I came out the other side hacking my lungs out, and falling to my knees while coughing. I quickly got back up and stumbled over into my bathroom, spitting into the sink a few times and retching. I would have thrown up, but my stomach was decidedly empty.

That was one of the usual aftereffects of the gateway stasis. This body was preserved for my spirit to enter whenever I got back here, but anything unnecessary wasn’t. Which meant I came out as though my stomach had just been pumped, and as though I’d taken a very long shower. Because dirt was decidedly not preserved.

After a few more coughs and retches, I finally managed to find a passing breathing rhythm again, wheezing for the first few moments.

“Fuck me,” I said, then coughed again. “I really need to stop forgetting to hold my breath.”

Once again, I’d made the dumb mistake of taking a deep breath and not keeping it in my lungs. Instead, I tried breathing during the transition from one body to another. The feeling of breathing the portal glass always, always haunted me.

Slowly, bit by bit, I could feel it wear off, and I was finally able to take in the environment around me. My hair was a bit frazzled, and dust covered every surface, as it usually did. I’d spent, what, a month and a half on Eden?

That meant autumn was probably starting over here. No, wait, my last visit was late summer. I checked the calendar on my phone, and it was late October. Middle of autumn, then. Two months, give or take.

Right about now, the time between Eden and Neamhan was probably pretty close to one for one. Soon, during late Autumn and Winter, time would pass faster on Eden, instead. I could probably spend two months there if I decided to stay in the other world, and only miss out on January here.

Besides checking the calendar, I also saw many, many messages on my phone. The apps all told me different amounts, so, as always, I was ready for a bit of a shitshow. Despite that, I also quickly pulled out a piece of paper.

This one I’d asked to take along. It cost only a small amount of contribution, it was just a piece of paper, after all. But I took the numbers on it, hastily saved them on my phone, and sent a simple text to all of them.

“Hey, Fio here. Make sure to save my number so I can make a group chat!”

After that, I proceeded to ignore the messages from my family, connected my bluetooth headphones, threw on some music, and started cleaning a little. The regular stuff, vacuuming, making sure nothing had gone bad in the fridge, and throwing away the things that had, so on and so forth.

By the time I was done, I had also taken stock of the horribly low amount of food I had. Namely, a bit of frozen toast. And that was just about it.

A swift check of my phone confirmed that the money from Foundational Exchange had already come in. And the money for two months of rent had been deducted. I had more than enough left for normal expenses, though not enough to wreck my car or anything crazy.

With a small sigh, I took the now full bag from the vacuum, carrying it down with me as I put on a mask to avoid breathing in any of the smog. Fun. As always.

Not long later I sat in my car, braving the ride to the grocery store while singing along to songs my dad used to play when I was still a kid and he didn’t lose his license regularly. Honestly, I was unsure if he had it now. Not checking my texts did include the whole not knowing if he drunk texted me or not. And if he told me about anything.

Right now, though, my phone was on silent. Otherwise, it would probably be buzzing endlessly, since my mother liked to monitor my “last online” status. And the group chat. Marie had made it while I was vacuuming, and about half of us had joined.

It was… really about time to be honest. We’d worked as a party for, what, a year and a half, now? Maybe two?

Time was much harder to keep track of when you spent your life spread out across two whole worlds which flowed a bit differently. Some people once tried to like… “live longer” this way, by exclusively going to Eden when that would mean less time passing on this side, but the stasis out bodies were put in did not prevent them from aging.

We did age a little slower, though, because of the small amount of Qi that stuck around when we crossed from Eden to Neamhan. Or Mana or Divinity, same difference.

Regardless, instead of worrying about that, I started thinking about finding a parking spot and getting out of the car. I hadn’t bothered to take the mask off during the drive. Having just come back, it wasn’t bothering me that much yet.

A couple minutes later, I was back at home, doing some swift cooking. Just noodles with some tomato sauce and fried veggies mixed in. I spiced it, obviously, using some common herbs, basil, oregano, ishtrintar, that kinda thing. While eating, I read a bit of news from a blogger I enjoyed, talking less about traffic accidents and more about large scale issues.

They were also rather positive, talking more about things done to fix everything that was fucked about this planet, rather than everything that was fucked about this planet.

Air filtration was slowly getting better, and there was an act signed by multiple governments to more heavily sanction some of the companies that were largely responsible for all the air pollution. Large scale cleaning projects had begun in some sectors of the ocean, replanting kelps and things of that kind.

An initiative of species preservation had seen success in establishing a larger school of endangered fish by breeding, and was now releasing part of said school in the ocean, hoping they were able to further spread there.

All in all, we were still on a very messed up planet and things were probably getting worse, but at least most people were trying by now. Just not the rich people.

I sighed, after I ate, lying down on my bed. All the notifications loomed on the top of my screen, dozens upon dozens of messages. I didn’t swipe them away, I really was going to read them, just… not yet. Not now.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Instead, I opened my browser, going through a couple tabs. A good chunk of the stories I liked had updated, and I read through those. Others were still on break in between seasons. As they had been for like… half a year now.

After that, I kinda dozed off a little. Had I purposely overeaten to fall into a food coma and run away from some of my responsibilities? Maybe. But everyone had waited for two months, anyway, they could wait for a little more.

I ended up passing out.

The mental fatigue from all the adventuring, combined with the sleepiness from eating, and the comfort of a soft bed all combined into a very fun, very drowsy mix. And so I slept for a couple hours.

By the time I was up again, it was evening. Not that the grey sky outside looked much different, well, some of the grey clouds shone orange I suppose.

Finally, I also gave my body a quick check-up. The food helped. I felt good again. There was also a noticeably larger amount of Qi in it, both the golden and the mirror kind. Noticeably larger, in this case, meant enough for me to run a little fast for maybe a mile. Not too fast, though.

Maybe I could take a single step into the air. Two, if I made the platforms super small and unstable.

I almost chuckled to myself at the excitement I felt at having such a tiny stockpile of superhuman power. This was nothing compared to what I had on Eden, less than even a single percent. I doubted I could manifest a sharper edge on even a kitchen knife with this, but I still felt it. It was there, like a small proof of my growth.

Enough to probably break any world record I set out to break exactly once. I could probably even run as fast as a car. For maybe ten steps, or five.

Still, I smiled to myself at the prospect. It let me know that Eden wasn’t just some fever dream. Well, I could have figured that given the fact that I now had the others’ numbers, but still.

Thinking of that, I opened up the group chat and quickly scrolled through it. There were lots of messages, just letting me know where the others lived. And it was likely that I would receive visitors, rather than go anywhere else.

I’d met two of my party members before, after all. Marie, who lived in the same city as me. She’d visited a few times when I’d gotten the bad injury on my shoulder, updating me on the party and things. We’d gone out to eat once or twice and played a game of tennis or two. Nothing too crazy, but it was fun.

Matt lived decently nearby, about a day’s trip by car. He’d visited exactly twice. Once, we went to the cinema, then did a trip across quite a few bars. He threw up a lot. The second time was when he had a bit of a rough time and needed company. His grandmother, the kindest, most motherly figure he had in his life, had died. And so he came over, because his family didn’t want him to grieve the way he wanted to.

I made him a meal, and just listened to him talk, all evening.

My phone buzzed, stopping my reminiscence. It was from a private message from Matt.

“Cool if I crash at your place for the meeting?” he wrote.

“Sounds good.”

“Alr. We’ve been talking about the date in the group, if you find the time in your everbusy life, please grace us with an answer! :P”

“Lol. On it, boss.”

I skipped over some of the general group chat things, people saying how long it would take them, and found the timeslot. Overmorrow, four in the afternoon my time. I sent in a quick text. “Works for me”, and a thumbs up emoji at the end.

Marie answered first. “Alright, date’s set, then! We’ll meet at Eiros Park. Be there or be square! :D”

It took me a moment to pointedly ignore that she texted like a grandma, and everyone else reacted to her message with a thumbs up or a heart.

With that out of the way, I had one and a half days to kill. I looked out the evening again, at the grey clouds, then dialled up Ivan. It rang through, and I hung up before I got to the voicebox. He’d call me back if he was available.

Idly, I scrolled through contacts I still had. People from uni. Old friends I hadn't talked to in a while. I quickly sent a message to Julieta, a girl I’d gotten along well with. We’d done quite a few courses and projects together, and I’d introduced her to indoor climbing. She got good at it pretty quick, being athletic, but she also always enjoyed hanging out.

“Hey Jules! Back from a long trip. Wanna meet up?”

Until she answered, I started properly reading through the borderline spam my mom sent me. There were lots of her being normal, honestly. Stuff like that she worried about me, that “Bethany” missed me, so on and so forth. She hoped I didn’t hate Jared.

Then, as time went on, it got a little more unhinged. Pictures of her paintings came in, some pretty, some expressionistic. I didn’t quite get how a red canvas was supposed to convey her emotions to me, but that was a discussion we’d had many times before.

Eventually, there were three instances of her texting me while depressed or angry or whatever, characterized by her usually properly put together messages dissolving into a mess of typos and ramblings about how she loved me and about how I was ungrateful and she just wanted the best for me and why I never gave her the light of day and that I was cruel and unfair to her and so on and so forth.

There were about two dozen messages just today. The first few had been within minutes of my status updating to show I’d used the app today. Then they drifted further apart timewise.

“You’re back! Do you have time to meet soon?” at 12:05.

“Please respond once you see this.” at 12:08.

“I know you’re ignoring me.” at 12:09.

“Fiona, answer me this instant!” at 12:11

“I see how it is. Fine. Reply whenever you get over yourself.” at 12:15

Then, a little later.

“I apologize if I was rude. I would just like to meet.” at 14:05.

Then variations of that every couple hours. I gave a sigh and replied.

“Fell asleep. Sorry. Should have time tomorrow all day. When and where would you like to meet?” I wrote.

Before sending, I double checked my spelling. She got real huffy about a typo or two. Honestly, I would be lucky if she didn’t scoff at having “sorry” be its own sentence. Oh well, what I wouldn’t do to see Butterfly, I suppose. Then again, I did also miss mom a little.

By the time I was halfway through dad’s messages, Julie responded.

“Omg Fio!” she wrote.

“It’s been forever!”

“I’m totes down”

“Wanna meet rn?”

“Sports or a night out?”

Ding after ding she sent me her messages, the last one had a crazy-eyed emoji with its tongue out at the end. I chuckled at her antics. Usually I got annoyed at people for sending me this much, but I’d really missed how energetic Julie was.

“Hells yeah, just need to gt ready. Had a nap, gonna get some decent clothes. Baseball bar?”

“Omg YES! Haven’t been there in ages. In an hour?”

“Hour works!”

She sent me a big heart and then disappeared off the app. I chuckled again. I left quick messages for dad and Ivan, letting them know that I was back and would like to meet sometime soon. I also texted my mom that I was going out with a friend and might not be replying a lot today. But that I was still more happy to meet her anytime tomorrow; she could just pick a time and place and I’d be there.

Then my phone went back into my pocket, on silent, as it should be. I looked at myself in the mirror. I grimaced. An hour might be a bit tight.