The next morning, Red and I were back in the moors where I’d first met him, albeit a little closer to town. The innkeeper was up (and I enjoyed my complimentary breakfast of eggs and oatmeal, though this time a little less friendly toward the man who so nakedly hit me with a slur) but most of the town seemed surprisingly shuttered. It couldn’t have been that early for shops not to be open yet; I’d arrived well after dark and stayed up for a few hours, having always been a night owl. Then again, I had no real clue what time it was, and the sun’s position in the sky was a mystery obscured by cloud cover. Perhaps I’d only gotten about four hours of sleep instead of my assumed six. Perhaps the culture of this plane was different from what I was accustomed to. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Red gave me a brief rundown of the biggest social taboos and pieces of advice he could before we were both exhausted of the concept, and thankfully it mostly seemed like what I was used to back home. Culture shock was not a thing I needed to be hit with on a regular basis, but I was sure there were tidbits lurking around that I hadn’t thought to ask about and he hadn’t thought to disclose. Time zones, when stores usually open, do you serve tea hot or cold by default, and other things that might differ even in America or elsewhere on Earth.
The other topic of the night was esper battling, which we discussed more in-depth. Of course, I had thoughts of a certain video game franchise dancing in my head as we spoke, but I wanted to try to keep its core principles separate so as not to hang myself on the expectations intrinsic to the game. I didn’t want to assume my bird-esper would be inherently strong against my opponent’s karate-esper, for example, and a thousand other different rules all the way down. Instead, I opted to ask some very broad questions that would give me a framework for how different the mechanics of each system might be, and after discovering that the concept of ‘type advantage’ wasn’t even really a thing in most cases, did my best to abandon the knowledge entirely. This was in harsh contrast to the way I was perceiving and interacting with the world around me, though that wasn’t a thought I had until some days later. I acted the way I’d usually act in any given situation but since I’d crossed some kind of dimensional rift (or, again, I was experiencing time-compressed end-of-life hallucinations which didn’t suggest enough of a functional difference to bother considering) it was more cavalier than I thought. Thankfully it all worked out in my favor, but I would often sit and consider ‘wow, what if I’d somehow really messed up in those first few days?’
Red had directed me back to the moor in a bid to find a more combat-oriented esper, re-iterating that he wasn’t especially predisposed to fighting. It was still damp from the rain last night, but without the active downpour and the soft glow of the sun radiating from behind the cumulonimbus, it was a more pleasant and evoked memories of an Enya music video. The garments he’d procured for me were a set of multi-layered, long, brown and cream robes that made me feel like Obi-Wan Kenobi if he were super into cable knit. I was wearing something like corduroy pants underneath, also brown in color and belted in place since they were a bit large. I expected to feel uncomfortably warm, especially in the muggy weather, but the holes in the knit of the garment capably caught the breeze and their softness made up for any other potential discomfort. Black was my preferred color, but the whole getup certainly made me feel more like a magic-user in a fantasy world. I wondered about the availability of a matching floppy-brimmed pointy hat.
“All right,” Red began, apparently satisfied with our distance from Willowbright, which had vanished beyond the low hills. “now I ain’t exactly an expert on spellcastin’ an’ how it works, but I’ve seen the other end of this a few times before, so hopefully we can meet in the middle somehow. First things first, we’re out here ‘cuz the veil between our worlds is thin. There’s lots of places like this, all over the Commonwealth, but this one’s close, so…” instead of finishing his sentence, he shrugged. “Now when I say parallel, lemme be clear; the Esperwild literally overlaps everything on this plane, but it’s different. There ain’t no Willowbright in the Esperwild, for example, and there’s a stream runnin’ through the land here on our side. Mostly it’s the same, though.”
“I think I understand. It’s like…” I wanted to make an analogy to changing the channels on a television, but I somehow doubted that was a thing here. “Like if you had a picture frame, and you changed the picture inside… the frame and the border would all be the same. Same size, same shape, and the picture would be in the same place, but the contents of the image itself would be different.”
“Yeah, sorta,” he smirked. “You’re smart for a human.”
“Thanks! It does not always feel that way.”
“Well, we all have our moments. Anyhow. You just gotta wait ‘til the veil gets thin enough to see an esper on the other side, like happened when you saw me bein’ chased by them oeivolants.” I made a mental note to check the grimoire when we got back, to see if their entry had become any clearer. “Probably helps to focus your mind or whatever, extend your senses. Spellcaster stuff. Once you see somethin’, just reach out an’ grab it like you did with me. Intention’s a big part of it, I gather.”
I shrugged my shoulders and did my best to follow his instructions, closing my eyes and trying to clear my mind of thoughts. Listen to everything around me. A few insects buzzed around me, looking for food amidst the tufts of grass and small flowers that had opened to bring in the sun’s light. Their sweet allure ticked my senses as I took a deep breath, drawing up the odor of wet soil and the treated wool of my garment. I couldn’t really empty my head; thoughts came too quick and too curiously, especially in a circumstance like this where new magic and wonder might be around every corner, and my next course of action was to literally pull a monster out of thin air to help me fight other monsters for prize money. But I had spent some time in High School considering Buddhism, and as a part of that I practiced self-led meditation. It was easier in the shower, with the droplets beating down upon my head. The rhythm brought me peace, and cleared away a lot of the smaller, less important thoughts without effort. It helped me to focus to the point that I had most of my best ideas in the shower. Maybe that’s why I took to Parting the Veil for Red so easily, in the rain and mud; I was naturally given the perfect conditions to utilize my mind and the shock had blasted most other mundane thoughts away.
Once again, I opened my eyes, and while I doubted the semi-transparent overlay of the Esperwild would be immediately visible to me after such little effort, I was still disappointed at seeing nothing but the rolling emerald moor. Fortunately, patience was a virtue I’d been steadily cultivating, especially in the last few years. A steady exhale pressed from my lungs, and I sat down in the grass, eyes forward, waiting. At home it was often difficult to wait. The refrain from one of Tom Petty’s dozens of hits often sang its way through my mind when I was forced to do little more than stare off into the middle distance and not overthink myself into an anxiety attack. I wasn’t sure if the tune helped calm me down or it was just the same kind of referential humor that popped into my head during most other situations. Maybe a bit of both. Especially when I’d convinced myself there were ‘better’ things I could be doing, it was often interminable not to busy myself with something. My hands, my ideas, my senses, or some combination of all of them. Even reading a book had become difficult, interrupted by spurts of restlessness and wandering thoughts. But when I was away from the anchors of my everyday life, beloved though it might be, in a place where I couldn’t work on something ‘more important’ it was easy to slip back into the dim, peaceful vibe of just… existing. Sitting in the lush, well-fed grass of the knoll in a strange land an incalculable number of miles from my computer, my sketchbook, my job, and anything else, serenity was much easier to attain. I doubted I could force the weaknesses in the veil to reveal themselves, so I would wait until they were ready.
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Eventually, they came. Or, one did. I wasn’t able to see them last night in the darkness, through the rain, but there were edges to my window into the Esperwild, shimmering with a rainbow of colors that slightly favored blue. There was no light coming from the other side, no glow of magic to anything save the edges themselves and the grid-like lines that ran between them, almost immediately fading to invisibility. It reminded me of the outline of a paramecium, with its cilia fluttering inward as well as out. I rose from my seated position and walked forward, looking through the visual portal for signs of life. I could see the river Red mentioned, flowing happily between the hillocks, over raw stone instead of verdant earth. There were some rocks that weren’t there on this side, or perhaps they were the same rocks that had stayed in a slightly different position. I didn’t have much time to study before the portal wavered and collapsed.
“I didn’t see any espers.” My brows furrowed, but even I didn’t know if it was in disappointment or confusion.
“There ain’t always someone there,” Red shrugged. “That’s just how it is, sometimes. Wait for the next thin spot to come around and hope it shows you somethin’ you can grab.”
“Okay.” I had a hard time pulling my eyes from where the boundaries had been, trailing their absence for a few moments before physically shaking my head to will myself free. “Can I cross through it?”
“What, like, can ya walk through it?” Red’s own brows and muzzle scrunched up. “You’re doin’ that right now. Like I said, the plains overlap, even if you can’t see ‘em.”
“No, I mean, can I just step over the boundaries of the portal and end up in the Esperwild?”
“Not without a spell,” he waved the notion off, then crossed his arms again. “An’ it ain’t a portal, exactly. If we’re usin’ your picture metaphor from earlier—” it was a simile, technically, but I had long since shed trying to be a pedant to anyone but myself “— say that frame was hangin’ on your wall all your life. You walk by it every day, same picture, as expected. Then one day someone changes it, but you don’t notice so much ‘cuz it’s always been the same picture. Why would you look?” He shrugged his little shoulders and continued, cycling his hand as he talked, perhaps with his own impatience to get his point across. “So you keep walkin’ by it seein’ the same picture outta the corner of your eye ‘cuz that’s what you think is s’poseda be there, even though it ain’t anymore. Then one day, even though nothin’s changed about your routine or how much attention you pay to the world around you, ya walk by and notice it’s a different picture. Boom. You can see the weakness in the veil.” Red scrunched up his nose enough that I could see his fangs and shook his head. “Actually, no, that fell apart pretty hard towards the end, there.”
“I think I get what you mean.”
“Good, ‘cuz I wasn’t gonna try to explain it again.”
The thin veil came and went two more times before I decided to get up and try another spot. We hiked for about fifteen minutes and waited again, and another three openings were made visible to me with not so much as a tiny insectoid esper in sight, if such a thing even existed. The sky was darkening, and I idly wondered how long we’d been at this, or what time it actually was. Little details like that were something I enjoyed keeping in my periphery, something to mark my existence more accurately, or have an estimation of when my hunger was based on an actual need for food instead of curious boredom, but without a phone time was just as foreign to me as the accurate temperature or my latitude and longitude. Somewhere in the middle of these musings, the Esperwild appeared again before me, and within it sat a very large and otherwise ordinary-looking toad. I made some small cry of excitement or anticipation that in my mind sounded like an old church lady who’d seen something mildly upsetting and was trying not to swear, and reached out for the creature. It throttled its neck back and turned an eye toward me as we made contact, and I poured my will into pulling it across the threshold where it landed with a soft ‘plop’.
“Ah, a terramor toad,” Red nodded, having been roused from his nap by the abrupt snap of magic. “Coulda done worse.” I looked to the toad for some sign of offense, but it just blinked its eyes and wiggled its throat. “She ain’t gonna say nothin’, chief. Not all espers is as verbally endowed as I am.”
“That’s cool, it’s her decision or whatever,” I shrugged. Surely Red meant that she lacked the capability to speak, but I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on her if she could understand me. “Does she understand words at all?”
“Uh, yeah, probably.” Red waved a paw in the air to get her attention, then made a series of chirping, chittering noises not dissimilar to those I’d heard from my cats back home when they caught sight of a particularly interesting bird. That thought made my stomach hurt a bit. I’d miss my mom, and my best friend, but they’d figure out a way to get along without me until such a point where I could come back. The cats, however… I remembered when one of our older cats had ambled his way over the Bifrost and how despondent they were after. I didn’t like thinking about them feeling so upset about me, especially not while I was traipsing through the countryside, pulling toads out of thin air. Thankfully, Red interrupted that particular doom train of thought. “She said she does more with pheromones, but she understands Ruben. Just don’t have the mouthparts to speak it.”
“Hm. I’m looking to put together a team of espers and travel the world fighting other teams of espers. Are you amenable to this?” Red gave me a look like I’d grown another head, and the terramor toad squished her eyes down a few times in thought before hopping slightly toward me and sitting up straight.
“That would be a yes,” Red translated. “Although if you’re gonna give this option to everyone you yank outta the Esperwild, maybe wait to do more recruitin’ until you know the spell to sever the link.”
“Good point,” I agreed, kneeling down and offering my hand to the toad. She was big for the Earth equivalents to her species I was more familiar with, roughly the size of a personal pan pizza when the ones back home were scarcely more than three inches. Now that she was non-translucent and with the aid of a few rays of sun peeking through the clouds, I could discern that she had muted lavender stripes mixed amongst the brown, black, and white of the rest of her body, and mottled brown eyes exactly as you’d expect. “Do you have a name?”
“Wysteria,” Red answered after some movements and quiet vocalizations from the toad. He then turned to me and caught my eyes to make sure he knew it was him talking, and not his translations for our new companion. “We spent more time out here than I expected today. We can start for Lion’s Head up North if you think you’re up for it, or we can head back to the inn and rest up a bit first.”
“Pass,” I shook my head, having already returned the room key. I didn’t fancy having to deal with the innkeeper again, now that I knew he was less-than-friendly toward magic-users, but not wanting to get into it with Red I supplied the other reason I had; “I’d rather save any money we have for the unexpected. I can go without creature comforts for a few days, at least, and I’d rather not be in a rush to make money once we get there. Slow and steady wins the race, right Wysteria?” She let out a small croak without opening her mouth and cleared the distance between us in a short hop.