Chapter 3: Chapter THREE

A few hours later, Mia woke up again, this time feeling better. She slowly stretched, yawning, and began to scan the room she was in, something she hadn't had the chance to do the previous time she woke up. It was relatively cramped and had a bed, a small chest of drawers, a window, a wooden wardrobe, and two doors. One had to be the exit and the other... She got up to find out.

It was a small bathroom containing a kind of marble sink and a wooden toilet, as well as a cupboard containing the necessary for a quick wash: soap, washcloths, a wicker toothbrush, minty toothpaste, and towels. There was neither a shower nor a bath to wash oneself.

The layout reminded her of the tiny attic apartments of Parisian students or the dormitories with their communal showers that she had been lucky enough to avoid. Mia's family wasn't rich by any means, but they were upper middle class, allowing their daughter to live in her own apartment. And so much the better, since she didn't particularly like community life. She appreciated more the freedom of action and choice that living alone offered.

The furniture resembled that of her world, except that it seemed to date from an older style than she was used to seeing. There was nevertheless all the comfort necessary for a young woman accustomed to living in her twenty-first century, except for the shower which was probably to be shared. Nothing particularly alarming so far. After all, fashion changed from one society or era to another.

When Mia was about to go back to bed after visiting her quarters, for lack of anything better to do, someone knocked on the door and entered the room before the blonde even answered. She thus invited the person to enter her bedroom, which she hoped would be temporary.

"Good, you're awake!" Lily called enthusiastically.

"Perfect. So, we can start" spoke an unknown male voice.

The newcomer was a man in his thirties. A very handsome man, with long blond hair, a porcelain complexion, white teeth, and red irises. Red? At least he had no wings.

Compared to the fairy, it seems almost perfectly normal, she thought, laughing mentally.

Perhaps he was a patient with an unusual disease that made his eyes scarlet. Or maybe it was just someone who liked to wear colored contact lenses.

"Please sit down," he said, waving his hand at the bed, which she quickly did. "Good. Let's start with the introductions. My name is Vassili More. I am a professor of History and Anthropology here at the Arena, to put it simply."

He paused for Mia to introduce herself. Two seconds passed before she understood what he expected of her. Her ability to think was still relatively impaired by the surrealism and incomprehension of this situation.

"Mia Bayer, uh... classics student," she hesitated.

"Mia, what I'm about to explain to you is going to sound a little... unbelievable, so hold on tight."

It didn't bode well. The blonde put her hands firmly on the mattress, a little stressed by the prospect of these revelations. If it was a prank, they were all very good actors. Her interlocutors seemed far too serious for it to be a simple reality TV scenario.

She nodded, however, signaling him to continue the conversation.

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"First of all, tell us a bit about what happened to make you arrive in such a state."

She honestly didn't want to dwell on the booze part that led to her downfall, though she would feel capable to laugh about it now that she made it out alive. Besides, it was something they already knew.

"We were having a little party on the roof of a building with my friends. At one point, my phone fell, and... let's say I fell with it. There must have been four or five floors. I should have busted my head on asphalt, but I landed in the grass, in the middle of the day. I feel like I dreamed of this moment, it just makes no sense..."

The more I go since I woke up, the less everything makes sense anyway, she told herself.

"You weren't dreaming. You went through a portal, a sort of bridge between our two worlds. No one really knows what they are, and they appear completely randomly. It's pretty rare, mostly because we don't know where they are. They can appear anywhere, in your world or in ours."

The prank was starting to go a little too far for it to be even remotely believable. She was not ignorant of the adage "the bigger the better", but this man's explanations were simply pure fantasy. The film director who thought someone would swallow this kind of wacky narrative should seriously reconsider his career.

"I'm afraid I'm not quite following you there... Your world?"

"Istarea is a bit like what you would call Wonderland. Except that the word "world" would be more appropriate. It's complicated to explain to you in detail since we don't know exactly how different our worlds are. Here we live by magic. It is impregnated in the depths of our genes. Mere humans have disappeared for quite some time now. Vampires, centaurs, werewolves, fairies... do these words sound familiar to you?"

A small "yes" crossed the blonde's lips, no louder than a whisper. It was a bit too much for her. The hidden camera theory no longer held water. The wings, the glowing irises, the absence of pain after such a fall... These were all elements that gently pushed her to think that they were telling the truth.

All these fictions of heroines who fall in their favorite book or in a parallel universe came back to her mind. It was just stories... right? Magic and vampires and werewolves, really? Where the fuck was she?

She really didn't know how to react. Her brain was registering the hard evidence that presented itself to her but just couldn't accept it as reality. She half-expected a woman dressed as a queen of hearts to come into the room to join the little party.

Or, given the absurdity of her fall, maybe they had really decided that her place was in a psychiatric hospital and it was all just a test to see if she was still in her right mind and didn't go entirely crazy... This hypothesis seemed pretty unlikely since it would have been too expensive a test for a simple patient like her, although slightly more rational than what the man in front of her was explaining.

Perhaps she was trapped in those famous comas that seemed as real as life itself while her badly injured body laid lifeless in a hospital bed, hooked up to all sorts of machines that kept her alive? Yet everything seemed extremely real to her, and she found none of the typical signs that she was dreaming, such as a sixth finger on each hand or the glaring lack of detail in her surroundings.

Mia could feel the migraine creeping in as she racked her brain trying to figure out what was happening to her. She winced as her head slowly seemed about to explode, then resigned herself to just listening to what was being explained to her and not trying too hard to analyze things just yet. Either way, neither theory held water.

Play along Mia, she told herself. We'll see what happens.

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