Faint trickles of moonlight filtered through the leaves and dotted the forest floor with speckles of faint blue light. She heard crickets, the gentle breeze rustling the leaves, and the occasional tweet or hoot of a night bird.
She was on the ground, positioned like she'd been on her back before propping herself up with her hands. She slowly gained control of her breath, transitioning from ragged gasps to deep, labored breaths. Her chest burned from the thumping of her heart, her arms and legs ached desperately for the blood that had rushed to her core.
Iris sat there for some time, gazing up at the canopy and imagining the gaps between the leaves as stars in the sky. Her breath slowed throughout the next few minutes, and her heart rate followed. Cautiously, keeping both hands on the ground to steady herself, she rose up and got a foot beneath her. Feeling balanced, she pushed up off the ground and onto her feet. The act was surprisingly easy, and she stood so fast she expected to dizzy herself. She scanned the ground for her walking stick, but couldn't find it. Then she looked around her and saw forest in all directions.
"No, no, no" she whispered quickly, "I am not getting lost."
She peered intensely through the trees, slowly spinning in a circle as she searched for any sign of the way she'd came. She started to panic, and felt her heart beginning to beat faster again, and then froze as she spotted a gap in the trees just wide enough to see the faintly illuminated sandy beach beyond. She sighed with a relieved laugh, and kept her gaze intently locked on the beach. She felt all of reality shrink out of existence again.
Reality wrapped back around her as fast as it had been ripped away, and she was now standing on the beach. She whirled around in a panic, stabbing pains pierced her head and the world spun as she collapsed into the sand clutching her head.
She groaned as she sat back up, not sure how long it had taken for the pain to fade. It was a dull ache now, occasionally throbbing. She stumbled to her feet and looked around for her sitting tree. Spotting it about twelve feet away, she took a step towards it.
Reality shrunk away again before collapsing back into form around her. A shattering headache struck her, the pain extending down into her neck like tendrils of fire. She cried out and fell forward, clutching her face with one hand as she caught herself on the tree with the other. Then, she puked and blacked out.
Iris awoke with a groan, the morning sun pestering her eyelids. She propped herself up on an elbow, recoiling at the stench of vomit in the sand beside her. She looked around for a moment, confused as to why she had fallen asleep by the pond. She looked out over the sand, her errant gaze resting on an arbitrary point as she tried to think. A familiar sensation crept up on her.
"No! Absolutely not!" She yelled, clamping her eyes shut, "stop it."
She sat there feeling stupid for a moment, before hesitantly cracking open her eyes. The sensation was still there, but it wasn't encroaching further. It sat just on the periphery of her senses, waiting to be called upon.
She climbed to her feet, hoping this would be the last time she had to do that for a while, and dusted sand from her clothes. Taking a deep, frustrated breath, she talked herself through it.
"Okay, strange magical anomaly, incomprehensible extradimensional experiences, and skull splitting headaches. Totally fine, whatever. Everything's fine."
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She didn't feel fine.
"It's okay, Iris," she said to herself, holding her hands out as if trying to calm and a scared animal, "you just got magic powers. This is good. You've always wanted those."
She let out a meek, uncertain laugh. This had not gone any of the ways she had imagined it. The urge to spiral into panic about whether or not any of this was real knocked on the door of her mind, but she did her best to ignore it.
"Books," she said, "you have books about this."
She turned around to look for her knapsack which held several of her books and adventure magazines at any given time. Instead there was a small, old-fashioned drawstring sack on the ground. It was made of a royal purple canvas fabric with a brown leather drawstring, the ends of which were capped with pieces of silver. The bag was about the size of a small melon. She looked around, but saw no one. The only tracks in the sand in any direction were her own.
She stood there for a moment, peering down at the strange bag. She had read about this before, when someone absorbed their first Thread of Power they didn't just gain a regular power associated with that particular thread, but also something extra. Scholars had a fancier name for it that she couldn't remember, but adventurers usually called them Special Abilities. She had read at least a few examples of Special Abilities manifesting as personal magical items. Was this bag her Special Ability? As soon as she wondered, she knew intuitively that it was.
"Huh," she said to herself, crouching down to get a closer look at the bag.
She picked up a twig and poked it. Nothing happened. Cautiously, she reached out and poked it with a finger. Nothing happened. She carefully tugged the drawstring, and it effortlessly loosened to open the maw of the bag. Inside was vastness. No other word could describe it, though all she could physically see inside was a formless black void, she still somehow perceived the infinite contained within. And somewhere, deep in the void beyond reality, there was something in the dark.
She grabbed either end of the drawstring and cinched the bag shut. Whatever that was, today wasn't the day. She glanced around, this time spotting her bag -- the normal, non-reality bending anomaly one -- resting against the trunk on the other side of the tree. She stood and picked up the normal bag, slinging the strap over her head and across her chest eager to go home. Then she stopped, and stared at the drawstring sack again.
She couldn't just leave it, could she? It was hers, after all. Unless it was some sort of extradimensional entity pretending to be her Special Ability, somehow tricking her mind with weird incomprehensible magic. She stopped herself there, there was no point in driving herself mad contemplating possibilities like that, if that's what was happening then she was probably already screwed anyway. With a sigh, she picked up the bag and tried to tie the drawstring around her belt loop. Before she could, the ends of the drawstring reached out and wrapped themselves around her belt, cinching itself tight and giving her the sensation that it had grasped onto her tightly and wouldn't be letting go anytime soon.
"Sure," she let out another exasperated breath, "why not."
She perked up, looking out across the beach. She picked a spot about 10 feet away, stared at it for a moment, and then invited the strange sensation lingering in her periphery. Reality shrunk and popped, her feet crunching into the sand as she appeared where she'd looked. She spun around to see the tree, now 10 feet away.
She let out a curt laugh, then did it again. She appeared next to the tree, standing in her own vomit. She groaned, scraping her sandals into the clean sand beside her mess. Then she chuckled at herself, then broke into laughter of joy and wonder and excitement. She blinked back and forth across the beach, popping in and out of reality. She soon learned that as long as she kept the distance short enough, roughly 12 feet, she could seemingly do it indefinitely. If she went over 12 feet, however, she started to feel the strain. Once she passed that threshold, the strain seemed to linger, and even short distances exacerbated it.
Soon, long before the novelty of teleportation had even come close to wearing off, Iris was reminded of the outside world. A pang of fear struck through her as she worried she was late for work before remembering it was her day off. Then she felt silly, what did she care about work? She had freaking magic powers!
Gleefully, she blinked across the beach towards the path back home. She ran down the path, hopping over roots and stones and blink teleporting across short distances every few seconds. Her echoing joyous laughter shared the morning ambience of the forest with song birds.