At first, she thought it was a dream. She’d had falling stress dreams before, but hers usually involved the Renaissance Centre in Detroit. They also usually didn’t end with an abrupt bump and a stab of pain through her shoulder.

“What the hell?”

She rolled onto her good shoulder and swore until the pain became manageable. A gentle exploration revealed that her arm was probably sprained, but not broken. She pulled up her jacket and tank top and checked her ribs. They were bruised too, but that side was already hurt, and she had enough experience to know they’d heal in a week or two. The sprain was a little more concerning, but she might be able to get away with steering her bike with one arm.

Maybe I can rig a sling from my spare shirt? At least until I can get something better. But I need to get going.

She glanced up at her hammock, twenty feet above her. There was no way she was getting that down with her arm like this. She turned abruptly away and started picking her way back to the road. She had loved that hammock, but she couldn’t come back for it. And for all its magical tree-channeling serenity powers, it was just a standard parachute hammock. She could pick one up at a sporting goods store in Traverse City. She forced herself not to look back, but she could feel her regret buzzing in her chest.

Her chest also made an odd ‘Bzzzfwibzz’ noise and crackled. No. Not her chest. Her helmet, still attached to her jacket where she had left it, was making some very odd noises. She turned it around with her good arm so that she could get a look at the HUD through the front, but it was just fritzing, an odd orange-and-red aurora flickering over its surface. Actually, her whole helmet was playing host to a dancing, glimmering light show that seemed to flow around her hand and chest.

Oh. Fuck, I’ve got a concussion.

That made things truly dangerous. Driving with a concussion was not a good idea, especially with one severe enough to give her hallucinations. She’d never hallucinated from a concussion before, but she’d heard it could happen.

Her resolve was starting to crack, but she let her helmet fall back against her chest and continued her journey back to the highway. Her progress was impeded by the thick undergrowth, but she eventually found her bike on its side, with the tarp covering most of it. Seph started to wheel it one-handed back to the road. Or tried to. Wheeling anything one-handed is a challenge, and the undergrowth was *thick*. Plus, some of it seemed to have worked its way into the spokes of the wheels. It almost seemed like a root the size of her wrist had grown *through* the spokes but that was ridiculous.

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Actually, is this my bike? The tarp is ruined…

The solar tarp was shredded. It looked worn and sun-ruined in the dim light of her helmet’s aurora. Seph tried to shake the hallucination from her head and immediately regretted it when her head twinged dangerously. She steadied herself on the bike and the tattered tarp slid off the cracked and peeling paint.

The pomegranate red paint.

With gold pinstripes.

Seph ran her fingers over the flaking paint, dislodging some and getting flecks stuck to her skin, but the rough texture of rust and sharp edges of the paint confirmed that her eyes were not lying to her.

She bit back tears. Her beautiful bike. She didn’t know how it had gotten this way, but it was her only means of escape. Maybe she could get a used car somewhere?

Gotta keep my name out of any system that could be used to locate me, find someone who’ll take cash and won’t ask a lot of questions. And I can’t use any of my contacts because of course they’d rat me out. That leaves… Craigslist?

She grabbed her helmet by reflex and grimaced as it jostled her wounded right arm.

Right. Dead helmet.

Seph fished her disposable phone out of her right jacket pocket with her left hand, and sighed at the light show that she was now positive meant something interfering with her tech. When she hit the power button, the aurora flared and shattered into wisps of light that fled out into the forest. The power button did not respond again.

Great. Just fantastic. Okay it’s fine, I don’t have a bike or tech, but I still have the cash. I can still get free.

Her forced optimism lasted exactly as long as it took to open the saddlebag compartments.

Empty. It’s gone. Someone took it.

The rising dread was now a tidal wave flooding through her

Someone took it! I need that money! I can’t go back! I can’t. I can’t go back I can’t go back I can’t go back I-

It flowed over the dam of her self-control, and she tore up the bushes and ground all around, desperately hoping that her salvation had just fallen from the saddlebags when her bike fell over.

Twenty minutes later she collapsed against that same maple utterly exhausted and hopeless. She sobbed hard, tears flowing freely. Slowly, eventually, the knot of sorrow, panic, and desperation in her stomach cooled until it was a solid lump of despair. Every part of her felt heavy and when she unclipped her helmet to let it fall to the forest floor, it felt like she was trying to move through thick, cool mud.

She stared dully at the fantastic hallucinatory light show in her hands, and she sat there for what felt like days. Eventully, a thought filtered through to her that wasn’t sharp and bitter.

Something weird is going on.

She leapt on it, throwing herself into a problem so she didn’t have to think about the empty bag.

The aurora

The hammock.

The shredded tarp.

The root.

Either she was more concussed than she thought, or more time had passed than she thought.

Her father deep Scottish burr echoed in her memory.

“Persephone, if you stay in the woods after dark, the fae’ll snatch you up and you’ll come back to find us all grey and covered in wrinkles!” He had winked and wriggled his fingers at her until she giggled.

Seph put two and two together… and got seven.

I’m in faerieland.