“Are you all right?”
I jumped at the voice, right over the back of the bench I had sat on, eyes wide in fear. A startled-looking human met my eyes. I must’ve looked like such a mess, the short fur of my face was soaked with tears as I cowered behind the bench. I was so absorbed in my sorrow and crying that I hadn’t heard him approach, and now I’d been seen without my disguise.
“Um, you’re… What…” He shook his head, as if trying to jostle loose his stuck thoughts. “I heard crying and came to see. What’s the matter?”
I blinked. Slowly, I stood up, watching carefully to see his reaction.
“I won’t hurt you. Can you… understand me?”
I had to resist the urge to chuckle at the reassurance. My mind flashed back to the tavern full of humans who failed to land a single blow. Well, one did grab me, but that hardly counted. And this one did not look to be nearly as threatening as those had been. “Y-yes. You’re… not… scared of me?” I tilted my head questioningly.
“Should I be?” A note of nervousness crept into his voice.
I winced. “I… don’t want you to be… I don’t want to scare people. You’re the first human who wasn’t scared. Usually Master would have to talk to people first, tell them about me, and then he could introduce me. And even then, they usually reacted with fear, or fear mixed with other emotions. …But that… won’t happen anymore, Master can’t…” I started to sniffle again at the thought of another thing Master could never do again.
“You have a master…? What are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” I saw him glance around, but there was nobody but the two of us here.
“I had. He… he was killed. It all happened so fast, this whole night has been…” I shook my head again, I didn’t want to get mired in those thoughts again so soon. “I’m a hoofbun. Master created me. I’m a ‘living construct’. Like a golem, but better.” I couldn’t help but let a note of pride into my voice.
“Hoof… bun?” He glanced down at my hooves, as I slowly stepped out from behind the bench. “Huh, okay, I guess. And you’re crying because this master of yours was killed?”
I nodded, shifting my weight from one leg to another. “Yeah. And now I’m in this strange city, and I don’t know how to get home. Or… what that would even accomplish. I wish Master was here to tell me what to do!”
Something about the conversation seemed to make this man a little uneasy. There was a slight hesitation to his voice, that wasn’t quite nervousness. Was he worried about me being rogue and uncontrolled? “Well, what would he probably tell you to do, if he was here? You know him pretty well, right?”
“I don’t know… This is such a strange… situation, I’m not sure. I… I think he’d want to be home, though. The villagers are going to have things hard enough without Master to help, but with me missing as well? I’m worried about everyone.”
“The villagers? Where are you from?”
“It’s a pretty small place, Freymoor. I don’t… I don’t even know what direction it’s in, but if I could find my way to Linport, I could get home from there. They have a pretty big port there, lots of ships in and out. I’m sure any major trade route would include it. Maybe this ‘Denver’ place I heard about would have a port?”
That earned me a pretty strange look, though I wasn’t sure why. “A port…? Like, water? We’re in Colorado, there’s no ports anywhere near here.”
“Oh, the other man said this was Lapine Falls? Though, given his attitude, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find he was lying to me.” Part of me wished I had given them a worse bruising.
“No, this is Lapine Falls, it’s… Colorado is the state. You… do know what a state is, right?” He was looking more confused, and I wasn’t far behind.
“State.” I thought for a moment how to define the word without using itself. “A condition a thing is in. ‘A state of shock’, or ‘a sorry state of affairs’ for instance. Right?”
“No, I mean, yeah, but… Okay, you’re really not from around here. It’s also the name for a large… territory, area, I’m not sure how to describe it, but Lapine Falls is a city in the state of Colorado.”
“This is all… very confusing. Maybe if I can find a merchant, or someone who travels regularly, I can ask more questions.”
“Look, um, I just realized, I didn’t ask your name. What’s your name? Mine is Ben.” He put a hand on his chest, gesturing to himself.
I gave a polite bow. “My name is Flopsy, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Well, at least you’re a polite one. But what are you doing here?”
“I came to this spot to feel a little more at home. All the stone of the rest of the city was a bit overwhelming. It was nice to see a spot of green amid all of it. And then it caught up to me that Master was dead, and I was crying…” I raised a paw to my collar, touching the tag. It was a gift from Master, so it helped to remind myself of its presence.
“I guess that’s on me. I meant, what are you doing in Lapine Falls?”
“Oh? Right, um… I’m not… really sure how I got here. Master was conducting an experiment, but then when the assassin killed him, everything went horribly awry. Just before that happened, I saw a strange room. I think we somehow opened some kind of… of portal. But then the explosion happened. At least I think it was an explosion, I’m not… really sure. Everything was so… chaotic, fast, it all happened within a minute, or two at most.” I stared into nothing, my mind trying to piece together the fragmented pieces of what I remembered. “Maybe if I saw the room again, there might be a clue. But I don’t even know where that is.”
“We can try retracing your steps, maybe.” He looked thoughtful. “You said you talked to someone, and that’s how you knew this is Lapine Falls, but how did you talk to someone looking like, well, that?”
I blushed a little. “I didn’t look like this. You caught me by surprise, I was in disguise before.” My paw still on my collar, I sent a bit of energy into the spell, activating both spells. The shapechange spell to make myself human, and the Nowhere spell to summon the clothes I stored earlier. As long as I didn’t pull them out, they could “remember” where they were when I stored them, and I didn’t have to go through the hassle of getting dressed again. In a few moments, I was my human self again. I smiled in the pride I felt, showing off Master’s collar.
The reaction I got was a bit different than I expected. Ben had reacted in total shock. “What…? How did… How did you do that? You just… transformed? You can do that?”
“Me? No, no, it’s the collar. It has a spell imbued into it that allows me to take on this form. Master is… was… a skilled magician to be able to create it.” Having to correct myself left me a little sad.
“Magic? Like, that’s… real, honest-to-goodness magic? Really?”
“Um, yes?” I was confused by this. What else could it have been?
“Okay, so you REALLY aren’t from around here! Holy crap, what else can you do?”
“Oh, I can’t use magic, no. Just the items Master made for me. I’m a construct, I don’t have a soul like humans.” I giggled softly.
“You don’t… have a soul? And that means you can’t use magic?”
“A construct with a soul? That would be silly. Where would I even get it? And how would I use magic without a soul? Surely you know at least that much, don’t you?”
“Magic doesn’t exist. I mean, I guess it does, since you have that collar, but I don’t… I’ve never seen magic, or heard of magic. Not actual magic like that.”
“Really? But this whole city is… Oops, someone’s coming.” My ears weren’t as keen as they normally were, but I could still hear footsteps of someone running this direction, feet hitting the paved path. They were coming pretty fast, which was strange.
After a moment, someone dressed in the bare minimum of clothes came by. “Pardon.” They barely bothered to say the single word as they half-ran past us, some sort of headband connected by a thread to a square on a band wrapped around their upper arm. Ben didn’t seem too surprised by this perplexing figure, but soon they left.
“What was… that about? I thought maybe it was someone coming to fight, but they just… ran?”
“A jogger. She’s just exercising, that’s all. It’s a nice cool night. I was on a walk myself when I heard you.”
“Huh. This city is so strange. It’s such a late hour, though. I should be trying to find an inn somewhere. Hopefully it’s friendlier than the tavern was.”
“Inn? Tavern? Wait, what happened at this tavern?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just a fight with a bunch of mercenaries, though, come to think of it, they were painfully unskilled fighters. Maybe a local bandit group got a bunch of new recruits.”
“What the heck are you talking about? Which tavern was this?” He looked like I had grown a second head, or like my ears had turned back into their usual shape.
“Oh, the sign was… ‘Rocky Road Bar and Grill’? Very unfriendly.”
“The biker bar, with the motorcycle gangs? You actually went IN there? Are you insane?”
Motorcycle. For some reason, that word brought to mind an image of the strange, two-wheeled metal machines that had been in front of the place. I nodded. “I was hoping for information, and taverns are usually the best place for it. People having fun and drinking are the most willing to talk.”
“Yeah, but that’s… That’s the worst place you could have picked. You’re lucky they didn’t stab you, or worse. I’m glad you got out of there okay.” He shook his head, the ride from panic to relief fast but wild.
“You’re glad…?”
“Yeah, I’d hate to see you get hurt.” He said it like he was stating the complete obvious.
“But you don’t even know me. Why would…?”
“You don’t have to know someone to not want to see them hurt. Besides, I do know you. You’re Flopsy.” He smiled warmly, a simple gesture, but it caught me completely by surprise.
“That’s… That’s so kind of you. I don’t think I’ve ever met a human that was… so quick to be nice to me.” I blushed deeply, biting my lip lightly. I had a slight bucktoothed appearance, my front teeth having a hint of my true form, but not enough to be outside the range of a normal human. “I-I should… I should be going, though. It’s only getting later. Since you know this town better than I, where should I look for an inn? Even a stable would do, I’m not picky. I’ve never travelled without Master before…”
“You don’t have a place to stay? I mean, there are hotels, but… Why don’t you stay with me? You won’t have to spend money, and we can talk more. You’ll need to learn a lot before you can really blend in and walk around. Wait, do you even have money?”
Reaching behind myself, I retrieved the green paper I had picked up earlier. “This is money, right? I picked up some of the pot from the arm wrestling at the tavern. Not all of it, just a little.” I handed it over.
Flipping through the papers, his eyes widened. “You have… three hundred forty dollars! You stole this from the bikers?” He put it back in my hand.
“Technically, I won it. But they accused me of cheating, so I doubt they’d agree. I only took a few of the strips after the fight was over, I left the rest for them.” When he looked at me strangely, I elaborated. “It was the prize for arm wrestling. I… used to do a lot of farm work, back in Freymoor. When Master created me, it was for labor as well as company, so he made me strong.”
“How strong are you…? What kind of work did you do?”
“Oh, you know, all the usual stuff… Pull the plow, carry rocks, carry logs, pull stumps…” I shrugged, blushing. I wasn’t sure where the line between answering and bragging was.
“Holy… Well, either way, let’s get back to my place. Beats standing around here. I’m getting hungry anyway.” Maybe he was picking up on my unease, and that’s why he changed the subject. Either way, I was grateful, and followed him through the small glade.
He stopped before one of the large metal vehicles I’d seen on the streets before. A “car”, I knew. But… how? It made a chirping noise as lights flashed, though he was completely unsurprised. Whatever it was, it finished, and Ben reached over to open the door, revealing a seat just inside. He gestured for me to sit down, so I climbed in and did. Once that was done, he closed the door and went around to the other side, opening the other door and climbing in himself. After inserting some kind of small blade into the thing’s “neck”, it roared to life, and I felt the whole car tremble subtly. It was incredibly unsettling.
Ben pulled some kind of strap over himself, clicking it into place. “Right, you don’t… Um, this is a seat belt, you should strap yourself in, just in case.” I followed suit, guided by his directions, and it was a weird feeling that I’d done this before. Either way, once everything was done, the car lurched forward and began to roll through the streets, Ben’s hands on the large wheel somehow directing it in ways I didn’t fully understand.
It was a different experience, rolling through the streets instead of making my way across rooftops. It made all the buildings loom impossibly large. We were stopped, though, when Ben’s path crossed the site of my arrival. Flashing lights on vehicles and bright lamps lit the area, as a crew worked to clear out the stone. Signs placed in the road directed us to detour around the blockage. “What the heck happened here…?”
“Um, that’s… That’s where I arrived. Those stones are from Master’s home.”
“Wait, you did that?” He was already driving around to another road, the mess disappearing behind a building as we rounded a corner.
“No! Well, I mean, I’m not the one responsible! It’s that… that hunter’s fault. If he hadn’t killed Master, the portal-thing would never have… done that, and it never would’ve happened!”
“When did that happen, though? That looked really recent.” He tried to catch a glimpse as he passed an intersection, but there wasn’t a good view from here.
“I’d say… about an hour ago? It’s been a wild night.”
“An hour in town and you already got in a fight in a biker bar.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“That’s not my fault either… They started it.” I huffed a little, looking away. The passing of each lamp post made the shadows switch directions, lengthening and contracting. None of the lamps seemed to have a flame in them, they just shed light, but Ben said he hadn’t seen magic before.
Either way, the rest of the trip was fairly short, and soon we pulled up to a house on the outskirts of town. With the blade in the car’s “neck” twisted again, the car’s rumbling died, and Ben began the process of unstrapping himself and exiting the car. Coming around to the other side, he seemed surprised to find I had done most of the work already, though I wasn’t sure how to get the door open. It felt good to have my hooves on solid ground again, though.
“So, was that your first car ride? You handled it really well.”
“Thank you. I hope you aren’t offended, but I think I’d prefer to avoid more of them. The way it just… shakes constantly is… is strange.” I let him lead the way to the house, though the car did the chirp and flash thing again, which startled me. Ben continued to seem unsurprised.
“I suppose I can understand that. No comments about a ‘horseless carriage’?”
“Huh, it is like one, isn’t it? No, I… It’s strange, but I think I know what a car is? When I was created, part of the process was supposed to pull in a… ‘general baseline of knowledge’, basically. I always thought it had gone wrong somehow, but… I don’t know, somehow I’ve been seeing things in this city that… It’s hard to explain, it’s like it’s tugging at a memory except it’s one I’ve never had?”
“Really? That’s incredibly handy.” He opened the door and gestured for me to enter. I wiped my hooves on the mat before doing so, it just felt like the thing to do.
“Well, Master didn’t want to deal with a blank slate, that would have to be taught things like how to walk, how to speak, how to… not relieve itself inside the house. There’s a lot of things I didn’t know, and some of the things I knew were simply wrong or weird, so we assumed there was a problem with it. Mind magic isn’t his strong point, so he purchased that part of the design from another mage.” The house was dark, but after Ben entered, lamps flared to life, brightening things immensely. It was almost like daylight inside. Now that we were inside, I raised my hand to my collar and dismissed the human form, glad to be back to normal.
“Hah, I can see how that would be… unpleasant.”
“Oh yes, especially a creature like me, who can lift two humans with one arm. Having a body like that without a mind that can understand commands is… not safe.”
“Eesh, yeah, I can see that… So like, four hundred pounds?”
“Maybe? That was when I was first made, though. I’ve grown more powerful since then. The more I exercise, the stronger I get.”
I think the talk was making him a little nervous. “So you just… work? You do whatever labor you’re told to do?”
I tilted my head a little. “What else would I do?”
“I don’t know, what would you want to do?”
“Huh.” I thought for a minute. “I… don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
“Well, there’s no rush. What, um, what kind of food do you eat? I might have some carrots…?” He headed into the kitchen, and I followed him, sitting at the table and watching.
“I do like carrots, but I can only eat a couple at a time. They’re just too sweet to eat too much of. I eat anything humans eat. Master didn’t want to have to deal with problems separating food, especially while travelling, so he designed me to be able to eat the same food as him. That way he doesn’t have to cook two meals, or risk not being able to feed me at inns.”
“Huh, that makes sense. He cooked, not you?”
I smiled and held up a paw. It wasn’t completely unusable, but it was still thicker and larger than a human hand. “I’m no good at cooking. That ‘general baseline of knowledge’ spell didn’t seem to include it, for some reason. Plus, I shed.”
“I see. I just kind of assumed he made you do everything, since, y’know, the whole slave thing.” He dug around inside the fridge.
“Hey now, Master wasn’t the kind of person to keep a slave!” I huffed a little.
Looking over his shoulder, Ben raised an eyebrow at me. “He literally owned you.”
“That’s different. A slave is a person who is owned by another. I’m not a person, I’m a construct. He created me, gave me life. How could I not serve him?”
He sighed, turning his attention back to the fridge, but then closed the door. “Screw cooking, I’m just going to order pizzas. This is gonna be a long talk.”
It took some explaining, but eventually I picked out a basic “pepperoni”, and he got one with “black olives”. Then he showed me a small rectangle, which seemed to be some sort of scrying device. Poking at the surface, the words changed and shifted, pictures appearing and disappearing. I watched with wide-eyed wonder, trying to make sense of what was going on, but he proclaimed the task to be done.
“Now what happens?”
“We just wait, and it’ll be delivered.” Ben sat down at the kitchen table across from me.
“That’s… it? You can poke at that thing and food arrives?”
“Well, I have to pay for it. But… yeah? That’s how delivery works.”
I chuckled softly, shaking my head. “And you say there’s no magic in this world. You’ve got lamps with no flame, you’ve got metal cars that move on their own, you’ve got glass mirrors that summon food…”
“That’s all just technology. It’s science. Everything is based on natural principles.”
“Okay, what principle is behind that?” I waved a paw up at the light above our heads. “It just came on when you entered the room.”
“I hit the switch on the wall. That connected two pieces of metal, and electricity could flow through them. It flowed into the light fixture, through the bulb, and that makes the filament heat up and give off light.” He gestured at each part of the puzzle as he mentioned it.
“Electricity. Like lightning?”
“Exactly. There are metal wires in the walls for electricity to flow, in order to power devices that use it. Lights, the refrigerator, even this phone. They’re all based on electricity.”
I narrowed my eyes as he held up the last item. “Phone? The scrying mirror?”
“It does a lot, but one of the things it does is make calls. I can call a number, and talk to the person with that number, from anywhere.” His confidence seemed to be wavering. I think I was breaking through the story he was weaving.
“But there’s no metal for the electricity to flow.” I pointed out.
“Well, no, I plug it in to charge it, and then the battery stores the electricity. When it runs low on electricity, I plug it in to refill it.”
“And to call? You didn’t have it plugged in to summon ‘pizza’.” I pressed the issue. I think I was beginning to understand, “electricity” was what they called magic in this city. Why, I couldn’t begin to guess.
“No, it uses, um… Cell phones work with signals, they talk to cell towers, or connect to the internet with wi-fi…”
I continued to stare, beginning to grin.
“Okay, look, just because I can’t explain everything about it myself doesn’t mean it’s magic. It’s designed by people way smarter than me, based on technology that’s evolved over decades. Even if I could explain the entire history of computers, it would take forever.”
“You can call it ‘electricity’ and ‘computers’ if you want.” I smirked and leaned back. “Oh, that’s right, you said the pizza thing cost money, right? You can have my money if you want it. I don’t want to cost you for my food.”
“No, no, it’s fine. It’s only thirty bucks.”
“How many bucks are in a dollar? Or is it the other way around?”
“Huh? No, ‘buck’ is just another word for ‘dollar’. There’s a lot of slang terms. For some reason, people will call them just about anything.”
Reaching into my Nowhere, I summoned two of the slips with the ‘20’ markings and offered them. “Well, then here you go. My treat, for being so nice to me. You’re bringing me into your home, teaching me about this city… Please, at least let me do this.”
He sighed, but it was clear I wasn’t going to back down, so he took the money. “You should hold on to the rest, there’s no telling when you’ll need it.”
“Well, if I can get back home, I won’t need any of it. I don’t think anyone there has ever seen these before. If I tried to pay with this instead of Sovereigns, they’d call the guard on me.”
“Sovereigns? Is that your local currency?” He started poking at his ‘phone’ again.
“Yeah. Here.” I pulled a couple out of my Nowhere and placed them down on the table in front of him. They were solid gold coins, a little over two fingers wide across, and thick enough that they’d not bend too easily.
He picked one up, his eyes widening. “Wait, this isn’t… actual gold, is it?”
“It wouldn’t be a Sovereign if it wasn’t. Why?”
He carefully set it back down. “I was trying to Google it, but since ‘sovereign money’ is a term, it’s hard to tell what countries actually use it. Looks like England does, though?”
I rolled my eyes at that. “Ha ha. I already fell for that once, I’m not falling for it again.”
“Um, what?”
Before I could explain, there was a chiming bell, though it sounded pretty strange. Like something imitating a bell. Ben got up and headed towards the door, and I started to follow him.
He held up a hand. “Ah, you should… wait here. Or disguise yourself. It’s the pizza.”
“Food cares how I look?”
“The person delivering the food cares how you look.”
“Oh, right. I’ll stay here.”
There was a bit of talking, a pretty basic exchange of money and food. It ended with Ben telling the other person to keep “the rest” as “tip”.
“Pizza’s here.” He set the two boxes down on the table, the smells heavy in the air. Opening them up, both circles had red round slices, but one had little black rings as well. “That one’s pepperoni, this one’s pepperoni and black olives. If you want to try a slice, feel free. I mean, you paid for them, after all.”
“I can always do more arm wrestling.” I grinned.
“No, let’s not get bikers angry with you.” He grabbed a slice of the black-ring pizza and took a bite, though the heat of it gave him a little discomfort. Blowing air, he let the bite cool before continuing.
I waited a bit, not wanting to make the same painful-looking mistake. “Well, I’ll need to figure out some way to earn dollars. I don’t know how long I’m going to be trapped here, after all.” Once the food had cooled, I tried a slice. Cheese, bread, sauce… The spiced meat was an interesting addition. It seemed like a pretty fancy dish, and Ben acted like it was nothing. It made me curious what else this city could offer. Maybe I wouldn’t rush to get back, a few days to explore wouldn’t hurt.
“Well, you’re welcome to stay with me as long as you like. I’m not going to just throw you out when you have no home.” He began eating a second slice.
“And I want to be useful. I was created to be useful. I can’t… be happy, just sitting here doing nothing and eating food.”
“Okay, fine. What kind of things do you do, besides… be strong?”
“It’s mostly that. I mean, I kept Master safe when we travelled, like a personal guard. I’m trained in fighting, so I can hit without hurting people too badly. I can read and write, I’m good with numbers. I served as something like an apprentice, as well as kept Master company with conversation.” I couldn’t help but be proud of my abilities as an assistant.
“I guess that’s something. I don’t know what we’ll do with it, but it’s something.”
The rest of the meal was spent with him telling me more about the various things in his house, introducing me to more of this city’s ‘technology’. I still wasn’t completely convinced it wasn’t magic, I’d have to look for runes later. Finally, exhaustion was catching up with both of us, and we called it a night soon after. Ben tried to take the couch and give me the bed, but I refused.
“No, I can’t have a guest sleep on the couch, it would be rude.”
“And I can’t take the bed from the owner of the home, and from a person.”
“Well, you’re a lady, you get the bed.” He crossed his arms.
“I’ll arm wrestle you for the couch.” I crossed my arms back. I narrowed my eyes.
We stared at each other for a tense moment. Finally, he sighed. “You’re really determined, huh?”
“I am. And I can be exceedingly stubborn. If you take the couch, I’ll sleep standing up.”
He paused for a moment. “Is that a thing you can actually do because you’re half horse, or…?”
“Okay, no, I can’t really. But I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll take the bed.” He threw a hand up in defeat and went into what I assumed was a bedroom. I settled onto the couch and laid down, yawning as I curled up. Sleep caught me soon in spite of everything, it had been such a tiring day after all. Rest would be another story altogether, with nightmares plaguing me the entire night.
In the morning, Ben showed me how to work a larger scrying mirror, one he called a ‘television’, the strange wand able to direct it to show other people and places. He had to leave for work, but he didn’t want me to be bored. It was a nice gesture. Honestly, it was a little overwhelming, so after I made it go dark, I simply left it that way. Instead, I explored as much as I could without prying into anything that seemed private.
Around midday, he returned, carrying a bag. “Hey, how are you holding up?”
“Holding up?” I looked around at the ceiling. “Was something going to fall?”
“Um, it’s… it’s an expression. Never mind. Anyway, I got you something.” He set the bag on the table and pulled out a box. “I was worried you’d run into trouble, being here by yourself, so I got you a phone. That way, you can call me if you need to.”
“A phone? That hand mirror that talks to people?”
“…Yeah. I called off the rest of my shift, and I can see I made the right call.”
He opened the box and pulled things out. Explaining how they worked, he showed me how to turn the phone on, how to ‘unlock’ it, walked me through the initial setup, and so on. This model, he explained, had a stylus.
“You just use this to poke at the screen. I was worried with your paws, you’d have trouble with accuracy. Since you said you could write, I figured you could use a stylus.”
I tried without first, but the phone refused to react. “Hm. I bet it’s because I don’t have a soul. I can’t use magic.”
“I told you, it’s not magic. Let me see your paw?”
Dutifully, I offered my paw for inspection. He held it, turning it over. I blushed a little, even though I knew I could easily pull out of his grip if I chose.
“You don’t have paw pads?”
“No. Rabbits have fur covering their paws.” I flexed the paw lightly for effect.
“That must be it. Humans wearing gloves can’t use a touch screen unless they have special ones made to work with it. Something to do with the bioelectric field? I bet it’d work if you were in your human form. Well, you can still use the stylus.”
I rolled my eyes a little, ‘bioelectric field’ sounded an awful lot like another word for magic. But I didn’t fight him on it just yet. Instead, I took the stylus and tapped where he told me to, and the device reacted to that just fine.
It took nearly an hour, but at the end, I had my own ‘phone’. He even showed me how to call his phone, which he entered as a ‘contact’, so apparently my phone would ‘remember’ his. I was amazed, but deep down, it continued to tug at half-formed non-memories. Did I somehow have ‘general knowledge’ from a land as far as this? Was that distance why it was so faint? I could only guess, even Master wouldn’t know the details.
With everything done, he gave me a protective case to put it into. I promptly tucked it into my Nowhere for safekeeping.
“Um, did you just… disappear the phone?”
“I put it away, yeah.”
“Huh. I wonder…” He picked his up and tapped the screen, holding it up to his ear. “Straight to voicemail.”
“What’s that mean?” I tilted my head, confused.
“It means when you have it in there, it has no signal. I can’t call you if you have it in that Nowhere place.”
“Oh. …Well, I can still take it out to call you, though, right?”
“Yeah. It is mostly so you can call me if you need me. It’s just fascinating, this whole Nowhere thing. When you wear clothes, though, you might want to keep it in a pocket instead.”
“I suppose. It has a case, so it should be fine. I’m just not used to pockets. Or clothes.”
“Yeah, I noticed. There’s a lot of things you might need to get used to while you’re here.”
I huffed a little. He did have a point, however. I pulled the phone out, and then activated the spell in my collar to shift myself human. Since I had it out, I tested my fingers on the screen, and they did in fact work. “Okay, I guess it’s not the soul.”
“See?”
“I still say it’s magic. I bet if I could open this up, I’d find runes somewhere.”
Ben rolled his eyes. I tried to find a pocket, but the skirt I was wearing didn’t have any. Shrugging, I slipped the phone back into my Nowhere. Ben saw this and commented. “Should we go clothes shopping today?”
“Perhaps. I’ve never done that before. I just grabbed some when I arrived because I couldn’t go around as a naked human.”
“That would explain why your clothes still have price tags on them.” He gestured at the tags, causing me to fiddle with them.
“Is that what those are? I was wondering why this city made clothes so uncomfortable.”
“Here, let me help you remove them, and we can go exploring the town, okay?”
“That sounds good, thanks.”