“You’re… from another world?”

“Yes, and we thought it was best to be completely open about it from the beginning.”

Jil looked across her small entry room at the two peculiar people in front of her. They currently sat on the other side of her little table, which was inlaid with black Yarvan rock polished to a shine. In fact, everything in her small hut was Yarvan in origin, it had been her goal to get rid of anything that reminded her of Tinaria, and now here were two of the Republic’s soldiers calmly sipping darrynroot tea three feet away.

“Like, other countries or—?”

“See there it is again,” the one named Jaak said. “That’s what we’re talking about. You keep pretending like you don’t know something about why we're here.”

“And it’s obvious you do,” the little one with one eye—Orf—added. “We really don’t mean to put you in an uncomfortable place, but your house—” the little man looked around at the room. It wasn’t just Jil’s entryway, it was her kitchen and library too.

Well, the whole house is my library really.

“Your house is special,” Jaak said. He had a particular sort of energy to him. Jil noticed it while they were both still standing outside the door. He looked tired—extremely. But there was something else there too, some sort of spark in his eyes. He wasn’t tapping his leg and speaking too quickly, but she got the innate feeling that he was feeling very impatient about something.

“What we’re trying to say,” Orf cut in, “is that your house happens to be sitting right on top of a kind of… well a kind of gateway to another world.”

“A gateway?”

“And a stronger one than we’ve really ever come across,” Jak said. He was certainly excited about whatever this meant. “Most kind of appear and disappear pretty quickly, but not this one.”

“Blinking,” Orf added. “That’s the technical name, but this one hasn’t displayed any of that kind of activity. It’s been constant for months now.”

Jil nodded as if this was all very sensible information, but she had also caught something else. It was a very small reaction, covered up in only a moment, but when Orv had said ‘blinking’ it had surprised Jaak, almost as if he was hearing it for the first time.

If he didn’t know that, maybe there are things they both don’t know.

That’s good.

“Blinking, ok. But mine isn’t?” she asked diplomatically.

Don’t tell them anything you don’t have to. Be careful. Jil was, after everything, a daughter born to a former general father and a militia aeronaut mother. She had the blood of tacticians running through her veins.

“Indeed,” Orf continued. “So if you’d just permit us to make a quick investigation of any cellars, basements, or lower levels, we would greatly appreciate it.”

Jil calmly set the teacup on the table. It was a light, translucent yellow—her second favorite set. “And what advantage would that give me?” she asked.

“Well,” Orf looked to Jaak and then back at her. “It could be dangerous.”

Dangerous? What a laugh.

“She thinks that’s funny,” Jaak said suddenly. It stopped Jil in her tracks.

“Yeah? Ok,” Orf nodded. “I do get the feeling she knows more than she’s letting on.”

“Wait, what?” Jil made sure to keep her face completely serious. In fact, she had kept her face an absolute mask of solemnity for the entire duration of the conversation. She was very practiced in facial expressions, seeing as they—more than anything else—betrayed one's innermost feelings. But that wasn’t the problem, the problem was that she had been about to smile. She almost smiled.

“She was going to smile,” Jaak said.

“I…” For the first time in the conversation, Jil didn’t know what to say. “What are you talking about?”

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“That’s not important,” the one called Orf said. “What is important is that you potentially have knowledge of a gateway to another world, and that gateway is potentially directly underneath us, and our goal for the last few months has been to locate that gateway and potentially go through it.”

Well, at least he’s matter-of-fact.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Jaak said. “We’re not here to do anything but just move along to somewhere else. If you just let us go, I swear you’ll never hear from us again.”

Which sounded like a pretty good option, but if Jil was going to let them investigate further, it would also mean telling them about something she had never told anyone else. She would have to let them in on the secret she had kept for years and years, and she didn’t even know who they were or where they came from. How could she trust someone like that with something like this?

Jak seemed a little impatient with her silence. “We’re—” he paused for a moment and seemed to be considering or remembering something. “We’re very good at keeping secrets.”

What?

“When I was a boy,” Jaak continued. “I had a secret. It was the most wonderful, spectacular secret I could imagine. And I never told anyone, not a single person. I just knew no one would understand. But then Orf came along, and I finally felt like there was at least one other person in the universe I could trust.”

“I don’t trust you,” Jil said automatically.

“And we’re not asking you to,” Jaak continued calmly. “I'm just letting you know that we get it. We… understand.”

Jil exhaled deeply in a way that seemed like she had been holding it in forever. She didn’t know exactly why she was doing it, but somehow she knew she was going to tell them everything.

Fine then here we go.

“The first time it happened was when I moved here,” she began. “I was up late finishing one of the best novels of my life. I loved that story more than anything, and upon finishing I was sort of… struck with that hunger of wanting more. But not more of that story, more of how that story made me feel. You know?”

Orf and Jaak both nodded.

“I wanted more than anything to just forget the book and read it again,” Jil continued. “All over again from the beginning. But you can’t unread a book, no matter how much you want to. And maybe it was something about the yearning, or maybe it was just that particular book, but the next morning I found a new book, and…” she paused a moment and looked at them. There was something in all three of their combined eyes that seemed like they were actually listening. “It was the old book but it also wasn’t.”

Jaak nodded. “I think I understand.”

“It was the same, but it was also something else,” Jil said slowly. “The characters were familiar, but also new and exciting. The setting had changed, but it was just as good and comfortable. Most of all, it gave me the feeling that the other book had—the exact feeling.”

“It was from another world,” Orf said.

Jil nodded. “I came to understand that somehow. I must have read that book a couple hundred times—maybe even a thousand. And that was only the beginning. I started finding other books, books from other places that I didn’t buy or bring home. They just appeared, and they made me feel exactly whatever it was I wanted to feel.”

Jil seemed to come back to herself for a moment. She picked up her teacup again.“Which is why I never told anyone. Not anyone ever. Even if someone believed me, it’s the kind of thing that shouldn’t exist. And I was…” She hesitated. “I worried it would stop happening if anyone else found out.”

“Which explains your obsession with the Ris’alan,” Orf said. The tiny human shuffled through his knapsack and withdrew an old, faded piece of paper. He gently handed it over. “They say the full Ris’alan is the record of a thousand worlds, and to the untrained eye they are just fables and folktales, but—”

“To the athedrinker they are past, present, and future,” Jil said. “They are the story of living reality.” She slowly reached out her hand and tried to take the ancient page as cavalierly as possible. She felt tears welling up as she set eyes on the Old Yarvan words climbing the page like ivy on a trellis.

Jaak coughed. “I uh… guess I should have paid more attention to this kind of stuff huh?”

“Maybe you should work on being less offensive,” Orf said out of the corner of his mouth.

It seemed like a joke but Jil didn’t know which of the two was supposed to think it was funny. She decided to ignore it. “You’re going to let me read this?” she said quietly.

“Read it? I’m giving it to you,” Orf said.

Jil tried not to squeak out loud.

“All we ask is that we can investigate your home,” Jaak said. “And…” He looked at Orv for a moment.

Jil nodded. “You can investigate. I think I’m sufficiently convinced. Plus, now you know my deepest darkest secret so what would I do anyway?”

“We’ll keep your secret safe,” Orf said.

“And I’ll keep yours,” Jil said, motioning to Jaak.

Jaak looked to Orf and then back to her. “Mine?”

“You’re an athedrinker,” Jil said, there was a bit of smugness trying to make its way through the feelings of awe that currently filled her. “My life’s work is the Ris’alan. You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

Jaak slowly nodded. “I think that’s a good bargain. Exchanged secrets, and a page of the Ris’alan for a little bit of investigation.”

“And we will keep the digging to a minimum,” Orf added.

Jil looked up quickly. “Wait, digging?!”