Kiah woke up on an extra cot in the back room of the house, sat up slowly and ran a hand over her face as if it could chase the stale headache away. She blinked stupidly for a minute and looked around- dark moldy room, dim light outside... Zeke and Shiva curled up on and under blankets on the floor.
Oh yeah. New dimension. Right. The last bits of yesterday came back to her, though there wasn't much to it besides her asking to sit down somewhere quiet for a while and ending up where she was now and staring at the ceiling. And now she was out of synch with everyone else. Stupid time difference. "Jetlag", Rais had called it. Whatever. She stood up slowly, tiptoed out of the room as lightly as she could- held her breath when she had to step over one of Shiva's ears. As she passed Nicol's office she peeked in through the doorknob hole to see him still sitting at his 'desk', slumped backward and sleeping right in his chair. Well that answered one question, but where was Rais?
Kiah found him curled up in a ball and sleeping on the dirt in front of the house where the porch should have been. Someone had thoughtfully laid a blanket over him. She laid down a few yards away and watched the sky go through it's sunrise colors again. She folded her arms over her chest and sneered at nothing, bitterly appreciative of the cold dirt and allowing herself to stew for a minute in how justifiably miserable she was.
Now now now, Kiah, a tantrum won't get you anywhere.
Common sense. What a pain. She raised an arm to punch the dirt in frustration, but stopped with the fist held above her in midair; the motion made the corner of the book in her backpack dig into her shoulder. She sat up and took it out, flipped through the pages, and slammed it closed immediately when she felt that she might start to tear up. Now wasn't the time, and besides, she'd get water or dirt on the pages looking at it here. Instead she sat up and held it against her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees as if protecting the precious thing from the air of this wretched place.
There wasn't time to behave like this. Home was still out there, somewhere. Maybe it would take forever. Maybe she would be a crippled old woman by the time she found a way back, or who knows, maybe she'd be an urn entrusted to someone to leave there when a way was found someday.
But so help me whatever gods you have, I'll get there. Kiah pressed her right hand on the cover of the book as if swearing in on a Bible. One way or the other. I'll get back.
And then; GAH! I'm getting dirty fingerprints all over it! She wiped the leather cover off with her shirt and lovingly slid it back into her pack. She heard a groggy snorting behind her as the rustling woke Rais up and would have said good morning, but-
"Nooo! Kiah! DON'T DO IT!" Rais pounced her from behind and did his best to hold her down with his slight frame. "ZEKE! NICOL! HELP!"
Kiah was still laying face down on the ground, blinking in shock and letting herself be pinned, as everyone rushed out the front door.
"Uh... Rais... what are you doing? I was just sitting here!"
"Wha...?" Rais paused, sat back. "You weren't going to... to hurt yourself or anything?"
"What!? No! Blazes, what're you on about now?"
Rais would have slowly eased into a vibrant blush if his fur allowed it as Nicol and Zeke stifled sleepy chuckles- Shiva, too young for restraint, was giggling so much that she actually fell onto her side and started to roll away.
"Sorry Kiah," Rais muttered while offering a shoulder to help her up. "It's just, I mean, sometimes people can't take the stress and..."
"Tisk tisk. What happened to your faith in me?" She patted him forgivingly and dusted herself off, but caught the other's impressed looks out the corner of her eye. "So, Captain Nicol, what's the plan?"
"You're certain you want to continue with our... goal?"
"Till the day I die."
Zeke whooped triumphantly and clapped Kiah on the back. "I knew you'd step up to it. I mean okay, your hair is frighteningly normal and you're not a mage or anything, but still. I can see it on you."
"Ummmmm, thanks!"
And with that Zeke was off to patrol the area, calling for Shiva to march along with him and humming what sounded like a strange little victory tune to himself. Kiah tried her best not to stare at him as he went.
Nicol stepped forward to shake Kiah's hand again, looking years younger with relief than he had the day before. "I'm so glad to see that you're all right. And since you look about ready to go tearing off on a mission, how about I give you one? It'd give you something to do with all your steam. Rais can go with you." Kiah saluted out of reflex, and he gave the gesture an odd confused look before shrugging it off and continuing. "Anything I can get you before you go?"
"I'd like a notebook if you have one to spare. I figure I should keep a journal or notes or something."
"That's no problem at all."
"But what about Rais? Is he ready to-"
Nicol interrupted and answered by pointing over Kiah's shoulder, where Rais was hopping about in cheerfully excited figure eights.
====================
A branch swung back and almost hit Kiah in the face, and she yelped as she ducked.
"Shh!"
"Oh shh yourself, Rais."
"But I wasn't saying anything..."
"Just explain to me why we're delving deeper inland through the forest where all the nasty beasts live, please? If I'm going to get eaten I think I should at least get to know why ahead of time."
"You're not going to get ea- oh, fine. Stop looking at me like that. Nicol is out of energy to power the devices he needs to use, and there's a site not too deep into the trees that used to be really rich in coal. Well, actually it's not coal at all, but it looks similar and we don't know what better to call it. But no power means no gadget to send anyone home."
"Isn't there anywhere safer to get it from? Rais? What's wrong with- oh, for crying out loud." Kiah had to stop to help a sheepish Rais untangle a whipy branch from around his curled horns. "Ugh. I can't wait to get out of here. Just you watch, I'll have missed the whole big event."
"Event?"
"Oh, just a freakish looking maniac getting into places he shouldn't be able to and slaughtering random people. That's all." She ground her teeth for a minute and then sighed, determined to iron the negativity out and work on the task at hand. Bitter sarcasm was probably inefficient.
"Well, er, you might not have to worry about that. Nicol thinks the dimensional pops sort of mess up the general schedule of Time."
A long pause passed, filled with the crunching of plants and debris underfoot.
"You mean whenever someone does get back to where they came from, they could end up in their own past or future."
"Well. That's the theory."
Given more than enough to chew on at that, Kiah shut up and focused rather on watching her step around branches and over roots. At one point she had to resist the urge to kick a very lost coffee cup, just on general principal of kicking random objects in one's path. Things had really gone wild in here, leaving the whole place feeling less stable than any of the other areas, and the trees looked to be, using our own terminology, on steroids
Finally, Rais stopped walking. "Shh!"
"I wasn't saying anything!"
"No! Just shhh!"
Since he was actually whispering now, Kiah obligingly crouched down and lowered her own voice. "What is it?"
"We're close, but I think I smell something. Wait here." He crouched low to the ground and slipped forward carefully. The sight of him so seriously locked into 'stealth mode' sobered Kiah up quickly, and she settled into a combat-ready stance. Not that she'd ever had to use any of her lesions in anything worse than practice. Finally, yards ahead, Rais stopped to look back and jerk his head at Kiah to call her over. She tiptoed alongside and knelt down to peek through the shrub he was squinting at. Yards ahead she could barely make out the form of a great big sleeping-
"Gods, what is that thing?"
"You really need to quit saying that. Who knows what it is? All kinds of animals from all kinds of worlds end up in here, and some of them crossbreed. But look at those paws."
Kiah found it difficult to focus on any one part of the... the... giant lizard-dog-thing, especially from the distance they were at. "What about them?"
"Blunt claws. I bet it can't climb." Kiah followed Rais' look upward, where the thick and twisted looking tree they were under sent thick branches out in every direction. In fact, they seemed to be taking after grapevines and reaching out to grab the branches and trunks of other trees. A complete highway for those who could use it.
"Right. It can't climb. And you can?"
"Maybe with some help..."
She wanted to sigh in exasperation, but her tactical common sense was busy mulling it over and deciding that, hey, it was a pretty clever idea. The trunk did kind of bend at an angle in the right direction, and the odd twisty bulges all over the trunk would make workable foot hand and paw holds.
It ended up being messier in practice than in theory. How the thing didn't hear them and wake up as she climbed / shoved an uncomfortable and scrambling Rais up the tree was beyond her. Once they finally made it to where the thick branches started reaching out and stopped to catch their breath, Kiah reached out a thoroughly tired and scraped arm to flick Rais in the back of the head.
"Ow!"
"Why didn't we just go around again?"
"I told you. This is a dangerous area, we'd have run into something nasty eventually, and there are fewer arboreal creatures to worry about. You said you didn't want to get eaten."
"Yeah yeah yeah. Are you sure that branch heads in the right direction?"
"Positive. Ah! Where are you going?"
Kiah stood and put one foot with some of her weight on the thick branch experimentally. "Ahead. I want to make sure this thing is wide enough for you all the way across. Can't have with any unseen slippery narrow spots tripping you and your lack of thumbs up."
It went well. Kiah had only a decent sense of balance, but it made a surprisingly wide beam and the branch's tight hold on another tree at the end kept it from swaying. The first six feet along were a piece of cake, and she stopped to look down at the sleeping creature.
"What're you doing stopping right over that thing's head?" The tone of Rais' hissing whisper was more worried plea than command. "You're almost half way across! Just keep going!"
"Don't get your tail in a knot, I'm fi-"
Neverclaimtobefine, Kiah had a second to think as an odd muffled hissing sound filtered down from above. She looked up to see- falling white? Snow! But not snow like it's supposed to fall, no, that would make too much sense. An actual snowdrift had popped in from somewhere and was falling in a short sharp shower that saw fit to land right on her. She yelped and covered her head with her arms, not wanting to get the flakes in her eyes.
I hate this place.
When it felt like the fall was coming to an end a few seconds later she lowered her arms and looked up, just in time to see a snowball bigger than her head playing grand finale. Great. With this luck, it'll be solid ice in the middle and give me a concussion. She quickly dropped to straddle the branch, held on with her knees, and reached out to catch the ball- sure enough, it was solid in the middle. But the weirdest snowfall ever was over, and the thing below still hadn't woken up, though it would probably be confused as to why it was so cold when it did. Rais quietly applauded Kiah's fast move from his perch back at the trunk.
"Nice catch!"
"Yeah, thanks, but now what do I do with it? It's loud enough to wake that thing if it falls, and I need my hands free for balance." She wiped away some of the surface frost and found that, rather than a hunk of ice, it appeared to be a frozen rock. I really do have all the best luck, don't I? It was enough to make her wonder if she really had annoyed some random local god.
"Put it in your backpack."
"The frost'll melt all over my book!"
"So wrap it in one of the bags we brought for the coal! I think one has plastic lining."
"Allright, allright, but if it messes up the leather cover of my book I'll be using your hide to replace it." She looked back and winked so he'd know she was joking, and he laughed in relief.
"Yes ma'am. Fair enough."
==================
Back at the house, Nicol in his workroom thoughtfully paced a square around a table covered in papers and an odd wirey contraption about the size and shape of an average person's forearm. Whatever 'average' was here. It looked more than anything else like a very large and very imploded remote control with the occasional odd gemstone-like bit embedded in it. Every now and then he stopped to either read or make a note; all the notebooks faced the edge of the table so they could be stopped at and checked quickly, and the movement was good for thought. An actual rut had begun to wear into the thin carpet.
Could it be that- no, I tried that. But with an adjustment like the one I made on this day- he stopped and checked another organized book, flipped hurriedly to a dated page. Yes! Maybe? If it's really so simple as this I'm going to murder myself for not having realized it sooner-
He quickly scribbled the new theory out, just in case, grabbed the device off the table and put a piece of gray-white rock in one of it's slots. It was the last piece of 'coal' he had, left behind for so long because it looked a little unstable, but it would have to do. So close! This might finally be it! He clicked the slot shut, flipped a switch- and sparks sprayed out of the coal's compartment. He sighed and shook his head.
"So much for that!" He set the device down and slammed his notebook shut in frustration. So close after all this time, his fingers on the very door, and he had to wait! Should have sent Zeke for more coal sooner, or gone myself. But an odd smell interrupted his stewing.
"What n- AH!" Some of the sparks from the power malfunction had fallen in a box of papers and failed devices, and the box itself made of ancient scraps of scavenged wood was now smoking enthusiastically. Nicol could hear the materials inside start to crackle as the sparks caught. Doing his best to stay calm and get it away from the delicate notes he grabbed the box and tried to carry it outside, but it was too heavy and there weren't any handles. By the time he had dragged it down the hallway and into the front room with the door outside beckoning, the box had started to give way, frail boards falling off from the strain and heat and spilling burning papers and sparking experiments out all over the floor.
"ZEKE! SHIVA!" Nicol darted to the door and yelled outside, but who knew if they were close enough to hear? And while he was wasting time yelling-
The notes! The device!
"ZEKE! FIRE!" Nicol tore off his jacket and tried to smother the flames in the hallway, stomping on it and yelling all the while. "ZEKE!"