There exists a realm. This realm is not actually a realm, but is more of the space between realms. However, it is still sometimes mistaken for a realm, which is why visitors named it “The Between.”
The creatures which live there are commonly perceived as gods, despite not being gods. They simply function with a different set of rules. This is why they are tasked with maintaining the realms which float about in their home.
Realms function much like bubbles. They drift around, sometimes colliding, sometimes merging, sometimes splitting in half. The barriers between The Between and the inside of the realm are also the only “physical” aspect of them in The Between. So when they pop, the barriers tend to be the only thing remaining if it’s not caught quickly enough.
And that is what happened one day. An event within one of the realms shook the barrier hard enough for it to shatter. At this point, it should be reiterated that the creatures who keep things together are not gods. They are not infallible.
The creatures managed to gather the barrier back together, and hold the realm together until the barrier was restored. The realm suffered greatly, and will probably never be the same, but it survived the ordeal.
They missed a piece of the barrier when putting it all back together. Whether through ignorance, spitefulness, or plain oversight, we’ll never know. After all, these creatures function on such alien mindsets, that we cannot deign to understand how they think.
This small piece of the barrier drifted through The Between, and eventually reached another realm. A relatively new realm, at that. Without the creatures’ direct oversight, this small barrier fragment would not merge with the realm. It instead drifted into the realm itself.
Something strange happened at this point, although it happens almost every time someone or something travels between realms. It had just never happened with something from The Between.
This small piece of the barrier had to adapt itself to the local realm’s Laws. It shifted form until it would fit in, assuming a physical form. It then continued to drift, except this time it could not escape the realm. It would drift until it was retrieved.
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Max was tired. This was nothing new, as she often struggled with insomnia, but today had been even worse. Her family had just recently moved, and she had to go to a new school. This led to the problem of trying to explain to everyone that she was only sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, and sometimes neither. This was made worse by the fact that people kept calling her a boy when she very clearly wasn’t one today.
Today had been the first day she didn’t go to school as a boy, actually. She always tried to make it easy for other people to tell what she felt like, as she knew that some people were ignorant. Hell, she was even wearing a floral dress today. If that didn’t scream, “I’m a girl,” she didn’t know what did.
Well, some boys did like dresses. And there’s nothing wrong with flowers, she reasoned. Alright, in retrospect, maybe the floral dress didn’t quite scream that she was a girl as much as it kinda whispered it. Wait, back on track.
She was tired. Her parents were both busy at work, so it fell to her to take care of the dog when she got back home. This on top of not being able to sleep the previous night, and the stress of the current day led to her current state.
She unlocked the front door, dropped her backpack, and crouched to greet her dog. Ash was a shelter dog of indeterminate breed. It had taken years to convince her parents to let her get a dog, but they eventually relented.
Ash had been a puppy at the time, barely a few months old when they got her. She was found with her litter mates by the side of the road in a trash bag, no parents in sight. With the fact that her parents were probably each a mix of different breeds, Ash wound up being a medium sized dog, with a light brown layer of fluff and droopy ears.
The ears honestly reminded her of a dachshund, but there was nothing else even resembling a dachshund, so Ash remained the mystery pup. It had been six years since.
Max grinned as Ash dashed into her chest and started violently licking her face. “Hey Ashy. Have you been good? Did you throw any parties while I was gone?” Max wasn’t asking in hopes of a response, she just always enjoyed talking to Ash. She guessed it was just part of a dog’s charm.
After Ash felt Max had been thoroughly licked, she ran off to grab a toy and run around the house with it. Max chased her around a bit, as was customary when a dog wanted to play, before she grabbed the leash to step out with Ash.
The rest of Max’s day wasn’t really anything of note. She came back in, had an extremely early dinner, turned on the tv, and then fell asleep on the couch. She had been awake for two days straight at that point, and her brain finally gave up on staying awake.
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She woke up shortly after midnight because she was getting too warm. Ash had curled up next to her chest, and she was a little space heater. She groaned, and tried to get up without disturbing her, failing miserably.
Ash noticed she was awake, stretched, and followed her as she made her way to the bathroom. After washing her hands, she checked the time and was pleasantly surprised. She had managed to sleep for almost nine hours. That was, if not a new record, certainly up there.
She figured since she was up, she’d step out with Ash before changing into pajamas and playing video games until it was time for school. It was as she was waiting while Ash peed that she saw it.
She had looked upwards to study the stars a bit. It was as she scanned the horizon that she saw a bright streak of light. It wasn’t moving as fast as you’d expect, though she’d seen a meteorite pass directly overhead before so she knew that it was an optical illusion. It was the fact that it was passing much closer overhead and the fact that it didn’t seem to be breaking up that kept her attention.
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She tracked where it was headed, and watched as it vanished behind the treeline. She debated following it, but Ash tugging on the leash pulled her back to reality. She still had a dog she had to bring back inside, and it was the middle of the night. She wasn’t going to go traipsing through the woods in the dark.
Giving up on tracking the meteorite for now, she headed back inside. It was time to game. Hopefully her brother was online, though seeing as how he lived in a completely different time zone and also had trouble sleeping, odds were high.
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Her brother was, unfortunately, not online. He probably also managed to get some sleep that night, which, on one hand, good for him. On the other hand, she was a bit miffed she didn’t get to play games with him. She stepped out with Ash one last time, before heading to school.
She somehow lived close enough that there were no buses that came by, while still living far enough away that it took almost an hour to walk to school. With the fact she liked to be a good half hour early to school, she often left home at about 5:30 in the morning, well before her parents even woke up.
She made it to school at 7:00, a good 25 minutes before the first class. She didn’t really have anything else to do, so she made her way to her first period class and sat down. This was why they made mobile games.
First period was math, but it was something she had already learned at her old school, so she kept playing games on her phone. Same with English, her second period class, although the list of books they would be reading was different, so that was something else to look forward to.
That reminded her. She should check to see if any of the stories she followed had updated. Some had, so she switched to reading instead of playing games. She kept her head down on her way to science and history, period three and four respectively. Following history was lunch, which she always packed and brought from home.
She grabbed one of the few empty tables, as she didn’t like being disturbed while eating. She had just finished getting caught up on her stories when someone sat down across from her. She glanced up to find a girl staring at her, making it pretty obvious that the newcomer wanted to - shudder - socialize.
“Hello, strange person.” Max had always found it was best to be blunt. Besides, if she could get the tone right, she might be able to convey that she didn’t want to-
“Hi! So, yesterday, I was a bit confused, which is why I didn’t approach you, but I got my thoughts in order, and I just wanted to ask, like, so, y’know, you just wake up and decide to be a different gender, and I was just wondering, uhm, how does that work? Oh, right, I’m Melody, though my friends call me Mel. Or they would, if I had any friends. I’m like you. I’m new here. So I don’t have any friends yet. But you’d be a great person to be friends with.”
At a certain point, Max had started to tune her out, but she managed to get the majority of what this stranger was saying. And she wanted to correct something.
“Look, lady, Melody, whatever. I don’t just decide to be a certain gender. I don’t just wake up and go, ‘Hm, I think I’ll be a guy today.’ No. You wake up every day as a girl, and don’t even question it. I don’t question what gender I am. I just am. It’s not even always after I wake up. I can shift in the middle of the day.”
Melody seemed a bit taken aback at first, but she quickly became introspective. Max figured she got the message across that she didn’t want to talk, and turned back to her phone. She had no sooner opened a game when Melody spoke up again.
“Huh. I never thought about it like that. So, do you dress how you feel? Does that mean you’re still a girl? Do you ever feel like neither? That seems like it’d be weird. I don’t think I could understand that.”
Max’s face didn’t betray a single thought of what she was feeling. However, internally, she was screaming. Loudly, and violently. She hated people like this. Not because they were ignorant, but, well, because they were ignorant and wanted to learn more. She couldn’t blow them off without seeming rude, and then she’d leave the other person ignorant still, which would lead to later frustration.
That didn’t really help when she actively tried to avoid social interactions. Both of her parents were extroverts, while she and her brother were violently introverted. They only really felt comfortable around each other, because they didn’t expect the other to live up to any social expectations.
Thankfully, she was saved by the bell. With a quick excuse to Melody, she scurried off to her next class, praying that would be the end of it.
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It was not. It should have been obvious, but Melody had multiple classes with Max. Thankfully, Melody seemed to dislike talking during class, so she only stared holes into the side of Max’s head. It was testing her patience.
Honestly, by the end of the day, Max managed to get away. He began the long walk home, going at a slight jog to try and outpace anyone who might be following him. Thankfully, a certain somebody was not following him home, so he made it back safely.
After greeting Ash again, he went upstairs to change into comfier clothes. He didn’t feel like wearing his current outfit anymore. A quick wardrobe change, and he was ready to face the world again.
He stepped out with Ash, and remembered the meteorite he had seen land the previous night. He didn’t have any homework yet, as it was still the first week of school, so he had an entire afternoon free.
He dropped Ash off inside before heading back out. Space was one of his passions, and he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to study an actual space rock.
He eventually reached the end of the neighborhood, leaving him to traipse through the woods. The lengths he’d go to for his passions. He kept glancing up at the sun, to make sure he was heading the right direction.
One of the useful facts he learned when he was in scouts was how to use a map and compass, along with other directional things. So it was the case where he was looking up at the sun to stay on track when his foot didn’t find purchase.
He fell down a small little crater, stopping right in front of a strange rock. It looked … unnatural. It was a solid grey color, but the longer he stared at it, the less that seemed to be accurate. It was almost every color at once, along with some other colors that he couldn’t even comprehend.
It looked like a simple cone that had different streaks of those colors spiralling up towards the tip. The streaks of colors pulsed in tune, like a heartbeat. It was mesmerising to watch.
He blinked, and it was back to being a simple grey. He blinked a bit more, but nothing else happened. Glancing up, he decided he had found the meteorite. Leaning down, he tried to pick it up
It didn’t move. He tried to dig out the surrounding dirt with his hands, trying to figure out if it had been buried and was stuck in place. He discovered that, yes, it was indeed buried. Underneath the part that was uncovered was another cone, this one facing the opposite direction. They were connected at the base, meaning it was a … bicone. That’s what it was called.
With a good portion of the bottom half uncovered, he tried to move it again, but was met with failure again. Not one to give up that easily, he kept pulling. Slowly, ever so slowly, it started to shift.
Feeling emboldened by his success, he tried lifting it up. He was met with the same resistance, though it did move upwards. As he kept trying to lift it, it slowly became easier to move. By the time he made it to the edge of the mini crater, it only felt like he was dragging it through tar.
Half an hour later, it was more like dragging it through syrup. Not the good kind of syrup, but the homemade syrup that’s runny, but still sticky. He couldn’t explain it, but he couldn’t wait to get it home.
It was so interesting.