“You shouldn’t use those kinds of words.”

Hearing the words of the girl with which she once shared a body, Thea stood there, not sure if she was serious. Yet she was being stared at by a 13-ish year old like she was the child. Looking at her, she had shoulder length brown curly hair and strikingly bright blue eyes. She looked a bit thin, not quite emaciated but definitely less than an average child her age. Her skin wasn’t the same pale of the arm she had seen from time to time but a healthy beige.

Then as she was observing this little girl, she realized that the girl was completely serious and she started to laugh. At first slowly until she was floating in the air, laughing uncontrollably and holding her sides. The absurdity of her situation was finally catching up to her.

She had died, been thrown to nothing, nowhere, somehow came back in another world, sacrificed herself in order to protect a little girl, saved the life of the not so little girl, and now she was being reprimanded by the very same girl for cursing. Oh, and she was a disembodied soul.

As she managed to calm down, she looked at the girl sitting on her bed, and she decidedly did not look happy with the way she acted.

Well, you’re funny I’ll give you that.

“I don’t see why you find this funny, why you find any of this funny.”

Thea dried the tears of laughter from the corner of her eyes even though they were probably there only because she thought they were there.

Well, first of all, I see plenty of reasons for finding this funny. I died and I feel like being able to say that you are dead is pretty funny even if it’s a very specific kind of humor. Then there is the fact that souls exist. The way you and your father seem to completely brush off being attacked by a bear and then beating the shit out of said bear.

She saw the girl wanted to say something about that last sentence but continued anyway.

Oh, and being told that it’s bad to use bad words by a child probably half my age.

“Well, maybe I wouldn’t need to do that if you listened to your own parents when they teach you to talk properly…”

They did and then I learned that you don’t have to listen to every word your parents say. And in regard to curses, I’ve discovered that intent is more important than form. Anyway, it’s not what’s important, I have a lot of questions, but I feel like the first one will get me answers to some of the others. Why were you sleeping in a clearing waiting to be eaten by a bear?

The girl seemed to be conflicted between staying mad at her use of curses, answering the question, and asking the ones she clearly wanted to ask. She finally settled on asking her own.

“Shouldn’t you give your name first?”

Once more, Thea stilled but this time she thought that it was a reasonable request.

Sure, my name is Thea Sentinel, I’m from Earth.

She looked at the girl waiting for her own name, but nothing came out. She looked surprised by the fact that Thea had actually answered.

Shouldn’t you give your name?

“Is that really your name?”

What?

“I asked if Thea Sentinel is really your name.”

Well yes, I’m pretty sure it is, why are you not giving yours?

“I just find it kind of strange, after all, I’m Lyn Sentinel, from Silvermount.”

Hearing that startled Thea. She started wondering whether any of this was real given the coincidence of having two people from different worlds having the same name. Everything else was even more unbelievable but to her, this was the kind of unbelievable that didn’t make sense. The statistical kind of unbelievable and that was without taking the cultural differences between two different worlds.

Why can I understand you?

“I don’t know?”

Yeah, I guess you don’t know much either huh?

“Hey, I’m pretty sure I know more than you!”

Well, then the stage is yours oh great sage of knowledge!

“I know what sarcasm is. Whatever. The reason I was in the middle of the forest, unconscious and about to be attacked by a bear was because of you. You were sleeping like a rock. This would not have been a problem if we weren’t connected and if this connection was unable to stretch more than a certain amount. By the way, this is just a guess but are you the thing that made me sick?”

Well first of all I’m not a thing, I’m a person. And I didn’t want to make you sick, I was thrown here without being asked. Also, when you talk about not being able to stretch, are you talking about the splitting headache I had when waking up?

“Yes, the thing is that I was probably going to leave this place sometime in the future and I needed to deal with this before then.”

At least, I’m connected to someone that is smart enough to plan for the future. What is the language your father used?

“You mean the language that we are currently speaking? That’s Ardian, why?”

Huh, maybe it’s the connection that makes me able to understand you. I’m guessing that’s the language of the country Ardia? Wait, can you tell me your name again?

“Ardia is an empire, but Ardian is indeed its language. And to answer your second question, my name is Lyn Sentinel.”

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This time, Thea concentrated on the sound coming from her. She already knew that they didn’t match the words she heard but it was hard to concentrate on the difference. After a few more times of repeating, she was almost sure. While both Thea and Lyn had the same sonority whether when pronounced by Lyn or when heard by herself, the Sentinel was different, it simply had the same meaning in both languages.

By the way, I’m not talking in Ardian, I’m using English, and our connection is somehow translating things between us. Or maybe it’s sending the meaning behind the words? Which is why Ardia and Ardian are no translated while Sentinel is. The first ones don’t really have meaning beyond a name while the last one has a meaning despite being a name…

“You know, when you’re not cursing every other sentence, you’re pretty cool.”

Yeah, I guess I could have had a worse partner for the afterlife.

“Hey! I’m not dead!”

Yeah, sure whatever. Can you give me a rundown on what this world is? Make it so I’m less lost about everything?

As Lyn was about to answer, the door to the room was opened and her dad entered the room.

“Did you say something, Lyn?”

“No, nothing, I was just talking to myself.”

Although he seemed doubtful for a second, he decided to let it go.

“Your mom is coming back in about an hour, can you come and help me prepare dinner?”

“Of course! I’m coming!”

“Alright, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Thea waited until the door closed again before turning back to Lyn.

You’re supposed to help me right now, couldn’t you have said no?

“Why are you mad? We can do that later, and no, I’m not not helping my dad. Mom works hard every day, so I want to make something good for her when she comes back!”

I guess that I don’t really have anything to do or anywhere to go right now. Sure, we’ll talk later, go help your father.

Lyn seemed relieved that Thea wasn’t really mad. She got up from her bed and went to their kitchen. Thea simply followed them floating behind the two. After a while of watching them, she started to feel homesick and simply left and explored the surroundings of the house. It didn’t matter if the doors were closed anymore since she could simply go through the walls.

On one side of the house was a dirt path that led to a more used road after a while. The dirt was more packed there than on the dirt path. It seemed to lead to a mountain in the distance. She went back to the house given that she could feel the pull from her connection with Lyn.

It seems like I’m really tied down to her. I’m guessing this mountain is Silvermount.

Going back to the house, the other side was a huge forest. Even going up for a while, she didn’t see anything that looked like another edge to the forest. She did however see what looked like a city in the mountain the dirt path led to. It was nested inside of it. Like an ornament in its box.

She went back to exploring the forest. Now that she wasn’t distracted by the pain, she realized that there was a lot of life beyond the trees. Insects of all kinds littered the ground. She didn’t know if there were more numerous than in a normal forest or if being able to float without disturbing them made it easier to see them. Critters were everywhere, with some of them similar to what she knew from Earth and others completely different. Some looked like a mix of animals and others just something else.

She came back a while later and Lyn was eating with her dad and her mom. Her mom was white without any tan, she had long curly red hair and her eyes were a striking sky blue. Looking at Lyn, she realized that she had taken a lot from her father, like her hair or her face but her eyes were definitely those of her mom.

After eating, they talked about their day. Thea expected Lyn and the father to hide the bear attack but they talked about it almost immediately. And when she expected the mom to either get mad or be scared, she simply laughed and didn’t seem to take it seriously.

Once they were done Lyn finally got back to her bedroom. Thea wanted to continue asking her questions but she seemed about to fall asleep at any moment despite trying to stay awake.

We won’t be able to do anything if you’re this tired, go to sleep.

“Sorry, we can talk tomorrow.”

She didn’t even wait for a response, she fell asleep as soon as she laid down on her bed.

I guess I would be pretty tired if I got attacked by a bear. It must have been a stressful situation even though none of them seem to have thought of this as important. The name thing was weird but at the very least, with different first name, there shouldn’t be any confusion.

Finishing that thought, she decided to go to sleep and deal with her situation later, once she had more information about this new world she was in. Thankfully, she didn’t need to fold herself to sleep and simply fell asleep after a while.

Unfortunately, the following day, the main thing that she learned was that she didn’t know much. In terms of geographical knowledge, she knew the name of the empire they were in, the name of the city they were next to and the name of the world with was Eta. She had next to no historical knowledge. She only knew about her own ancestry.

Still, this was from there that came the biggest piece of information. There is an energy called Aether that exists in this world. And by using it, you could become stronger, the superhero kind of strong. In the past, her family was a big family that served as the protector of the city. They were cultivators, the name given to the people who trained in using Aether. But as more and more independent cultivators, as well as full families of them, came to the city, the beasts from the forest learned to stay away from the city and the need for the Sentinel family diminished. Some of them simply left to seek more, others just went back to a more normal life. Her dad simply continued to live next to the forest and started tending to a garden. While it wasn’t in the city, it was still close enough that they didn’t risk much.

The main reason that the little girl didn’t know much was that since she was ill, she couldn’t go to school, thankfully, a tutor was supposed to come soon and she was going to follow along to learn more about the world. She was especially interested in Aether given its supernatural abilities, but it seems like there were limitations regarding the age at which you could start using it. Even though it felt like the kind of rule put in place by adults to prevent children from doing something stupid, she wasn’t about to push her to use it and risk endangering her.

Still, she was excited, she was literally in another world. It didn’t seem like there was anything threatening any of them anymore. And she might have access to literal magic in the future.

She still felt sad that she wouldn’t be able to see the people from Earth but she couldn’t really do anything about it. She just hoped that Eric and Lyn would continue with the studio. She wasn’t really close to her own parents, not because of a feud between them but just because of life. Still, she knew they cared about her. She simply hoped it wouldn’t hit them too hard.

During the last few days, she had talked more about her old world than she had learned about this one. Lyn was fascinated by all the technology and the engineering prowess of a world that didn’t have access to Aether. The idea of a world without Aether was also an extremely hard concept to wrap her head around. It seemed that in this world, every single thing had Aether, no matter how big or small.

She also learned that time was slightly different from Earth but close enough that she could just mentally stretch the notion of Earth to match. Days felt slightly longer but were close enough, the years were shorter but again close enough. The way they divided things was different but since there was a meaning behind it, it simply transformed into Earth's way of counting time just stretched to match. To her, this proved that it was the intent that was sent through the connection since you couldn’t really translate different systems of time. You could use math to go from one to another but not translate them.

She also learned Ardian thanks to the connection. After all, it was easier to learn a language when you had a way to perfectly understand the words rather than just memorizing their meaning. She could now understand simple conversations between the family.

This night, when they went to bed, both of them were excited, after all, they would meet their new tutor the following day. They were both finally going to learn all the things they didn’t know although one was excited because she was learning about a whole new world while the other was excited because once she was done with that, she could go to the city and make new friends.