I staggered back onto the street I originally started out on only to see a pair of them approach. One of them had bright blue scales while the other had similar dusky green scales as the first one I had seen, and so I ducked into another alleyway, hiding in the shadows as they walked on past, not sparing me another glance.

I let out a sigh of relief when it looked like they had either not noticed me - or they had noticed me but I was not something of any relevance or interest to them.

Either way, given these encounters, I did not have the courage to emerge from my hiding place from that alleyway. I stayed there, in the shadows, for what felt like an hour, though it was probably much shorter.

I had seen more lizardmen pass by, though none of them so much as glanced my way - and it was only when I saw a human that I dared to step out and go back onto that street.

They looked like they were from Southeast Asia based off their features - and if I had to hazard a guess I would’ve said that he was in his thirties. He was wearing a black robe with a red floral pattern with a red sash tied around his waist. His robe only went to slightly above his knees, and he was wearing sandals that looked like they were made of wood. His hair went down to his shoulders and was neatly combed. No one from my hometown would’ve dressed up like that.

“Hello,” I said, planting myself in his path. He stopped, surprised, but the next words I was going to say dried up in my mouth.

Up till this point I could’ve deluded myself into thinking that the lizardmen had not noticed me, and that was why I had been safe from them.

However, now, one of them walked right by us, and didn’t spare either of us a second glance.

So, that confirmed it for me that they weren’t going to try to roast me over a fire or something along those lines. Also, humans and lizardmen existed in something which resembled peaceful coexistence in this world, given how this other guy didn’t seem to find the presence of one disconcerting in the slightest.

It was the closest I’d been to one, however, with this lizardman passing by within an arm’s distance of us. I could see their facial features far more clearly and they certainly did have some humanoid features, though the thought that they resembled bipedal alligators was still my strongest impression.

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“Yes? You wanted something?” I was snapped out of my train of thought by the man asking me something.

Thank heavens he spoke the same language as me! I turned to him and saw that he was looking quite intently at my clothes which very obviously marked me as someone who didn’t belong here. “I uh, got lost here and I was wondering if you could uh, help me get back home… you see, I was at a library and then there was this door, which led here… so is there like, another door that goes… away from here… maybe?”

I tried to tell the story of how I’d arrived here in a somewhat coherent manner, but had likely failed to do so as his perplexed expression remained throughout my narration.

“So, what is the name of this place you’re from?” he asked. An entirely reasonable question.

“Earth,” I told him, and then started telling him my address before finally asking him if he had seen any magical doors that led to different places. Maybe they were quite common wherever we were?

By now, though, he had an exasperated look on his face. “Look, I don’t know- ask someone else, would you?” he said and then dashed off saying he had somewhere to be.

I tried to chase after him, but he glared at me while walking away, and that was enough to dissuade me from following him.

Oh well, he couldn’t have been the only human in this place, could he? And now that I knew I wouldn’t be hunted on site by the lizardmen, it made sense to try to look for other people.

Before that however, I tried to go back to where I thought I had come from to see if perhaps, it would magically take me back home somehow. No such luck, and no similar door to the one that I had seen before in the library appeared. It looked like my only option, assuming that I wasn’t dreaming, was to go and find someone else. I decided to try to avoid these lizardmen for now.

I still ended up passing by a few of them, though like my experiences had been up till now, none of them seemed to be in any way curious as to what or who I was.

I didn’t see anything like a car or any other motor vehicle, and there were no lampposts like you’d see at home. Some of the streets were not even made of cobblestone but were just dirt, and I didn’t see anything resembling a modern sidewalk made of pavement as I scuttled about, not even sure what it was that I was looking for.

I tried glancing at some of the signs, but they were written in a language that I did not understand whatsoever, and I didn’t see any writing even vaguely resembling English. The writing was mainly a collection of pictures, so it seemed like something like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

About twenty minutes later, I came upon what looked like a market street which was wide and flanked with small stalls on both sides. People, most of whom were lizardmen, milled about, though occasionally you would see a human. I even saw more of those large axolotls so they seemed to be popular pets here. Aside from the stalls, there were also large shops, many of which were selling what looked like manuscripts written in the same strange lettering that I had seen earlier. I saw no point in going to them.

Much like with the people, there were occasionally stalls that were run by humans. I went to one of them.