Chapter Text
It was a completely normal day, boring in its regular routine, as usual. But then the unbelievable, the evil, the insane happened...
"You can't start like that!" Nici slaps me on the wrist - which is only possible because the woman doesn't adhere to the conventions of the civilized world and throws herself lengthways across the table so that she can stretch her dark blonde fuzzy head over the laptop screen, "that sounds like crap!"
I blink and tap the keyboard without pressing any letters. "Aha, lady, what did you write?"
In response, Nici turns the corners of her mouth into the oversized grin she usually puts on when she has "forgotten" her homework for the third time in a row and wants to stop the teacher from giving her the whole thing twice. "Nothing, but it's still better than THAT!"
Her emphasis on the last word is full of disgust and she hacks at the sentence with her fingernail, dangerously close to my poor screen, to let me know what she means. Not like there are more laptops with open Word files on the table and she has to show me which one she's referring to, the whole table is empty except for my water bottle, two pens, the laptop and an open notebook.
Irritated, I roll my eyes and tilt my head, which gives me a great view of her frizzy curls wiping across my keyboard because Nici absolutely will not keep her head still. "Well then, how would you like it to be, you carrot fish?"
"Better than that," comes the reply, totally unhelpful, and Nici finally pulls her head back, revealing my three little sentences grinning at me from the screen. That's decidedly bad - And then everything I've managed to put together in half an hour. It's unbelievable how difficult it is to start something like this.
With a hiss, the doors to the common room open behind me and my remaining concentration disappears completely, prompting Nici to throw a cheap ballpoint pen at my head as a friendly reminder, which was previously lying peacefully next to me at the table. "Just write it the way it started!"
My gaze slowly returns to the screen. "It's your responsibility..."
"Go ahead, I don't care." Nici snatches the pen from the table again and sticks it between her nose and upper lip.
"I'll do it. And I'll also summarize this conversation so that everyone knows who had this stupid idea and who they should say their thank-yous."
"Absolutely fine with that, as long as you do something now."
"Do it yourself," I grumble, yet I dutifully look at the screen and delete my carefully crafted sentences to start all over again.
The product can be seen below.
Once upon a time...
... in a galaxy far, far away...
Ah, wait. Nici wants it differently. All right. Let's rewind to the day it all started - which was quite a while ago.
In fact, that long ago that I have no idea what we were doing before we ended up where we're chilling now.
The story begins sometime towards the end of the summer, after all the Middle-earth adventures that I'd actually pretty much finished writing at that point. Gradually I remember what was going on back then, and I'm making up the rest. No, i'm joking. But dialog reconstruction is so awful, you ALWAYS can't quite remember exactly what it was like...
Anyway. Let's get started. Welcome to "Help, we're switching universes!"
Still no idea where we are? Note your guesses here.
That's good, nobody has a clue, neither do we, great. As always, everything is in order.
Let's go!
"What's that supposed to mean?" Folding my arms, I give Nici an offended look. "Legolas says I'm really good at Sindarin for a human now!"*
My conversation partner looks at me with a gleeful, almost malicious smile and kicks a branch lying on the ground, but it doesn't move a bit - which could be because the term 'branch' doesn't really fit - big fat monster thingy tree would be better.
It's just before midday and Nici and I are once again beating our way through the bushes in the woods behind the house. All right, behind the residential area. And behind the fields and the river and - we're somewhere deep in the forest, no humans left, just the small path and us.It's just before midday and Nici and I are once again beating our way through the bushes in the woods behind the house. All right, behind the residential area. And behind the fields and the river and - we're somewhere deep in the forest, no humans left, just the small path and us. Considering autum is coming fast, the leaves are already starting to turn red, it's quite warm, the sun is also shining, peeking a little through the dense coniferous canopy of the forest, but almost nothing reaches us down here; dense fir and spruce trees reliably hold back the rays and provide cozy shade. Nevertheless, you can easily see the now really well-trodden, trampled down path that winds around the trees like a tipsy snake.
After all, this is no longer just a game trail that is rarely or never used by two-legged friends. We've been following it quite a while, past thick conifers, and reminisce about the bunch of idiots we fished out of the shallows of our forest some time ago. Little did we know at the time that it would turn into something really weird that almost made me die.
And what do we learn from this, dear children? Don't just take anything you find somewhere with you, especially if it's a bunch of fictional characters.
"Jojo...?"
"No," I reply, nevertheless turn to the side, where Nici had been walking fives seconds ago. She's no longer there, she's stopped, her head is stretched forward and she's tapping her finger in the air like a little woodpecker. "What do you - what are you doing?"
Tapping the air it seems, she's playing pantomime and keeps touching an invisible wall right in front of her with her
finger, which runs right through the forest and we're standing on one side of it, at least that's how she's behaving.
"Are you okay?" What in seven hells is she doing - and not even reacting, still pokes the air right in front of her nose again, highly concentrated and utterly ignoring me.
At the same moment, something flickers in the air, then circular waves spread out from Nici's fingertip, getting bigger and bigger like a spider's web suddenly building up. And then the whole thing starts to pulsate white.
I can't even get a word out, I can't scream, whirl around or reach out to touch my best friend, because at the same moment everything becomes glaringly bright, the forest around us, the ground full of pine cones and old, brown needles; everything disappears into an eye-cancerous white nothingness, leaving me blinded.
A second later, the world is dead- truly dead. No more noises. No warmth or cold. No wind gently stroking your cheek.
No more cracking twigs under your shoes.
I am floating?
There are no colors - instead, everything is just gray. Not light gray, not dark gray, something right in between.
Then, before I panic, like any halfway normal person in this situation, my consciousness kindly says goodbye.