Chapter 2: 2

*BAKAAAAAAW*

Her eyes suddenly shoot open at the loud sound, her body jostling awake in the same instant.

Everything is bright, too bright. Her hand flies up to shield her surprised gaze as she yelps. Feeling the sensation of a free-fall for just the briefest second, her torso falls back behind herself, her legs seemingly locked into where she is sitting, as the inside of her knees presses against some hard surface. Cold water splashes everywhere around herself. Her hands flail around in her panicked state of mind, before they find the same stone surface that she is laying on with her back. She presses herself upright, coughing and spluttering out water as she breaches the surface a second later.

A weak fist hits against her own chest as she coughs out a lungful of water, now sitting back upright on the rim of a large, stone fountain. What? Where is she? Why is it so bright?!

Her eyes scan the area around herself. It's sparsely wooded; the edge of a forest, maybe? Has she been kidnapped?! She jumps up and looks around. The fountain behind herself is the most obvious thing to look at, but it only seems vaguely familiar. Like something she might have seen in a dream once or in any old, generic park ever. But the rest of this place?

The late morning sun shines down with warm intensity through the boughs of the gently swaying, evergreen trees, each of which is moved by the supple springtide breeze. The clearing is small and surrounded by light forestation. A single dirt path leads towards the fountain that she had been sitting on the edge of. This place looks more like a shrine than a park of any sorts, thinks the girl, as she swings her arms around, getting the wet off of her pajamas. She hopes that the pink-elephants, which were printed on them, would forgive her, for getting them wet.

“Huh?”

She looks at her clothes. These aren’t her pajamas. There isn’t a single elephant to be seen anywhere, let alone a speck of pink. She is wearing a dress, no, a robe. It's an off-gray’ish almost, but not quite, white tone. It has no sleeves. Also, the wet-front is more generous and showy than anything she would ever dare to wear outside.

*BAKAAAAAAW*

Surprised again, she jumps and, now roused from her initial shock, looks at the fairly large bird that is running around the clearing, pecking at the dirt. It looks like a chicken. A chicken? Where is she? The chicken looks at her. She looks back towards it.

It nods to her.

She nods back. Wait, what?

*BAKAAAW!*

The chicken shouts and spreads its wings, charging towards her with a dangerous look in its small eyes. She screams in surprise and turns tail to run the other way as fast as she can. Her dry leather boots send a cloud of earth up and out behind herself as she sprints for her life, scrambling away from the chicken, which is hounding her with flapping wings and high-pitched clucks.

“GO AWAY! SHOO! BAD CHICKEN! BAD!” screams the girl, between surprisingly heavy feeling breaths, as she runs from the bird that doesn’t even reach her knees. The creature wildly flaps its wings as it pursues her and chases her away from the fountain. A fork builds itself in the road ahead. She hears the squawking just behind herself, likely not even five feet away, it’s close! Sweatily, wet, covered in dirt, she grabs hold of a branch and makes a sharp turn towards the left, one of her feet leaving the road for a moment. Her chest pounds, her lungs burn. She never did exercise much, or ever at all really. But was she really this out of shape?

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She knows that it's absurd to run away from a chicken, but then again, she has never been chased by anything before and its beak did look pretty sharp, after all… What if it has rabies? Can chickens get rabies? She doesn’t know and doesn’t want to find out.

Her gaze turns back towards the crossroads just behind herself for only a second, but she sees the chicken just standing there, as if not willing to cross some arbitrary line in the sand. Then, as if having lost all interest; it turns and leaves to go back. But not before flashing her a look, that if anyone ever asked her, she would swear was one of cold judgment.

The sweaty, frantically breathing girl leans forward to plant a palm against the trunk of a tree to catch her breath. She feels nauseous, winded. She knew that she was out of shape, but had no idea that it was this bad. Her head spins. But as she leans there, listening to the noise of the quiet spring day, clarity comes to her blood-rushed head and soon, so do the other sounds.

- People. Voices.

She looks to the side, down the road and her eyes go wide, as she sees the obvious sight that she had missed before, in her panic. The giant stone gate. Two large, regal statues stand near the entrance, as if guarding it. One clutching a fantastical sword; the other, a decorative spear. Their bodies are hewn of a pristine white, but time-worn, stone. The base of which is covered in overgrowth and creeping vines that apparently tried, but never quite reached their legs. Her breath leaves her and she straightens herself upright, slowly walking towards the gate, as the sun shines down brightly onto the pale, pinkish skin of her meager shoulders.

“This can’t be real…” she looks down at her hands, but they’re real. They’re not vague or foggy like they would be in a dream. She pinches her fingers against her palm and feels the slight tingle of hurt. This is real. The heat of the sun, the warmth of the kind winds, the dewy sweat on her forehead and the ache in her lungs, the clinging of the fabric to her skin, all of these are too real to deny. She looks down at herself, the robe thankfully not made of the kind of material that becomes transparent when wet. Though… she looks closer. Something is off.

Her body feels different than she is used to it being. It feels… her hands run over her upper body and shoulders - different. It feels different. Is this another world? Could it be? It has to be. She knows it. It's too obvious to deny. This is it, this is finally it!

She beams. This is the moment that her life would start, the moment that her real life could finally start. She’s surprised in a sense, but also not. She supposes that years of lurking on dark corners of the internet had made her numb to just about everything. Even something monumental like this, the concept of being taken to another world in another body, doesn’t phase her as much as it likely should. But, nonetheless. The warmth of the sun feels intoxicating. The laughter and the sounds of people, just beyond the walls, is intoxicating, they both pull her closer and closer towards the city.

The girl’s eyes shine brightly, brighter than they had shone in so many years. The sounds of marching and of the hustle and bustle of the city makes itself clearly heard to her heart and ears, emanating out from the plaza just beyond the gate. She walks towards it, but finds her pace quickening to that of a slight jog, then to a run, even if it does ache her throat to breathe this fast. This is it… This is finally going to be it!

After a whole life of nothing but being miserable, sad and lonely, this would be her chance to finally have a real life to live!

Razmatazz

*BAKAAAAAAW*

Trivia - Crossroads

In common folklore, an intersection (crossroads) represents the intersections of worlds, time, destinies or people's paths over one another. This means these are particularly strong supernatural locations, where spiritual energies are rife. Crossroads are represented in many culture’s mythos. From the Greeks, to the medieval English to the Kongo people of the Democratic republic of Congo, crossroads have strong spiritual connotations of parting ways, starting new lives, or burying that which is dead and unwanted. Uniquely, in American culture, the crossroads has become associated with demonology and the selling of one's soul. Likely because of the 20th century blues music.

Think of crossroads as man-made 'ley-lines'. They're a point of energetic convergence where the big choices are made in life

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