Chapter 2: in search of civilization...

I sighed as I looked around again wondering for what had to be the hundredth time whether or not I had gone the wrong direction. When I had been unceremoniously pushed through the wall I had found myself on the hill of some rocky outcropping that overlooked a river that carved a path through the valley below me. The first thing I had done was turn around and feel at the stone wall with my hands, just to see if I could feel the rift, or something left behind by it. As it turned out the answer had been maybe? It had felt charged, like it had some electricity running through it, just that slight vibration you get when you touch an active wire through the jacket, but as I noticed it began to fade before it was gone completely and I had my hand placed against the sun-warmed stone and nothing else.

The next thing I had done was to unpack and look at the contents of my bag, inside were as promised a map that looked like it had been drawn on what appeared to be vellum or some other leather-like material. This was good seeing as that meant it could likely shrug off some water and still be usable, but was also completely and wholly useless to me at the moment. The thing about maps was unless you knew where you were when you started looking at them you couldn't really use them. And unfortunately, I didn't know enough about the landscape around me to look at say a mountain range and definitively say I was here, or there or anywhere. For all I could know I could be smack dab in the middle of the map or off on one of the four corners.

Sighing to myself I tucked it away and looked through the rest of the things packed. In there was indeed some food and a water skin. The food looked to be some sort of hardtack bread or biscuit thing and a good amount of dried meat. Now I know most people would have complained about something like that but honestly, I was used to fare such as this, my dad and I often went hunting and this was exactly what he normally packed, bread and dried meat. Other than that there was a rolled up and tied into a bundle blanket, and a large sack of something that sounded like porcelain clicking together. I opened it and was surprised to see not gold or silver or even copper but rather what looked like polished agate coins.

Agate was also commonly called a Geode by many people, they were rocks that when split open showed that they had crystalline structures on the inside of them. Often when you sliced into one you would get these cool ridges and swirling patterns in a variety of different colors. It would seem as though instead of metal coins the people of this land found and sliced Geodes then cut coin blinks out of them and polished them into coins that ranged from the size of a penny up to ones that were roughly the size of a silver dollar. What's more, the color or number of bands didn't seem to matter in terms of the coin's denomination as it would appear as though I had the full rainbow spread of crystalline colors, but rather the size and the etching on one side likely denoted the coinage’s worth.

Each coin of a certain, rough, size as there was some variation of each one indicating handcrafting, had a symbol cut into it on one side. These geometric patterns meant nothing to me at the moment but I was assuming that would rectify itself once I had figured out the monetary system. My entire life’s accumulation of wealth lay in a depressingly small sack at the bottom of my bag, though judging by the amount that had been on that paper I still had more spending money on my person than I have ever had in my life, even after they had taken their cut. I had pulled out the bundle that was the bedding/blanket and tied it to the bottom of the pack to free up some room and packed everything back into the pack again and set off down the way into the valley that had been carved out by the river.

Logically speaking if I followed this river I would eventually find a town or at least a road of some sort. Originally that had been my plan and so I had opted for going downhill beside the stream in the hopes that I would come across either of those. Unfortunately, that had been several hours ago and I was wondering if I had picked the wrong direction. After all, it's not like they would simply drop me off in a random location on this new plane of existence, was it?

I sighed again and kept moving, the sun was high in the sky meaning it was just past noon and I knew I either needed to find a place to camp out or I needed to find a town or something in a few hours' time. If I was to camp out then it was best if I started making the camp ready as soon as possible. Unlike in movies or videogames setting up a camp could take half a day if you were doing it from scratch and that was if you had all the supplies you needed to make one. Me, well all I had was a knife, sure it was a pretty big and rugged knife, clocking in at five inches in the blade alone, but it was no saw, or hatchet, or any of the other myriad of tools often used in setting up a camp. And that was just the setting up of the camp, to say nothing of the actual starting of a fire. A task made significantly harder by the fact that they hadn't given me anything by which to actually make a spark in order to start it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

At least I had the river for water, so it was not like I was going to run out of that anytime soon. A lot of people thought it wasn't good to drink water from a stream or a lake, and while there were a few things you could get from them the pros always far outweigh the cons. Always. If you ever find yourself in a survival situation, drink the water, even if it is lake water, which is much more likely to get you sick. The reason being that the dehydration will kill you much quicker than anything you ingest that is in the water. Normally there is no issue with the water, but on one of those occasions that you do get something it will likely be a pretty bad case of Diarrhea, and that isn't going to even hit you until a week or two after you drink the water. Personally, I would drink the water now and worry about the perfuse Diarrhea later, if I even get it.

This is exactly what I did, as I crouched down the neck of the waterskin in the small mountain-fed river I thought about my situation. Honestly, my father coming from another world or plane of existence or whatever made a lot of sense. My father had always been, different, I had once heard him be described as an old soul and that was about as accurate as it got. He had stood at five-foot foot eight, and while not as tall as my six foot two he had never been described as a small man, I had heard him called a mountain man or Viking more than once, what with his blue eyes and platinum blond hair that he kept long and often braided and the beard, well all that and the fact that he had been built like a tank. I personally was a little slimmer, not small by any means and I had a good amount of muscle mass, one couldn't avoid building it when living and working with my father after all, but my hair was a strawberry blond, and cut relatively short, as was the beard I was sporting he always said I got that from my mother, the hair color that is, not the beard.

He had built the house I had grown up in the mountains of Montana, just outside of the city of Darby, which was a small town in the Bitterroot Mountains with a population of about 900 or so. He had made a good living and provided for me by cutting and selling firewood. He had done this, despite having more than enough money to actually purchase a chainsaw with nothing but a felling axe and a splitting axe. I remembered asking him once why he didn't buy one and he had simply smiled and said that he liked to feel the trees when he fell them.

He hadn't owned a car, but he had a mammoth donkey that went by the name of Jack that had pulled around a wagon that was often loaded down with firewood that my dad had felled and split. Water was brought into the house via the stream that flowed into a pipe and into a series of tanks he had built, so we had running water but up until I was ten or so we had no actual electricity. Now, a lot of people might find it hard to imagine a life without things like a fridge or an electric stove, or hell a T.V. or cellphone, but it wasn't bad at all, rather relaxing in fact. When I was ten he had paid to get electricity run to the house and had purchased a single T.V. on which he often would watch sports or boxing. But other than that the house was lit during the day with the sun and when it went down it was time for bed, so no need for lightbulbs right?

To make sure I got to school every day I had always caught a ride with the neighbors, they lived almost a mile away and their son James was about the same age as me, so I had been walked there by my father every morning and back after school until I had gotten old enough to walk myself to and from the Miller’s house.

My father had raised me alone after my mother had died in childbirth with me and had never remarried. I am pretty sure he had never even dated again, though I do remember a few women who had come to inquire about wood and had erm, stayed for a tad bit longer than had been necessary. Knowing now what I do it all made so much more sense, it must have been hard on him. Leaving his world and starting a new life with mom out of literally nothing, only to lose her so quickly after having arrived?

The waterskin I put thoughts like that out of my head and stood back up looking at my surroundings. I decided to go on a few more miles before I started setting up camp, who knows I might find some signs of civilization just over the next ridge or something…