The murmur of the hustle and bustle of the mid-quarter gently pulled Talia from the oddest of dreams. Rays of arcano-sunlight streamed in from the crack in her heavy black curtains, gliding across the mural of the city that had been painted on the far wall. She let her sleepy gaze roam across the beautiful painting, her eyes catching on the silhouette standing at the top of the city, poised for a dive into Lake Wyrr.

Why did I wake up so early? I thought I had a day off.

Talia rubbed groggily at her eyes, rolling over to glance at the hourglass on her dresser—

Mreow—eep.

“Shit,” she said with a jerk as the covers beside her squirmed and flailed, revealing a vaguely feline head, white, puffy fur in disarray.

“Sorry, Menace, didn’t mean to smush you,” Talia cooed, rubbing the back of her hand against the lynx’s cheek.

THUMP

Rattle—

“What in the world?”

The rattling sound of metal on wood drew her attention to the door. Her heart beat frantically in her chest for no reason she could discern.

No one should be home right now, I don’t think…

Something told her that calling out would be a bad idea. There was a need for silence in the Deep. And darkness. A stillness of life and colour that turned living beings into non-entities…

Talia frowned.

Where did that…actually, come to think of it, wasn’t I doing something? It felt important.

She shrugged.

If it was important, I’m sure it’ll come back to me.

With that decided, Talia flopped back onto her bed, ready for a lazy day free from responsibility. It all started with a nap. Or it would have, had her godsdamned cat not leapt onto her face no sooner had she put her head down.

“Gaah Menace! Why?!”

Meep

Talia sighed, settling the kit in his own little puddle of blankets, and warning him with a finger. The smug bastard stared, orange eyes unblinking and oh-so-knowing. Talia shivered as the room shook around her.

But the quake didn’t register, caught as she was in the lynx’s gaze. His fur rippled spasmodically, giving the illusion that he was…well, illusory.

“What is it?” she whispered, unable to shake off the feeling that he was trying to tell her something.

The moment stretched out, creaking like used tendons —a bowstring of fate drawn tight, ready to snap—

He jumped at her.

“Ahh! Godsdammit, that’s it! OUT!” she yelped, scooping the cat up and making her way to the…

“Door?”

Talia stopped just short of the door to the stairs. Or at least, where the door should have been, given that it was gone. As were the stairs, for that matter. In their place lay a…it hurt just to look at, but it felt like a hole. The essence of nothingness, boiled, distilled, concentrated. A beckoning abyss that twisted atop itself. Talia clutched Menace to her chest, wincing at the sharp pain there and feeling blood drip under her shirt.

“I—I’m going crazy…” she muttered.

“Colour me pleasantly surprised that you aren’t further gone,” a sultry voice said from behind her, “I must admit, in writing, you shouldn’t even be able to form a half-coherent mindscape, let alone remain coherent yourself, though, in all fairness, you’re not quite all there, are you?”

Talia whirled, rounding on the unexpected guest.

“Who…” Talia trailed off, her question ripped from her lips by shock.

Woah. Tall.

She —he? it was hard to tell, but Talia thought those were modest breasts, rather than well-developed pectorals. She sat cross-legged on Talia’s desk chair. The next thoughts to go through Talia’s head were ‘holy shit’, followed swiftly by an emphatic ‘what the fuck.’

The figure was, very clearly, not human. Nor elven, or dwarvish, or any manner of beastkin Talia had ever encountered.

Definitely not a gnome, while we’re at it.

The visitor boasted elegant features that might have been graceful, had they not been a little too sharp. A little too sharp, or perhaps, a little too…artificial. Pearlescent, almost glowing skin. Large, captivating eyes that glowed in truth, a cross between the orange-yellow hues of arcano-sunlight and the ethereal sheen of pure jadeite. Her body was, true to Talia’s first impression, too large. But in a way that felt natural, as if perfectly proportioned in every way —a painting-perfect rendition of a nearly androgynous giant. The chair was obviously too small for her, but instead of making the woman seem small and stooped, it only served to highlight the willowy power of her frame.

Talia gulped, lifting her gaze from the long, carefully poised and clasped fingers with perfect nails to examine the strangest part of her visitor. Her horns. Horned sapients were nothing novel. As far as wytch marks went, they were fairly common, and many beastkin had them in all shapes and sizes.

These horns, however, were the blueprint from which the very concept stemmed. They began right above the woman’s temples and spiralled in a double helix which swept into a rounded ‘v’ shape that wrapped around her head like a crown. Or a halo. The helix’s edge shone softly, as if wrought from amethyst. For the life of her, Talia couldn’t tell if the crystalline material was organic or some kind of decorative plating— but no, there, a closer look showed that it stemmed straight from the root, glowing lines piercing through the giantess’s skin.

Completing the visitor’s otherworldly first impression was her strange dress. ‘Dress’ being, here, a vague and imprecise word for a sheathe of pale white gossamer that both billowed and clung tight to her body, pinned here and there in loops by bands and studs of tarnished silver. Waves of long, flowing vermillion hair spilled across a prominent, almost pointed collarbone, catching seamlessly amidst the many folds of fabric like blood atop translucent marble.

Either I’m hallucinating, or…no, I’m definitely hallucinating.

The woman chuckled.

“Why, in a sense, you are absolutely correct,” she allowed, a glimmer in her eye as she leaned forward and locked Talia’s gaze with hers, “Now, the real question is, ‘do you think that makes me any less real?’”

Talia just stared, mind running a kilometre a minute and getting nowhere fast. Then she stuttered to a stop.

“Wait, can you read my mind?” Talia stuttered.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The visitor’s smile held altogether too many teeth, many of them ending in a far-too-natural point to have belonged to anything less than a predator. Then she tilted her head as if listening to a voice only she could hear.

When she sighed, the smile evaporated, as did the glimmer in her eye. From one second to the next, the…predatory interest she’d shown was gone, replaced with a cool, calm veneer.

“Yes, if I was so inclined,” the visitor began, “I could. However, that would be a grave violation, and one I would prefer not to resort to. The simpler answer is that you were muttering aloud. Not necessarily concerning, considering where we are, so nothing to fret about.”

Talia took a few steps back, semi-intentionally tripping over her bed and falling to a sitting position.

Where did Menace go? Wasn’t I bleeding?

The lynx was gone, as was the blood she’d felt trickling down her stomach. For that matter, so were her clothes, replaced with a set of armour she’d never seen before, all scales and matte black metal. In front of her eyes, it flickered in and out of existence, melting off her hands like foam held to a candle.

Tearing her eyes from the odd sight, Talia parsed what her uninvited guest had said.

“‘Resort to’?” she echoed suspiciously, eyes narrowed, “Do I have something you want?”

The visitor looked Talia up and down, murmuring something to herself before shaking her head.

“No, my young friend. Well, not really. It’d be more accurate to say that I am here to help you, assuming you are able and willing to accept my help,” she explained without explaining anything.

Another sigh. Talia furrowed her brow, fighting against looking down, where her sabatons were puddling into liquid something.

“Let’s start over, shall we? I’m realizing that perhaps I have been…out of touch in my approach. I am Isha Ma’Ellat Ar Scylla —but you can call me Isha— and I am here to help you.”

The smile was back, kinder this time, almost pitying. For some reason, tears pearled in Talia’s eyes, though the accompanying haze was red. Through it, the woman almost looked like… If you ignored the horns and the dress and the…

“Mama?”

Suddenly, the room was sideways —or was it her that was sideways?— the walls were melting and screaming filled the air. Flickering lights of blue life speckled the void beyond the walls, each one winking out with the shatter of a dead dream.

A hand ran through Talia’s hair as she cried without knowing why, the screams gently pushed away by a soft hushing sound.

“Shhhh, it’s alright child, I am here. It’s al—right.”

Gentle fingers pried her head from the bed, laying it on a pillow of gossamer-sheathed steel. Talia fought feebly, wrestling against whatever had her in its maw, shaking as that feeling of nothingness expanded until it was all-encompassing.

The heat of fireballs and the woosh of arrows and the screams of the dying—

A monster, huge and hulking and bearing down on her—

A light, so bright so blinding it threatened to consume them all—

Couldn’t stop, there was so much to do—

“Hush now. You are safe now, I promise. It is time to rest. Let me take care of you, ok? Can you do that for me? I promise I’ll make it all better.”

Through the haze of disjointed memories and voracious fears, Talia felt herself nod, staring at her blood as it pearled across Isha’s beautiful gown. She caught herself wondering if she’d stained it, and suddenly all the fight went out of her and she slumped.

“I need you to say it, ok? Can you let me in? So I can help you?”

“O-Ok,” Talia croaked.

A sigh. Talia felt it whisper across her naked shoulders. The winds of change. Of renewal.

“Good girl. Now rest, child. I’ll take care of you.”

Then Isha began to hum a song. One unlike anything Talia had ever heard, with a strange, jumping rhythm and lilting high notes.

It echoed in her dreams, a hymn of warmth and comfort and safety.

----------------------------------------

Talia woke within a cloud. In both the literal and figurative sense. From her immense bed —three or four times the size of her bunk in wagon two— she looked out onto the blue sunrise as the green sun crested over the horizon of alien pink clouds. One of which was sloughing off the imperceptible barrier that surrounded her home in the sky. Talia spent her first few minutes of wakefulness just watching the alien sight, appreciating its beauty.

If Talia turned her head just right, she could feel the warmth of the sun on her face, hear the wind whistle against the barrier, just beyond the balcony. It was heavenly. Surreal.

Which is kind of the point, I guess.

The minimalist, nearly all-white, polished room was somehow familiar. Carefully arrayed flowers, their colours more vivid than she ever could have dreamed of, sat in delicate clear vases sculpted in abstract shapes. A similarly marble-white table sat before the bed, surrounded by plush white chairs that felt like they’d been filled with mirage-lynx fur.

A mirror, a shelf replete with odd little metal knick-knacks and giant, bay windows of the clearest glass Talia had ever laid eyes on completed the room.

Her home for… She wasn’t sure how long it had been. Her memories here were fuzzy. They ebbed and flowed like the tops of the clouds outside her window.

It was like living in a dream. If her half-remembered conversations with Isha were right, then that was closer to the truth than anything else.

The things magic can accomplish…

After the indeterminate time she’d spent in this place, Talia was feeling like a new person. Or perhaps, an old person. Closer to who she’d been when she’d first left home.

But also further away. There was a serenity to her that had been absent before. One of the first conversations Talia could actually remember having with her healer had been when she’d realized just how much time had been passing. She’d nearly broken down in tears with the need to leave the dream, to return to the waking world. Most of the conversation was a haze now, robbed from her by what Isha called a splinter personality. But the part where the Ancient explained that time here wasn’t quite the same as it usually was, had stuck.

That had been…a long time ago. Talia wasn’t sure how long. Many more conversations had taken place, the details smoothed out, the colours washed away. The same had happened to a lot of her memories. As if she’d been through a whole course of norroot therapy. But better. Cleaner. More targeted.

“Talia? Are you awake? I brought breakfast.”

“Coming!” Talia called, slipping out of her blissfully soft sheets. The coolness of marble felt nice on her bare feet. A light breeze whipped through her simple, loose alabaster clothes as she made her way out onto the expansive balcony.

Isha sat with one leg over the other in her oversized chair, ceramic cup held loosely between two fingers the aroma that wafted over earthy and warm. It reminded Talia of home.

The green sun was high on the horizon now —the days in this place, wherever it was, were uneven and unpredictable. It had been disconcerting when she’d first become aware of it, but now it felt like part of the dream’s charm.

Talia tucked in, taking her time and appreciating the alien food. A sort of bread-like…loaf, some kind of egg —the yolk was greener than the sun— and a bowl of fruit with a bean-like texture in the shape of a star that melted in her mouth with the taste of happiness. Talia didn’t remember much, but she distinctly remembered Isha waving off any questions about what the food actually was. Talia thought it was likely that even she didn’t know. She giggled at the image of the powerful Ancient conjuring up a random assortment of edible things and picking a few that suited her every morning.

Apparently, they didn’t strictly need to eat, but the Ancient claimed that it provided a form of normalcy for the mind to repair itself.

Won’t see me complaining.

When she was finished, Talia pushed the plate across the glass-like texture of the table, watching in fascination as it sank into an until-then-invisible slot and disappeared.

I wonder if that’s just liminal space shenanigans, or if there really is something like that that exists.

They sat like that for a few moments, each in their own inscrutable thoughts, gazing at the strange horizon.

“This place is real, you know?” Isha finally said, “Not this place, but the paradise world it’s based on exists outside of our little liminal space. I spent a decade here after…it doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say it was there when I needed it most. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.”

Talia nodded hesitantly. Usually, their talks —the ones she could remember— focused on small, seemingly inconsequential things before moving toward the haze that was all Talia remembered of the…untwisting she’d gone through. Isha had never spoken of her past before. But Talia latched onto something altogether different in the ethereal woman’s words.

“‘Enjoyed’? Are we going somewhere else?” Talia hedged, not sure how she felt about the prospect.

I…like this place.

Isha favoured her with one of her smiles. The one that made Talia feel warm and fuzzy inside. Like the time she’d met Orvall’s mother as a young girl, before she’d gone to the Stone.

“We can go wherever you want. Rather, I meant that you’re done. As it is, my…assistant tells me that your psyche is as stable as a 20-year-old woman’s should be, with no signs of splinter regression. You’re healed, for lack of a better word.”

Talia stared, not quite sure how she felt about that. On one hand, it was a relief. It had been painless. Pleasant even. That felt…all sorts of wrong, and yet she knew it in her bones that what the Ancient said was true.

On the other hand, a part of her wanted to stay. As awful and pathetic as it sounded, the time spent in this dream had been amongst the most blissful she’d ever had. No worries, no work, no pain. Just rest and sleep and knowledge. Knowledge beyond her wildest dreams, all at her fingertips. Even if Isha said that what she could share was heavily restricted, what was available was enough to boggle Talia’s mind. With it at her disposal, she could do anything.

She could change the world.

Leaving felt like it meant losing that.

And then there was the final voice. The voice of duty. The voice of burden. The one that said that now that she was better, she needed to leave. To save her city.

“I have questions,” Talia finally said.

Isha’s smile grew wider, revealing sharp sets of canines that were an eerie mirror to Talia’s own wytch mark.

“Oh, I knew you would. Shall we trade then? A question for a question? After all, we have all the time in the world.”