“Cassius?”

Kathryn. In all the excitement she had slipped my mind.

Damn.

I guess I couldn’t save her. Means I died for nothing, huh. A grand act of heroism turned out to be a grand act of suicide. Not that I particularly care. I think I'm better off in this new world, if the note holds true.

She lunges from the doorframe and latches on to me in a hug, almost knocking me to the ground.

I feel her body start to shake with sobs.

She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t have to. Imagine one minute you’re facing certain death, and then another you wake up all alone in a whole new world with no clue of how you got there.

A jarring stab of sympathy hits me. For me I have the promise of finding my dad. Kathryn has nothing. She left behind a family, friends, a popular school life. She had her whole future taken from her.

Her body stomps shaking and stay stays there in my embrace, our conjoined shadows dancing given life by the wayward candlelight from inside.

We stay like that for a minute or so. “You okay?” I ask softly. She looks up at me with reddened eyes and nods. My heart skips a beat. I don’t want anything to hurt this girl.

“Ahem,” a gruff voice clears their throat from the doorway.

I look over to see a thin old man with grey hair and spectacles befitting a librarian eyeing me suspiciously.

Kathryn turns to the man with a sniffle. “Jome, this is my friend Cassius. Cassius, this is the librarian, Jome. He’s been letting me stay here for the past few weeks.”

I nod my head in acknowledgment, but what she said strikes me as odd. ‘weeks? I’ve only been here what, six or so hours? How does that work?’

”Just a friend eh? Quite the greeting for just a friend. Also, quite the outfit he's wearing. Very... foreign?” Jome remarks.

Kathryn responds with a glare, and then takes my hand. “Come on, let me give you a tour.”

Seemingly feeling better she leads me through the tall building, explaining how each floor is dedicated to a specific genre, and how she has been sleeping on the top floor which is used for storage.

Jome sleeps on the ground floor at the checkout desk. Old people and their reclining chairs. My Grandma used to sleep in a reclining chair before she passed.

We end the tour on the top floor, where she shows me her tiny cot and candle hidden amongst a maze of stacked troves of books.

'Who in their right mind would use candles in a library? I get their lack of technology, but come on. One wrong move and this whole place goes up like Alexandria.'

She sits down and motions for me to join her.

”Where are you staying?” She asks.

“Nowhere. I only just woke up here today.”

Her eyes widen. “What? I’ve been here almost three weeks!”

“Three weeks? How is that possible?”

“Your guess is as good as mine." She thinks for a second. "Maybe you didn't die instantly," She posits. "Like, you were stuck in a coma or something." Her expression turns sad.

"I mean that could be the case, but I'm pretty sure I took the brunt of the impact. I probably died first." I point out. "Besides, there's really no way to know for sure. Just throwing ideas out there won't give us any solid answers."

I look at her, the candlelight flickering in her emerald eyes as they grow wet. "I'm sorry," She whispers, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Huh? Sorry for what?" I ask.

"I'm the one responsible for you being here. It's my stupidness that killed you," She says. "You died trying to save me."

"Hey wait hold up," I say. "It's not that big of a deal, trust me."

"How can you say that? You're dead! Because of me! If I hadn't been such an airhead both of us would be back home safe." Tears roll down her cheeks. "Now who knows if I'll ever see my parents again! And how will they feel? If we really are dead, they just had to bury their only child."

"Kathryn wait a minute. I really don't mind that I ended up here. And it was more a suicide on my part, anyways. But hold on let me show you something." I pull out the note my father left from my pocket. And damn do I need some new threads.

"What's that?" She asks.

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"It's a note. From my Dad. At least I think it's from my Dad. It's signed with his name." I hand over the note, and she mumble-reads through it.

"Holy crap!," She pauses, meeting my gaze. "What does this mean? He's alive?"

"I'm not sure," I respond. "But think about it. We both arrive here, unharmed after almost getting railed by a truck. That's crazy in itself, yeah? Now say you're blindfolded, and walk into a new room unwittingly and remove the blindfold. You're surprised that you've suddenly gone from the familiar to the unknown, but that doesn't mean the door isn't still right behind you. You get what I'm saying? There still might be a way for you to get back."

Her eyes widen with hope. "Are you serious?"

"If there's a way to get from there to here, surely there's a way to get from here to there, no? And if anything, it might be possible for your parents to travel here."

"I guess it would make sense," She says. She breathes a sigh of relief. "Holy craaaaap, you have no idea how stressed out I've been this whole time."

"I get it," I respond. "What've you been doing the past two weeks?"

"I've been reading a lot," She says. "The village is pretty neat. It's just like something out of a medieval story. Knights and everything." The presence of knights might indicate a monarchy. If it's truly like the middle ages, is there slavery? Or famine? Aside the unknown technology they use to move their carts, I haven't seen much of anything out of the ordinary.

"Hey wait a minute," I interject. "What if we haven't gone to a new world, but instead just went back in time? These people speak the same language as us, their books are written in the same alphabet. What if we somehow just traveled to the middle ages?"

Not sure where my lapse in rationality came from, assuming we were transported to some new dimension or whatever, but it would make a least a bit more sense if we had gone back in time. Ignoring how insane either idea sounds, being transported to a new world which is exactly like the middle ages of Earth seems less likely than being transported to the middle ages themselves.

Her eyes light up, sparkling like emeralds. "Watch this."

She holds out her palm facing up, and whispers something unintelligible. First, nothing happens, but then the space above her hand seems to warp just like a mirage, and a small flame sparks up out of nowhere. Hovering on her palm, the fire dances in the rich oxygen of the room.

I just stare blankly.

"What the fuck!?"

She laughs, the flame flickering in and out of existence as she does. “Could they do that in the Middle Ages?”

"How are you doing that?" I ask.

"Magic," She replies.

"Honestly. That is like the coolest trick I've ever seen." The thought of the fire catching onto the old wood of the library flickers again in my mind. What is with people and holding open flames near flammable objects?

"It's not a trick, trust." The flame disappears as she lowers her hand.

"I am so confused right now," I admit. Maybe she's using that hand sanitizer trick I saw online. Apparently you can light your hand on fire if you dip it in hand sanitizer and you won't feel the burn, or something like that.

She shows me her hand. No sign of any external influence.

"How?" I ask again.

"Magic. Honest. The reason I know we're not in the middle ages is because they couldn't do stuff like this." She summons two flames this time, one in each hand. She makes as if to throw one at me. I flinch and throw my arms up to block my face, but at the last moment of her throw the flame dies. She laughs again.

"Two for flinching," She says, and punches me twice in the arm. I have no words. Magic? That's like, every boys dream. I grew up fantasizing about being able to summon fire at will and bend storms to my command.

"You want me to show you how to do it?" She asks, her voice filled with excitement.

I nod fervently.

"Alright. Hold your hand out like I did."

I hold out my hand, palm facing the ceiling.

"Focus on your fingertips and imagine a a thrum pulsing to the beat of your heart."

It takes me a second, but I start to feel a buzz in my fingertips, almost as though I'm touching an object.

"You feel it yet?" She asks. I nod. "Great. Now imagine all that energy at the tips of your fingers condensing into a ball. And then will that ball to burst in flame."

Her hand lights ablaze, giving further illumination to the somewhat darkened room. On my account, nothing happens. I still feel the buzz, but no fire appears.

"What did you say before, when you did it the first time?" I ask. "Maybe that'll help."

"Uhhh," She blushes. "It's kinda cringey... but I gave it a name? I felt like one of those superheros with the shit like "Lightning Flash" or like Goku's Kamehameha. It seemed to help me learn to control it better."

Yeah I'm not doing that. I’m surprised she even knew who Goku was.

"I never took you for a nerd," I tease.

"Shut up." She says. "It's not nerdy to have hobbies. Should I start calling you a sports junkie?"

"That's not all that offensive," I state.

"Whatever."

I stare back intently at the palm of my hand, focusing on gathering the energy at my fingertips into a condensed ball. It's not something you can see with your eyes, but rather something you feel and envision.

And then 'whoosh', my hand combusts into flame.

"Woaahhhhh," I say. "This is crazy." There's a conscious effort involved in keeping the flame alive, but it's not difficult in the slightest. I move my hand around, and the flame follows, perfectly suspended in the palm of my hand. I shake my hand really hard, trying to put the flame out, but it doesn't die.

"Be careful," Kathryn says. "You don't want to light anything on fire. I'm not sure I'd be able to put it out."

"How'd you learn this?" I inquire.

"Well, part of it was reading and part of it was asking Jome to help me practice. He's actually really good at stuff with fire, and this library is filled with books on different forms of magic," Says Kathryn.

"Is there a science behind it? Are the laws of physics redefined here?"

"Ok so listen to this. It's like something straight out of a videogame. You know we all have souls, right? According to the books I've read, when you're born, your soul has a specific brightness to it, and it's like this ball of light near your solar plexus. Kinda like chakras if you ever looked into that stuff. Some are born very bright, some are not, and the brightness is what determines the strength of spells you're able to cast."

"So it's like a religion. How can you tell how bright a soul is?" I ask.

"There are spells you can use to reveal the brightness of someone's soul, but I haven't found anything detailing such a spell in any of the books I've read. Apparently they're safeguarded and kept a secret. I asked Jome if he knew anything about it, and he said the only one with the any knowledge about how to use that spell is the village Wisewoman. I was planning on going to talk to her pretty soon."

"Yeah so it's exactly like one huge religion. And everyone can use magic right? Even if you're like, a dull soul?"

"As far as I know. But also get this: there are affinities for certain types of magic. Along with brightness, your soul has defining colors that present themselves in the form of an aura. Someone who has a greenish-blueish aura will be efficient at water and earth and nature magic, reddish-orange fire and heat, and you can extrapolate from there. All of this is invisible to the untrained eye though. I don't know how to see a persons aura or anything. I've just been cooped up here reading and talking to Jome."

"This is so crazy," I say, but I can't hide my smile. "Do you think it's a good idea to go talk to the Wisewoman tomorrow?"

"I was already planning on it, but I guess you could tag along," She says with fake sarcasm, really drawing out the 'guess'.

"Sounds like a date then," I jest back.

Her face flushes. Or maybe it was just the light.