“Hey, Kaiya?” Amity asked.
“Yeah?”
She didn’t look away from the ice to ask this. “How… exactly.. did you get here?”
Kaiya was silent.
“I mean, like, how did you get to this world? We got here through a portal that Himiko made on accident, but you’ve been here for a few months. What’s the deal?”
She took a breath in.
“I… don’t know.”
Amity turned her head away from the ice, although still focused on pushing it along.
“Hmm?”
“I just, don’t know how I got here. I was walking to school, after I transferred away from you guys’ school, and when I went into the door to first period…”
She exhaled.
“I ended up here. A stone frame, the sand around me dyed green. The princess found me at some point, and it was a few months until you guys found me, then… you know.”
Amity turned back to the ice.
“The portal spontaneously appeared? In a door frame?”
“I mean, yeah… Sorry, I know it’s ridiculous…”
Amity was silent, for a few seconds.
“It actually makes a bit of sense, to me. ‘Rest of you, remember the librarian girl?”
Raleigh piped up.
“Oh, yeah, actually. She had every detail about some dude who’d been trying to get home, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. She knew precisely how to activate a portal. Maybe…”
She paused.
“Kaiya. Did you happen to see anyone near you, when you left the portal?”
Kaiya had to take a second to think, eventually remembering, “Yeah, actually. She was a red-head, short, and she had a little vial in her hands. She was already running away when I actually managed to realize what was happening, though.”
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Amity pondered, putting a bit more effort into her thinking than she was to the ice.
“Did she… Do you guys think that was the librarian? She had vials on her desk, and I did wonder why she didn’t put any of that old dude’s stuff away. Also matches the description.”
They all gained a look of realization, and then all realized precisely where she was going with it.
“I think that he didn’t exist!”
“But then, who would’ve had all those books..?”
“Personally, I think it was the librarian herself! She probably made everything herself, and was just about to go on her own lap around the area, to get to Earth.”
Raleigh didn’t entirely follow. “Why would she do that, though?”
“The librarian,” Amity postulated, “was a human!”
They didn’t immediately agree, though.
“That makes, uhm, exactly no sense?”
“I think it’s quite clear. Remember a few years ago, when there was an uptick in missing teens? She looks like someone I remember…”
“Where are you going with this..?”
Amity continued. “On the fridge, in my house, my mom always kept a picture of one particular case. Ramona Simmons. She was 17, red-head, and short. The librarian looked, what, 21?”Everyone made a noise that pretty well conveyed that Amity was on a good track.
“About the right age to be her. Maybe the royalty here was trying to reconstruct gateways, and accidentally swept her up.”
“How would she have found the library then? Did the princess save her, too?”
“Dude, stop interrupting me, I’m getting to the point.” Amity snapped. “I think, she entered with the same rocks we did, mixing blue, red, yellow, and green.”
“Okay I’m really sorry, but that kinda sounds stupid. Why the hell would it be those same four, why not like, just the primary colors?” Himiko butted in, for the first time.
“That’s.. actually kinda interesting. I mean… maybe the quaternary one controls the destination?”
“Maybe…” Himiko began to speculate in her head.
“Back to the point, maybe the same portal we entered through was already fixed enough to enter through, when she accidentally dropped the mix into a door.”
“I, uhm. That’s honestly really convincing. Maybe you should take up becoming a prosecutor instead of a doctor,” Raleigh joked.
Amity kept powering through creating the ice bridge, still shocked that it worked, although she wondered what her parents were doing. Hopefully they weren’t home from vacation yet.
She felt her head buzz and her hands got the pin and needle feeling. Her chest cried out in pain as she struggled to not fall over in the moment, exhausted.
“Amity, you okay?” Kaiya asked.
“I- Can you take over for me? It’s kinda hard to use magic like that for hours at a time…” She groaned.
“Yeah, no problem!”
Kaiya stood near the malformed edge, pressing her hand into it and using all her might to hook onto the ice block. She managed to get her magic to attach to it, and she began expanding it. Slowly at first but steadily getting faster, until she was going at more or less the same pace as Amity, who was already back on her feet and walking along with the ice.
She had to be careful, flip-flops weren’t very solid on the slippery ice, but she was still walking. Just a few moments later though, she felt the chunk of ice she stood on crack, and separate from the main chunk. Amity reacted, stepping back onto the main chunk, but the sudden shift made her lose footing and she slipped backwards into the depths of the sea.