Zaria Joseph sniffled and raised her head to look around her. The sky above her was thick and heavy with clouds, and a gentle rain fell down on her skin. The ground underneath was just short of being swamp, and she guessed that it had been raining for quite some time. She could see that she was in the middle of a field, and off in the distance what looked like a road skirted the edge of that field before turning into woods that were so thick that it looked like night time underneath them. She could not see how far the road went through the trees, it seemed as if the road disappeared into the dark not long after it entered.
Disappeared. A tear escaped, and she wiped it off quickly with shaking hands. The look on Gu Cheng's face as she said she was leaving was frozen like a screenshot in her head. During her time in City C, especially during the month where she made him his dinner and then ran to her own apartment, she had watched a lot of television since she had nothing else to do. She saw a lot of the cultural differences that she knew about explained in more detail. More information that supported her theory that she was in a world that inspired so many of the modern chinese romance novel tropes. Even though she was drunk, she had kissed him on two separate occasions, the most recent one leading her to try and do far more than just kiss him. According to the 'rules', the two options were to push her away and send her off somewhere in disgust, or to take responsibility and marry her. Zaria hated the idea that the amazing man had been acting the way that he did because of a sense of responsibility, his brain tricking him into thinking that it was the best way to proceed, but that was easier to deal with than the idea that he had really liked her so she concentrated on the first option. It was better to leave abruptly so that he could move on rather than draw it out and leave on better terms.
Zaria stood up and looked around from her new vantage point. At the other end, the road wandered along the field and then created an open path through the trees, the trunks growing several meters away on both sides and allowing a little more light to get through to the ground. She had no idea what time it was, no clue as to how long she would have before night hit and everything became even darker. She was passing through into another universe, and, theoretically, she was not passing through time. But as for whether the time difference the first two times she had hopped along had been because the crossing that seemed instant had actually taken a long time, or if it was because little differences made the rotation of the new Earth take on a different schedule she had no idea.Astrophysics was not taught in her little secondary school, nor quantum theory.
The messenger bag tugged on her neck where the strap sat before crossing her body. Both of the bags were heavy-duty and waterproof, so she slid her phone inside the messenger bag while packing up her last bit of clothing earlier. The phone would not tell her the current time, though. Without satellites to link up to, there was nothing to tell it to update itself. Maybe there were satellites. Her world had them, and so did Gu Cheng's, but the different technology would not necessarily link up. To be sure, she hunched over and pulled the phone out enough to check the screen. 9pm. No bars. Sliding it back inside and sealing the bag again, she stood upright and looked around quizzically. Even overcast, there was too much light for it to be that late.
From a distance, Zaria could tell that the road on her left side was not paved. Whatever, that didn't mean anything in particular about this world. Her own town had dirt roads winding away from the main road. Five or even ten kilometers was a lot of road to pave if there were only one or two people living along that road. Too expensive and no real gain from it. The road would just be covered in snow come winter anyway.
The long month in 'volcano world' had given Zaria a lot of time to think about all the differences there might be between universes. There were lots of stories and movies in her own world that hypothesized about it. It was thought that some universes might be almost exactly identical to her own, down to the same people even. Others might be entirely different, with different life forms rising on the planet. Others might exist where the Earth might not have formed at all. Nerves jangled as she looked at that road, wondering what she would see come down it if she waited long enough.
Taking a deep breath, Zaria turned away from the road and walked toward the forest edge on her right. As she approached the towering trees, a mournful cry came from somewhere far ahead. Wolves, she thought immediately. Every child she knew could recognize that cry and knew to head home if they did. In general, wolves avoided human settlements, but animals behaved differently if they were sick or injured. You don't mess around with 'well, it shouldn't happen' things. She stared at the trees for only a moment before she backed away. Her hand slid into her pocket, stretching the fabric as she touched the casing of the stun gun to make herself feel better. To be safe, she pulled it out and pulled the flap of her bag across the hand, holding it to keep it dry, but have it close enough in case she needed it. When she felt like there was enough distance between her and the trees she turned in a circle to see if she had any other options other than woods, road through dark woods, and road through slightly less dark woods. There was none, and she chewed on her lip while she mentally flipped a three-sided coin.
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With a sigh, she headed toward the section of road that was only partially covered. At least there would be more light to see by, and she could still duck into the trees if someone came along. Or something. "For all I know the residents of this world could be giant weasels," she said to herself, forcing a chuckle.
At least with the worry about wolves and where to go, she was not thinking so much about Gu Cheng. Until she thought how great it was that she was not thinking about him so much. Zaria sighed again, shaking her head to focus her thoughts before stepping onto the road and heading down the lighter path.
The woods stretched out as far as she could see ahead of her, which was quite some distance since the road ran in a straight line and the terrain was even. She walked for some time, the field falling behind her, but no openings showed up ahead. Besides the light rainfall hitting the leaves to the side there was not much as far as sounds went, and she felt better knowing she would probably hear anything that might approach behind her before it got too close. This was tested when something that sounded like wheels echoed from somewhere further back on the road. She stepped off the road immediately, glancing sideways to see a horse turning onto the stretch of road that ran next to the field in the distance. As a cart followed it, she ducked behind a large tree and crouched down to wait for it to pass. When it did, she was surprised to see the person steering it was human, a middle-aged man hunched over on a bench at the front of a wooden wagon. A tarp covered whatever he carried in the back, and a cloak hid his face from view and kept the rain from his eyes. The horse had something similar over its eyes, like little visors to keep the rain from dripping straight down. The clothing looked coarse, the shoes little more than leather and thick soles with laces to hold them on. Wooden wagons, hand-made clothing, Zaria watched as he passed and wondered if he was a normal resident or if she had stumbled into this universe's answer to an Amish community. She had never seen an Amish person before except on tv. There were not many communities in her area of the country. But she knew that almost everything was made by hand, and they used horses to get around. It was not a super long stretch to think that this person could be in a modern world but eschewing modern life.
Zaria waited for some time, taking a break to eat a granola bar from her pack, before going back onto the road. The wagon was far in the distance, just a vague shape on the road ahead. There was no sound of anyone else coming, so she hitched her pack back onto her back, slung her messenger bag across her body, and continued down the road. The stun gun stayed in her hand, under the flap of the bag, just in case.
The road began to get darker, and the rain came down heavier. She fumbled in the messenger bag, cursing at herself for forgetting about the poncho that she picked up that morning from the sporting goods store. She shook it out and slid it over her head, covering herself and her bags in woodsy camouflage patterns. Her blue jeans stuck out only a little below it, her below average height even in City C working to her advantage. When the light continued to fade, she acknowledged that it was most likely getting late in the day and not just from thicker clouds. In her last world, it would be well after midnight, and she was exhausted.
The cart vanished from view far ahead while she was fiddling with her poncho. She squinted her eyes as she tried to make out if there was another road he might have turned off onto, but the rain was coming down too heavily to see that far with any accuracy. As far as she was able to see in both directions, there was not a soul on the road. She removed her phone again and, sheltering it from the rain, shined the light along the opposite tree line to her left, looking for an area off the road that would be big enough to pitch her tent. It took a while, the road getting darker and the rain getting heavier, before she found something a few meters back from the edge. The ground was wet even under the trees, but that meant that she could see if there were any foot or paw prints around the little area before she settled in. Seeing nothing, she fumbled around in the dark with her new tent, setting up the poles and the dark grey canvas quicker than she anticipated. She looked at her bag for a moment before ducking inside. Along with the MREs and poncho, one of the other things she purchased that morning was an alert system that could be strung up around a campsite to warn of bears and other large animals. Despite the desire to set it up, she unzipped the flap to the tent and crawled inside. The trees were shaking in the increased wind so much that it might be going off all night just from the wind.
Once she was zipped up, she removed her poncho and her bags, then took off her boots and lined them up next to the entrance of the little tent. Her feet were surprisingly dry, and she smiled at the boots, glad she had made that purchase. Her jeans were not so lucky, and it took a fair amount of wiggling to peel them off of her legs. The butt of those and her underwear were held outside in the rain for a few minutes to rinse off the mud and then squeezed out and hung from hooks at the top of the tent's dome to dry a little overnight. Finally, she squirmed into the sweat pants and top loaned to her by Gu Cheng, now forever lost to him, and fell asleep, clutching the small star shaped charm hanging from her wrist.