Thalassa has always been an elf who never liked the idea of being in one place for too long. That's why she became an adventurer at a very young age so she would have the opportunity to meet new places and people. When she learned that her village needed resources, she quickly volunteered to go in search of what the village needed. Now she never imagined that one day she would end up in another world ruled only by humans and with no sign of magic and other humanoid races. Trapped in a white room with only a bed, a small table with some books placed later on, and two chairs, besides containing two doors. One door gives access to the exit of this room and the other to a place that these humans call a bathroom. This place she finds herself in is certainly a prison, but she was not mistreated as she expected to be.

She mentioned that she has probably been trapped in this place for several weeks since she was captured. But her stay in this prison has not been unproductive; over the past 2 weeks, a human woman named Alice, who is always dressed in white, has started visiting Thalassa every day. In the first few days, Thalassa noticed that this woman was trying to communicate. Thalassa is an elf who has lived for hundreds of years among humans and has seen various different cultures and languages as well. The language of these humans was not a true challenge for her. Since then, Alice has been teaching her the Portuguese language; she even gave her some books that have been helping Thalassa understand how this very different writing works. The elf can already form small sentences that at least enable her to have some kind of communication with Alice.

As usual, the door opened and one of those guards entered. He wears that outfit with green details that look like foliage and wears an armband with two letters of the alphabet that she learned, MP. She knows that these letters must be some kind of military rank. He stands by the door while Alice enters, they smile at each other as they usually do every time they meet.

"How are you feeling today, Thalassa?" asked Alice as she adjusted her chair to sit down.

"I'm fine, but it's cold here," Thalassa said.

"Your Portuguese improves every day, Thalassa, that's impressive. And about the cold, I don't know what might be happening; most likely, the air conditioning is faulty."

"Air condi... what?" Thalassa asked, confused to hear this new word.

"Oh, sorry about that," Alice let out a light laugh and continued, "I forgot that you've never seen or heard of one, right?"

Thalassa shakes her head in denial; she can hear the guard chuckling at this situation.

"So, an air conditioner is a device, an object that we humans created capable of controlling the temperature of a certain environment." Alice turns and points to the air conditioner installed on the wall, "that's an air conditioner, cool, huh?"

Thalassa is confused about how this thing works and asks, "magic?"

The guard can't hold it anymore and starts laughing at the poor confused elf. Alice shoots a threatening look at the guard, who immediately stops laughing, "Sorry, ma'am." She turns her attention back to Thalassa, "So, Thalassa, as I've told you before, and I know it's hard to believe, but in our world, there's no such thing as what you call magic."

Even hearing this, it's almost incomprehensible to her that these humans can do all these things without magic. Alice continues, "Our world uses something called electricity to make a good portion of our equipment work. Well, for now, I won't go into details, but I'm sure I'll have the pleasure of explaining to you how our society and technology work in the future."

Thalassa knows that these humans surely know how to do things she's never seen or even thought they were capable of. "I'll be eager to learn about your world," Thalassa said.

"Well, now let's enhance your studies a little more."

For a few hours, Alice taught more grammar rules and phonetics of the Portuguese language. What's most impressive is that Thalassa learns very quickly, so Alice also decided to give her these books, but today she wants to give something different.

"Truly, you're an amazing being," said Alice as she closed her notebook. "Starting today, I'm going to leave this device with you." Alice takes a cellphone out of her pocket, a phone made especially for Thalassa. "This device will help you practice the phonetics of the Portuguese language for the rest of the day when I'm not here." Alice turns on the device and approaches Thalassa, who is impressed by it. She brings the device closer to Thalassa so she can see what it will show. "Look, on this button, you turn on the device, on these two, you increase and decrease the volume." Alice plays some music and raises the volume of the device to demonstrate to Thalassa, who looks impressed and curious. "And here, in this icon, you can listen to all the songs on this device, and here, in this other one, you can listen to the exercises to train your phonetics."

Alice points the device to Thalassa, who hesitantly takes the object. "Can I really..." Thalassa forgets the correct word for a moment, "...keep this?" she finishes saying.

"Yes, this device is yours now, and by the way, the name of this object is a cellphone, and almost every human in this world has one, but yours is quite limited due to your current situation."

Thalassa nods her head to show that she understands what Alice is trying to say. Alice leaves the room with the guard, and Thalassa finds herself alone again or not, as she now has the company of this thing called a 'cellphone.' She begins to do what Alice just taught her and decides to play a song. As it starts playing, Thalassa becomes quite curious to know how something so small can store so many sounds and voices. Under different circumstances, she would think that people are sealed inside this thing, but she is somewhat familiar with it due to the guards who stand at her door when they bring her food; she saw that the guards have an object that also emits voices hanging from their hips, and she noticed that they use them for some kind of communication at a distance. Perhaps they also serve to record words and sounds. Thalassa spent the rest of the day listening to these melodies and songs and realized that these humans know how to enchant an elf through sound.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

---

Alice is walking through the corridors of this large military facility for these prisoners from another world. She is reviewing her notes and notices great progress from Thalassa. A specific researcher has been assigned to each prisoner. And for now, she does not have access to the results of the other prisoners, but she hopes they are also promising. She arrives at her office, and upon entering, a man in a suit is waiting for her. She is not surprised by this and can even guess which department he is from. "I could have sworn I locked my office," said Alice as she took off her coat and placed her notebook on the table. "You know, there are no doors that can't be opened."

"But then, what do you want?" The man walks around the room and then begins to speak. "You know that your interaction with the prisoner should be purely biological," he then turns his gaze to Alice, "and yet you interacted too much with the elf."

"I was just doing my job."

"I didn't know that your job consisted of teaching our language without permission to one of the invaders." Alice was speechless. "Don't look at me like that, Alice, did you really think the department wouldn't find out? Seriously? You even secretly ordered a device exclusively for the elf."

"Yes, I taught her, but it was only so that now I know more about them, and now we can at least try a diplomatic means to resolve this whole situation."

"I agree with you, nobody here wants war."

"But then, are you going to arrest me?" said Alice, crossing her arms.

"Why would I arrest our best researcher and biologist?" The man sits in a chair in front of Alice's desk. "Under other circumstances, yes, I would arrest you. However, the defense department liked your work, and at first, of course, they were disappointed by what you did in the shadows, but in the end, I convinced them that this was something positive, you know, none of the other prisoners speak our language, and most of them don't want to cooperate, except for the elf and another girl who hasn't said anything since she arrived here."

"I... don't understand, why would you do that to help me?"

"Don't be mistaken, I'm not helping you, I'm helping the nation. I want to end this conflict as much as you do." The man stands up again. "And it will be impossible to end this war if we don't communicate with them. What I'm trying to say is, let's use the elf as an interpreter and ask her to teach us her language in exchange for freedom."

"You want to use her, she's not a toy!"

"On the contrary, we will help her. I saw the conversations between you and her, and if the reason she came to our world was just to help her village. We can provide that for her, and not only the freedom she will eventually receive by helping us."

Alice is silent, thinking about the consequences of her actions, and even though she doesn't want to admit it, he's right. Thalassa will surely want to help if it will end the war and help her village.

"I'll take your silence as confirmation." The man opens the office door to leave and finishes by saying, "Let's start the preparations tomorrow."

---

Pedro is standing with his suitcase, dressed in his military uniform, in front of the military academy, waiting for Gabriel to arrive so they can both go to the central command of the operations beyond the anomaly. As he opens a pack of gum, he notices his ride approaching—a LMV-BR 4x4—which soon parks right in front of him. To his surprise, the driver is Gabriel. "What are you doing driving a 4x4?" Pedro said, looking confused at Gabriel, who had a smile on his face.

"I'd say the higher-ups love me."

"Enough joking," says Pedro as he laughs and opens the door to get in, "why didn't they just send a driver to pick us up?"

Gabriel steps on the accelerator. "They did, but the guy simply gave me the vehicle and left."

"Just like that?" Pedro laughs again. "That's crazy, man."

"Hold on, I'm a great driver."

"No... I'm not talking about you driving, I'm still processing the fact that you and I are going to another world right now."

"Look," Gabriel began as he stopped the car at the traffic light, "I'm also having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this, but on the bright side, we're technically astronauts now. I remember back when we were in elementary school and you said one of your dreams was to be an astronaut. Well, in the end, you ended up joining the army, which is quite different from being an astronaut."

"Yeah, you're right," said Pedro.

"And we'll make it through this mission just fine. I'll return to be with my girlfriend, and you'll be with your family when all of this is over." Gabriel extends his fist to Pedro, who reciprocates, and they both fist-bump as a sign of respect.

They continue the rest of the journey talking. Occasionally, they look around and notice how the city is completely different now, filled with military personnel—wherever you look, there's a military vehicle parked or soldiers at checkpoints and inspections.

Before entering the area near the portal, they had to pass through a checkpoint and identify themselves, which took a while before they were cleared. But when they were, their vehicle was directed to park near the others.

As they get out of the vehicle, they are instructed by an MP guard to go speak with the base commander. In the background, they both look at this strange portal—it's enormous, and at the moment, fighter jets Gripen NG-BR are passing over trucks for this type of transport. "Seems like things are going well on the other side," said Gabriel, "anyway, let's go talk to the commander." He concluded.