Dear diary, I am not on earth.

Regret is such an annoying thing. The event has already happened, but you still feel bad about it happening, like how I am feeling great right now for not taking my school bag with me or how I feel regret about climbing this tree. Because it is a long way down, and climbing down is always harder than climbing up.

I try to look for a way down; I mean, I could stay up here until the plate is charged again, stay with the dwarfs for another week and then hope I come back to a better place on Earth. But as long as I can make it out of this jungle and find civilisation, I can ask someone to call my parents to; I don’t know, pick me up and send money for a plane ride. It is kind of hard to think about.

Now, how does one find civilisation? The whole improvise, adapt, overcome thing sounds good on TV, but how to go about it in practice is a bit more complicated. Well, I did bring a knife or, in this case, more a machete, but I don’t want to take my sword out of its sheet. The humidity would probably rust it like crazy. I think I am not sure if steel rusts, but I don’t want to find out.

I try climbing as far up into the tree as I can to at least get a proper vantage point, but all I see is green, well green and three solitary mountains in the distance. But no signs of civilisation anywhere. I guess my best option would be to follow the river until I reach the sea.

I sigh. I can’t even see the sea, so it is going to be a long walk. But the first food I did was spot a tree in the distance that looked like it had some kind of fruit on it. I start my climb from tree to tree. It is not as difficult as it sounds. These trees are massive, with branches as wide as a car, so it is the only thing that poses a bit of risk is jumping from the branches to the next tree.

So even the fruit is massive, well maybe not massive. I find what looks like a banana, but it is the length of my entire arms. Once I managed to open one, I found that it had a bunch of these black seeds inside. It still tastes good, though. I am a whole lot better than the fish from yesterday.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I grab some extra bananas and strap them to my back. Once I have made sure I got what I need up here, I start to climb down. Back on the ground again, I try to reorientate myself in the direction of the river. Luckily, the river did not become quieter overnight, and I could easily find my way back to it.

I follow the river downstream, being careful not to make too much noise. I don’t know much about jungles, but I'd rather not fight off a jaguar. Or whatever else prowls in a jungle. It is in this way I stumble upon something, an otter creature but a lot bigger, maybe the size of a human. I think they did say that they had big otters in the Amazon, though, so maybe. It is currently feasting on some fish and has not noticed me yet.

I stand there, weighing my options. I don’t know how dangerous they are; I could try to sneak past them. I mean, the creature either has not noticed me yet or does not see me as a threat, which is fair. I don’t plan to fight it. Suddenly, there is a loud noise from further down the river. It sounds to my untrained ear like a bunch of loud animal noises. I see the otter look in the direction of the noise as well and slink back into the river, heading towards the noise further downstream.

Sadly, that is still the direction I was going, so after a few seconds, I follow. Once I make it further downstream, I am treated to a crazy sight of more of the otter things attacking something. I want to call it an elephant, but it has two sets of tusks in addition to its long trunk. But that is not what gives me the most pause. No, that is the thirty-meter-long snake tail that is attached to the elephant's head.

“Yeah, so not Earth then.”

I don’t know how to feel about that particular piece of information. I want to go home more than anything, and the fact that the tablet did not bring me back makes me feel an amount of dread that is rather complicated to parse.

I get taken out of my musing by half of the body of an otter landing next to me. I look back at the fight the otters are losing badly. I decided that this was not my problem and I am not staying around long enough for it to become my problem. I started running past the elephant snake and further down the stream. I keep running until I am completely exhausted and need to stop.

I sit down underneath a tree eating my weird banana and trying my best to calm down. As I sat there, I started to think again: The first time was a dwarven city, and the second was a jungle. How many more would I have to go through to get home? I try my best not to cry it won’t help me in this place. What I need now is a safe place to hide until the amulet is charged and then go to the next. I can’t let a stupid forest like this get to me.