Waking up always felt like a chore. Phone alarms were startling no matter how jangly and upbeat the melodies were. The bed was too comfortable, the covers too warm, the day ahead too gloomy to face.

Yet today, waking up was… easy. In the same way dropping a glass to shatter on the floor was physically easy – just quick and upsetting with a lot of mess to clean afterwards.

They bolted awake at a strange sound, head spinning as they flinched upright. This was not Default Sound #8: Early Bird.

There was, however, a bird with them on the gazebo, locked in a freeze response by the human’s sudden movement. The biologist urge to taxonomize kicked in in-lieu of common sense as the stranger stared at the thing.

It was a heron, a small one. The long legs were the best clue. Dark feathers with oil slick iridescence, the size of a magpie with the coloration of a crow. On the top of its head was a crest of white feathers, a milk-colored mohawk.

“Hel—” The stranger began a pointless greeting, but they were immediately cut off by the creature who hissed like an angry goose at an unexpected decibel and hopped off into the nearby pond.

They found themselves standing now, very alert at the gooselike hissing. Geese weren’t that bad, really. They were mostly flappy bits and bravado that could be solved by a hand to the neck. But you didn’t want to be below eye level with any creature who thought it could take you down, lest it scratch your eye or poop on you while it tried.

They were only a little bit convinced this was still a dream, now.

The elements were so… so consistent, it was hard to rationalize. Still without shoes, in the gazebo, in whatever city this was.

At a glance, it looked to be near sunrise, in the very early morning. Early bird hours. There were more of those crested herons at the edges of the pond, picking at insects and unlucky fish. They seemed well-adapted to city life, largely unreactive to the human presence, keeping a safe distance.

The stranger was avoiding thinking about their surroundings. It was easier to think of birds and fish.

In dreams, sleep was… sleep was a segue to a new thing. Fall asleep and suddenly you’re flying or escaping from zombies or whatever other fictional scenario your brain wanted to replicate. A second dream-day of the same dream-shit? The hope that this was all fake was dwindling fast.

Okay, the stranger would humor the alleged realness of this situation. They’d been a Scout. Okay, their brother had been a Scout and his books were fun to steal. But the stranger knew they had to find shelter first, then access to safe food and water.

They glanced at the pond. Not that water.

Overwhelmed, they looked out over the circle and the market stalls, spotting at least one diligent merchant starting their day.

The stranger rubbed their feet together awkwardly, trying to loosen the dried mud and dirt in an effort to make themselves presentable. The trousers and shirt were serviceable; they mentally catalogued the fit into the same folder as camp shirts and shorts – functional and plain, meant to blend in with everyone else.

Their face was clean of dirt too, except it now had a layer of stubble and that was an entirely foreign concept. Sure, they’d had little mustache hairs grow over time. Oh, and those really long invisible hairs that grow in odd places, like the base of their chin. But never morning stubble.

Running a hand through their short hair, they reached up to pick out what felt like leaf litter from a strand, separating the red hair from the debris.

Red?

With some shock, the stranger all but yanked a strand of their hair into the upper periphery of their vision. It was short for a girl but mid-length for a guy, they finally conceded. At least a guy of modern society. Maybe not here.

And it was, indeed, red. Dark ginger. Not copper, and not quite dark enough to be bloody. A rust color.

The stranger never subscribed to the superstitions and juvenile mockery thrown at gingers, but it was a surprising color of hair, given they’d been a brunette before.

They filed that information away for later, deciding that there was nothing to do about this until a mirror could be found. Or a polished stone.

The first point of order was figuring out where here was.

They approached the merchant, watching the woman pull colorful draped fabric to the side and pin it back like curtains, revealing the counter of the stall.

She chirped something at the stranger and waved them off. Again, it was the shape of sound, yet completely unidentifiable.

“I don’t have money, anyways.” The stranger stated awkwardly, standing at a polite distance. “Can… what city is this? Can you tell me that?”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The woman’s face wrinkled in confusion. She was probably middle aged, a little worn by the sun but not elderly. She spoke something short. Tonally, it sounded confused.

“Um,” they continued, realizing there was a language barrier. They wiggled a finger as it pointed up, trying to indicate the world around them. “Where—” They pointed downward toward their feet. “Here?”

There were a few more exchanges with zero information conveyed, each growing more frustrating than the last. The stranger gave up and left, though they couldn’t shake the pitying look the woman gave them.

She wasn’t angry. She probably had a right to be angry at some irritating foreigner asking lots of strange, unknown questions. But she wasn’t.

The pity and acceptance felt too real for the stranger. It firmly brought this out of a dream into a reality where they were totally fucked.

It… look, they were smart. That’s why they were in university. They were really smart in a lot of ways. They could figure this out with trial and error.

The stranger wandered the city for a few hours, posing questions to anyone who would spare them a glance.

No one understood them. And the stranger understood no one.

The words didn’t have language to them. If it did, then they could have parsed out that whatchamacallit meant chair, or a more realistic iteration of that. Sounds made phonemes which made syllables and then words and sentences.

This was trombone noises, like the Peanuts. It was static.

The words had tone. Upward tilts to indicate questions or concern. Downward to indicate finality. All those nuances that the stranger knew how to interpret.

But they couldn’t survive on tone alone.

After many rejections, the stranger found a pair of willing pedestrians. A thin, dark-skinned man with a staff on his back. Scholarly, given the glasses. An elven woman with green eyes in a smart-looking outfit that had to be a uniform. They were carrying bags of unidentifiable materials toward the market. The lady was chatting enthusiastically. The man listening, more subdued in nature.

The stranger waved at them and approached, launching into the hundredth explanation of the day, hoping that it might work this time.

To her credit, Stella held her ground as the tall, red-haired stranger advanced rapidly, speaking nonsense and gesturing.

She turned her head slightly, taking her eyes away from the stranger only briefly to glance at her companion. “What’s he saying?”

Her grip was tight on the materials she carried, vaguely unnerved. Beggars and vagabonds were not unheard of in the capitol, but they certainly weren’t this forward. Usually they sat near businesses and scavenged. Stella helped where could, as she wasn’t heartless. It was the perceived aggression that worried her.

“He’s not saying anything,” the mage answered, with some incredulity.

“I thought you knew all the continental languages?”

Tyrus huffed, adding his own correction. “I know seven of the nine national languages and several dialects within those. I haven’t made it to Brigavalé because it’s too cold and I’m working on Haftunga. It’s very glottal.”

He earned a pointed stare from Stella, who waited for the pedant of a mage to answer her actual query.

“He’s not saying anything because it’s not a language. I would at least know if it sounded like Haftunga or Valien. And draconic is hard to mistake for anything else.”

The stranger blinked at this discussion. Well, at least the noises were continuing in their direction. That was better than a lot of their prior attempts.

Stella shifted the weight of her parcel to her hip, turning to face Tyrus. She was no longer concerned about the threat of the foreigner, who seemed patient and mostly lost. “I don’t understand how it can’t be a language.”

The mage stared her down, going through all the stages of grief as he realized that an educational lecture wouldn’t help in this moment.

He sighed. “Try mimicking what he says.”

Odd, but fine. Stella gestured toward the foreigner, making a talking motion with her now free hand. “Say something again.”

All the stranger saw was a shadow puppet motion. They complied. “Bark bark bark? Is that it?”

The woman’s face contorted into disbelief. She couldn’t even begin to mimic the sounds. Even with animals, she could try. But there wasn’t a starting point for this stranger’s words.

“How is that possible?”

“Did I win? Was that right?” The stranger asked the pair. It was as if they hadn’t spoken.

The mage rubbed the bridge of his nose. “A curse, perhaps? I think we can rule out a linguistic explanation, so the magical remains.”

“Oh, that’s…” Stella trailed off, looking at the foreigner. They seemed hopeful and it hurt to know there was nothing she could do.

She stared at the foreigner as she thought about her options. To the stranger, this was a weirdly intimate moment of silent prolonged eye contact.

“We could help him?” She ventured, looking toward her companion with intentionally soft eyes, pleading. It was, perhaps, manipulative but Stella knew she had lovely eyes – it was the second thing people commented on, the first being her pointed ears – and she wasn’t afraid to use them.

“We could,” the man grumbled. “But we need to sell these and I’m not going to carry it all to healer and cursebreaker alike.”

He was quick to add on. “It’s not our job, regardless.”

Stella glared at him, indignant, and the mage visibly withered. “It’s not your job, adventurer Tyrus, the Wandering Scholar.”

The title was clearly not meant to be a compliment. It was a jab at how maybe an intellectual wanderer could lack sympathy since he clearly had no roots here, but not Stella.

“I didn’t mean—”

“But, as a representative of the Adventurer’s Guild, it’s my job to see that the people are taken care of. Whether that’s coordinating adventuring parties or seeing that requests are posted and completed.”

“Stella, please—”

She was not slowing her admonishment.

“And this is a citizen who has directly asked me for help. Even if I don’t understand what kind of help is needed. I plan to provide it. To try to provide it. With or without you, Wanderer.”

There was a long, regret-filled pause that even the foreigner abided by. They could tell by tone that this was an argument.

Another deep-felt sigh from Tyrus. “Can he follow along as we sell our materials first?”

A beaming smile spread across Stella’s face. “Of course! I knew you would come around. You act so aloof, but I don’t see Lizel carrying the guild’s wares.”

“She would if you flirted with her,” Tyrus stated sourly, but Stella was already addressing the foreigner.

“You’ll come with us and we will help. Can you carry this?” She held out the bag of materials. It wasn’t heavy but bulky, easy enough for the two mages to manage on their own.

The stranger took the bag without debate, although their confusion was written across their features. “Are—Am I with you now? These aren’t for me, right?”

The woman nodded, agreeing to whatever the foreigner said, and patted their upper arm, then she just… took off, walking at a brisk pace back toward the market. The stranger shared a glance with the mage guy before falling in line.