The Threshold

Thomas continued to stare up at the orb in awe.

“Woah,” he repeated, much quieter this time. He reached up to touch the orb, but every step that he moved forward, it retreated. He huffed, and sat down in the dirt. Thomas glared up at the orb.

“Well, if you’re not gonna lemme poke you, what do you want me to do?” There was a moment of silence, and then-

“Follow me.” The orb pulsated light with each word. Its voice was much older than Thomas’s-- although that wasn’t saying much, as he was 6-- and distinctly masculine, although it was slightly higher in pitch than most adult men Thomas knew.

Thomas’s eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. He hadn’t actually expected a response.

“Follow me,” the orb repeated.

Thomas continued staring at the orb, dumbfounded.

The orb sighed. “Are you going to do it, or what?”

“You can talk?”

“Actually, I’m obviously just projecting my voice into your mind by telepathy. Of course I can talk. Are all humans this dense?”

Thomas frowned. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

“Well, I’m not a very nice being. Just follow me.”

“I can’t follow strangers, dummy, ever heard of stranger danger?”

“Ah, yes, stranger danger. I can’t say we have that where I’m from, though.”

He looked up at it quizzically. “You don’t? Where are you from, then?”

“Hmm. I don’t think I should tell you, us being strangers and all. I hadn’t realized that would be an issue.”

Thomas thought for a few seconds, then responded, “Well... I guess if we were to become friends, you’d be able to tell me?”

The orb quickly flashed a brilliant yellow light. “Why, yes! What a splendid idea!”

“You talk funny.”

“As do you, child.”

There was a beat of silence. “So, Mr. Floating Circle Thing, what’s your name?”

“I can’t give you that, however-”

“Why not?”

It made a sound that resembled clearing its throat. “However, you may call me, um... Patton.”

Thomas looked at it in confusion. “But you just said you couldn’t give me your name.”

“I didn’t give you my name.”

“You’re weird. My name’s Thomas.”

The orb-- Patton-- flashed yellow again. “Lovely to meet you, Thomas. In your realm, would this make us friends now?”

“Hmm… yeah, I guess! Usually we’d have a playdate, but I’d consider us friends now! So will you tell me where you’re from?” He made puppy-dog eyes up at Patton.

“Awww… normally I’d say no, but since you’re just so cute, I’ll make an exception this time. Follow me, and I’ll show you.”

“Promise you’re not going to kidnap me?”

“Would I really kidnap you? You know me, I’ve been talking to you for the past fifteen minutes!”

“I mean, you could still kidnap me. You didn’t promise.”

This gave Patton pause. “Alright, I promise I won’t kidnap you. I’ll just abandon you in a random place in the forest, and let you wander around until you find something.”

“You’re weird.”

“So are you.”

“But you’re weirder.”

“From your point of view, maybe. But from my point of view, I’m the normal one, and you’re the weird one. Our species are very different, which I think you’ll find out soon enough. Most of you give out your names to people you just met! No offense to you, of course.” Patton sighed. “Let us get back on topic, child. Will you follow me?”

“I guess…”

“What is it now?”

Thomas pouted, but continued anyway. “My parents said not to go anywhere with people without per-shish-- uh, pruh-miss--”

“Permission?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, where are they?”

“They’re-” Thomas looked back towards the clearing where his family’s campsite was. “Somewhere over there? I dunno, I can’t see ‘em. They’re probably setting up the campfire for s’mores. They wanted to get a head start, and they’re not very good at the campfire part of it, that’s why they started now, even though it’s like an hour and a half early, and we’re gonna start at like 5. But I don’t wanna interrupt them, because I want s’mores!”

“What a shame. I don’t suppose you could just… leave for a few minutes? They might not even know you’re gone. You could be back before the campfire is set up.”

Thomas thought for a minute, then nodded. “Alright. I’ll go. But only for a few minutes, because I really like s’mores.”

“Wonderful.” The orb began glowing a brighter shade of golden-yellow. It began moving further into the dark forest, just fast enough for Thomas to trail behind it. Unbeknownst to him, a pair of softly glowing yellow eyes also followed, up in the trees. Watching.

After several minutes of walking in silence, Thomas spoke up. “Are we almost there yet? It seems awfully dark, and my parents are probably wondering where I am. I don’t wanna miss s’mores!”

“Don’t fret, child. It’s only about 4:00 in their time. Time moves differently out here. You’ll be where you need to in not too much longer.”

“Woah, it’s only four? Geez, it seems more like four a.m.!”

Patton pulled to a halt for a moment, but didn’t respond.

“...Get it? Cuz it’s super dark?”

“Yes, I got it.” The orb hesitated, but started moving again.

“Oh. Okay.”

They travelled for a few more minutes in an awkward silence.

“So… what’s your favorite color?” Thomas attempted to break the tension.

“Definitely yellow.”

“Really? Cool. I like pink. It reminds me of sunsets, and my aunt who really likes pink-- she gives me pink sugar cookies sometimes, they’re really good-- and also flowers-- ooh! Speaking of flowers, I found this really pretty pink flower back at the campsite! I got distracted, though, and I dropped it. I hope it’s still there. Hey, maybe when you bring me back, we can look for it together! That would be fun! I also-”

A sharp voice cut him off. “We’re here, child.”

“Uh… Mr. Patton? I don’t see anything special about here.”

“You can’t. A word of warning before your journey?”

That response raised several questions for Thomas, but he settled on: “What?” It was probably not the choice that would have gotten him the most information, but it did get him one important piece of advice.

“Don’t give strangers your name.”

The orb vanished.

Thomas panicked. He had no recollection of which direction he had been going, or from which way he had come. He otherwise would have known exactly where he was, but because of his terrified state of mind-- and a little bit of illusionary magic from the orb-- he just didn’t. He was hopelessly lost in the pitch black woods, without a single speck of light to guide him. No stars shone above, and most importantly, there was no glowing orb to guide him. His eyes scoured the darkness for any source of light he could find, his mind in a complete daze.

After what seemed like hours of searching in vain, Thomas’s eyes caught upon a glimmer of light to the right of him. He moved towards it, straining his eyes to see what it was.

As he moved forward, he stumbled on something. He looked down to find what he had tripped on, and saw a cluster of mushrooms. As he stared down at them in confusion, they seemed to grow brighter. He looked away from the mushrooms, and that’s when he realized that it wasn’t the mushrooms that were getting brighter. The air around him was filled with fireflies. Large blankets of them surrounded him, and there were five, ten, over a hundred of them. They appeared from seemingly nowhere, and lit up the space around him with a burning blaze of light.

Thomas’s eyes struggled to adjust to the new light. Once they did, however, he was met with a scene from a fairytale. There was a giant beech tree with golden autumn leaves about twenty feet ahead of him; a stark contrast from the dark, leafless trees contained by the rest of the forest. There were identical clusters of mushrooms to the ones he had tripped on in a nearly perfect circle around the clearing, with the beech at the head of them. Thomas was standing just within the circle. He wandered to the middle of the circle, and smiled. It was beautiful.

Thomas noticed a clump of clear, white crystals begin to form next to him, directly in the center of the circle. He reached down to touch them.

And the world flipped upside down.