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The next day, Arwin stumbled out of the mansion with the girls in tow, everyone groggy and slightly hungover. Aoi, looking sick, waved goodbye and wandered off toward her family home. At Bleu’s invitation, Arwin followed her toward her own home, where Jacque would be. Remembering that Jacque was her father and what Arwin and his daughter had gotten up to the previous night, the closer he got to their door, the more he thought about trying to come up with an excuse not to enter.
Jacque and his wife, Bleu’s mother, were having a late breakfast when the two came home. The parents took one look at the state the newcomers were in and must have understood at least part of what had happened the night before.
Her mother’s mouth opened and closed without words coming out.
Bleu saw the conflict on Jacque’s face and cut his thoughts off with a raised finger. “Papá. I’m an adult. Not a child. How I spend my time is my choice. And I am happy with that choice.”
Jacque blinked at her, then relaxed and chuckled. “Seems there’s no end to the changes that man brings around here.” He nodded at his daughter, then looked at Arwin, and his eyes flickered towards a chair in an invitation to sit. “Hungry?”
Arwin’s gut unclenched, and he took the chair as Bleu sat down next to him. “I could eat.”
Understandably, Jacque and his family, along with most of the village, were very busy that day. There was much to talk about and organize. That left Arwin suddenly feeling like a third wheel, with nowhere to fit in and not a part of anything.
Wandering around the village on his own, he enjoyed sightseeing, admiring the medieval setting and that most people were blue-skinned, something completely from his world. Well, except for Smurfs.
Trouble came his way soon enough. He came to a stop in a random street and then turned around on a whim, only to find a viciously snarling man behind him, driving a dagger at his gut.
“Whoa!” Arwin leapt backwards, avoiding the blade.
“You little shit!” the man spat, taking another stab. “You ruined everything!”
Arwin let the knife miss again, then slammed his arm down on the attacker’s wrist before kicking him in the groin.
The man’s eyes rolled back, and he fell to his knees, dropping the weapon to clutch his bruised testicles instead. A second kick to the head knocked him onto the street.
The action drew attention and a small crowd. Some were worried for his sake. Not all were sympathetic. One couple gave Arwin the stink eye and looked like they would have preferred it if Arwin had been the one on the ground.
Someone sent for Jacque, who came at a run. Luckily, it was clear what had happened and why. The crowd moved on relatively quickly, and the attacker hauled away.
Jacque put a heavy hand on Arwin’s shoulder.
Arwin looked at him. “Guess you were right.”
“I’m sorry, Arwin. You’re an easy target, being a foreigner and not blue-skinned. And you were the catalyst behind what’s happening. It’s not going to be safe here for a while until we get things settled into a new normal.” He genuinely looked apologetic. He sighed. “Maybe we could…” He trailed off, at a loss.
Arwin wanted to stay and get to know these people better, his spirit yearning for new friendships and his heart had sparked an interest in both Bleu and Aoi. But he could see the logic to the idea of leaving for a while.
Social change could be difficult, and not everyone was happy to go along with it. He didn’t relish being made the town scapegoat and the target of their hate. He’d gotten lucky. If he hadn’t randomly turned at the right moment, he could have died today.
He tried to look for a silver lining. His recent success had restored some of his self-confidence and distracted him from his recent heartache.
Relationships, whether beginning, overcoming hurdles in the middle, or ending, provide opportunities for us to re-evaluate ourselves and choose who we want to be going forward. After a long period of grieving and depression, he was finally going through that process. He felt better after spending an evening with Aoi and Bleu. Maybe continuing to adventure in this new world on his own would be good for him.
He spent another night in the village, this time on Jacque’s couch, then decided to hit the road. He didn’t ask either of the women to join him, knowing they had important roles to fill in building a new home. He waved goodbye to them and Jacque, promising to return and meaning it, and strode off down the main road alone.
The dirt road was marred by wagon wheel ruts and clumps of weed and grass. The forest surrounded him, evergreen trees towering far overhead, reminiscent of Earth’s giant douglas firs, but many were far larger. Trunks stood as solid and wide as apartment buildings, wrapped in crackling brown bark, with evergreen needles in the branches above as long as his forearm.
On a whim, he wandered off the road into the woods, though he tried to keep the road in sight. Looking up into the sky-high reaches of the trees, something strange caught his eye amidst the broken light and organic shapes of the branches. There was something almost uniform there. He stopped and squinted up. Yes, there was something unnatural up there. It had manmade regularity.
As he moved around to get a better look, he spotted similar dark shapes in other places. But they were broken up and inconsistent. Was that a ladder? A bridge? Were those frayed ropes dangling over there? Or was it all just shadows and his imagination? Unfortunately, they were too high, and the light too dim to clearly make things out. He continued on his way and immediately tripped over something on the ground.
Picking himself up off the prickly, brown ground, Arwin looked back to see what caught his foot. His eyebrows rose in surprise. He’d uncovered a few old and very worn wooden planks, mostly buried under the forest floor. Sweeping off some of the dirt and debris covering them, he could see that they would have been held together with rope at one time. Now they were falling apart from rot. He glanced back upwards. Those really were some kind of manmade bridges or something up above. Perhaps an elaborate tree house. Or tree village, given the size. It looked like it had been a very long time since anyone had used it, though.
He continued on, keeping an eye out for anything unusual. Pretty much everything was. He saw two bellhops hopping through the woods, each bell making a distinctive ring at the top of their bounce. Disturbed by Arwin’s passage, a cat of nine tails jumped out from some bushes, startling him, and lashed him vigorously with all nine soft and velvety tentacles. Satisfied that justice had been done, the cat haughtily sauntered a short way off before sitting down and studying Arwin from a safe vantage point.
Arwin had the odd sensation that the feline giving him the cat scan was cataloguing him and was maybe on the point of catechizing him, perhaps before realizing that it couldn't speak human. Then the creature vanished once again into the underbrush. Arwin shook his head. He'd certainly been catapulted into a strange world.
Eventually, the great evergreen trees thinned, and more leafy types worked their way into the forest. He came to a fork in the road.
Which way should he go? Neither looked more used, so taking the less travelled one simply wasn’t an option (sorry, Robert Frost). With nothing to indicate that either way was better, he chose at random and ambled off, heading south.
He noticed the sun passing its zenith overhead. Growling in his stomach reminded him that adventuring through the woods builds an appetite and that he hadn’t brought lunch with him, nor had he made plans about spending the night.
“Hmm. It appears that I’m quite the rookie at adventuring,” he chided himself. He grew a little worried and wondered if he should turn around and head back to the Blue Region. He had no map or destination, no provisions; what had he been thinking?
But all this instantly swept from his mind when he turned a corner in the road and saw what lay before him.
It was a skeleton picking his butt! Her butt? He couldn’t tell gender just from the bones. The figure was down on one hand and both knees, the other limb lodged deep in their backside. The bones were bleached white from the sun, entirely free of flesh, and somewhat shone under the clear blue sky.
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A male voice grumbled and worked the back hand around rigorously. Well, that cleared the gender up. Probably.
Arwin's eyes widened. He pulled up to the skeleton on the path, only to see the skeleton go into a growling fury while trying to extricate its hand from its backside. "Uh, hi.” Arwin mock-defensively raised his hands. “Sorry, is this an inappropriate time?”
The skull twisted around to look up at him from the ground. "Oh, of all the rotten times to be caught with one's pants down,” he grumbled.
Arwin’s jaw dropped. "You can talk!”
The skeleton rolled his head in exasperation. "Ah, you're a simpleton. For a moment, I was worried that you might be someone dangerous."
Arwin’s gaze levelled. "And apparently, you're rude."
The skeleton let out a whoosh of air, which was impressive, given that he had no lungs. "Don't just stand there. Give me a hand!" he demanded.
"I think you've already got one,” Arwin replied, backing away slowly. "I'll just leave you to whatever it is you're doing. No judgement here. I think people should be allowed total sexual freedom, whatever turns them on, just as long as they aren’t hurting anyone. Well, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone who isn’t asking for it and enjoying it. Because some people are into that whole whips and spanking and the occasional Californication punch-in-the-face thing. Not me, by the way. The punching part, anyway.”
"Oh, don't be a nincompoop,” the skeleton spat. “I don't care what you think I'm doing, but this isn't what it looks like. I ran afoul of a troll with a sense of humour who shoved my bones into place like this, and now they're stuck. Better than running across an ogre and having them ground into dust, but still, it's rather undignified, and the sooner the situation is rectified, the sooner I'll stop being the butt of your jokes."
Arwin snickered. "Don't you mean when the situation is 'rectumfied'?"
The skeleton glared at him.
Arwin shrugged apologetically and pointed a thumb over his shoulder. "I saw a bunch of puns earlier..."
The skeleton shook his head as if he were listening to an idiot.
Arwin smiled. "Oh, come on. Butt of your jokes? You didn't do that on purpose?"
The skeleton’s cheeks seemed to turn a shade of reddish pink, though bone shouldn’t have been able to do so. "All right, enough! I think we've reached the end of this!”
"Or, at least, you certainly have." Arwin snickered again.
"Are you going to help me out," the skeleton shouted with frustration, "or stand there laughing at me all day long?"
"Sorry." Arwin hurried forward. After a few seconds of experimentally twisting the arm and hand, he extracted the limb from the pelvic bone.
With a sigh of relief, the skeleton stood and stretched. "Ah, much better. That was giving me a kink in the shoulder." He turned and offered his bony hand, and Arwin shook it. The grip was firm, the bones smooth and dry. "Thanks for that. Sorry for being so short-tempered with you. It was a rather embarrassing and uncomfortable situation to be caught in."
"Don't mention it. What's a hand job between friends?" Arwin tried unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.
The skeleton's eye sockets narrowed. "Are you always like this?"
"Um, maybe? I could be out of sorts. I’ve never spoken to the undead before. Didn’t even know they were real. That only happens in books and movies where I come from.” This was a different reality.
Unless, of course, he was, in actuality, crashed in a ditch somewhere just off the highway on Earth, and everything he’d gone through up to this point had been happening entirely in his concussed head. He hoped not. That would be super disappointing. Like those movies where someone goes through all this amazing stuff only to wake up at the end of the film and realize that it was all just a dream. The thought that this world might not be real for him really bummed him out. He frowned.
It’s ok, the author assured him, momentarily breaking the fourth wall or something. That isn’t the case here.
Arwin relaxed again, pleased.
The skeleton looked puzzled. “Where do you come from? Undead like myself are not exactly commonplace, granted, but everyone knows that undead exist in real life. Er, undeath. I mean— Whatever.”
“I guess it depends on the location of your reality.”
"Ah, so you’re from farther away,” the skeleton mused. “You’re from the Knight’s Realm?”
“Nope. No knights where I come from. In fact, I’m pretty sure that chivalry died a long time ago back home. And whatever the female version is.” He ruminated on that, looking up at the sky in thought. “Actually, have women ever developed a formal code of conduct? If they did, it would probably be, ‘Thou shalt crave chocolate, wear fluffy socks, and never turn your back on a good romance novel, especially if there are good sex scenes.’ Hopefully, something about appreciating boyfriends and husbands, too.”
“Our female knights follow the same code as male ones.”
“Oh, that’s cool. Are there a lot of female knights?”
“Some. Not entirely uncommon.” The skeleton studied him, then spoke doubtfully. “You’re from Pillé, City of Thieves?”
Arwin shook his head. “No. Definitely not. Sounds dangerous.” He paused. “But also exciting. Is that wrong?”
“The Indós Morass?”
“I have no idea what that is. Sounds messy, though.”
The skeleton tilted his head. “Hmm. You don’t look like an elf, and your skin isn’t red, so I doubt it’s the Blood Kingdom or the Red Region. Somewhere in the Heart Kingdom then?”
Arwin’s eyes widened. “There are elves here?”
The skeleton looked taken aback. “Yes, of course. Several different kinds.”
“Dwarves? Naga? Goblins? Gnomes? Fairies?” Arwin excitedly babbled.
The skeleton only appeared more confused. “Obviously.”
“Wow. That’s awesome!” Arwin enthused. “And no, I’m not from the Heart Kingdom. I’m really pumped to go there, though.” He chuckled. Wordplay was fun.
The skeleton tapped his chin thoughtfully and appraised the human in front of him. "I'm not much on fashion nowadays, not needing it myself, but come to think of it, your clothes are nothing like what people wear anywhere I've been in Heartstone. You also have an odd accent. Uncouth and boorish, but I suppose the ladies will adore it anyway, simply because it’s foreign, and some think that anything foreign is exotic and attractive. Finely cut hair, perfect teeth, strange ignorance of all things Heartstone and you enjoy puns, finding them amusing instead of bothersome. Perhaps you aren't from around here at all."
"That's what I'm saying! Wait.” Arwin looked down at himself: dark green sneakers and fitted gray jeans, a plain white t-shirt he’d gotten from Jacque that showed off his somewhat muscular arms. His previous shirt had been ruined in the fighting. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
The skeleton looked around for a moment, puzzled. Then his gaze caught the tall forest behind Arwin. His voice filled with awe. “No. It couldn't be. After all this time, has the Curtain finally opened again?"
“The Curtain?” Arwin asked. "And why did you capitalize it like that when you said it? Also, how do I know that you capitalized it?” He frowned, confused.
"The Curtain,” the skeleton explained, “is a magical barrier separating Heartstone from the non-magical dimension of Drearia, what you call Earth, I think. You know, I find it strange that you named your planet after dirt. Anyway, Drearia is where very early primates and then, later, modern humans of Heartstone originated from.”
“Wow. That’s cool.” Small world. Er, universe? Multiverse?
“The Curtain is one of several portals to other dimensions found in our world. In the past, the portal was always open, allowing people to venture from Heartstone to Drearia and back again, though not that many took advantage of the opportunity to go to Drearia because there’s no magic, so why bother? There are far better travel destinations.
Arwin nodded. “And why you call it Drearia, I assume. Yeah, I can understand that.”
“But the Curtain has been closed for ages. I heard that the shutdown was supposed to be permanent in order to protect Heartstone.” He frowned, and he continued in a worried tone. “The Curtain is powered by the Heartstone. Has something weakened the power of the Heartstone so that the stone can no longer keep the portal closed? That’s a very troubling thought."
“The Curtain was protecting Heartstone from Earth?”
“Well, yes. No offence.”
“None taken,” Arwin assured him. “You should see what we’ve done to the place over the last two hundred years. Killed off something like sixty percent of all living things—on the entire planet. We’re responsible for the world’s first manmade mass extinction event, losing so many entire species that we’ve lost count. Negatively affected the climate of the entire planet with our pollution and rampant consumerism. Seems like every month, we break more heat records. Polar ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising high enough for islands to disappear. Storms are getting worse. Wildfires are big enough that smoke travels across oceans to other continents. We all live on the edge of ecological disaster. Social and financial inequality has skyrocketed to the worst levels in history. Pandemics are killing millions, and nobody cares. All kinds of problems.”
The skeleton stared at him with a slack jaw and hollow, unbelieving eyes.
Arwin sighed. “Yeah. I’m guessing that’s why you closed the portal to my world, eh? Good call.”
“I had no idea that things were so bad,” the skeleton allowed. “If I recall, the portal was shut because of rising pollution and rapidly advancing war technology.”
“Ah, probably the industrial revolution and all that coal burning. Followed by dynamite and modern warfare. We had two world wars, back to back.”
The skeleton staggered back a half step. “World? You mean the entire planet, all nations at war at the same time?”
“Sadly, yes. Forty or fifty million died in the second one? It only ended when we dropped two nuclear bombs, each strong enough to reduce an entire city to ash. Not our proudest achievements.” Arwin huffed and changed the subject. “So, Heartstone is a place and a thing?"
The skeleton took a moment to regroup from the horrors Arwin had so casually rattled off, then nodded. “I can tell by your seemingly limitless ignorance that you really must be from Drearia after all. Yes, both place and thing. The place was named after the thing, you see. The Heartstone thing rests in the centre of the place, this continent. It's a very big stone that acts like a heart, pumping concentrated magicons, a type of tiny particle, into the realm. I’m told that magicons exist everywhere, perhaps even in your universe, but their density in Heartstone contributes to our rich diversity of magical things. The particles naturally affect both living creatures and the inanimate. Buildups of magicons in certain regions are responsible for most of the puns. And magic users can harness available magicons to power spells and so forth. Makes our world a much, much less dreary place than yours.“
Arwin grinned. "Punny, I was just thinking the same thing." He guffawed and slapped his knee at his own joke.
The skeleton would have rolled his eyes if he’d had any. He sighed instead. "You know, puns are more like an unfortunate side effect of the magic. It's considered bad taste in some circles to throw more than necessary into a conversation."
Arwin sobered and replied with mock seriousness. "Well, I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me. Being handed such advice from a handsome skeleton like yourself is really handy. You seem like a dab hand, and I don't want to force your hand or make you get your hands dirty, but you are hands down the only person I know here. I think I'd be in safe hands if you could further give me a guiding hand." Arwin snickered, then couldn't help himself and doubled over in laughter at his humour.
The skeleton remained silent for a long moment. His eye sockets bored into the human until the laughter dried up, and Arwin stood straight again. The skeleton shook his head. "You don't have many friends, do you?"
Arwin opened his mouth to reply but had nothing to say to that. His shoulders slumped as he remembered his recent bad luck with friends back home. “Recently, not so much.”