Like Lurona, Aarick was also not having a good day, though that was likely because their bad days were related.

Admittedly, for Aarick, it hadn’t started terribly.

He greeted the morning as the cool air of autumn wended its way through the green leaves of the trees; here on the Oregon coast it wasn’t going to get cold enough for most to lose any leaves. The blustery wind and the grey clouds presaged the rain predicted on the forecast. Aarick was looking forward to it; he loved the rain. Finals were imminent, and his haze of busy studying, interspersed with desperately needed relaxation time with his friends, left him barely enough time to eat and sleep.

He still made time to talk to his parents though, he knew they would worry. And after Dolores… well, he wasn’t going to let them worry.

And then the world cracked open and sucked him through.

Aarick had no words to properly describe his experience.

Hardly surprising, as the space that surrounded him was alien. Even with his inability to parse it completely, some part of him understood that it was fundamentally not part of the reality that he had grown up with.

How do you describe the unknowable and unnameable? You don’t, you simply experience them.

He was keenly aware of each sensation, though they were contrary to each other.

One moment it was a vast void, endless and infinite, hungry. The next it was full of life, grotesque and packed into every available inch, nothing but walls of flesh and eyes and mouths, and it was all only the barest fraction of an inch from his skin. Then it was chains, intensely bright, and weaving through reality, sewn through the flesh of the universe like stitches to keep it contained; there, waiting for him, was the lock that kept it that way, if only he would choose to be the key. It was a place of shadows, of light, of unending darkness, of cotton candy mixed with gasoline, of spirals and polka-dots made of ravening locusts. A thousand mirror images of himself spoke to him in a cacophony, each shouting out advice, like “beware the giant squirrels and their magical trees.”

It defied all sense. It was a place without time, without space, where distance had no meaning, where meaning had no meaning. And, as he traveled through it, he could feel a growing sense of comprehension. Surely, if he could stay for just a little longer, it would all start to make sense. All the infinite strangeness, it fit together, didn’t it? He could just reach out and grab it, and it would be clear…

Before he could reach out, the strangeness disappeared and was replaced with a vague impression of a room. Figures knelt on a glowing diagram on the ground in a large room. And then all of that disappeared.

Pain became his whole world. Fire and ice burned him, no through him and beneath his skin. He could feel them tunneling into him like a thousand voracious worms hungry for his flesh. For a brief moment he could feel the fire rise in intensity, an almost holy fire ringing with purpose. Then, the increased power of the fire became just another piece of sensation.

Vaguely, he could feel the rest of his body. It was convulsing and screaming, thrashing in primitive impulse to escape the pain.

He did not escape the pain.

The twin burning sensations, one of scorching fire and the other of creeping ice, continued. Their hunger seemed endless, burrowing into his skin and then moving deeper into his veins, his muscles, his bones. His eyes were full of tears, even as his eyes were consumed with fire and ice, the water forced out by the pressure of the world wanting in. And as the lava and frozen river continued to flow into him, that was what it felt like. He was stuffed full to overflowing, and still more wanted in.

The pain overwhelmed everything, but even through that, it felt like he could feel the world around him. His sense of touch had expanded and he could feel himself brush against everything within a few feet. And there was more, there was a faint whisper, like the world itself wanted to talk to him. Whatever it was trying to say, it was completely lost to the pain.

And then, suddenly, the pain was over. Everything he was had been scoured away by the ice and fire now mixing at his core.

Whatever force had been keeping him awake was suddenly gone, and he could feel his body. It was wracked with pains so minor as to fall beneath his previous notice. Now, the wrenching cramps slammed against his mind for attention. His mind, already overdrawn and forced awake by pain beyond comprehension, gave up and blackness claimed its due.

Despite what his body or mind would have liked, eventually Aarick returned to consciousness. The complete lack of pain was both a surprise and considerable relief.

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His mind worked as his body struggled to catch up, his eyes fighting to stay closed and tiredness filling him to his bones.

Was that a dream?

It was the most logical explanation, even though… he didn’t think it was only a dream. Even with the utter insanity of wherever he had traveled through, it had felt too real.

Finally managing to get his eyes open affirmed that, at least in some way, things were not back to normal.

He didn’t recognize the room he was in, nor the clothes he was wearing.

The room was small. A brief glance around the room revealed a window to his right, though it was concealed behind a pair of waxed paper and wood shutters. With them closed for the moment, only the light shining through revealed the window’s presence. Beyond the foot of the too-short bed, where his feet were hanging over, a doorway was to his left. A compact bedside table to his right finished the room.

The bed itself was comfortable, plain, and painfully short. The sheets were white, clean, and smelled vaguely of flowers and herbs. The comforter over the top was sinfully soft, with a pale green hue. He could vaguely feel that it was stuffed with feathers of some kind.

As for himself, Aarick was definitely not in his normal clothes.

He was wearing something robe-like. The upper portion wrapped around his chest, the main color a deep black with shimmering blue trim at the edges. A wide cloth belt of matching blue wrapped around his waist, keeping the robe firmly in place. The sleeves were full length; they started form fitting at the shoulders and then widened slightly toward his wrists. The bottom portion of the robe was somewhere between very loose pants and a dress. It was divided down the middle, forming individual pant legs, but each one started quite loose at the waist and became a tiny bit wider as it headed for his ankles. If he stood with his feet together, it would look like he was wearing a long skirt. The bottom edge was, again, hemmed with the same silky navy blue.

Honestly, his clothes felt vaguely Chinese, but the divided skirt-pants felt more Western and modern. A little more investigation revealed the pants and upper portion were actually a single garment, joined at the back; the shirt’s loose portions would get wrapped around and tucked underneath after the pants were put on first. The belt was the only separate piece, but the pants buttoned onto the belt’s interior, keeping everything in place. The clothes were fairly comfortable, all things considered. The accompanying underwear most closely resembled a pair of silk briefs, which were tied from the front.

He struggled up, the pillows and bed resisting his attempts to escape their fluffy grasp.

He felt… odd, and surprisingly good for how much pain he remembered, but there was still a lingering sensation from before. He had a vague sense of the world near him. It was akin to touch, but not quite. As though the objects nearby were telling him that they were close, but not touching, a sense of proximity. As he reached out toward the small wooden table he was aware of its hardness, and the faint feel of polished wood, before he actually touched it. The same was true of the comforter, the sheets, and his robe. He was aware of what they felt like from the outside, the change in texture as they changed from seams to blank expanses of cloth.

Well, I am guessing I am not on Earth anymore. Unless it was aliens, of course, but this doesn’t feel like aliens…

He snorted. How the hell would he know? Maybe aliens were big fans of fantasy period dramas and abducted people to fill roles in their plays. It seemed just as probable as aliens being really fond of anal probing.

His new extrasensory perception… that demanded a fantastical explanation. Exceptional claims might require exceptional evidence, but the corollary was also true. Exceptionally impossible evidence demanded an equally amazing explanation. Honestly, the most likely explanation was that he was imagining it. That it was some lingering effect from whatever had caused him so much pain. Surely it was some kind of neural echo, where his sight and proprioception were creating the illusion of feeling something before he touched it.

Well… he could test that.

He closed his eyes.

He could still feel it. And he could sense the contours of his own body. He knew, even more than he ever had, exactly where every single inch of him was located. And he could still feel the table, at least some of it. He reached out, turning his hand and pinched the corner of the table between his thumb and index finger. He grabbed it perfectly, or so it felt. He opened his eyes, he had grabbed it exactly where he was trying. That… could be chance, but it was less likely.

He repeated the tests, his eyes closed as he perfectly manipulated the world around him. His proprioception had always been good, but never this good. And certainly he had never had perfect awareness of the objects around him.

Unless this was all some strange hallucination, then…

Well, I can’t really do anything if that is actually the case.

It was past time that he found out what he could.

He stood up.

He walked around the bed, the stone underfoot cool, but not actually cold. The doorway didn’t actually have a door, just curtains which had been withdrawn beyond his original sight. He had just assumed it was an open door.

There, sitting on a chair and obviously waiting, was a man in clothing that resembled his own, though the colors were a dark golden yellow with dark gray highlights.

Some part of Aarick had been expecting him to look Chinese, or at least Asian, but he looked… vaguely Caucasian. There were hints of something else too. His nose was squatter and wider, reminding him of some Africans he had met at college. Also, he was short. Aarick was about a foot taller than the man, even with his slippered feet. The faint green shimmer to the man’s almost black hair added to the sense of unreality.

Aarick waved feebly, his smile the best he could manage, though he could feel it wavering.

“Uh, hello.” He said, not really sure what to say.

The man stood and then bowed, his movements flowing with precise grace.

“Ulurac ta,” he said, as he straightened his body.

He gestured with one hand, forming a beckoning gesture and then turned and started to walk away.

Right. Fuck. Of course they don’t speak English. Damn, this is going to suck. It’s going to take ages to learn anything.

His shoulders slumped slightly, but then he straightened up. He sighed and then started to follow. It wasn’t like he could do anything else.