You’re probably thinking, ‘Nelia, you liar, there were no Velociraptors or fireballs. You just met some weird girl! How dare you get my hopes up! I swear to God, you’re just like Steve!’ Well, I’m sorry Steve is so horrible at telling stories but I wasn’t done with mine. Meeting Sola was only the beginning of what I would later call ‘The Snake Incident’. 

Sola and I arrived at the Guild kiosk soaking wet. The storm hadn’t let up until a few moments ago. Throughout the trip I had listened to Sola’s near endless talking. She told me everything from innovative and daring new ways to skin a fish to why the Endless Sea wasn’t actually endless. I’d never felt so happy to see the bored expression of the man who’d signed me up as an adventurer again. As we approached the counter I asked, “Do you have a life or do you just sit here all day?”

“Do you ever speak with a purpose or is it just to fill silence?” He asked.

“Hi Marty!” Sola said with a smile. ‘Marty’ looked at Sola, becoming more awake. “Hey, Sola. You’re here for the job?”

“We are. We’re completing it as a team!” She said with a grin. If Sola became any sweeter I would have to throw her off a cliff. Marty shrugs. 

“Okay. Probably for the best anyway.” He takes out a folded letter with the Guild’s Stamp on it. “Why?” I ask, growing very suspicious.

“Just read the letter and get moving short stuff.” He says to me. I am impossibly close to losing it when Sola- after speed reading the letter- thanks Marty and pulls me away. “I’ve never seen Marty act like that.” She says.

“Maybe I’m special.” I reply.

“Maybe if you were nicer to him-”

“Sola,I get that being nice works for you. And that’s fantastic. But I’m not nice. Been there, done that, got stepped on.”

“How?” She asks. I start to play with the edges of my shirt as I reply, “Where I come from… there was this day where you celebrated your mother. Essentially thanked her for giving birth to you. I was f-” I stop myself from saying fourteen. 

“-F?” Sola asks.

“Freezing cold because the previous night had been a blizzard that snowed my family in.” I finish. She nods slowly. “I get up before the sun rises to make her breakfast. I follow every recipe to the letter, bring it up to her on a silver platter with a hot cup of coffee, and give it to her with a card I’d spent a week on prior to that. She said two things to me, ‘The toast is dry’ and ‘there’s no creamer’.” 

Sola’s quiet for a long moment. “That sounds rough.” She finally says. I shrug.

“But she was your Mom.”

“She didn’t get the memo I guess.” I say.

“How were Father’s Days for you?” She asks.

“Not much better-” I stop. Stop moving, stop talking. There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day here. It was impossible Sola would know about that unless… unless… Sola smiles. “Pieces clicking together?” She asks.

“You...you’re from Earth. From my time- my home.” I whisper.

“Yeah. Got here about four years ago. You really aren’t good at hiding where you came from.” She says.

“How’d you die?”

“Meteorites. They hit my home. Last thing I remember was a flash and… burning heat.” Sola runs a thumb over the gauze on her right hand. “I never thought I’d meet someone who was also from home.” She adds quietly. I can barely process what I’ve heard. Another person… like me. I’d given up hope that I’d ever meet someone in this wide expanse of a wold. And now… I didn’t know who Sola was before this. She seemed nice but you never could trust what people chose to show you. 

“Who were you?” I ask.

“Cassandra Emilia Lobo.” She replies. “I lived in Madrid and I was born in Spain.” She holds out a hand with a smile.

“Greta Faith Shatslinger. I was born in New York. Lived there until I died.” I said as I shook her hand. She gives a chuckle as we start to walk again. “It is good to meet you. We should finish this job though.” 

“What is it?”

“It is for a farm that borders the Velox Woods. The farmer writes that a group of… Hawk Lizards have been attacking his livestock.” She says as she reads the scroll. “He wants us to kill them.”

“Are we dealing with flying lizards?” I ask. 

Sola shrugs. “My Tribe never came this far south. I’m unfamiliar with some of the wildlife. I was hoping you’d know.” 

“Why are you here, then?” I ask. Sola purses her lips. “Sensitive subject?”

“No, not really. No one asks so I’ve never had to explain it.” She takes a slow breath. “My tribe has a… belief that female warriors shouldn’t travel.”

“So they’re sexist?” I ask.

“No. Female warriors are seen as equals in the tribe. It’s just frowned upon that they travel to make a name for themselves. It’s dangerous and we don’t have many women to begin with.”

“So… you’re sexist. But it’s a survival-based sexism?”

“No it’s-” Sola sighs. 

“Can the men travel?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“But the women can’t?”

“It’s not that they’re restricted from doing so. It’s just not really tolerated and they’re usually married off before they can. And then they have to stay- oh Gods we may be sexist.”

I shrug. “So were you married off?”

“No. I’m only thirteen. At this point they just considered it a phase and let me go.”

“So are you traveling just to prove a point?” 

“No. I’m going to be the leader of the Adventurer’s Guild.” She says. 

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Good for you.” I shift the massive pack on my back so that the belts of potions don’t fall off. 

“What about you? What’s your goal?” She asks. 

I open my mouth to answer but close it. I realize I didn’t have one. I was walking around and exploring only because Prudence forced me to. I didn’t have any goals or aspirations. It was almost as bad as my last life. “I don’t know.” I finally say.

“That’s fine.” Sola says with a shrug of her own. “Nothing wrong with living day by day.”

We arrive at the farm soon. Everything’s quiet again and, well, you know how I feel about quiet places. Sola notices that I’ve tensed up. “You all good, Blondie?” She asks.

Ignoring her nickname, I listen carefully. Nothing except the wind. Some birds. In the distance there are some church bells. I think I hear a mouse break wind. “Might’ve been not-” Sola’s interrupted by a sound that’s similar to nails being dragged along a chalkboard. She tackles me to the ground as a black shape flies over us, crashing into a tree nearby. I turn to see the thing wriggling to its feet. Its clawed feet that are the size of my arm with one particularly large nail glinting at me. The creature is covered in muddy brown scales that shift over its muscular body. It has a fringe of green feathers on its head, right above its soulless yellow eyes. The black slits shift to me and Sola as it lets out another roar. 

“Move!” Sola shouts as she drags me to my feet. We run into the woods, the creature following us. “That’s a freaking Velociraptor, Sola!” I shout as we circle around a tree.

“I know. I’ve seen Jurassic Park. Don’t they usually hunt in packs, though?” She asked. I push her as three more lunge from the dark underbrush and tackle me. As far as ways to die go, ‘eaten alive by velociraptors’ had a neat ring to it. Before I can fully embrace that, a fireball knocks them off of me and scorches some of my hair. “Sola!” I exclaim as I climb to my feet.

“What? I controlled it, didn’t I?” 

“Can you control the major forest fire you’ve made?!” I shout. Four more come from the underbrush as the path behind us is consumed with flames.

“Not my brightest moment.” Sola admits. Which I found pretty ironic since the forest around us was going to burn to the ground soon. 

One of the raptors lunges at Sola. She grabs it by the ankle and swings it into a burning tree. Two come at me. I draw my sword and stab it into one of them. Which is harder than most movies made it seem. There was bone and muscle that I had to stab through. Later I found out that I didn’t even stab in the right place so I just made it angry. The other one- you know, the one that was going to eat my face- had my attention at that moment though. 

I let instinct take over and closed my hands over its mouth before throwing it into the air. It flew farther and higher than I expected it to go. With a roar it tumbled through the air off to some other neck of the woods to-hopefully- become someone else’s problem. 

Sola breaks the neck of another one and says, “That looks like the last of them-” She pauses to fight the one that has my sword in it. All around us, the flames are getting higher. 

“How is this possible?! It rained less than an hour ago!” I exclaim as I try to avoid the tendrils of flame that lick at my cloak. Sola screams as the Velociraptor's talon digs into her arm. With a sharp ‘crack’ she breaks the claw off. The velociraptor’s roar calls the attention of more. Sola, holding her bleeding arm, stumbles back with me as the group forms a circle around us. 

And then we died. Permanently. The end.

Okay. I lied. We lived. But I was scarred mentally. We were about to be little girl sushi for a bunch of formerly extinct lizards when something else hissed. I looked over my shoulder and saw what I thought at the time was a black, scaly freight train. It crashed through the burning woods and crushed all of the velociraptors in its path. Which happened to be all of them. After about ten minutes of it slithering around and destroying property and animals, the snake looked over its non-existent shoulder at me… and winked. It slithered off into the sunset, leaving a trail of property damage no one in this time would be able to calculate. 

Sola looked at me with her mouth wide open and her arm gushing blood. We both looked at my bag, where the trail of destruction had originated from. “That… was that the snake in your bag?” She asked.

“I-I think so?” I said. We cautiously walked over to it. When nothing else sprang out of it, I gave Sola a healing potion and wrapped up her arm. 

“The veins and skin were torn pretty badly. You’ll have a wicked scar.” I say. 

Sola grins with delight. Of course she does. “Here.” She tosses me the claw. I step to the right and dodge it. A) there’s still blood all over it and B) I don’t need a murder lizard’s claw. When I tell her this, Sola shrugs. “You never know when you might need something that looks useless. Plus it’ll make for a great story.”

“Yeah,” I grunt as I pull out my sword from the crushed remains of the velociraptor, “how we destroyed a farm and released a giant snake upon the world.”

“Or, how we survived a horde of velociraptors and a forest fire!” Her eyes are practically glowing with excitement. Sola would always tell the story with greater exaggeration than I preferred, but that was nowhere near what our ‘fantastic adventure’ would be.