Falling through an ocean of sleep, bubbles of fear surrounded the writer's falling body. As if paralyzed with a tightly-bound noose of fatigue around his waist, he tried his best to not surrender. The effervescence clung to him like a chemist's electrode. It fed off his longing to die.

"Anothor!"

He was already frustrated with hearing new voices every now and then. His half-closed eyes were drunk with disappointment. He had seen things he never wished to. He had survived through experiences unimaginable.

"Anothor! Are ye alright, lad?"

The need to wake up pierced his mood like a harpoon, fishing him out of the twilight depths endorsing and urging him to continue remaining in a coma.

"Ghaaaah!" he sat up straight at the very instant he regained the reins of consciousness. "Whey-where the hell did-"

The writer chugged down a drought of the wine of anger. Believing he had had enough, the writer was prepared to strike down any person or being who dared to obscure his sanity any further. With not a single petal of mercy.

"Calm down, son," a badly-aged hand gently tapped his shoulder, the skin stuck like a thin layer of glue on bones. A stench of rotting mud swam about the peach pole of an arm. Citadels of microorganisms celebrated a mass migration onto a new host's body.

An old elf man shone like a symbol of peace beside him. Grasses of sun-boiled labor were stuck to his coveralls, made of a material reminiscent of Earthly denim. A straw hat perched on the rim of his head reminded the writer of classic oriental farmers back in Asia. Two holes let his gnarly ears pass through comfortably. His nose proudly presented itself two inches away from his face, hygienic and stain-free. Boots of unknown leather sheltered his rickety feet from any predators lurking among the soil kingdoms, splattered by liquids of red, white and green.

'A farmer,' the writer easily identified.

"Ya're in safe hands now," the elf continued tapping the writer's shoulder, this time drumming it with a speed higher than before. "Sayiiiife hands, m'boy. Say... where ye be from?" the farmer's overgrown brows drooped closer over his eyes in a squint. "Sixteen hundred years me lived. And never seen the likes of ye. Oh well, I can say for sure that atleast you're not a turnip!" he broke off into a 3-second chuckle, promptly slapping the writer's shoulder in the hint of sharing a light joke. "Otherwise me wife would be already cookin' ya... possibly alive! Ha-ha-HAAAH!"

The farmer elf's hazel eyes burned a sense of discomfortable guilt into the writer's face.

"A turnip?"

The writer brushed his eyes over the surroundings. He was sitting atop a gruesomely murdered turnip, vegetable blood oozing out in puddles around him. Strangely, the pattern and placement of the dead root fruit's corpse oddly announced that the damage had been implied not from the outside, but rather, from the inner parts of the plant organ.

He lifted his hands to inspect the sticky substance covering his fingers.

Turnip juice.

"A few moments back," the farmer informed distastefully. "I was walkin' through my crop fields just like any other day. Atleast today was better than the other days. I pretty am glad to the divines that I didn't find any thieves trespassing or trampling on me lovely li'l treasures. Or that I didn't get my arse set on fire by some winged lizard. D-dragons as ye call 'em. Anyways... I be walkin' down this aisle o' crops today while the sun sipped on my sweat. Bloody greedy bastard! And ayeee... I see one of me turnips had grown overripe. I was about to pluck it off when... goodness be limed! A hume creature pops out from the flesh!"

The farmer's eyes widened with wonder as if he was narrating a campfire tale to the writer.

"I thought to myself," the farmer acted out the actions as he spoke, mirroring his anecdotes. "This is rather peculiar. Most peculiar indeed. For I've plowed seven hundred acres of land in me lifetime and harvested for over eighteen hundred seasons, but never have I seen a hume creature popping outta fruits as small as a turnip! I knew at once, it must be a sign. A sign from those ruling above the skies. That I have been blessed! Ohh... I have been blessed, goodness be limed!"

Half of the farmer's bolstered words participated for a joyride in the writer's head. Only a quarter survived. The other half landed off-track.

"I have always wanted a son!" the elf thrust his hand towards the sky. "And by the grace of the divine deities, they have granted me wish! They sent me YOU!" he pointed the same hand's index finger at the writer's nose, touching tip-to-tip. An innocent smile crawled upon the old elf's face, aided by a hurricane of delight and satisfaction accelerating surreal happiness in his mind. "They sent a hume creature rather than an elf. But ye're a young one enough. I found ye screaming like a newborn, uttering yer name. I clearly heard ye speak that ye're Anothor."

'Ah, I see. So he's another cracked nutcase,' the writer concluded to himself. He realized how surprisingly low the farmer's intelligence quotient was despite his veteran-like appearance. He sighed. 'Well, atleast he doesn't seem to have the ability to read minds, I hope. And this time I'm in my own body, at last! Let him call me whatever he prefers.'

"So... Anothor, me son," the farmer, now unofficially the writer's adoptive father, stood back on his unreliable feet and offered one of his arthritic hands for him. "Let's go head back home immediately and send word to yer mother. She'll be surprised! Also at the same time... she may kick us both outta the house. Those turnip seeds were not cheap, ye know?"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The writer silently accepted his 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳'𝘴 hand.

"Atta boy, Ano! Come, come. Let's quickly hide under covers of wood and stone before that sun unhides from the clouds!"

Hand-in-hand, they both ran off towards the horizon. Particles of loam quivered beneath their feet. Nearby plants witnessed an earth-rumbling havoc that made them pray their leaves off to be safe from harm. Smokes of humus, the spiky flavor of fresh leaves and spongy beads of pollen hovered above the well-tilled rows upon rows of neatly organized crops. The elven farmer seemed to take his profession seriously.

Tomatoes flaunted their attractive pumpkins of scarlet. Grapes dangled from vines of silvery-green maple. Cabbages and cauliflowers grazed on a buffet of nutrients from the soil. The writer wasn't proficient or knowledgeable about plants so he could only name a few of the many species of vegetable brethren that lived there in harmony.

'Seems better than death and the previous places. Although I wish he were a bit younger,' he thought, biting on a lozenge of dark humor. 'This man seems like he might die from a cardiac disease before the next time I hear a rooster's cokka-doodle-doo.'

What totally ticked in Anothor's mind was the shallow way that the old elf shrugged off the impulse to panic, even after seeing a human out of the blue. He seemed calm. A shade too relaxed, as if he had already expected This chill reaction reminded him of the flipside opposite effect typical alien movies he used to watch for his pastime back on Earth portrayed - humans calling in their military forces to exterminate or abduct any extraterrestrial being their relatively hostile eyes found.

'Maybe humanity is the only civilization to react like that,' he avoided bringing his own set of stereotypes into the conversation.

"Marveno was right! She foretold I'd be receiving both good news and bad news on this forsaken day," Anothor's new father shattered the silence, including Anothor's convoy of thoughts. "Me think that ye're the GOOD part of today. Now..." his tone dropped by a notch; the initial joy he toted faded away. "...I be wondering what could be the BAD thing to happen."

'Marveno... this name was also referenced by that elf girl,' Anothor placed a hand on his chin, distracted by his own thoughts before hearing the farmer's last sentence. 'I wonder who she is. A fortune teller? Or something more?'

Whoever Lady Marveno was, Anothor didn't approve his trust to entwine her name yet.

A swift shadow of a flying creature passed in front of Anothor and the farmer's fields of vision.

That was hardly anything prioritized compared to the issues the writer currently ranked on his mental list of queries. His mind fluctuated to-and-fro like a piston in an internal combustion engine - once thinking about what was happening around him and his mortal body, once wondering about the questions haunting his territories of thought.

The layers of clouds shadowing the sun above shifted positions. Searing heat rays darted straight at the ground and everything on it.

Anothor stopped walking.

*****

An hour later, Anothor and the aged elf farmer were spotted on the outskirts of the nearest town. Bags of weariness dangled from their heavily-scratched clothing. Their movements pronounced news of a tough battle they fought back at the agricultural haven. Every footstep was trudged out. Every breath's exhalation dense with physical exercise. What could have possibly converted their health status to such a dire condition? That, too, within a short span of time?

"I’m sorry, me dear son," the old elf coughed out words to banish the awkward silence. "Those darned crows are gonna pay for causing ye trouble."

The streets were caked with baked clay. Terracotta cottages nested within loops of road and ground. Blades of grass sneezed out fresh green scents to purify the town's atmosphere. Shrubs of flowers remained napping beneath shades provided by knightly trees and tall bushes towering over them. In the distance, a handful of multi-storeyed palace-like structures dominated the glory of the elven settlement - sparkling white domes over a low skyline shaded by green, beige and brown.

Under the warm influence of the sun, few elves were out wandering the streets.

The writer wished there were fewer.

Eyes shot arrows of curiosity at him as he continued following his 'father' back home. He couldn't blame the other elves; he felt like an exotic animal being escorted to a zoo. Pimples of mild shyness grew all over his face. Pointing his gaze at the ground, he avoided sparring with their frightfully sharper ones. Social anxiety bottled up in his spiritual mindscape without any valid reasons.

Nonetheless, the numerous minor injuries tattooed on his arms and legs shone a brighter spotlight over his position.

'This... is rather weird,' Anothor sipped on his thoughts. 'I've fought those monstrous winged pests with my bare fists. Not a single ounce of fear or worry was bothering me. Yet, here I am bathing in them, without any signs of violence aimed at me.'

Voices whispered. A couple of uneducated hands pointed.

One of them caught his ears' attention.

Jerking his head lured by the direction of that voice, for once, the writer's memory answered the call. He spotted a female elf insistently holding onto her husband's arm as they headed in the opposite stream of walkers on the current vein of a road.

'Wait... isn't that?' Anothor tilted his head in debt of remembering.

Indeed, it was, as his own ears paid witness to the proof.

"L'Esson, my cherry breeze, please! We must visit Lady Marveno to cure your mental ailments."

"S'Awira, dearest tune of my heart... I'm telling you I'm perfectly fine!" the man by the name of L'Esson replied to the same elf woman Anothor had met. "By the grace of the divines, don't believe every grain of the old crone's words. She's corrupting you!"

The farmer, the writer and the elf couple crossfaded on their paths.

L'Esson and Anothor exchanged looks.