet still had an adult tinge to it. On another note, I found myself in a completely different outfit from when I Went to sleep the previous night. my super cool anime T-shirt, had been replaced with a plain white dress that went down to just above my knees and My shorts? Well I guess the air replaced them.
“God, seriously, this sucks what the hell happened?” I stood still for a moment, and tried my Damnedest to try and figure out how any of this made any sense. And as if on cue, memories flashed through my head; the memories were of last night, and the ‘dream’ I had. I chuckled to myself. “Hehe…Oh no, then it wasn’t a dream… then, I guess my golden month ends here…”
I was in a state of shock, well it wasn’t that shocking, I had already resigned myself to getting transported to another world when I died … but this was just; “A cruel and unusual punishment.” I face palmed as an attempt to concentrate. “Ok calm down, I need to find a way out of this damn forest before I can worry about anything else.” I un palmed my face to actually look around me.
The trees in this forest were very big, but then again I was inside a small body so it was hard to tell if that was actually the case. I attempted to take a step away from the tree I was standing next to only to realize something even more dire: I wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks.
“Shit.” I began to franticly look around myself in the hopes that whoever decided to drop me in the forest at least left me some sort of gear. There wasn’t any, and I was back at square one. “Dang it, I’m just going to have to power through this and hope I don’t step on glass or something.” And so, with much hidden confusion and distress, I began to walk in a random direction. my only hope was that I wasn’t walking deeper into the forest.
I walked with surprising amount of comfort in my step. This was surprising because Being in a different body and all, I was kind of expecting to at least have some difficulty moving around but there wasn’t any. In a matter of fact, it felt as if I was overflowing with energy. “…reminds me of back in my middle school days when I used to run Track with Tod.”
I stopped in my tracks to berate myself. “why in the world am I being nostalgic?!” I let my body move again on autopilot as I focused on my thoughts. ‘Yeah my main focus right now should be on remembering any important survival tips I might have heard.’ I let my mind wander as if to cover more mental ground, but I could only remember the basic stuff like: in which direction moss grows and which types of rocks could start fires.
I was so focused on the situation happening in my mind that I didn’t notice my physical one, more specifically, the oversized tree root in my path. My right leg bumped into it and I was suddenly in the air for half a second before I came tumbling down into the dirt.
I landed on my arm “Owwww…. You know what…” I began to pick myself up as I talked “…this isn’t even worth complaining over, let’s just keep –” I lifted up my head and saw the closest thing to heaven. “—Going… ah, well I guess I don’t have to worry about being alone in the forest anymore.”
--
It took a lot more effort to pick myself up then I thought it would, maybe it was because I had been walking for a while, or maybe it was because my body was weaker, I was hoping that it was the former. When I finally got myself settled and standing up, I laid my eyes upon paradise. Well… now that I was actually looking at it, it was less of a paradise and more of a get together.
I found myself in a clearing in the forest, and within that clearing was a bunch of people, myself included now, I guess. As I got closer to the center of the clearing I began to realize how shady my situation was; ‘a confused girl in the middle of the woods discovers a clearing full of people dressed in white.’ Yeah not shady at all.
I noticed a few things as I walked. the first was that everyone here seemed to be equally as confused as me, if not more so. The second thing and by far the most distressing was that everyone seemed to be alike, as in, everyone here looked to be an Elf. “I guess I wasn’t the only one dumb enough to pick this stupid race.” I began to mumble to myself: “if I hadn’t gotten so absorbed into the idea of that character creation tool then, I would probably be in a much better situation then the middle of this Godforsaken forest …Oof—” I bumped into someone.
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“O-oh I’m sorry.” I focused back into the real world and looked up, way up. The man I had bumped into looked really tall. He turned to look in my direction but his eyes went straight above me.
He looked all around himself because he was too tall to notice my small body (I felt kind of offended but I guess it couldn’t be helped). “What the hell was tha…” when he finally did look down, I could tell that his face had contorted with anger, as if he would’ve been ready to lash out at a moment’s notice. That anger softened as soon as he realized that he was essentially screaming at a child. “…Oh, wait a moment, you’re just a little girl.” His voice was deep, but blank in a sense.
I wanted to give him a snide reply, but I held it in as I repeated my earlier apology.
“S-sorry…” My urge to say something stupid was increasing so I took a step back and looked away as I prepared to Dip out of the situation. Before I could walk any meaningful distance away I felt a large hand grasp my shoulder. I Turned to face him with what probably looked like fear, although I felt more irritated then anything.
“Stop for a second.” His face was contorted into an uneasy smile that looked like it would crack at any minute. “Are you alone Little girl?” red flag.
“yes.” I answered him honestly in the hopes that if he tried something strange, the people surrounding us would step in.
He removed his hand from my personal space as his face returned to a more neutral state. “Interesting… so it seems that everyone was separated from their families.” I took a small step back as he silently looked at me. Then his face suddenly returned to that fake smile. “Yes… we may be together for a while, so I’ll tell you my name, It’s Gareth.”
Gareth stared at me without moving an Inch, something about him gave me Anxiety. I was never really a social person, I only ever really got talkative, or comfortable when I was with friends, or having a conversation about something I was passionate about. “Um, m-my name is—” Before I got the chance to (Stupidly) tell Gareth my name, a voice resounded from the other side of the clearing:
“Excuse me everyone!” I didn’t know who owned the voice because they were obscured by the people in front of me, but I could tell that they were male, and had a considerably larger emotional range then Gareth. Speaking of Gareth, I allowed the other persons voice to be a distraction as I slid into the front of the semi-circle of people that had materialized around the new voices owner.
“Alright guys, thanks for stopping to listen to me!” the owner of the voice in question was a lanky guy. He wore a white robe and lacked shoes, like almost everyone else. “We’re all confused, right?” He paused for a second to look at his audience. “Well I think the best course of action would be to figure this out as a group, any objections?” everyone remained silent so he continued. “Anyone have any Ideas on where we should begin?”
I looked at the people in the front, who themselves were looking at everyone else into the rest of the crowd with unsure looks on their faces. One girl who was in the middle raised her hand and got everyone’s attention. “Um, I think that we should get a head count before we do anything else.”
The lanky guy nodded his head as he responded to her. “Oooooh that’s a good idea!” he looked at the girl directly. “Do you want help me count everyone?”
“Sure!” The girl walked forward with a bit of unsureness in her step. When she finally reached a good enough distance away she turned to look at the lanky guy, and then back to the rest of us. “Umm, I think it would be easier to count you all if you lined up.” We all obliged and awkwardly shuffled into the middle of the semi-circle.
After a second of everyone settling into place, the lanky guy decided to ruin it. “Actually, I think it would be better if we separated everyone by gender too.”
The girl agreed with him: “Oh, that’s a good idea!” She pointed to her left, to one end of the clearing. “Guys should stand over there…” she moved her hands to the other side of the clearing and pointed again. “and girls should stand right here...oh and keep the line.”
There was a sigh of irritation as the people unshuffled themselves but there were no problems as they did it. I found myself in the middle of the line. It didn’t take them that long to count at all, I’d say that after a long 30 seconds or so they were done. The lanky guy announced the results of the counting as if he was some crappy announcer at a high-stakes game show
“Alright, so there are 21 dudes, uhh…” The girl leaned into his ear, he nodded his head and, she then un-leaned herself. “…. And 31 gals, so it looks like there are 52 of us all together.” He paused for a moment to look at everyone. “I think we should try to stay calm and—” the Lanky guy was interrupted by the sudden outburst of a girl standing next to me. She had the most confused and distraught looking face I had seen out of everyone, I guess she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHY WE'RE HERE?!” she looked down at her body. “OR WHY I LOOK LIKE THIS??!” she looked at the lanky guy as if she was expecting him to know the answer to her question.
He tried responding to her. “Actually, miss, that was exactly what I wanted to try and tackle nex—” he was Interrupted again, this time by a male elf with a surprising red head of hair:
“SHE’S RIGHT!!!” the man looked around him, and then lowered his voice. “They must’ve taken our families, A-and taken us here for some sort of experiment!”
One of the men close to him asked him a question. “Who’s ‘they’?”
The man looked terrified as he responded. “ha…haha, IT WAS ALIENS, YEAH I SWEAR, IT WAS ALIENS!!”
the same person laughed at him as they started talking. “HAH, Aliens?!” the guy facepalmed. “you really think aliens exist?”
The Alien Guy looked at the Skeptical guy and responded to him with a Loud yet shaky voice as if he was on the edge of breaking down. “How ELSE DO WE EXPLAIN THIS?!”
A new voice interjected to try and get him to be quiet. “Whoa man calm down for a second.”
but the Alien guy was having none of it “BUT I—”
I drowned out that side of the chaos and focused on what was happening next to me. The girl who was the first to scream was having what looked to be some form of Panic attack, the girl who helped the lanky guy count was next to her trying to calm her down. The lanky guy himself was trying to get everybody to calm down but he was failing miserably.
Everybody had gotten loud, and the lack of progress was pissing me off. I put my hand in the air in closed my eyes shut, as if to focus all my energy into what I was about to do. “HEY EVERYONE—” I put all my power into that yell. “— SHUT THE HELL UP FOR A SECOND!” I took a couple of seconds to look at the people, most of them looked surprised; I guess they weren’t expecting the smallest of them to scream the loudest.
“I think….” I took a couple deep breaths. “I think I know how we got into this situation.”