I’m Flying! This is amazing!

Thin air whizzed past me, as though I was standing still. Of course, the blurred landscape below me proved otherwise. It was an exhilarating feeling, flying. Had I ever done it before? Or had I always been able to do it? It didn’t matter. The best part about it though? It was how the breeze played with my long, beautiful hair. It trailed all the way down to the small of my back; the dark, copper ringlets fluttered in the wind as I crested over a fantastical hillside.

I eventually slowed down to a gentle float as I settled my hair down from its high-speed venture. I looked over my dress, fawning over the beautiful lace on the hem of the skirt. The olive color went rather well with the tanned complexion of my Greek heritage. I gave a slight grin at the modest cut of the bodice, satisfaction rolling over me at how the cut framed my body.

I hovered above the hill to get a good look at the landscape that expanded infinitely before me. It was a majestic scene. Fields of endless grass with a magenta hue lay in front of me.  Off to the side was a forest that resembled a bramble thicket, but bright blue and green, and blown up to an immense scale.  Between the grassland and the forest, flowed an intricate river that traveled below me, all the way to the other side of the panoramic view, off into nothing. The river cascaded into an endless void, falling off and scattering into a hazy mist that hid whatever might lie below. Floating outcrops of land dotted the nothingness that continued onto the horizon.  Far off beyond the fields of grass lay a pinprick of a city, and yet, from this distance I could tell that it too, was of immense and complex design.

I glanced again to admire the delightful dress, noticing the cut was a little more generous than earlier. Well, nobody complained about a little cleavage, right?

I decided to head down towards the giant bramble thicket to explore. Traveling across the grasslands toward the jungle, I spotted more than a few farm houses, with tiny farmers tending to their grain.  A few of them had their heads raised, pointing to the young woman that flew over their heads.

"JJ?"

As I approached the tangle of trees, I tried to plan my route through the branches that twisted and turned. I began to weave my way through, effortlessly darting under and around the overgrowth, closer to the center of the forest.

"JJ?!"

A small clearing on the forest floor caught my attention. It felt out of place in the dense thicket, so I decided to go investigate.

"JJ! Wake up!"

-----------------

“JJ, come on!” Maya’s voice rang out sharp and clear, contrasting the fuzziness of my mind and vision. I blinked a couple times, then quickly glanced down to look at myself. It was then that reality hit me full force, like a sledgehammer to the gut. Oh… It was just a dream… Of course it was. I’d had dreams like that before, each of them were miserable to wake up to, but this one felt so real.

I glanced over at Maya, my mood in not the greatest shape, “What, what? What is it?” A painfully gravel voice came out a little too forcefully than I would have liked.  My mind was really trying to dissociate from this body, not wanting any part of it at the moment. I wanted to go back to sleep.

For a split second, Maya seemed a bit taken aback by my words, “Oh… Well, um, Katya found something!” Her face returned to a sense of urgency. “A book or something, I’m not sure. I just woke up myself.”

Memories of the night before flooded my mind. Drinking… Pool… Katya mentioning I looked cute… Driving… Being teleported by a magic circle.

Right.

I shook my head and started to move myself out of the back of the car, feeling the aches from the awkward sleeping conditions of last night. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Not good at waking up…”

“I see… well at least you aren’t hungover. Count your blessings at that,” Maya grumbled. Her hand was glued to her head as she stumbled out of the car door.

I paused. She was right. All four of them probably felt horrible right now. We need to find a source of water fast. From what I remembered from last night, we didn’t have any water whatsoever.

I clamored out after Maya, and saw Flynn and Jeremy huddled over by Katya, who was sitting on the ground leafing through the aforementioned book.

“What did you find?” I asked

Katya looked up marked with excitement, “I think this is a book with notes on what went on here! It’s got all these different circle designs in it that look kinda like what’s on the ground!”

“Cool! What does it say about them?” I peered over Jeremy’s shoulder to get a good look at it. It was well worn, and considerably thick. The patterns on the page meant nothing to me, however.

“I have absolutely no idea!” She said, with no less excitement in her voice.

Maya and I exchanged looks, then she asked, “Does it look like any language that you know of?”

That seemed to bring Katya back down a little, “Well… no, not at all. I don’t even recognize the script, it’s completely foreign in every way.”

That only reinforced the idea that we were somewhere else entirely. What Katya said before we went to bed last night shook me to my core. Another world? How do I even begin to comprehend that? Well, what’s done is done, we needed to focus on more immediate things.

“Well that’s very interesting, but I doubt it will be much use to us at the moment.” The instant I said that, I received a look of pure indignation from Katya, “I’m sure if and when we find other people, they might be able to tell us what’s in it, but for now we need to deal with more pressing matters. Like finding some water?”

That put a stop in everyone’s tracks. I saw them realize just how hungover they really were. Katya and Jeremy looked pretty tired, but Flynn and Maya did not look well at all. Flynn had his head between his knees, while Maya looked considerably paler than normal. Katya nodded solemnly, closing the book. I found them all looking at me as Jeremy asked, “How do you suppose we find some?”

Wait what? Don’t look at me! Crap, am I the only clear-headed one at the moment? Do I have to get them moving in the right direction until they start feeling better? I don’t want to have all the responsibility here! Okay... think!

“Well… I think we could split into two groups, and head in opposite directions? We’ve got two canteens so we can each take one to fill up, if either of us finds any?” That makes sense, right?

“We should probably meet back after... an hour or two? Just so we don’t go too far away and risk getting lost.”  They all nodded, Flynn seemed to want to say something, but after raising his head, he quickly went back to putting his head between his knees, not wanting to expose himself to the bright environment.

I looked out into the forest to see if there were any landmarks available. I couldn’t see much with all the trees in the way… The sun was rising over my Forerunner, so was that way East? Oh right, we have a compass. I went to grab it out of the backpack. As I did so, I eyed the car for a moment, then decided to climb up on top of it.

That helped. Standing up on the roof I got a pretty good look at our immediate surroundings. I could see a low mountain off to the… South? Other than that, nothing else seemed to stick out. Okay, well spring water usually runs down mountains, right? So, water might be that way? It’s a start at least.

Since Katya and Jeremy looked pretty okay, sending them with Flynn seemed like a good idea. Flynn and I were really the only ones with a lot of hiking experience, and while he looked like shit, I felt like he could still help them not get lost. That left Maya and I to take the other direction.

“It looks like there’s a considerable mountain range off to the south,” I said while trying to safely dismount the car. “If you two and Flynn go that way, some spring water might be running down? I’m not sure, that’s all I got.  Maya and I will go the opposite direction.  Is... uh, that cool with everyone?”  This felt very weird. I had delegated stuff to all them before at work, but this felt very different. We were all on the clock then, and it was decidedly a team effort to have things run smoothly.

Yet they all seemed receptive to the idea. Katya spoke up, “What if we run into someone? Or worse, something that might try to hurt us?”  I drew a blank at that. We had no idea what could be out there.

Jeremy spoke up, “Well, we have that hunting knife of yours. I’m pretty familiar with handling knives… I sure hope I won’t have to use it though… I’ve only carved up things that were already dead.” Adding a grim laugh that quickly faded into a worried expression.

“Cool,” Katya said. “You’ve got the stabbing handled then. I’m going to keep looking through this book while we walk.”

“Right then... Well I’m parched as hell, so I guess we’d better get going.” Flynn sighed while he got up. He squinted and scowled at the light above, then started to move in the direction I had indicated. Jeremy followed, fiddling with the knife, while Katya walked behind, still engrossed in the book she had discovered.

“Okay then,” Maya called out to them. “Bye, I guess!”

“Yeah, you too!” Flynn waved a hand without turning around.

And just like that Maya and I were standing in the camp by ourselves.

“Well, they were certainly eager to be off…” I said, a little stunned from the suddenness of their departure.

“You can say that again,” Maya murmured. She turned to me with a slight scowl of her own, “By the way, what exactly do we have for protection?”

“I— Uh…” Right, I should have thought of that, I’m really not good at this am I? “We have a... Swiss-army knife?”  I held it up after grabbing it out of the back of the car, shrugging at the obvious uselessness of the thing if we were attacked.

“Right... and I guess you’ll just file it to death then? Or will you use the scissors?”

“Hey don’t look at me! Everybody suddenly asked me what we should do! I just said what was coming to mind and everyone else decided to agree with it for some reason!” I waved my hands exasperated and frantic to defend myself. “Also, there is totally a knife on this thing! It’s in the name! Plus,” I added in a manner of fact, “We have the compass so we don’t have to worry as much about our direction.”

She gave a lovely laugh, “Hey, relax! I’m only poking fun. I’m glad that we won’t be directionally challenged.”  She then gave a look around the makeshift campsite, “We should probably lock all this up in the car though, before we head out.”

I grinned, “Yes, ma’am!” I followed the direction gladly, relieved there was something I didn’t have to make a decision about.

----------------

It had been about forty-five minutes out on our excursion. Maya was starting to look pretty worse for wear, and we hadn’t come across anything resembling liquid.  Not much had been said during the trip. We were both pretty worn out from the events of the last two days. After a while though Maya piped up,

“You know, it was pretty impressive how you took control back there. You really seemed like you knew what you were doing.”

“Really?” I looked at her with surprise. “Cause I didn’t think so, I only did what made sense. You all looked horrible, and I wasn’t about to make any excuses for myself, because I only had one drink last night. Also, anyone could’ve figured out we needed to find water if they could think straight.”

Maya looked off into the forest as she listened. Once I was finished, she looked at me with a serious expression, “It would’ve taken a lot longer for me to figure out how to find water. I don’t know what the others thought, but you were looking out for us.” Her smile appeared again, “That’s exactly what I meant with what I said last night. You’ve got a clear mind when you’re under stress. It’s exactly like how you are on the expo line. We could have a full house with tickets lined up from end to end, but you just take it one step at a time, not letting the problem overwhelm you. Not a lot of people can do that.”

I blushed furiously at the praise. “The expo line is fun, though; I like the puzzle aspect of it. And there are a ton of other things that overwhelm me, I can’t be the one who makes big decisions with the kind of anxiety attacks I have…”

She stopped and gave me a sharper look. “That’s a different problem and you know it. Yeah, you might need a little bit of self-reassurance at times, but you’re great at dealing with problems that aren’t in your head. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I suppose…” I grudgingly relented. “But there’s no way I’m going to be some kind of leader of this group, that’s too much responsibility!”

Maya giggled, “I’m not asking you to be our ‘leader’ or whatever. I’m just trying to make you realize that you were good back there. And I’m sure everyone else appreciated what you did.” She squeezed my arm, giving me that smile again that always started to make me feel weird. “Now come on! I’m fucking thirsty!” She bounded ahead giving another laugh.  Whether it was at my expense or not, I wasn’t sure.

A minute or two later she suddenly stopped, listening ahead, “Oh my gosh! I think I hear running water!”  She bounded ahead, almost reaching the end of my sight of her. “Thank the merciful creator, I hear water!!”

I was about to follow suit, until out of the corner of my eye, something began to glow. My eyes immediately tracked where the bright light had come from, but it had disappeared. Weird.

My curiosity got the better of me and I decided to just take a little detour to check it out. Maya would be gorging herself on water, so she would be fine for the moment. 

The glowing began again. This time I saw it start up, and got a better look at where it was coming from. The light emitted a strange, soft, blue hue to it, and it had originated behind a series of trees that looked like they were enclosing an area. I started to move a little quieter towards the source, hoping that I wasn’t putting myself in serious danger. 

As I approached the trees, something started to feel strange. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, but I couldn’t quite place what it was. I dared to inch closer to the source.  My body slid up against the first tree where I had seen the light. My body was feeling a little tired, but at this point I was too curious to be worried about that.

As I began to peek my head around the corner, the strange glow suddenly surged brightly.  It was then that I realized what it felt like. It was that feeling of falling into that semi-conscious state you sit in right before you were falling asleep, but I had already turned the corner.

“Oh… that can’t be… good…” I mumbled into the air as I felt the lethargy take over my whole body. I saw myself falling forward towards the ground, the light enveloping me. Everything went black as I faded into unconsciousness…

…and then suddenly I was awake again? I felt different, though, and picking myself off of the ground I was startled by an exquisite sight. The trees and plants that surrounded the grove I had entered were of strange, bright colors. Plants hovered in the air, attached to nothing, as over-sized butterflies with bizarre patterns flitted from flower to flower. I unconsciously pulled my hair back behind my ears as I took in my new surroundings.

“My, my… Well, isn’t this interesting. Where did you come from, little one?”