Enidd Morigwen, aged seventeen, was spending yet another thrilling evening on her bedroom floor, surrounded by the silent chaos of a maths textbook, eraser shavings, and scattered paper squares. Her focus was not on the homework but on the large sheet of paper she had pulled from a wooden box her grandfather had given her. This was not unusual for Enidd, whose idea of a good time recently involved folding shapes with an intensity that could be described as mildly concerning. She had begun learning the art of Origami from her grandfather before he set off again; he spent many of his retirement years travelling. Tonight, her “piece de résistance” was once again a crane, an origami creature that was starting to look far too impressive to be the result of her procrastinating on her maths homework.
Enidd's fingers moved nimbly, each crease and fold bringing the crane closer to life. It was, to put it plainly, a small miracle of geometry and paper that made her feel marginally better about the general state of the universe. Just as she was tucking in the final few folds, she yawned—that deep, eye-watering yawn, the type that signals that you stayed up way past your bedtime. She glanced up at the clock, its numbers blurry in the moonlight peering in through the window, much like a door-to-door salesman trying to see if the occupants of the house weren’t hiding from his sales pitch.
She never quite made it to her bed, eyes closing just as the last fold of the crane completed.
When Enidd woke, it wasn't to the familiar sight of her cluttered room but to a faceful of grass. This was alarming for several reasons, not the least of which was that she distinctly remembered being indoors when she fell asleep. As she sat up, blinking groggily, she took in the scenery: trees towering above like misplaced skyscrapers, their leaves shimmering in a way that suggested they were auditioning for a fantasy movie. The sky was an obnoxiously cheerful shade of blue, and the air had that annoyingly fresh quality that made you want to question your life choices.
Enidd rubbed her eyes, certain this was some sort of elaborate joke, but the grass remained stubbornly real beneath her fingers. The more she looked around, unable to see anything familiar, the more everything screamed, "You’re on Prank People TV!”. Her first thought was that she must have wandered outside while asleep, though that explanation seemed as flimsy as the paper crane still clutched in her hand.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Speaking of which, the crane seemed oddly energetic this morning. It fluttered in her hand, wing twitching like a small, paper-bound, well, crane that had just been informed it was late for a very important meeting. Enidd stared at it, half expecting it to suddenly ask for directions. “What…?” Enidd managed to mumble because this seemed like the appropriate thing to say when faced with inexplicably animate paper art.
She loosened her grip on this thing she had created; the crane flapped once, then once more, and took off with all the grace of a paper aeroplane thrown by a toddler with questionable aim. It did a loop around her head as if trying to show off before landing back on her shoulder and giving a sort of papery up-nod, which Enidd was fairly sure was its way of saying, “Get a grip, woman.”
Enidd glanced around again, hoping for a sensible explanation to present itself, like a hidden camera crew or a very dedicated group of performance artists. There were no signs of either. Instead, there was just the relentless calm of nature, which continued to be deeply unhelpful.
“Right,” Enidd said as if he had any idea what was going on. “I’m… outside?” The crane offered no answers, only a flutter of wings that suggested it was as confused as she was, or perhaps it had simply accepted its newfound animation with the blasé attitude of a creature made entirely of paper.
Enidd stood up, brushing grass off her pyjamas, and turned in a slow circle. Trees, more trees, a distant hill, and what appeared to be a vaguely promising path winding off into the woods. It all looked perfectly outdoorsy, and Enidd almost felt offended by it. She couldn’t shake the feeling she was missing something important, like the punchline to a joke no one bothered to explain.
“So… I maybe just... wandered outside in my sleep.” She mumbled, trying to convince herself as much as the crane, who flapped its wings in what Enidd chose to interpret as a shrug.
Enidd took a hesitating step forward, then another, all while glancing over her shoulder as if expecting her house to magically appear behind her. It did not, and Enidd was left with the unnerving realisation that she was, indeed, lost in the middle of nowhere with nothing but her pyjama-clad body and a sassy origami crane for company. “Brilliant,” she muttered as she started down the path because when life hands you inexplicable situations, the only sensible course of action is to walk straight into them. The crane looked at her in what Enidd could only describe as a judgemental rustle, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it knew something she didn’t.