Jonathan awoke cold, stiff, starving, and with a desperate need to go to the bathroom. With a groan, he rolled to his side and leveraged himself into a sitting position, quickly snatching the blankets back up around his shoulders when they fell off. The attic was chilly, to say the least. Although there wasn't much light, just enough was seeping in from somewhere that he could make out his surroundings in the gloom. Abigail was unidentifiable, curled up and completely buried under the blankets she'd claimed the night before. He considered waking her to ask about where the bathroom was, but on the other hand he had no idea what time it was and frankly didn't want to deal with whatever annoyance she was liable to cause if he woke her prematurely. He was an adult; he could find a bathroom on his own.

By exploring a creepy, abandoned orphanage. Yeah.

Jonathan eyed the Abigail blanket pile once more, before regretfully leveraging himself to his feet.

As his bare soles came in contact with the wood, he involuntarily hissed. It was cold! Though it wasn't going to help his feet any, he grabbed the blanket and wrapped it as tightly around his shoulders as he could. It made climbing down the ladder from the attic a little awkward, but he was glad for it when he reached the hallway. The orphanage proper wasn't any warmer than the attic.

Before he commenced his search for the facilities, Jonathan slipped around behind the ladder to the attic and opened the curtains, letting the wan light of dawn into the hallway. Sadly, he couldn't really see much outside, because the glass was terrible; so warped, bubbly, and clouded that the surrounding area just looked like a bunch of smudges.

Jonathan was beginning to despair, images of outhouses or even just sufficiently dense bushes crowding his thoughts, when he at last opened a door on the ground floor of the orphanage and discovered a short row of what were clearly toilets tucked away in small stalls. Unlike the sleek porcelain of his original reality, these were all simple bowls without standing water, connected to a reservoir slightly above head height with a chain that could be pulled to flush. All of the chains hung down ridiculously low, perhaps to ensure that children of all ages would be able to manipulate them, and the stalls had no doors.

Jonathan didn't care. He simply thanked his lucky stars this reality had flush toilets and solved one of the sources of his discomfort. Unfortunately for him, each of the three sinks only had a single knob and the water that came out was hand-numbingly cold. There were no showers or baths that he could find, so he wasn't sure how he was going to go about cleaning himself—or his who-knew-how-old clothing. That was a problem for future-Jonathan, though, and one he was sure Abigail would be able to offer some insight on.

Outside the bathroom, Jonathan paused to consider. He could go back to the attic, but he wasn't at all tired. He didn't have anything to keep himself busy until Abigail awoke, and he finally had clothes…perhaps it was time to do a bit of exploring. It was still pretty murky in parts of the orphanage, though, so he headed for the front doors and exited the building for the first time.

To Jonathan's surprise, the grounds around the orphanage were much nicer than he'd pictured after seeing the bleakly institutional interior. A sizable open space filled with grass, low-lying ground cover, and a scattering of plant beds wrapped around the front and sides of the building and was bordered by a white-washed wooden fence in good repair that appeared to be about head height. To his right, the fence ended at a small copse of trees that appeared to stretch along the full depth of the property, and slightly around behind the building where he couldn't see. Across the street there appeared to be a vacant lot, or possibly farmland or something. In any case, he couldn't see any buildings above the fence until quite a way down the street to his left.

However, a neighboring home loomed above the fence on the left border of the property. Something about the architecture was unsettling, and Jonathan stood frowning at its roof and upper stories for a few moments trying to figure out what was bothering him. At last it came to him: he couldn't place the style of architecture. The ornamentation around the edge of the roof where he would expect a gutter, the styling of the windows, the material and look of the roof itself; all of it was just ever-so-slightly alien. He certainly was no expert in architecture, but through school and the news he'd seen enough pictures of homes in other countries to usually be able to guess if something was Slavic, or Chinese, or French, or whatever. But this…he simply couldn't identify it. It was entirely alien.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Then again, of course it was completely alien. He wasn't in a foreign country; he was in a completely different reality.

Jonathan turned on his heel and strode back inside. He absolutely did not have the leisure to try and unpack the emotions that were frothing up. As he shut the door behind himself, he frowned. He'd satisfied his need for a bathroom and moving around had alleviated the stiffness from sleeping on hardwood. There wasn't much he could do about his freezing feet other than wrapping them in a blanket as soon as he sat down somewhere, so that left the fact that he was starving. Time for the next distraction while he waited for either Abigail to wake up or the sun to rise enough that he could justify waking her: finding breakfast.

The kitchen turned out to be in the back left corner of the building, and like every drawer he'd searched through the previous day on his ongoing quest for a pair of pants, the cupboards were bare. "Damn it!" Jonathan slammed his hand against the counter in front of him, then slid the door to the cupboard he'd been investigating shut. He leaned against the counter briefly and shut his eyes. This situation was just the absolute worst.

But no, he was thinking positive still! After all, he created a sandwich yesterday. Which meant he could do magic! As absurd as that was to imagine. He'd always wished he had magical powers growing up, and although creating sandwiches wasn't terribly inspiring, it sure sounded good right at this moment.

Jonathan shoved himself upright. He wasn't really in the mood for a sandwich, per se, but probably best to try and repeat the trick exactly before he attempted to branch out. He really didn't want to go through the process more than he had to; the pain, exhaustion, and feelings of panic were not remotely enjoyable, to say the least.

Once again, he held his hands out with one above the other, closed his eyes, and tried to force himself to concentrate on the memory of his brief experience with the Infernal Abyss.

Adrenaline shot through his system, as he had a visceral reaction to the thought, but although the feeling was extremely similar to what he'd experienced the previous evening when he created the sandwich for Abigail, and although he was picturing the sandwich he'd conjured in as much detail as he could remember—which was admittedly not a whole lot, given how fast Abigail had snatched it out of his hands—no unexpected weight or sudden rush of pain and exhaustion was afflicting him. After several uncomfortable seconds, Jonathan let his arms drop and opened his eyes. Maybe Abigail needed to be nearby? He really didn't understand this whole "summoned demon and contracted human" business very well.

A minute or two later, and Jonathan had made his way back to the attic, where Abigail remained unconscious and obscured in her nest of blankets.

Okay, time for a second test. Jonathan faced the blanket pile, closed his eyes, and assumed the Sandwich Position. As he cast his mind back to the Infernal Abyss the panic hit him again, but—still no sandwich. Try as he might, he couldn't detect any of that red smoke that he'd noticed the day before either. At last, Jonathan dropped his arms, and collapsed into a sitting position, tucking the blankets around his poor frozen toes.

"Well, crap," he muttered. His suspicion looked correct; he couldn't perform magic without something from Abigail, and it looked like it wasn't something he could gain when she was unconscious, which implied intention on her part. That sucked, not least because he really needed something to eat.

It seemed there was nothing for it: it was time to wake the beast.

Jonathan scooched over toward the blanket pile and poked at the blankets. "Hey Abigail, rise and shine."

No response.

He grabbed the blankets lightly with both hands and pushed them back and forth. He could feel her body shifting underneath the layers, so she was definitely in there. Who knew how she was breathing with her entire body completely buried, but he supposed he couldn't fault an orphan who lived in such a—stellar—environment a few weird sleeping habits.

Still no response. "Come on Abigail, I'm starving here, and I've got a ton of questions for you. Remember, you need to answer my questions?"

Nothing.

Alright, it was time to go nuclear. Jonathan carefully peeled his own blankets off his feet and stuck the frozen appendage straight into the middle of Abigail's blanket pile.

"Yeeaaargh!" screeched Abigail, shooting straight upright and thrusting herself backwards, blankets tumbling every which way. "What—why—what is wrong with you?!"

Jonathan pulled his foot back and tucked it into his blanket once more with full dignity, before gracing Abigail with a wide, entirely false smile. "Good morning, Abigail! Rise and shine!"

Abigail peered blearily toward the window. "Is the sun even up?"

Jonathan shrugged. "Mostly."

Abigail dragged a hand down her face, and began to recover her blankets, piling them up around her until she resembled some sort of head balanced on a mound of blankets. "Lovely. And why are you torturing me so early in the morning, you demon?"

"My name's Jonathan. And did you think you're the only one who sometimes needs a sandwich?"

"Uuuugh," groaned Abigail. "I'm going back to sleep."

Jonathan extended his foot and wiggled his toes as best he could, given how cold they were. "Oh?"

Abigail gave him a glare that very clearly conveyed exactly how much she wished she could count this treatment as bodily harm and summarily dismiss him to a gruesome fate in the Infernal Abyss. "Fine," she sighed at last. "Let's have breakfast."