Tucking my pants into my boots wasn’t comfortable, but it was essential for traversing through Marekaj. The first few days of the trip were in familiar territory, if a bit flatter; the foothills leading into the Highback Mountains began rather abruptly and we were passing just within sight of their galloping waves, but not close enough to offset our stride. It reminded me of Ohio in late winter/early spring, when it was too cold for much to grow back but not enough to freeze the water that pooled in the ditches and roadsides. The shapes of the mountains themselves created an interesting landmark to track our travels, as well. Triangle Road, while absolutely more pleasant to traverse, felt isolated from anything but itself, drowned in trees and featureless hills. Watching specific peaks fade from the scenery as we put them past us gave me a more tangible grasp on the progress we were making. The foothills seemed to hug closer and closer to the mountains as we curved South out of the ambiguous border between Senta and Astonia and into Marekaj proper. I don’t know why, but I was surprised that it was still cold despite being a wetland, somewhat reminiscent of the Western parts of Skyrim. Silently acknowledging what that said about me as a person, that my strongest frame of reference for a biome that was within an hour’s drive from my house was in a video game, I shed my robes and began the aforementioned pant-tucking to keep leeches and any other hungry creatures from sneaking into my boots.

When shopping for a tent and other essential accoutrements, I discovered what looked like a sturdy, black, fur-lined poncho. Imagine my delight when I found it had an equally furry hood. With the warm mantle short enough to stay out of even splashing water as we tromped through soggy stretches of marshland, it became my signature garment for this stretch of our voyage. I found myself wearing black more often now, with tunics and trousers among the purchases made in Yukiori, all dyed to a colorless oblivion. This was my preferred color scheme and what I wore most often on Earth, but I couldn’t help to notice how it matched Tanis’ own choice of dress. Having to rely on our own supplies to camp without the rental services of Triangle Road, we opted for a large three-person tent that Tanis offered to carry for us. Anything more might’ve been too much, especially with how much space my heavy woolen robes took up within my pack. A bag of holding or portable hole or… something to minimize the physical burden of inventory would be nice, but even if such a thing existed, I doubted we had the coin to purchase one. For the first week, we each kept to our chosen corners of the tent; Tanis, me, and the espers. Then, after a week, when the day had been hard and the pissing rain had set us all in a foul mood, Tanis wordlessly joined me on my bedroll, combining our blankets and snuggling into my back as we had done in the Frozen Salamander. She did it again the next night, after a drier day, and again the night after that. Like Red leaving first thing in the morning to help his fellows hunt for breakfast and avoid cutting into our food stores, Tanis quietly slipping into my bedding became a regular occurrence.

I’d picked up a few more experience at some point, but sitting literally one Xp shy of thirty and nowhere near a place where Wysteria and Grajo needed to be stronger, I held on to what I had until the number ticked over again. The days were filled with little beyond idle conversation, the collective mood of the group waxing and waning with the intensity of the downpour. I liked grey skies and rain, but being stuck outside in them for days at a time put a very literal damper on my spirits, not to mention those of my sunshine-loving comrades. Even Wysteria seemed at odds with her surroundings, more acclimated navigating the uneven terrain but rankling at the cold breezes and chilly water she would enjoy in a warmer clime. Away from the crowd, a month removed from the barrage of questions that spilled from my curious mind and into Red’s vast stores of local knowledge, it was the quietest any part of our journey had been. That is, until an otherwise unremarkable Ujur afternoon. Red and Tanis went in search of a suitable place to make camp and dry out our clothes after a miserable morning downpour, and I had found a stump of such quality that I couldn’t bring myself to pull away from my seat upon it. I knew I’d been losing weight from my efforts, but it was neither as fast nor as noticeable as I might’ve liked. The purchase of a belt to keep my current rotation of pants up around my waist would soon be a wise investment, likely once we got to Vil Kayman, but otherwise I felt as schlubby as ever, and the toll our current environs were taking on my nagging injures from a former life was noticeable, especially on colder days like this one.

“I have a query,” Grajo began, his voice like an old floorboard in a haunted house. The surprise that I fluently and effortlessly understood and could speak a different language, even one like Esperlang that was so close to the Spanish I was fairly well-versed in, was only just starting to fade. Translating the luchadores’ promos I’d watch on TV or trying to speak to native Mexican customers at work took thought. Time. Esperlang came to me as fluidly as English.

“All right?”

“You and Tanis have been spending much time in close physical entanglement, especially at night. Why do you not fornicate?” The bluntness of the unexpected question struck me like a water balloon to the face, leaving my mouth flopping open and closed like a fish on the line. Wysteria croaked just as suddenly, a chastising abruptness to her throaty voice. She had turned her body to square at Grajo, who shrugged his shoulder-equivalents with a blasé look in his good eye. “I can ask what I wish. It is his choice whether or not to provide a response.”

“I, uh…” I swallowed to moisten my somehow-dry throat, the offended glare the terramor toad was trying to burn the nachtkrapp down with eliciting a chuckle from me and freeing me from my momentary stun. I wasn’t scandalized, nor was I concerned with some veil of privacy around my personal life; it was just among the last questions I ever expected Grajo to ask me. “Well, a lot of reasons, I guess. I’m not sure that’s the relationship we have, and I’m not into… uh… fornication with just anybody. I’m not even sure that’s what she wants. And… y’know. More practical stuff, I guess. Respect for you guys since we keep the same tent, for example—”

“I would not mind,” he said, with a tone that implied generous permission.

“I would,” I said, the noise Wysteria made echoing the sentiment. “Besides, I don’t have any kind of protection, and I’m not looking to have a kid.”

“That is not possible,” Grajo shook his head. “Humans and balt are incompatible.”

“… we are?” My interest was less in putting the option of nocturnal activities in the realm of possibility, but more my intellectual curiosity about the rules of this realm.

“Of course. Humans, mawon’nwa, nezumi, balt… none of them can procreate. The same as Wysteria and I could not make a child, even though we are both espers.” A series of perturbed whistles and pops came from Wysteria’s position in the mud, and she slapped her arms about to emphasize whatever her point was. Grajo rolled his eye and responded to her. “Well, yes, of course not. But the same goes for Red, or a moss troll, or whatever else you might consider handsome.”

“I think you’re very handsome, Grajo.” I inclined my head toward him, trying to pick up any spirits Wysteria may have wounded while simultaneously sending a wink the toad’s way to show I appreciated her bluster.

“Thank you.” He puffed up his chest with pride. “My child-making seasons are behind me, I think, but it is nice to be recognized for one’s merits.”

“If I have my druthers, my child-making days will never be a thing.”

“Then my advice would be to secure a lover who is not human,” he nodded sagely. “You could do worse than Tanis, for what it is worth. She is a skilled hunter and has an amusing temperament. She seems to elicit joy from you.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Wysteria took a few steps forward and began a string of chirps and belches that I only wished I could understand. She went on long enough that she finally drew Grajo’s full attention, and we both waited patiently for her to finish her thoughts in their entirety, which went on longer than one might assume and petered out slowly, but with marked intent, like the last few drops of conditioner plopping down from a mostly-empty bottle. She looked between the two of us and croaked again, prompting the nachtkrapp to turn back toward me and catch my eyes, inhaling deeply before he translated.

“Wysteria finds it pertinent that I remind you your decisions are your own to make, and that no matter how wise my demeanor may make me seem, not everything I say should be taken as appropriate advice for you, as we are different beings who have led different paths.” Wysteria made another insistent bellow after a few seconds of silence, and Grajo rolled his eye. “She would also like me to apologize for overstepping my boundaries with an inappropriate question, though I do not agree with the idea that it was inappropriate. Copulation is as natural as feeding, as breathing.”

“It’s fine,” I chuckled. “Thank you both for your advice and your concern.”

Strange and awkward though the conversation was, it broke a morose sort of enchantment that had settled around me. When Tanis and Red returned with news of a small cave to set up our tent against what appeared to be another encroaching storm, I volunteered to do the lion’s share of the work. Resting on the stump had helped, sure, but beating the dust out of my spirits like so much old rug had a more obvious influence. The mirth spread around the camp, over dinner, and into the night. Perhaps we’d been merry enough this whole way and I was only just now able to see it again. Time alone with my thoughts wasn’t exactly grim, but my brain often attempted to poison me in quiet ways, and I had to consider how many dark shackles had begun to take hold before my esper friends shook me free. Clothes would dry, spirits would rise, hard work would pay off, and dreams would come true. The bad times couldn’t last forever, and hindsight might provide the context needed to realize they weren’t all that bad to begin with.

Around an hour after Tanis and I settled into bed, I still hadn’t fallen asleep. My mind wasn’t exactly buzzing with thoughts, but insomnia was gripping me more than usual. Perhaps it was the week and change I’d spent sleeping on cold, hard ground, padded though it was by our bedrolls and the floor of the tent. This variety of camping reminded me more of the kind I disliked from my youth, when my father took me to the lakes and I was serenaded by the mating songs of horny bullfrogs, droning and persistent as slumber stepped ever further from my grasp. No noise kept unconsciousness from taking me that night, no thought in specific, but it refused to come all the same. Whatever foggy train of thought I’d taken away from my monster-naming ritual was dispersed by Tanis’ whispering voice.

“Hey. Are you still up?”

“Yeah,” I rumbled. I’d heard speaking in an undertone was less disturbing than a whisper, even if the latter was technically more quiet. I didn’t think either of us were going to wake up the espers, but it seemed polite to try my best.

“I can’t sleep,” she huffed.

“Same.”

“I think there might’ve been coffee in that fudge we picked up in Grenseben.” I hadn’t thought of that. We’d both been snacking on it a lot today, concerned about how well sticky chocolate would hold up as we continued South and the weather got warmer. Snow was already well in our rear-view, and I wondered how cold it would be if not for the frequent rains.

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“That seems entirely possible,” I agreed.

Silence filled the tent again, the soft echo of the storm outside reflecting off the walls of the cave and back further into the unmapped cavern. I had opted against exploring its depths earlier, despite Tanis’ enthusiasm, since I was aware sometimes what seemed like a normal cave could become a twisting hellscape of stalactites, stalagmites, surprise underground lakes, and sheer drops into swallowing blackness. Claustrophobia wasn’t exactly among my many idiosyncrasies, but the idea of getting lost in the crushing depths beneath the mountain or taking a tumble and the only possible way back to the surface being an Amigara Fault-like hole outweighed the possibility of seeing some neat mushrooms and rock formations. I liked exploring caves in video games, where I could stay safe in my living room, on my couch, able to get up and grab a bag of chips and a cup of tea when the environs got too oppressive and overwhelming. She didn’t spend long looking around, herself, returning to camp after maybe fifteen minutes, though she didn’t mention why, exactly. My money was on it being a boring cave more than the ominous dread of the unplumbable darkness, knowing Tanis, but either way I felt relieved when she made it back safely.

“Can you tell me a story?”

“Eh…” I hated being put on the spot like that, in an intrinsic way. Nothing killed my desire and ability to recite a tale quite like being asked to do so. Suddenly my brain voided itself of every yarn I’d ever heard spun, and my own meager ability to manufacture entertainment as a dungeon master dropped itself entirely from my skillset. It seemed like a reasonable way to pass the time until sleep decided to take us, though, so I made an effort. “What kind of story?”

“What about one of your fanfictions?”

“I don’t write fanfictions. I’m not a writer.”

“You know what I mean. One of the ones you read.”

“I dunno, Tanis, I don’t really remember fanfic that well—”

“If you tell me you’re not a rememberer, I’m going to pinch something soft.” That made me laugh, stifled though it was.

“No, I just don’t know if I remember any of them well enough to tell like a story.”

“Not even your favorite one?”

“My favorite fanfiction…” I mused, considering my options. “It’s an old one, based off a game I played… the main character was this overconfident, smarmy rogue, and the story focused on building a relationship between him and one of the other playable characters, a rat-woman. Kind of like a nezumi, now that I think about it. They were friends from way back, reunited as part of the main quest. Her lover had gone missing, presumed dead. His efforts at wooing the princess were going largely unsuccessful, and the story explored this alternate idea that maybe something blossomed between them.”

“That’s not telling me a story, that’s telling me about a story,” she huffed.

“I’m sorry, I really don’t remember it enough to tell.”

“I mean, I do.”

“You know the plot of some niche fanfiction I read over a decade ago?”

“I bet I can guess it,” Tanis responded as smugly as someone can while whispering.

“All right, let me hear it.” I felt sure she was joking, but I was curious how close she’d get.

“The nezumi thinks he’s a smart-mouthed little miscreant, right? But then he trusts her to mend a secret wound, then a little later in the story they share a bed for warmth, and it happens a few more times with deeper and deeper conversation and a little alcohol at one point. They talk about the ribbon on her tail, a memento from her lover—who is alive, by the way, but he has amnesia and doesn’t remember her. Tragic. Anyway, they have this encounter at a hot spring where he doesn’t know that she knows he’s watching her until she gets all coy and calls him out, but in the end when the princess finally returns his affections, the nezumi gives up and tries to help her lover with his memory.” My mouth widened with every word, and by the end of it I was sitting up in my bedding and staring at her.

“Uh… yeah. Like, exactly. You remembered some stuff I forgot.”

“It’s one of the side plots in Hiro’s Ninth Epic, between Dane and Frey,” she shrugged with a simple smirk. “One of my favorites, actually. I left out the bit at the end where they finally have a passionate tryst before he goes off to get married… though most of your more reputable playhouses do, too.”

“Those are also—” I shook my head, and suddenly a few stray thoughts and ideas settled into place. “Hiro’s Ninth Epic? You told me about his sixth one a month or so ago… how many epics did Hiro write?”

“Fifteen, I think? I heard he’s working on another one, though a lot of people say it’s actually a ghost writer based on how different they were after the fifth. Or, like, a team.” Hiro. With an ‘i’, not an ‘e’. As in… Hironobu? And the names of the characters Dane and Frey were so similar…

“What is Hiro’s Sixth Epic about?” There was more of an edge of demand in my voice than I might’ve liked, and it had risen in volume more than politeness would recommend, but another piece was slowly weaving its way into the strange tapestry of this world and it wracked me with something approaching panic.

“Pretty straightforward story. A bunch of heroes fight a corrupt government in a world without magic, until suddenly the magic comes back and it nearly destroys the world until the good guys finally save the day.” Even in the dim light from the fire’s final embers, I could see her brows quirked in concern. “It was pretty good, though it’s got a big cast and that makes most people want more from the individual characters than we get, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the sequel. Why are you freaking out?”

“OK… so at least that’s different…” I breathed, measuring my volume and taking a few deep breaths. “Who’s the villain of Hiro’s Sixth Epic?”

“Francisco Pagliacci. He’s like the President’s right-hand man, really flamboyant. Kinda reminds me of your sh—”

“My shirt. Right. Featuring Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI. And the story I was just telling you about is based on Final Fantasy IX… both games involved writing and direction from a guy named Hironobu Sakaguchi.”

“Oh! That is an interesting coincidence.”

“But it’s not a coincidence. It can’t be. Not when so much is so similar… the plot of Indomitable, the languages we speak being excruciatingly similar…”

“Deep breaths, Glenn. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I feel like my whole frickin’ world is a ghost! I try not to get hung up on it, I really do, but then something like this happens and I just don’t know what’s real anymore!”

“Glenn…” Tanis’ voice became less whispery and more breathy, less for stealth and more for comfort. She closed a firm yet tender hand around mine that I hadn’t realized was shaking and drew herself toward me, wrapping her other arm around me in an embrace. Part of me wanted to fight her and plant myself firmly in panic, but common sense prevailed, and I allowed myself to be drawn in. A ragged exhale shuddered from my throat, and I wasn’t crying but hot tears were suddenly streaming down my face. Somehow I was weeping in spite of myself, no sobbing, no anguish, just exhaustion and tears. It was an emotional state I’d never been in before, that I remembered, and one I didn’t know how to handle. Thankfully, there was Tanis. “What does it matter if a story from Earth is a lot like a story from here? If you woke up on Earth, had breakfast, and went to work the same way a character in a story did, would you be this freaked out?”

“… no,” I admitted with a sigh. My voice didn’t sound my own; thin and pitchy despite me trying to keep it down. “But this is a bit different from mundane similarity—”

“I know. I know it is. But, like… really listen to what you’re suggesting for a second.” She leaned back and held both my hands in hers. “You were in a world with no magic, you got hit by a big cart and maybe died, and now you’re here. You’ve got a cool book that helps you understand the magic that is inherent to you—it’s inside you whether you have the book or not. What conclusion could you draw based on that evidence that makes the most sense?”

“I… I don’t know.” I could feel myself calming down, the involuntary, jittery shaking of my hands fading with Tanis’ warmth. Somehow, I felt even more empty than when it was all pouring out of me, like a burst dam that I could only watch in horror as it collapsed. “When this first happened, when I talked to Red about it… we talked about determinism. The idea that some kind of authorial figure… a game master or a god or something had plucked me out of my life and putt me in this situation with some kind of… intent. And it kinda flared up again after there was only one bed in Brum, that’s such a trope of the genre, y’know? Slow burn ten thousand word romance stories of ‘will-they-won’t-they’ until the climax.”

“Life’s not a story, though. Even if it seems that way sometimes.”

“Right,” I sniffled up a few tears, trying not to look like a mess with snot running down my face, but not yet willing to give up our shared grasp. “The other thing I thought a lot was that I’m in some kind of coma or something… that this whole world is a dream, a vivid hallucination I’m having. But the downbeats between the lyrics… the small moments between the big, dramatic scenes… the minor irritations, the very act of breathing, the passage of time… it’s too precise. My dreams were never quite so… incremental. Very rarely were they focused on the minutiae, and when they did it wasn’t as real as it still is here, every day. Aches, pains, tastes, smells… this world doesn’t warp to my whims or the chaos of my unconscious imagination; it’s fully-formed and complex. I can learn about it… but I’ve also never been in a coma before. Maybe that’s how it is when I’m sleeping without waking? The idea that it still might be a dream, that it all might just… disappear…”

“Does it really matter?” She wasn’t being dismissive, or impatient. It was an earnest question, and she asked it in a way that shed a lot of her typical pretense. “I mean, I remember most of my life… I existed long before you showed up, and I’m pretty sure everyone else I’ve ever met did, too. But assuming you’re right and this whole thing is just a prolonged figment of your imagination… what does it change? Can you force yourself to stay asleep? To wake up? What if the Earth world was the dream? Does that change anything?”

“I don’t know, Tanis, I don’t know if I could handle the idea that my mom and my dad weren’t real, that Mike—”

“Maybe they are! What the hell is ‘real’, anyway? You and I both love stories. If I found out Indomitable wasn’t really based on a true story and someone just made it all up, does that change how sad I feel when the boat hits that iceberg and everyone on board dies? The Tanner Clan books are complete fiction, but they still helped me feel like I had the big, supportive family I always wanted growing up. Should I not be comforted by it because I didn’t really have a neat-freak dad, a cool uncle who hunts the wilds, and a weird bard who lived with us for some reason?” My mind was finally in the right shape to put pieces in places, and I finally deduced the Tanner Clan’s Earth analogue, eliciting a quiet guffaw from myself. What ever happened to predictability, indeed. My laughter made Tanis smile, and she released my hands to draw her thumb over my tearstained cheek.

“You’re absolutely right. This is exactly the advice I’d be giving you if you were the one who fell out of the sky in my world with a magic cell phone that helped you level up your computer hacking or something. I’m just a professional overthinker, and it gets to me. Especially on weird details like Hiro’s Epics that overlap so much. I mean, it’s not all exactly the same… but it’s just so close…”

“And that is super weird. But sometimes weird stuff is just weird stuff. It doesn’t mean anything. I love stories, Glenn. Books, plays, songs… everything. They’ve brought me comfort, they’ve inspired me, and they’ve even helped me understand the world by hearing how the writers interpreted their own experiences of it. But you have to be careful—”

“— because if you spend a lot of time with them, you start to believe life’s just stories, and it’s not. Life is life.” I recited the rest of the quote from her paraphrase, shaking my head and chuckling to myself. Maybe she was making it up from whole cloth just now based on her own experiences, maybe the narrator was poking fun at me, or maybe it was something a pink-furred grimalkin told her sad horse companion in a very famous show she saw once. In that moment I didn’t care, and that felt like growth.

“I’m not gonna pretend like your story in Barbavia is typical. I’ve certainly never heard of it happening before, outside the pages of a book. Maybe it is all just in your head, or some kind of divine prank. So what? Unless you figure out how to change the cards, you can only play the hand you’ve been dealt, so you might as well ante up and enjoy the game.”

“Yeah,” I sighed the weight from my shoulders and squeezed her hands before finally letting go. “I shouldn’t be looking at this… curious parallel as a problem, or a sign of something greater. I should just be enjoying it for what it is. I mean, do you know how few people I had back home who wanted to talk about Final Fantasy VI?”

“Right? It’s like… hello, people! Hiro’s Sixth Epic is one of the most popular plays of all time with some of the coolest characters! It’s been twenty years and they still put it on all over the Commonwealth! One crummy sequel doesn’t unmake a good play.”

“I am so looking forward to hashing out the differences between the two with you, but for now… I think I’m finally actually tired.”

“Me too, actually,” she stretched her shoulders and unleashed a mighty yawn, almost as though on command. “Thanks for sharing your story with me, Glenn, even if it wasn’t the one I asked for.”

“Thanks for being in it.”