Life in another world had its perks.

Sure, you ended up missing the simplest pleasures in life: wasting hours watching cat videos, microwaving soggy noodles, and screaming as you waited for the server to load.

But air was a little cleaner and people were a little kinder.

Or that was what they told me.

I never really tried to check that out.

I could get all I needed between my room and the family’s garden, thank you very much. I was busy enough by taking care of my plants and flowers, reading books under the wool blankets and doing my part with the family business.

Just like in my previous life, absolutely no need to get tangled in social situations or meeting other people.

Did I need other people to compile my awesome flowers encyclopaedia that would one day bedazzle minds everywhere? I surely did not – I just needed time and quiet to carefully begin my work.

Was going to start any time now.

So… when this whole situation began, I had everything sorted out.

Perfectly.

And yet – I did allow myself one exception.

The bell’s ring pulled me back from my reverie. I turned away from cleaning one of the furnace’s conduits, looking at our workshop’s door, but the tall figure of my father as he worked at the furnace’s bellows blocked the way.

“Lugana, will you go check on it? I’m a little busy.”

“Sure, Dad.”

Did it feel strange calling him like that? After nineteen years… I got used to it.

Sometimes I still thought about my parents in the other world, but...

I just hoped they were fine. I must still be caught up a little in my previous thoughts.

Sometimes it still happened.

The sound of creaking tetrarmide filled the workshop and I just knew who came in.

Wait, if it was her… I stopped to take a quick look at myself in one of the polished shields around the shop.

It was just to make sure I wasn’t covered head to toe in dark soot, nothing else! The shield gave back the image of a petite brunette with large green eyes and dash of freckles around her eyes. I tucked my strands of sweaty hair back into my beret. Try to keep your long hair flowing free when you work around open fires all day! My eleven-years-old self had quickly learned to put safety before fashion.

But my current self could try to make an exception when it mattered.

“Coming! Please wait just a moment,” I shouted, running my fingers through my hair to try and straighten them out.

“No need for haste,” answered a confident female voice.

Of course, it was her.

Even after ending up in this world, reborn in a new body with a new family, I hadn’t felt the need to do something silly like walking out of the door and go on an adventure.

Back on Earth, people kept talking about second chances. About how they would do better the second time.

But in my experience it absolutely wasn’t like that.

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Just because my hair and eye colour had been different for almost twenty years now, it wasn’t like my personality had changed. I still enjoyed reading. In most occasions, all I wanted was to keep to myself.

Spending all my time in bed was still top priority.

I had matured a newfound love for plants by helping with the family business, but I believed that was it.

And yet again, there was one exception.

“Coming...” I reassured our recurring customer. I walked past my father as he kept taking care of the raging oven, and I had to cover my face from the exhaust heat that pumped out of the huge black structure. Even like this, it was weird to think that at most we used a small fraction of the power of the fossil furnace. It had been there, with its chimneys of shiny black glass, before our family built around it to make a living out of tetrarmide production. We didn’t even know who built it, we were just making use of it. Like ants setting up a nest in an abandoned house.

Maybe one day I would discover who or what built it, but for the time being I was much more concerned with the tall woman standing by the counter. She wasn’t looking at me, perusing our shelves, and I allowed myself a moment to take the image of her in, the lady Knight who had appeared around here two years before.

It seemed like she had just came back from a harsher scuffle than usual, because Madama Kishirra’s dark skin was already covered in swelling bruises and shallow wounds. She kept her usual stoic expression on her face, but I had known her for a while, and the crease on her forehead showed she had been having a hard time pretending everything was fine.

Harder than usual, at least. She held her golden hair in a short braid, just to avoid them getting in the way, and she still managed to look stunning even bruised like that – the same stony look in her grey eyes, and her features were as beautiful as ever, with her long and straight nose, her thin lips and the elegant curve of her neck.

Back on Earth she’d stop traffic – one of those ‘dark elves’ stepping out of old fantasy novels or cheap anime.

But she was there – flesh and bone.

I was staring, but it was kind of hard not to: what would you do if a woman as gorgeous as a Scandinavian model, as graceful as a ballerina and as kind as summer walked into your shop every other week?

“Sorry for the wait,” I said, greeting her with a swift nod. "Are you back from the fold? It seemed like this time was...”

“It is as the time before and the one before that, Madama Delebasse,” she interrupted me. Her smooth voice was silk brushing on silk... and it made something twist in my stomach. It must be because Lady Kishirra was an Elf. There was more to them that just their slightly-pointer ears after all.

Some sort of otherworldly grace in her elegant, slow movements.

Kishirra still managed to convey even in a scratched brigandine and with her body covered in wounds. “I will be right as rain in time for the evening’s prayer, but I am in need of your services, post-haste.”

“Ah, yes.” My eyes shifted to the golden pendant hanging from her neck – the circle with the three extended rays, the symbol of her faith. It still glowed faintly. She really pushed herself this time... and as every time, she was not one to talk about it. “Please come this way, then.”

I swung the counter open and she walked in, trying to push through the light limp in her stride, but even if her brigandine hid the worst of her wounds, I half-expected her to start dripping blood all over the workshop.

“Lady Kishirra... did you take care of your wounds before coming in here? Ah, careful with that,” I pointed out at the low pipes crossing over the ceiling. Kishirra was tall enough her blonde head brushed against the obsidian exhausts (or whatever material those were made of).

She just nodded and lowered her head a bit.

“There is Who did take care of them for me.”

Oh. How bad must her wounds have been then? It looked like this time wasn’t like all the others, no matter what she said.

“Please do not put yourself in harm’s way next time,” I sighed.

She stopped. I turned and we shared a look, even thought it was really hard to sustain her silver gaze and I let my eyes fall towards her shoulders.

“If I shall not, then whom?”

I had no answers to that.

“Please come this way...” I muttered, defeated. I led her through the workshop to a short hallway and then to the inside garden.

It spread in a wide-open space behind the workshop, still protected by tall walls, but with no ceiling, so that rain could simply fall in to help nourish the trees and the basins with the growing red reeds. Looking up, I shielded my eyes from the burning sun and the silver planetary ring that glistened almost white in the light of the day.

That was another reminder I was not in my old world anymore – even after all this time, it felt a bit weird to look up at the sky and see no moon.

“Please sit,” I instructed her, and the Elf complied, slowly limping to her spot on the roots of our oak tree. The rest of the garden was covered in orchard trees and flowers which we needed for our craft – some of them were just like those I remembered from my former home. Others, like the lilythorn I brushed my hand against as I picked their seeds out, only grew here. And all of them were very important.

I was fairly proud of our garden.

One day it would take the first few chapters of my book.

“How damaged are the inside plaques?” I asked as I held out a hand with the lilythorn seeds. The Elf stubbornly blinked as her sable fingers raised to gently brush my hand aside.

She hesitated, which immediately made me worry.

This was not good.