I was sent tumbling back into the real world as my phone flew off from me, the song still playing. My head was swirling from the events that took place, trying to figure just what in the hell had happened.

What was that? That wasn’t a dream, no. I tried to move but my ached from the fall. I turned to see Rinoa, lying motionless on the ground, her necklace gleaming red.

Curse it. That thing is cursed, I thought. The wheat, the open air, the kingdom and the thunder. I left those questions in the backburner of my mind and made my way towards Rinoa. The pain was aggravating, but at least it didn’t render my movement obsolete. I picked up my phone along the way, muting the track and bent my knees next to her.

“Rinoa?” I decided whether to shook her shoulders or not. I didn’t want to be thrown into that same place again, though I that felt surreal and authentic. Was that magic? In the real world? Was she a-

Rinoa coughed awake, her eyes returning to the colour of blue. Not that I was expecting it to radiate the colours as it did before, but still.

“Are you okay?” I lifted her up from ground, sitting her on the rock that we were on before. Her bag had been tossed on the floor, and I helped retrieved it for her.

“I feel sick,” she said, slinging the bag on her shoulders.

“Are you okay?” I asked, taking a seat beside her. She was pale, lips white. Something was terribly wrong with her.

“No,” she replied. “But I’m okay.”

I watched her as she curled up slowly from her feet to her head, the cold night playing an added factor to her current condition.

“What happened back there?” I asked. It was only a matter of time before someone who had been so seriously affected would have asked. Won’t anyone? Being thrown into a new world, and one that looked so authentic and - I was searching for the word - tangible. I felt like the tall wheat back there in the open field was physical and concrete. I could grab it. I could shake it. I could pull it. I could feel it.

“The Pasture Necklace,” she said softly, pulling the strings that held it. She was wearing it still, not sure why, after what just happened.

“The what?”

“The Pasture Necklace,” she repeated, slower this time. “It transports the user back to Estoria, where they are able to see visions of the past or the future.”

She lost me at the necklace, and so the rest of the sentence was incomprehensible, or unbelievable. I didn’t know what to believe, but my eyes weren’t lying and my back was still aching, so her explanation must have been true.

I stood up and paced myself back and forth, trying to tie the knots around these thoughts.

She must’ve been a witch, I thought to myself. A superhero? Was that a superpower? The necklace grants the user something rather magnificent, or substantial. I mean, how does it all even work?

There was no way that could have been in this world, or on earth, or a virtual reality game. No way. What was that supposed to mean? Being able to see the grandiose of the other world, but then stepping in and - ah, I was just running around in circles. Suddenly what I had seen had inflated my mind and my questions, but I decided that she knew the answers, and the necklace had been from her.

“How did you get that necklace?” I asked her.

“I got it from my grandmother when I was ten years old,” she said, turning to look up at me. “I know this is a lot to take in.”

No, this wasn’t a lot to take in. This was like an eternity of running in circles. There was no way that whatever the hell I experienced was real. There is absolutely no cursing way that it was.

“The thing I saw,” I paused, lining up my next few words in my mind, “was that from the future?”

The black thunder. The kingdom. The oasis. The kingdom was demolished, and the rampaging thunder was coming for Rinoa next.

“Yes,” she said. “But it is long in the future.”

“You said that users can choose to see visions of the past or the future. Why the future?”

Rinoa dropped her head slowly. “I’ve been having visions of that for quite some time. When I saw the garden and the view we had, I immediately thought of Estoria. But whenever I choose to see visions of the future of there, it always ends with the thunder. Always.”

“What about the black wave?” I asked. “It enveloped everything. It was more crazier than the thunder, in some way.”

“That was my curse.” She stopped speaking, and I stopped walking.

Curse? She had a curse placed on her? Okay, now everything that was stirring in the pot had been knocked over, and I suppose that there would be more still leaking. I realised that the metaphor didn’t work as well as it did, but I thought I did fine.

“What curse?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to hear of the answer or not.

“That I would die if the dragon of Temper was not killed and that the heart was not ,” she took a deep breath, “in a year from now.”

Thunders, kingdoms, oasis, crazy necklace and now a dragon? What? A DRAGON?

“The spitfire kind, or the flame-breathing kind?” I wanted to make sure, though that probably didn’t make much sense to ask.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Both? I guess.”

“Please tell me this gets crazier,” I said.

“I can take you there,” she said.

My eyes gleamed at Rinoa. That was what I meant, with the crazier part.

“I can take you to Estoria,” she said with a smile.

Estoria. Was that the place she was seeing? Was that the place I was at before? The fields and all.

Rinoa coughed, the pain residing in her body striking again. She needed to help from a doctor. Or, rather, help from her side of the doctor, even if there is one.

“Where is this,” I made a flailing gesture with my hands, “Estoria?”

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“Through a Glimmer Portal, at my home.”

I didn’t want to believe, but with what I saw and with what she said, I don’t think I had much of a choice. The best thing now was to take her to someplace where they could cure the pain.

But she said it was a curse, and that it could only be broken from the slaying of a dragon, so then how does one cure it? It can’t be, can it? Technically speaking, if the curse was strong and imbedded in her for a long time, then she would, well, die regardless.

Either way, wherever Rinoa came from, she needed to go back.

I’m starting to wonder how I got myself into this crazy little mess, from just a sight of a girl in the corner to now being absolutely entranced by what I had witnessed and heard.

Rinoa’s quite the gem, but then the warning of her death hit me. She needed someone to slay that dragon, be it true or not, be it real or fake. She needed someone to take care of business so she could live. But who could do it?

She started to stand, but the pain hammered her legs and she fell to the wayside before I could catch her.

“C’mon,” I gave her my shoulder and she climbed on with her arms around me. Her veins, as I saw when she threw them, had several inks of black dotted all over.

Time was running out, I said to myself. If she was as she is, not from this place, then no doctor on earth could cure that curse. They couldn’t even identify it, and it would take them months - years, to fully find the remedy. And by then, Rinoa would’ve succumbed to it anyway.

“Where do you live?” I asked, carrying her down the spiral hill and got to the edge of the streets. She answered, and I hailed for a taxi. When it arrived, I carefully placed her in first, her body tensing slightly, colder now than before.

Rinoa’s legs were shaking and her eyes had dimmed. The taxi had to be fast.

I repeated her address to the driver and he nodded, slamming on the pedal. I watched Rinoa as she closed her eyes. Her house was a distance away, so it would be some time before we actually reached.

When I pulled out my phone, my music player was still running, though on mute. The tracks had been shuffled, and it had landed on I’m A Believer by The Monkees.

Ironic, I wondered, casting a look on her. Guess I’m in it.

***

The stark night was coloured blue, and the taxi finally reached Rinoa’s house a few streets down. She lived in Edmonton where the estates were lined shortly alongside the roads, spaced evenly apart, on a small lot. The lamp lights provided enough glow for us to see clearly.  

I carried her out of the taxi slowly, lending a shoulder so she could stand better. I paid for the fare and the driver went on its way, driving down towards a bend.

When I saw Rinoa’s house, I was a little stunned. Okay, maybe I was a little miffed too, for some reason that was a little too clear. Her lot was decorated with tiny gnomes spread from each other, like mini guardians to protect against burglars.

Rinoa’s wallpaper was painted marigold, though it wasn’t too striking during the night, and her roof a dark ceramic red. Those were the features that first caught my eyes, which then moved on to a convenient low porch that allowed me to carry Rinoa up with much ease.

She fiddled her bag for her door key while I took another look around. A wide bench had been placed outside of the house for those sunshine hours I suppose, and a thorny cactus hidden in a corner that seemed to have been showered with love everyday without fail.

“Sorry,” she said, jutting the key into the keyhole. “I’m just glad that you’ve been a great help.”

“Yeah,” I replied. I wasn’t sure what to say next, and instead focused on what I shouldn’t say: looks, love, and a final one that was escaping me.

Sympathy, I thought. No, that can’t be it.

When we entered, Rinoa reached the switches to turn on the lights. The bulb hanging in the living room lit up, reflecting the shine of the polished wooden floor and the cased paintings that decorated the walls.

“Wow,” I muttered. The paintings had were all over the place, as I saw. From where I stood, peering into the other rooms, there were even more. Some of the designs were abstract, like a single tall tree sitting on a plot of land, or a hundred chicken-like creatures that wielded sharp sticks. It could be told easily from a near-glance that it was hand drawn, all of it. And that must have been one of the benefits of the curse. To draw like no tomorrow, and still be able to afford a house thrice the value of mine.

“Nobody cares about the paintings,” she said, and pointed to the room in the far back. “You’re the first.”

“Does nobody care because you never let anyone in, or does nobody care because they don’t?” I asked, bringing her towards the room in the back.

“One time I brought a guy in. Tall, lanky. Wore spectacles that were a little too big for his eyes. All he cared about was the phone in his pocket, and when it wasn’t, it would be the shape of his hair,” she said.

“I know about people like that.” I nodded. “I try not to be one of them.”

We entered a dimly lit room, sharing the remaining light from the living room, but it was clearly not enough. Rinoa lifted herself off, juggling to put both legs on the floor at the same time, but it worked. She was walking slowly, though I could see her clutching one hand on her stomach.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked, concerned.

She didn’t answer me. Somehow, that didn’t bother me as much as it did the first few times. I guess I just got used to it.

Rinoa threw her Pasture necklace down in the center of the room, and walked towards the desk on her right. There, she produced what was a fire striker, though I had never actually seen one in person before, and she struck the necklace with the striker. A radiating shine exploded in front of us. She stepped back as a violet water wall enclosed in fine black curvy pillars stood before us. The other side of the wall - or I suppose that was what it was - belonged to a patch of grass in a swarm of trees.

“What the hell,” I said, gasping loudly. “What is this?” I approached the seemingly new reality.

“A Glimmer Portal,” Rinoa said. “It is the gateway to Estoria.” She cracked a smile, but grimaced immediately as the pain struck again. I managed to grab a hold of her before she collapsed.

When I held her, Rinoa was burning. She was cold before, but now the heat had overtaken her entire body. Time was wasted with every second that I was still on earth.

But shit, do I even believe that this world that she calls Estoria exist? What if I’m just dreaming? I’m just imagining things? But she was in my arms, so this has to make sense, does it? It has to, there was no way.

“Step through the portal,” she instructed breathlessly.

With our first foot off of the ground, we entered the portal to Estoria. Similar to dipping feet into water, the glimmer seemed to infect us, or rather just me. Blobs with starch that floated in the waves of water in between the pillars stuck to my open skin and clothes.

I could feel my feet touching the ground on the other side, and feeling safe that there was actually land there.

“Next time,” she whispered, “just throw yourself into it.” Her smile widened.

I nodded, and carried her through the portal.

***

We stumbled forward, the portal still gleaming, and Rinoa hopped off to close it with the fire striker. The glitter disappeared, as did the pillars, absorbed into the Pasture necklace.

When I got on my feet and returned to carrying Rinoa, the trees that were in the portal were now humongous. Towering. It was a little creepy and eerie, and for some reason the lack of nature probably added to the fear.

I’m here, I thought, the surreality from earlier returning. I was finally in Estoria, or at least physically here, but it was… different. Something was amiss.

There was dead air, and no wheat, and tall trees. They all replaced the sense of wonder and open field that I had witnessed from Rinoa’s Pasture necklace. The colours were similar, but everything else was just, as I said, different.

“Walk on,” she said, her voice turning softer and softer. I checked her eyes, but they were now shutting off completely.

“You need to-”

“Hold it, young man,” a gravelly voice spoke from behind me. “Turn, move or run and I will decapitate you.”

I gulped. “Okay, I’m not moving.”

Rinoa spoke, but she was growing weak and I couldn’t hear her well. I wasn’t moving, not if someone decided to off my neck because I did. I stared at the hut off in the distance from the road that we were on, puffing smoke from its slanted chimney.

“You are a criminal!” He shouted.

“I’m not a criminal!” I screamed back.

“Then why are you holding the princess?!” He yelled.

Wait, what? I turned to look at Rinoa, but a pointed edge met the back of my neck.

“Turn, move or run and I will decapitate you,” he repeated. He meant business, and I don’t want to mind his.

At that moment, my phone rang. All I could think of was: you have got to be kidding me.