#ritidia

For a while I couldn’t get a word out of my mouth. What? How could that be? It was impossible! ”That has to be an exaggeration, someone wants to frame them!” The report had to be written by some anti-kini arsehole! Someone wanted to look bad, no, horrible, to justify some new law that would finally allow humans to kill kinis! That report was nothing but lies all the way through! Once I went to the scene everything would be settled, the whole thing would be revealed as the frame job it was! ”I’m going there to set this straight!” I declared and got up. Ritidia grabbed my arm before I got out the door, eyes tired and wet. ”It’s best to wait a few days, the kinis are still agitated.” ”But -” I started, and quieted. I didn’t know how to continue. It was true that the kinis could get a little aggressive, but not like this. How could anyone believe they would do something like this? I sat back down, numb with despair. How was I going to continue my job? The people already disliked me, and they believed any hateful lie told about the kinis. I could show them as much evidence to the contrary as I wanted, they would never side with me. Not even Ritidia. I thought of Jotiri. His family lived in one of the farms nearest to the forest. ”Does the report tell the victims’ names?” Ritidia handed me the lying paper. Survivors: Afra, Aulu, Takaho, Denasi, Geauda, Kera, Jessi, Umin, and Nemin. Wounded: Aejon and Riio. Dead:  Adi, Piikon, Bellekrig, Daslej, Sessan, Sukara, Teriminka, Karmin, Kaoratsil, Hana, Heiratsil, Hitagi, Nef, Ubume, and Ruimin. Oh, Jotiri… How could I ever tell him? How could I ever ask him to take me to the border again? His whole family… Where was he? I knew he was at the palace, because I was meant to have a meeting with Joyjaa in the afternoon. The report had come in later than him. ”Find Jotiri for me”, I pleaded Ritidia. She found him Kika’s room. He had already been told. He was crying against Famfara’s chest. Ritidia must have told her, and as his friend, she had broken the news and offered a shoulder. Jotiri didn’t even acknowledge me, and Famfara waved me to leave. She was right, I was the last person he wanted to see right then. Once he recovered, he would likely resign. In his eyes, I had caused the tragedy because I didn’t keep the kinis in a tight iron leash. He would hit me just for suggesting that maybe something about the report wasn’t the gospel truth.

I was right. Jotiri handed in his letter of resignation the same evening. The next day I borrowed Kitiri from Kinati, and declared I would go to the forest. Ritidia saw I wouldn’t back down no matter how many warnings she threw my way, and called Famfara so they could both accompany and shield me. On the way she called for Joyjaa, who never let her know whether he would be seeing us or not. We first toured the farms, which to my disbelief had been thrashed just the way the report had said. All the bodies had been cleared away, but little had been done about the blood. When we got to the forest’s edge, I felt sick enough to throw up, but also furious. Even if the report had been exaggerated, most of it was true – 15 dead! Joyjaa was already waiting for us, leaning casually against a tree with a bored expression, braiding his hair. Ritidia spoke to him a freezingly polite tone and round-about words. ”Our greeting. We are the first tunasa Rititia and her entourage, second tunasa Ritidia, and our bodyguards. We humbly ask for audience with the ruler of the kini people.” ”Here he is, I suppose. What are the ladies after?” Kitiri gasped at the informal language directed at the royal family, but Famfara quietly reminded her to stay calm. ”The farms near the border of the forest were attacked the previous night. Livestock and buildings have been laid to waste, and humans have been killed. We have come to investigate the matter.” Joyjaa rolled his eyes at the formal wording. ”So go ahead.” ”We have investigated the farms that were attacked and interviewed some of the survivors, and would like to know whether a member of the kini people might have heard about, or witnessed, some of the events of that night, and if so, would like to speak with them to assure an impartial evaluation of the matter.” ”I did. Whatever you’ve heard about it is probably true.” I stood there stunned in silence, and even Ritidia didn’t know how to react to such a blunt confession of mass murder. Joyjaa dug dirt from under his fingernails, utterly unaffected by everything. ”...would you mind elaborating?” I finally asked, hoping in vain to hear something to wake me from this nightmare. ”On that particular night in question a most dreadful event took place-” Joyjaa said, mocking Ritidia’s formal speech, ”-where one of the farmers was about to blow out Klovi’s brain. We answered to the fire. The border was not crossed, so you skip along home now.” ”Skip along – you just confessed to 15 murders! We can’t exactly let that be!” ”The border was not crossed, so you can. The treaty wasn’t violated.” ”15 murders!” I repeated to the maniac. ”How is that not a violation of the treaty?!” ”Looks like the ambassador isn’t up on her duties. The treaty only says that no one is allowed to cross the border, nothing else. So it was not violated.” Helpless, I looked to Ritidia, who nodded her head in shame. ”Everything else is unspoken rules. In theory, nothing stops anyone from killing anyone.” This could not be true. This was the stupidest, least thought out, rushed, unfair and generally the worst treaty in the history of the multiverse! What kind of treaty doesn’t forbid mass murder? Once I died, I would search out the makers of this so called treaty in the afterlife and personally strangle them to second death with my bare hands! I’d borrow a cannon from the army and – wait, there was a thought. The kinis didn’t have firearms, so they had to get up close and personal to kill. ”You burned four farms to the ground, pray tell me how you managed that without setting foot outside the forest?” Ha! Squirm your way out of this one, Joyjaa! That would prove they had crossed the border and we could bring them to court! But… he only scoffed and pointed to the closest half-standing barn, half a kilometre away down the distant slope, which spontaneously caught on fire. The he did the same to our buggy. Our conversation ended there.

Later Ritidia explained that the treaty had been prepared in extreme hurry and it really did only say that no kini or human was allowed to cross the edge of the forest. These murder sprees happened with regrettable frequency, which wasn’t saying much because in my opinion any frequency was regrettable! The humans couldn’t touch the murderers because the kinis’ strong magic allowed them to hit from afar, so they never needed to cross the border when they felt like payback was in order. That was why most of the farms were deserted, and the government had resorted to paying a substantial compensation as incentive to populate one of the most fertile territories in the country.

--

Asahana brought some more clothes to fill my drawer, including my own shirt and jeans. They seemed more appropriate for my plan, so I put them on.

“I’m not Rititia”, I reminded Asahana. I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia I’m not Rititia.

Maybe he wasn’t a telepath after all, he looked just the same as always. Or maybe he was just so obsessed with me it didn’t matter to him either way. Cripes, what a creep!

Yeah, he couldn’t be a telepath, no reaction of any sort to that. It must have been Ritidia, maybe she could send thoughts to other people’s heads like that dickhead and his pet. But clearly she couldn’t read minds like they could, otherwise she would have known on the spot I wasn’t her sister.

Speaking of her, she was very excited about something today. In addition to her usual happy babble she clapped her hands a lot and did little jumps on the way to breakfast. Her little brother was also cheery – and had his hair on milkmaid braids. Well, I had already seen male servants and the master of the house in dresses, clearly their idea of masculine and feminine wasn’t the same as mine.

Alele and Suni were early birds, or maybe just always hungry, since they always seemed to be at the table before anyone else. This morning they looked like they had pulled an all-nighter. Alele had even done her own hair, apparently, that single sloppy braid would’ve gotten her hairdresser fired. It was the first time I saw her hair down, and was surprised to see it was a bit shorter than Ritidia’s. With her proud displaying of it I thought it would have been victorian.

Ugh, don’t get lost in thought! You were here to tell her you weren’t her dead daughter!

“Pa Rititia”, I said to her and shaking my head vigorously. “Ko Mimi”, and enthusiastic nodding. It wasn’t very eloquent, all I knew how to say was “no” and “yes”. But at least she understood something was wrong, even if she didn’t fully get what it was. I patted my chest and repeated “Pa Rititia”, shaking my head. I tried hard to ignore Suni who again looked ready to burst into tears, and keep my attention solely on Alele.

“Ko Rititia”, she insisted, and that was final. She wouldn’t hear any more of my objections, and gestured me to sit down. I protested a few more times, but she was relentless and started looking worryingly much like her husband. I wanted spare her the embarrassment of having others see her cry, since it was so important to her she look poised at all times. Ritidia whispered comforting things to me, even Kinati looked worried for me. Everything was all right. There was no need to worry about anything.

That could only have been Ritidia. I sure didn’t feel like everything would be fine, despite what my brain said. This family had fake-gained a family member, but mine had real-lost one. My friends would never see me again. No one on my planet would ever know where I had gone. They wouldn’t know why I had gone. They’d interrogate Claire about my secret boyfriends and ask Heidi about the time I said I wanted to run away from home because Marie had been a little shit and broken my phone. Maybe after a while even they would believe I had run off with some guy I met on the internet. The one thing no one would ever have the imagination to suspect was that I had been spirited away to another dimension and was impersonating a dead girl. What an unbelievable predicament, this just couldn’t be real. I had to be in some kind of lucid coma dream. Maybe I had slipped and banged my head on a rock. The brain damage was too severe, I would never wake up. They’d pull the plug any minute now.

In the afternoon I felt calm enough to do some studying. I was never good at school, but I liked it alright. If nothing else the brain work let me concentrate on something other than my own misery. I went over my little dictionary, practised the alphabet some more, doodled a few more pictures. Stared brainlessly out the window. Noticed a buggy coming to the courtyard, and an elderly couple climbing out. The whole family was there to receive them. Suni parents. There was lots of hugging.

More family coming home.

The word for family was “itoa”. Ritidia had told me while introducing Suni’s parents. She had brought out an extensive and artistic family tree, and traced her lineage up to them. Her grandmother’s name was Sareleila Rini, the grandfather’s name was Tatela Siuen. I remember thinking that it was a little difficult to tell which parent was which, but mostly I was so overcome with loneliness and  envy I just thought about my own family. Only two of my own grandparents still lived, mum’s mum died of post-partum infection five days after my mother’s birth, and dad’s mum died of a heart attack five years ago. I had three cousins, all under 20 years of age. All from dad’s side, of course – I was my mother’s only child. Far as we knew, anyway. We didn’t want to think about it, who’d want to think about it, but who’s to say she didn’t have more babies in her acid-fueled state of mind and just throw them out in to the forest? Who’s to say the reason the bear hung out at the cottage wasn’t that it had learned the hut was a good source of easy meat?

Suni’s parents were more posh than he was, but they weren’t on Alele’s level. They could see I wasn’t having the time of my life and retreated to their room. For a while I hoped Ritidia would also piss off, but after a while I found her presence just a bit comforting. She taught me more family words, and listened when I told her about my own family – not that she understood, but it felt like she did, on some level. I told her about my own una, Marie, that she was a horrible brat but also bloody funny. She drew these dadaist stick-figure comics that mum and dad never understood, because understanding wasn’t the point. Mum, me, had a bad una who got into drugs at fifteen, was kicked out at eighteen, and lived in shanty towns and homeless shelters for six years, then “built” a “hut”, that is to say “gathered some garbage and stacked them to a crude approximation of shelter”, in a forest. That’s where I was born. They said I must have only been a few months old when that bear killed my mother, and if it had been winter I would have died from exposure. A hiker had heard me crying and called the cops. And as so often happens when someone dies, everyone suddenly hoped they had treated her better and had always wanted to support her – so mum adopted me and named me after her sister’s childhood nickname. Madeline and Patricia – Mimi and Pats.

I fully expected to cry again, but Ritidia helped me through it. She shared some stories of her own family – she had the most to tell about her paternal cousins, sesetunas. Heliko and Alima’s eldest, Ailasou, lived in the third wing. Ailasou’s younger sibling, Hoibon, had the first occupied room from Ritidia’s. Uli was also apparently an interesting case, as Ritidia talked about them for a solid ten minutes.

As the names went on, I noticed that none of the spouses shared their last name. Some had no surname at all. Suni was a Rini, as most of the people in the manor, and married to a Niasa. However, his sibling Heliko Rini had married Alima - just Alima. And Kee Rini had married Sato. It wasn’t laziness, this family tree was a work of art, and it wasn’t lack of space, if there was enough space to write Umalartuna Lustaro there was space for Sato Whatever.

Alele and her kids were the only Niasas in the manor. It started to look like Suni really was the heir. Made you question just how much more rich and powerful the Niasas were since his kids had inherited the mother’s name. I tried to ask about this by saying “Niasa” and gesturing vaguely at the painted family tree. Ritidia was smart, I had to give her that – she immediately took me to the library, where she dug out a living room wall-sized painting. Being paper, it rolled up nicely to save some space, but it was still taller than us. This one went back to Ritidia’s great-great-great grandparents, and had so many branches that following them got confusing. First off, the name Niasa had only been introduced to the the family three generations ago – and then there was someone who’s first name was Niasa, when their other parent’s surname was Niasa.

I told Ritidia my surname was Willow, but their alphabet didn’t have W. So I used the Latin alphabet. She was very interested, asked me to write her name, and then revealed she had a middle name – Jaslak. Her siblings’ full names were Rititia Nupuri Niasa and Kinati Geauda Niasa. Alele Umlie Niasa had a nice rhythm to it, as did Suni Tsejanna Rini. Much better than Mimi Agatha Willow. And I didn’t even have a relative named Agatha! There was no reason to make me sound that old! Marie hadn’t gotten off much better, her full name was Virginia Marie. Who gives their kid a religious pun for a name? My parents are crap at naming. Marie had tried to go by Ginny for all of elemantary school, but for some reason Marie stuck.

I tried to convey nickname to Ritidia through some gestures and examples, so it was no wonder she didn’t understand. Then I wrote some examples on the paper. She still might not have been exactly on the map, but she did shorten Ritidia to Dia. Not many names in her family could be shortened, but when they could, they didn’t differ from the root – Asatair just became Asa or Tair, and Tolekirara became Toleki. No Richard-to-Dicks in this language. The weird thing was that many of the longer names, such as Beruhon, could not be shortened at all.

I was trying to ask about her maternal aunts and uncles, fonas, when she informed that her sesetuna, cousin, and their parent had come home – by suddenly piping up “Sesetuna u me sias!”. I let myself be dragged outside to receive them alongside the rest of the family, Suni’s parents included. Their knees were in great shape, two sets of stairs and they weren’t even out of breath. They smiled at me quietly.

It wasn’t just one cousin and one parent coming home, it was both Kee and Sato and all three of their kids- – Hamaoben, Uli and Lieha. So far Suni’s brother Kee was the only unmistakeably masculine man – he had a goatee and a jawline like Superman. His wife, Sato, turned out to be his husband. Glad to see this country was pretty progressive, not only were they married and recognized as a couple in the family tree, they also had adopted three kids, who were registered into the family tree as their own.

I wasn’t quite as glad about the sudden interest in me. Once Ritidia had introduced me, Uli squeed and tried to hug me with the same enthusiasm as Ritidia had when she first saw me. Rititia must have been incredibly loved to get this greeting after disappearing for God knows how many years. Uli’s enormous earrings clinked softly with each look he threw my way. He went beyond effeminate – valley girl mannerisms aside, he openly wore girly jewellery, flowers in his bun and frilly dresses, and probably lipstick, no one has that kind of pink naturally. He didn’t necessarily look bad – just weird since he was so clearly a young boy, 14 at the most. His sisters weren’t even half as feminine. And that’s saying something, considering their neatly braided hairdos and flowy dresses. Of the whole family, Sato was the only one to wear trousers. Note that it didn’t mean he wasn’t also wearing flowers.

Unlike Suni’s parents, this family had some luggage with them and went to unpack. Ritidia urged me to change into the cream dress. I had been done for only a minute when the next batch of family returned home – this time it was Temaha with his wife Matuke, and their daughter Asa. All three of them were remarkably “common people”, like Suni. No jewellery, simple cotton clothes, one braid or ponytail. None of the trio tried to hug me, also very reasonable behaviour – or Ritidia had sent them a message beforehand. They weren’t sure what to make of me, and in the end just slightly bowed to me.

Even with the three families at the table, the hilariously huge dining table had space to spare. Even if you counted in the four missing family members, there were still seats for about fifteen guests. Table conversation was still loud enough, and seemed to mostly be about me. There were lots of Mimis and Rititias thrown around. Some were said with pity, some with rage, and Uli’s feelings about the matter seemed to change every twenty seconds. He had changed out of his cream cake layer dress to something approximating casual wear. The earrings had stayed on, though.

I didn’t feel like any of the displeasure was aimed at me, however. I guess they were just angry at the circumstances. The long-lost daughter had finally been found, but she didn’t speak the language and thought she was someone else.

By the end of the dinner only the grandparents, Temaha, and Asa still called me Rititia. The rest had accepted that the Rititia they saw in front of them was a different person from the one they used to know, and so could be called by a different name. Whether it was more for their comfort or mine, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t have much time to wonder about it anyway – the language teacher appeared again, and I was ushered back into the study room. I was presented with an illustrated dictionary meant for small children. The teacher fixed my pronunciation, made me write some more, taught some expressions – like “thank you” and “bye bye” - and wished me good night.

That was why there was no traffic on the streets. All the buggies ran under them. There were smaller, less fancy ones than ours, ones without roofs, and ones that could only be buses. At times I could swear felt a slight tremor, like there was a tube below. How on Earth (or whatever this planet was called) a tiny town like this could afford a tube was beyond me.

We resurfaced next to a park, where two separate parties had gathered on a picnic. It was a pretty nice day out, sunny but not too hot. Maybe I should take a walk after changing. Maybe I could have someone show me around town.

Or not. There was a small crowd gathered in front of the manor. The two guards at the gate had received backup that was keeping an eye on the people. Everyone of them erupted into overjoyed hoots when they saw the buggy pull up, soon synching up to a unified cheer of “Rititeea! Rititeea!”. The name that the father had called me, so similar to Ritideea. Were they actually chanting “Ritideea”?

No, pretty sure that was a T.

A few tried to rush the gate as it opened, but overall the small crowd was remarkably well-behaved. They came to the gate once it was again closed, and quieted down almost instantly when Ritideea addressed them. She bowed to them (eliciting some more cheers), drew me to her side and started explaining something, it sounded like. It was a short explanation, after which the crowd started whispering amongst themselves. We went inside before they dispersed.

Now, the inside. It was nothing but bustle. Servants cleaning like mad, scrubbing the floors, walls and windows in each floor, dusting artwork, polishing furniture and decorations… Was this normal spring cleaning…? It was getting difficult to tell what was normal behaviour. I was already getting used to being bowed at every five minutes, but was Ritideea pausing to chat with a servant typical? It didn’t happen this often yesterday. Was lunch usually this busy? Alehleh and Soonee had a bunch of papers with them at the table and they were almost more interested in them than the food. Ritideea was apparently making some kind of plans with Kika, while Keenahty inhaled his food and ran off. Seemed to be his thing. He also had a servant with him today, an androgynous person with their hair on a large bun, who went after him slowly and composed. They were almost as refined and chilly as Alehleh.

Speaking of whom, she was trying to write something on her paper with a fine brush. The paper wouldn’t stay still, so her husband reached over to hold it in place. He got a quick smile as thanks. The two were an unexpected pair – the wife decked out in silk, the husband in cotton. The wife aloof and difficult to approach, the husband emotional and always smiling. The wife well into her forties, the husband only approaching them. Opposites had attracted? Probably Alehleh, the jewel business owner’s daughter, had found a commoner interesting. There was such a contrast between them. Alehleh was so clearly upper-class: her patterned silk blouse and long, azure blue pencil skirt looked expensive as hell, while Soonee’s straight, cranberry red dress  lacked any decorations. He also didn’t bother doing his hair, aside from putting it on a ponytail at the nape of his neck – Alehleh on the other hand had hers on an elaborate braided bun. Wealth and style next to comfortable affordability. Maybe one day I could ask how they met.

...one day… Would they even let me stay? I was a complete stranger who didn’t even speak their language, why would they let me stay? I had already overstayed my welcome if you asked me, I’d have dumped me at the nearest police station the minute I came to the house. But instead they had taken me in, fed me, given me a place to sleep and bribed a beastman into helping me. That bribe had looked nothing short of extravagant. Did these people really just have that much spare time and money? Can you imagine how bloody bored you’d have to be in order to take a distraction like this?

Well beyond anything I could imagine, it turned out. After lunch, Asahana appeared and guided me to one the rooms on the first floor – one that had already been scrubbed squeaky clean, thanks to the Spartan decoration. Just a single table with six chairs around it. In one of the chairs was sat a woman, and on the table was a stack of papers, an inkwell, and two brushes.

The woman turned out to be a teacher. She used a brush to write something on the paper, then read it out loud to me, and started teaching me the alphabet. Writing with a brush was surprisingly tricky, but after a few hours of practice I could manage it all right. I could also remember most of the letters, at least for the time being, they’d probably be out of my head come morning. Same went for the few words I had learned. Maybe I could get Ritideea to practice with me, she always seemed eager to spend time with me. She would help with the language, too, for sure. At least some words, something simple to start with. The phonems of this language were really different from English ones, and she had the patience to help me polish up my pronunciation. Plus she actually would correct it, instead of just smiling politely and suffering in silence like Asahana. The aforementioned man, by the way, stood in a corner the whole time. I guess he was supposed to be my moral support, but honestly it was just annoying. I mean, I understood he was probably instructed to be within reach in case I had trouble or something, but his presence was really distracting. He just looked so proud – like a parent whose kid just wrote their name for the first time. I wanted to snap at him, but I figured escaping to the guest room would spare the family a complaint of mistreatment of employees. He wouldn’t come in there unless he had actual business.

Ritideea came to get me for dinner. It was a little bit less busy than lunch, even though it had one more person – Famffarah. She was sat on the opposite side as Ritideea and Keenahty. It was only then that I wondered who she might be. I had just assumed she was a servant, but she wasn’t wearing the uniform, but a loose-fitting sleeveless top tucked into floral print harem pants. Neither was that haughty look typical for a servant. She had the look of a woman who didn’t take no shit, and it was entirely up to her to decide what shit was. She must’ve been a relative. She did share some of her features with Alehleh, namely her sharp jaw and narrow eyes. I didn’t think she much looked like anyone in the family, but then again, it’s not like first cousins usually resemblance each other much. If she was a cousin, I suspected on Soonee’s side, since she didn’t have that upper class feel to her that Alehleh did. Whoever she was, she was friendly with Ritideea. Alehleh and Soonee acknowledged her presence but didn’t talk to her that much, while Keenahty only glanced at her shyly every now and then. I think he found her quite scary – can’t say I blamed him, that great posture made her cool calmness and severe look quite effective. From the start I had been scared of saying a wrong word to her, now I was nervous to say anything at all. I tried to listen to the conversation, to get a feel of what the language sounded like, but everyone spoke so quickly and mumbled so badly it was very difficult to pick out any single words. Every sentence just sounded like baby babble. The only things I could gather were that the language had a lot of vowels and short sentences. Evidently the laconic style was in vogue. Ritideea tried to follow fashion – but often her enthusiasm took hold of her and she ended up holding a long speech. She was more child-like than her little brother.

After dinner I meant to draw some things to ask the words for them, but I couldn’t find paper in the room. Well, I had an artist as a neighbour, and if I used her bathroom door Asahana wouldn’t even have an excuse to come with me. I heard Ritideea talking with Keeka and Famfarrah, so I knocked three times before creaking the door open. Thankfully she wasn’t busy, just having her hair done. Keeka was good at braiding, that French braid was super even.

“Paper?” I asked and mimed writing. I think she understood, even though she did nothing – just looked concentrated for a few seconds and then smiled. She said something to Famfarrah, who was lounging on Ritideea’s bed. They really were friendly relatives, that’s strictly a friend activity. It seemed odd, Famfarrah was about ten years older, around 25. Maybe Ritideea was just a lot more mature than she seemed? After all, I understood zero of the things she talked to me about, maybe everything she said was actually really eloquent and deep. Even that excited babble she now started on.

And speaking of eloquent and deep, here’s someone who was neither – Asahana. He knocked on Ritideea’s door and brought with him three drawing pads, two notebooks, a veritable bouquet of brushes and inks in all the colors of the rainbow. Overachiever, much? I only needed one pad, one brush and one inkwell.

Wait wait wait. How had he known to fetch them? No one had said a word to him. Was he also a telepath? Oh God, was he reading my thoughts all the time? The things I had thought about him! He was grinning and bearing it bravely, but he must have hated me!

I took the stuff meekly and slinked off to my room. I don’t know how Asahana still managed to be so pleasant and cheery around me when he should’ve been punching me in the face, but I was thankful anyway. I spent the next few hours painting whatever things came to mind – apple, house, tall, short, bottle, plate, glass… the last two were really only recognizable next to the fork, knife and spoon. My artistic talent was next to nonexistent. On a whim I added the family and wrote their names next to their respective stick figures, and then that long-haired dickhead and his pet. I doubted I’d ever see them again, but knowing how their names were actually pronounced felt appropriate. Also, doodling was fun. I would have gone on, but Asahana came to give me the evening snack. I shooed him out quickly, embarrassed by both his enthusiasm and my own hostility.

Ritidia gave me the proper spelling for each name: Alele, Suni, Kinati, Asahana, Kika, Famfara, Jotiri, Joijaa, Marsohu – as expected, she looked a bit uncomfortable when she got to those two. She also gave me the words for most of the objects - I didn’t blame for not getting “dog” because the doodle was shady as hell, but I thought “man” and “woman” should be clear enough. Instead she informed that both of them were “kikota”, while Joijaa and Marsohu were “kini”. I had no theories as to what she thought I had asked.

What was even more surprising was that she borrowed a brush and ink to paint me(with considerable skill and speed) next to to the family, and labeled me as “Rititia”. Again with that? I shook my head and pointed to myself, and very pointedly said “Mimi.” She got up from the desk to point at the family portrait above the bed, and pointed to each family member in turn.

“Alele. Suni. Ritidia. Rititia.”

Rititia was the eldest sibling. Shit. Had they got into their heads that I was Ritidia’s older sister? Had she gone missing? Was that why she was never at the table, not that she was in aboarding school? Was this her room? Was that why the “guest room” shared its bathroom with Ritidia? But… why was the room so barren? There was nothing personal in here, just the bare necessities and the one painting! You’d think they’d have kept the room the same as it was when she disappeared, they had space to spare!

Crap, but it really did make sense. That woman had recognized me as the missing daughter of this family thanks to my resemblance to Ritidia, and that was why she had brought me to this manor instead of the police station, and why the family had welcomed me with open arms. They’d been shocked when I didn’t speak their language, because it was Rititia’s mother tongue, she must have been a daddy’s girl since Suni got so upset when I didn’t recognize him and then continued to mangle his name beyond recognition.

Did I want to set this misunderstanding straight? If I convinced them that I wasn’t Rititia, they were bound to throw me out, I wouldn’t survive three days on the street. I highly doubted I’d find a homeless shelter in time, and forget about finding a job! I couldn’t even ask how to find a job!

Okay, this had to stay a secret for just long enough until I knew the language enough to land some kind of cleaning gig. After that, for sure, I’d tell them I wasn’t their daughter! For sure.

Ritidia pointed at me smiling patiently and said “Rititia” again. I didn’t correct her this time. What had happened to her? Even if I resembled her greatly, I couldn’t look identical. She must have been missing for years, long enough to allow a margin of error in looks. Had she been kidnapped? With this family’s wealth, that option sounded realistic. Had something gone wrong? Had she died? Her body must never have been recovered since I was so easily accepted into the family. If a body had been confirmed, there would have been a lot more suspicion.

Oh God, how low can a person sink? Was I seriously going to take advantage of this grieving family? Fooling money and hospitality out of them was one thing, not a very good thing, but at least it wasn’t posing as their dead daughter and sister! Emotional manipulation is the one thing villains can’t be forgiven for!

Anyway, that tailor had with him a high stool and the most exquisite dress my bleary eyes had ever seen, even in pictures of renaissance royalty. The base was turquoise silk, like, imagine the smoothest kind you possibly can, and then make it even smoother, really go overboard with the smoothness and it won’t even come close. Okay, well, maybe close, but what I’m saying is “baby butt smooth” did not do right by this cloth. Just that base alone would have made the most wonderful dress, but it was also embroidered all over, with the tiniest damn stitches of the finest thread in existence. The whole piece from the high collar to floor-dragging hem was decorated in flowers and songbirds. Well, at least there weren’t gemstones. The thing must have cost a year’s worth of salary as it was. I can admit liking nice clothes, but this thing could have fed a family in Africa for God knows how long.

Oh, right, they probably wanted me to put it on, that’s why he was pushing it towards me. Right. So I took it. The men didn’t turn around. So I glared at them and shooed them out. They didn’t get why, but at least didn’t try to come back in. I ran the fabric through my fingers, it was heavy but slippery, like trying to hold water. The thing must drape like a dream. Not that there much to drape, it was a figure hugging piece, thanks probably to extraterrestrial price. Wonder where you could even get fabric like this. Bet you have to order it straight from the spiders and have it blessed by a priestess of the moon or something. I’d like a pillow case made from this. So soft…

Oh, right, put it on. Had they been taking the measures for this? Obviously it was pre-made, stuff like this doesn’t get made overnight even in fictional 24/7 tailor shops. They probably meant to fine-tune it to fit me. Why was beyond me, but – oh damnit, again I just stared at it instead of dressing. God, I need more sleep.

Okay, so this was why they had stayed in the room. The buttons were in the back. I could only do the three lowest on my own. Why not put the damn things on the side, like in qipaos? It already looked qipao enough, this one little change would let you get dressed by yourself and not feel like a baby.

“Okay guys, you can come in now”, I called. They did, and the servant was again overjoyed from seeing me. The tailor was less than impressed and grumbled again, circled behind me to get the rest of the buttons and then gesturing me to climb on the stool. A struggle in and of itself in this dress. There was barely room to walk! Yeah, it saved a fortune to use as little fabric as possible, but a fat lot of good that would do if I ripped it! I couldn’t even hike it up properly so I had to perform some very awkward moves the get up there. I looked ridiculous.

The hem was a bit long, but it also wasn’t heavily embroidered so it shouldn’t be too difficult to shorten. The top was more of a problem, as my boobs were a little too big. They pondered for a long time, and finally decided to just pop open some of the top buttons, get some string in there to hold it together and cover the back with a vest held closed with a wide sash. What it couldn’t hide was the fact that my hips were too wide and stretched the fabric dangerously. The tailor pondered about this even longer, grumbling to himself and tapping his feet. He did come to some kind of solution at long last, as he gestured for me to come down and opened my buttons. Again I had to shoo them out. Once dressed, I got out the door and saw Ritideea talking animatedly with the tailor. She, too, said “Emahem”, and I tried mimicking her. I doubt I was very successful, but she smiled and clapped anyway. Her servant was with her today, too, I guess they worked around the clock. So they lived somewhere in the manor? Wonder where their quarters were. Could be in the locked wing? That was the only place I hadn’t gotten a look at yesterday.

I didn’t even know their names. I turned to my servant, ever smiling, pointed at myself and said “Mimi. Name Mimi”, then pointed at him and asked “Name?”.

His face lit up like I had just gifted him a million pounds.

“Asahana!” he shout-whispered and bowed deep. I bowed too, to be polite, and I swear he almost started crying. What was up with these people? Would the girl servant be better?

She was. She smiled widely too, and bowed, but nowhere near as deep and didn’t get teary-eyed. Her name was Keeka. They separated from us again to go do their work.

When Ritideea finished her talk with the tailor, we all went down for breakfast. Just as much greens as in the evening, but more bread. There was also omelette and something that resembled the gross cabbage soup they serve in Chinese restaurants. I didn’t taste it to make sure. I stuffed myself with bread and fruit juice.

Breakfast was much less noisy than dinner, possibly because of whatever decision had been made last evening. Everyone looked either worried or determined. Ritideea was among the determined ones, and talked with me. Well, at me, mostly. She talked slower than yesterday, maybe she thought I would be staying long enough to learn her language.

...would I be staying long enough to learn it? I had no way of returning home. Humans hadn’t made it to Mars, they wouldn’t make it to Jupiter during my lifetime. And where was I? Somewhere astronomically far away from the Milky way, possibly. At least one would assume so. Was I even in space? Maybe this was a different dimension altogether. I’d read enough sci-fi and fantasy to consider that a possibility. Could I get back the way I came? How had I come here? I had just walked into town, and then the forest was gone. There had been no portal, or star gate. Just air. How would I even explain that? Was it a common occurrence here? Hopefully not unheard of. But in that case wouldn’t the man from yesterday have considered that when he tried to find out where I was from? He was a mage, right, he should be the expert in these things. A rich family like this wouldn’t hire a third-rate mage who didn’t know his stuff.

What did this family deal in, anyway? Jewels? That should generate enough money for a super fancy manor like this. And all these paintings and murals. Last night I had concentrated on the table because I had been hungry, but now that my belly was full I took a closer look at the walls. They were absolutely filled to the brim with portraits of several sizes. There were an equal amount of women and men and indeterminates. Skin colours of every imaginable hue – white, yellow, brown, black, pink, green, blue, violet, rainbow – but everyone’s features were Caucasian. Except in the more stylized or abstract ones, of course. Who were all these people? And who were the ones dominating the ceiling? The paper-white woman with white hair in a clear blue dress, the faintly yellow fat woman with long curls and the pitch-black ladyboy?

Ritideea noticed my stare and smiled brightly. She started pointing at each figure.

“Alimagotsat”, the white woman, “Umube”, the fat woman, “Sibaja”, the black man. Didn’t tell me anything. Then she got up and started pointing out the portraits. “Kao, Sooi, Ailum, Kiolo, Linten, Suginak, Daslej, Kanun, Heliko, Tunuhe, Naumuok, Reksee, Anesan, Kahokisa...” she just went on and on and on and on and on, for an eternity. Frankly, I was impressed that she could remember them all by heart. There had to be well more than a hundred in all.

And then she pointed to the floor. I hadn’t even noticed that was painted, too. The green-blue woman with a mermaid dress taking up most of the floor was Klipikt(try saying that fast three times in a row), the boring, tan brunette was Bellekrig, and the brown woman with green hair was Malisale. Then Ritideea went back to the wall to tell more about “Mede”, of inditerminate gender. It didn’t matter to her I didn’t catch a word of it, she just liked talking about them. The rest of the family made themselves scarce about five minutes into the speech, and one of the maids reminded Ritideea that she had some things to do as well. The two of us went back to the third floor, where Ritideea dragged me into her room, the one next to the guest room I was staying in. Keeka and Asahana were already waiting for us in the big room, and they came in, too.

Ritideea was a painter. There was an easel with an unfinished work on it next to the window, a shelf filled with pencils, paints and brushes, and a stained apron hanging on the dresser door. Her walls were almost as crammed with artwork as the dining room, but at least their subjects were more varied. Only a few portraits(one of her mother, and two others of the same unknown young lady), mostly landscapes(one of a night sky with the moon shining behind a deer of some sort, it was very pretty), some still-lifes(flowers and fruit were as popular in this place as they were on Earth). She was good, I had to admit, she had probably started painting at a very young age. I was never a creative person, I only liked camping. I really envied the people who could pour untold hours into drawing something lifelike. Dancers, too, they can make movement look so easy and light. I don’t have the patience to endure practice.

But Ritideea hadn’t brought me there to show her paintings, she pulled out something from her dresser. A bright yellow gown, like the one her favourite painting subject was wearing. Loose and billowing, probably made from super fine tulle. She started talking excitedly, then suddenly soured and turned serious. Without any warning she started pulling her clothes off, and appeared just as confused by my reaction as the two men. I think she asked if I was okay. So I said yeah, turned a bit to reassure her, and noticed she had been wearing a tight, black top under her cream tunic. Her trousers came up almost to her armpits and were secured with laces. She didn’t shy in the least, evidenced by how she pulled them off with me standing right there, revealing black boxer briefs. She slipped on the yellow gown, and nearly drowned in it. If it hadn’t been tulle, I would have wagered the dress weighed more than the girl. She just looked so funny! I was sorry I offended her, but she looked so much like a little kid playing with her mum’s clothes! Just throw some oversized shoes in there while you’re at it!

She started on some lecture where the name Mede was repeated often. Again, I don’t speak your language, girl. I don’t know, maybe she just wanted me to get used to it. She at least was expecting me to stay a long time. In any case, I could respect her ability to keep up a lengthy conversation by herself.

While she talked, I checked out her bookshelf. Everything was in an alphabet I had never run into before, of course. They used letters, the characters repeated often. Mostly curved lines, every now and then a straight one. I picked out one book at random, and it turned out to be art history or something. At least there were a lot of pictures of paintings and a bunch of text in tiny font. Looked a little advanced for a 14-year-old. Then again, she was nearly a professional artist already. Ritideea smiled wide and shoved another book in my hands. That one was about a single artist, it looked like. Their style was very… airy, I suppose would describe it pretty well. Mostly watercolours and light hues, impressionistic. Not like Ritideea’s, who did realistic oils. She had bookmarked several pages with colourful paperclips. Good to see some inventions made it to other dimensions, would make adapting a lot easier.

What the hell was I talking about? I wasn’t staying! No need to adapt when I’m just going to leave soon.

Asahana suddenly piped up, and the atmosphere in the room turned nervous. Both looked at me with pitying eyes as Asahana guided me to the bathroom. For some reason the guestroom shared its bathroom with Ritideea. At least it looked fairly normal – a modest bath against the wall, faucet, toilet paper… although the toilet itself was the traditional hole-in-the-floor model. What kind of manor doesn’t have toilet seats? Was I supposed to throw the toilet paper in the hole or the bin? How was it flushed? Asahana fiddled with the bath’s faucets, then called me to come look how to work them. He left me in peace, to figure out the mysteries of plumbing by myself. I took a quick bath, using most of the toiletries I found in the rack on the wall, not knowing which of them was shampoo and which was soap. Then I realized I had no clothes to change in to. Hopefully the dresser would have something. I looked for a towel, but could only find a large square cloth that wasn’t terrycloth or cotton. At least it absorbed water well, despite being pretty coarse. Wrapping that around me I walked out to -

“GODDAMN, get out!”

Asahana and the grumbling tailor were standing there like they belonged! What the hell!? And they had the guts to look confused! I had to practically push them out! The one thing that lifted my spirits somewhat was getting new underwear – this would have been the third day with these panties. The only option was the same type of black boxer briefs as Ritideea’s but I wasn’t about to complain. I did opt to leave my own bra on rather than brave the t-shirt without underwires. As for clothes, pickings were slim – one dark green bathrobe dress, one cream tunic, one pair of cream pants. Ritideea’s outfit from earlier. Well, better than my sweaty button-up and jeans. And I could go without socks inside the house. No one else was wearing anything on their feet, after all.

I opened the door to glare at the two men, who still couldn’t understand why I was mad. Hopeless! They came back in and showed the gorgeous dress from this morning. I had to shoo them out again to put it on. I don’t know what kind of magic the tailor had worked on it, because it fit almost perfectly on the hips now. He had also substituted the vest with another, deep green one with some basic embroidery running along the neckline, must have been to match it better with the elaborate and extensive decoration of the dress. But the sash was still the same solid, banana peel yellow piece as earlier. What was it with these people and bright yellow? Ritideea looked like a huge ball of cheese in her dress. Who in their right mind makes a whole dress from bright yellow tulle? It might work as a detail, but jeez, no one looks good in banana.

And the dress wasn’t even enough. After they made me throw it on Asahana braided my hair around my head, like that one Russian politician lady, can’t remember her name right now. Except of course he had to make it a French version, since my hair was nowhere near long enough. Once he was done, he led me all the way downstairs to the front door, where he gave me white sandals to wear, and creaked the huge double doors open to let us out.

At the gate there was a horse buggy looking carriage, but without the horses. Three people were standing in front of it – Ritideea, a young woman with two braids carrying a long metal bar, and a tall man in his mid-thirties with a long ponytail. Long hair was most apparently in fashion. Both the woman and the man bowed to me, and Ritideea introduced them. The woman, Famfarrah, looked like she wouldn’t recognize a joke if it slipped on a banana peel right in front of her.

Again with the bananas, I swear. Must have been Ritideea’s dress, it was just so in-your-face-yellow.

The man, Yotiry, was a bit more laid back. He even smiled a little. We all got in the buggy(me with considerable difficulty, thank to that gods-damned tight dress), and somehow it started moving. The buggy had windows, but they were covered with curtains, and Ritideea drew me back when I tried to peek out. I wondered why we had to keep this a secret, but I wasn’t about to anger her. Wouldn’t do to get kicked out on the street before learning how to say “alms for the poor”.

The new faces whispered nervously with each other while Ritideea tried to meditate, I think. She was doing those breathing exercise thingies, in the mouth out the nose, and mumbled to herself. Bit by bit her back straightened further and her chin lifted. She started looking scarily much like her mother. Impressive how such a gleeful and innocent-looking little girl can turn so regal. I just wondered why she needed to steel herself like that. Was she really that nervous about wherever we were going? The other two sure were. The longer we rode the more fidgety they got. When Ritideea drew back the curtain on her side, they didn’t calm down at all.

We were outside the city, on the countryside. Fields almost far as the eye could see, a grand forest in the distance, and mountains in the horizon. Such a pretty view, but Yotirry in particular avoided looking at it. Though as we went further, his worry was replaced with anger. Ritideea tried to calm him, first with reason, then with sympathy, and finally with authority. That last one worked the best, surprisingly. That little girl could really demand respect when she wanted to.

Eventually the road turned towards the forest, and the fields were only things visible. It must have been spring or early summer, since everything was still green. I only saw a few cows, or maybe horses, difficult to say from this far away. Too big to be sheep, in any case. Very few trees. Five in total could be seen on my side, and Ritideea’s side had even fewer. You could easily see the undulation of the ground, plus really far. There wasn’t much even ground, mostly slight hills.

I hadn’t taken my watch, so I couldn’t say how long we rode. It felt like it had been an hour, give or take some, when we got off the road and maybe half an hour after that. The only thing I could say for sure was that my butt was numb. This dress wasn’t exactly helping my circulation, and I was scared it would rip if I tried to fix my position. The first thing I did after getting out of the buggy was wiggle my toes vigorously, as if that would have helped. Famfarrah got a large, decorated wooden chest from a compartment on the back of the buggy. The chest itself must have weighed over 5 kilos, but whatever was inside was light since she carried it like it was nothing, then set it down on the ground by the treeline. Yotiry laid a blanket behind it, and Ritideea kneeled down on it. I wasn’t going to follow her, but Yotiry set his hand on my shoulder and firmly guided me next to her. Booooring. First sitting on my arse in the buggy, and now sitting in the ground? I needed to stretch my legs. Famfarrah and Yotiry got to stand, why not me? I looked over at Ritideea, and she could have been mistaken for a statue. She was so majestic and still, with her hands folded on her lap and looking proudly straight ahead. So damn regal. Even in that ludicrous dress.

For a while I did try to copy her, but got bored quickly. The fields weren’t very interesting, so I looked at the forest instead. It wasn’t that much more interesting… although, the more I looked at it, the more it felt like something was off about it. It was difficult to see what exactly, since it was so dark in there – oooh, well that for starters, it was too dark in there. It was a sunny day outside the forest, and the inside of the forest was like twilight. The foliage was so thick very little light could come through. And the reason the foliage was so thick was because every single tree was an ancient giant with a trunk as thick a small house, with an unbelievable amount of beard moss hanging from the branches. There wasn’t one sapling or youngling. There wasn’t any fallen down trees, either… How did this forest renew? Where were the animals? You’d think you’d see one bird or hear a little rustle now and then, but it was silent. Yeah, you read that right, silent, not quiet. Was this one of those cursed forests the fantasy genre loved? It didn’t feel cursed, a bit foreboding maybe now that I thought about it, but cursed? Hmm, maybe a tiny bit cursed, just subtly, like you wouldn’t die if you set foot in there, but get hurt a little, or be struck by minor bad luck. Were we here to see a witch? Was that what everyone was so worried about? Was this the decision no one had liked? Ask help from a witch since they couldn’t figure me out by themselves? What kind of an idiot makes deals with witches, those never turn out well! We’d all be lucky if we walked out of here with all our organs and firstborns intact. What do witches even do with all those firstborns? Eat them? Take them as apprentices? Or do you become a witch solely by selling your soul to the Devil? In this world, was the Devil real? Were we here to meet Devil? Who makes deals with the Devil? White people! Who were we? White people! We were so here to make a deal with the Devil. Well, not if I had anything do with it.

The Devil let us wait a good while. Still, Ritideea never made a move. If anything, she only looked more aloof. She barely stirred when a figure slowly emerged from the shadows and made a beeline for us. She only got up to bow once the two-meter figure was stood in front of right behind the foremost trees.

I… didn’t really know what to make of the figure. I would definitely call it a person, and male, but he had hyena ears on his head, furry paws for feet, and a long, fluffy tale. The others were scared shitless of him, but all I saw was anime cat person. Even his eyes fit the bill. Bloody huge hazel eyes, way too big for a real human, even bigger than Anne Hathaway’s. I wanted to shake my head at the display, even though he didn’t how he looked, anime probably didn’t even exist in this world. He couldn’t help how cringe-worthy he looked.

His voice was higher than his height had led me to believe, and had an odd growling quality to it despite the high pitch. Every word came out slow and forced. Sounded like talking was difficult for him. Still, he was laid-back and joking, leaned against a tree, as a total opposite to my companions, who all sat ramrod straight and kept their faces perfectly neutral. Ritideea considered her every word carefully and kept her voice even and respectful. It then hit me that the furry man hadn’t so much as acknowledged anyone else in the company. As far as he was concerned, Ritideea and him were the only ones here. Can you believe this guy?! How rude can you get?

Unfortunately I’m not the type to explode with righteous fury. Ritideea and the man talked for a while, then Ritideea asked Famfarrah to push the chest forward so the man could reach, and at that point he stopped pretending to care even about Ritideea. He opened the chest with glee and dug in. For the most part he didn’t care about the contents – he set the bundle of geometrically patterned fabric to the side, took one whiff of the perfume before flicking it over his shoulder, only looked at the musical instruments for a moment, but he did like the hairbrush. A real piece of work, that one, seemed to be made of red amber. He wasted no time in opening his thigh-length braid and trying it out, and was not disappointed. He kept lazily brushing his mane the whole time we stayed there.

So now that the bribe was out of the way, Ritideea brought me up. Finally, finally, the rude cat boy turned his goddamn eyes at someo

Oh, sorry, it just felt like the whole world stopped for a while, not in a good way. The instant his eyes met mine it was like being dunked into ice water. The shock made my heart skip several beats and breathing feel painful. The afterwaves of the hit still had me trembling.

I suddenly understood why everyone had been so reluctant to do this. He might have seemed harmless, but he damn near killed me with just a careless look. Wouldn’t have regretted it, either. The bastard smirked, supposedly subtly, but everyone could see he was howling with laughter. I was the weakest thing he had ever encountered.

He exchanged a few words with Ritideea again, letting me catch my breath. Dear God how I hated this guy! What a dickhead!

I would have given almost anything to never have him look at me again, but something Ritideea said raised his interest. He stared at me hard in disbelief, so hard it almost felt physical. Then he barked a laugh and called out to the forest, pointing at me and even forgetting about his stupid hair for a while. He was looking deeper into the forest, the darkness, like someone was there and he wanted them to come stare at the freak, too.

I didn’t want to die for disrespecting this douchebag so I stayed put.

There was someone in the forest. Almost noiseless rustles and cracks of branches breaking under feet started coming closer, until I could see some kind of black hyena. The man’s pet? Even for an animal with no facial expressions it managed to look annoyed. Its long tail twitched like a disturbed cat’s. It’s bright emerald eyes shone brilliantly against its coal black, sleek fur. A beautiful specimen, really… Such intelligent eyes, it was clearly no run of the mill beast. It sat down next to the dickhead, quickly glanced at the other humans and then set its gaze on me. Its nose twitched, it was sniffing me from the distance. As though reluctantly its head twisted sideways, like a confused dog’s, and it quickly acted like I was nothing special and turned its nose up. I couldn’t help the snort. The man barked to the hyena, actually sounding like a real animal, and made some other animal noises too – and he got a similar response. Like they were actually conversing. Just how intelligent was this animal? Was it magic?

I really shouldn’t be this surprised by magical animals, I had already met a wizard and an anime cat person. Fantasy is full of magic animals. Though they’re usually more horse-like. Sometimes big cats. Don’t think I ever ran into a magic hyena. Associated too heavily with carrion, not glamorous enough.

Jesus Christ, another one of those ice-water dunks! Cool it with the torture already! I’d rather not have a heart attack at sixteen! He didn’t care, yeah, but I did! I did my best to glare at him, but I… sort of got lost in his eyes, to my great shame. They were so pretty… Earlier I said they were hazel, but looking closer, it was more like maple syrup with fine gold glitter swirling in the mix…

He laughed, and I snapped out of it. My head was such a mess the only thing he could figure out was that I liked what I saw. What? Bullshit! Why would I even think that?

So there I sat, mortified, while Ritideea and the vile man talked some more. I’d look at anywhere but them, examine my nails, study the forest, twist around the check the expressions on Famfarrah and Yotiry(suspicious and containedly angry, respectively), fiddle with the edge of the blanket, shift my weight from one knee to the other… The hyena would shoot glances at me and then turn up his nose at me when I answered the look. So cute.

What was I doing here? Just playing with the hyena, it was like a proud cat, so cute. I wanted to pet it, but I guessed it would just run. Or maybe bite my hand off. How did I come here? What a weird question to answer myself, where did that come from? I knew how I came here. And I’m not one of those philosopher types who uses that question as a metaphor for something bigger. I’m a pretty literal gal. I was hopeless.

The vile man was looking at me again, aloof amusement all over his smug face. He was no help when I took zero interest in him. Hell yeah I took zero interest in him! I took negative interest in him! Maybe Marsohu would have better luck.

...the hell? Who was Marsohu? I don’t typically just come up with random names in my thoughts. Also I was way past imaginary friends.

There was a lull in the negotiations, Ritideea looking pleading, the man looking bored, and the hyena looking cautiously interested. Don’t ask me how an animal looks cautiously interested, there was very little in the situation that I understood. The man and the hyena  had another one of those animal conversations, and it ended with the hyena obviously grumbling to himself. It looked me straight in the eye, making me wax poetic about gemstones and crap. They were so pure green, you couldn’t get that kind of green with even photoshop. There was almost an inner glow to them. That’s not what I was here for, why was I here? What, again with the philosophy? Okay, brain, I came here by that buggy thing. Satisfied? I came because the family decided to ask help from a witch. Who turned out to be a dickhead anime cat person.

I swear the hyena snickered and said something catty to the dickhead. He responded with a faintly amused smirk. Where was my home?

What was with these thoughts? Usually they followed some kind of logic, but today they just transfer, ever heard of it?

What the heeeeellll. Now my thoughts were interrupting themselves. No, it was me. No wonder I was a mess.

…

Where was my home? Sheffield, of course, I knew that. Nether Edge Road. Not the nicest house on the road, but not the smallest, either. Just enough to fit me, Marie, mum and dad. More about Sheffield. Well, it was a big city, pretty far from London, uhh…  Yorkshire, middle England. England. A country in Europe. Great Britain here, France under there, all the other countries. Connected to Asia, cross the pacific and there’s North America, South America, keep going and you get to Africa. Oh And Australia’s in there somewhere, too. There, to be exact. My mental world map might have been less than spectacular, but I think I got most of it right. At least it showed enough to confirm that I wasn’t from around here. Uh-huh, it did – hold on a minute, I already knew I wasn’t from around here. There was nothing I needed to confirm to myself. That’s because I wasn’t confirming to myself, idiot.

Was someone screwing with my brain? A certain black hyena, mayhaps?

“Hey, you! Are you doing this?”

The hyena nodded.

Welp, that settled that. It was a telepathic magic animal. What an unorthodox kind of telepathy, just putting thoughts into my head like that. It could’ve at least made it sound like speech, like a normal telepath. This way was just too confusing.

Wait! Now that I knew it was telepathic, I could ask it to help me home! That was why the family had brought me here! They knew that the animal, and possibly the dickhead, were telepaths and could get around the language barrier by communicating directly by thought.

“Can you help me get home?”

Can you help me get home can you help me get home can you help me get home can you help me get home can you help me get home. That’s beyond me, even beyond Joyjaa. The dickhead is Joyjaa.

The hyena snickered again.

“So you’re Marsohu, I’m thinking?”

The hyena nodded, although my pronunciation fucking sucked.

“Sorry, I haven’t exactly had a lot of time to practice”, I complained. Seemed like I would have nothing but time to practice from here on out. If humans couldn’t help me home, and these people couldn’t help me home, I was stuck here for good.

“Can you at least contact my family? I need to tell them I’m fine.” How would I do that, I can barely talk with me.

Or would that be “How would I, Marsohu, do that, when I can barely communicate with you, Mimi”?

“Oh. That makes sense.”

My family would never know what had happened to me. Went for a walk, never came back, never answered her phone. Survived the woods as a baby but not as a teen. Couldn’t have been a bear, those tend to be pretty rare close to highways. No ravines, either. They’d think I had just walked out of their lives. Mum would be heartbroken. She was a self-blamer, she would be convinced she had done something wrong and I hated her for that. Nothing could be further from the truth, my mum was basically the greatest living person on the planet. Poor mum, first her sister and now her daughter. Seems our branch just kept abandoning her. Dad might suspect murder, but I had wandered off in the middle of the day in a place where not a lot of people congregated, no murderer would be searching for victims in there. Marie, I suspect, would fluctuate between feeling betrayed and hopeful. She was bratty enough to believe it was all about her, that I had walked out on her specifically, but also optimistic enough to believe I’d return regretful some day.

So now that you know how extraordinarily rare it is for me not stay in control, we can move onto more important things. After my breakdown, the girl and the woman showed me upstairs to the third floor. That floor looked a bit more like an actual living space instead of a display of wealth, with a semicircle of comfortable couches and reading lamps in the centre of the very large room, two giant bookshelves against a wall, a grand piano looking thing and string instruments against the opposite wall, and paintings of varying skill level all over the place.

The guest room I had been given was incredibly bare bones compared to the rest of the manor. A queen sized bed with a plain headboard, a small bookshelf with only three books in it, a medium-sized dresser, an L-shaped desk pushed into a corner, and only one painting. It was a family portrait. Of the strict blonde woman, a foppish black-haired man, a toddler with sandy brown hair, and a baby with large green eyes and bright blonde hair. So yeah, I’m guessing it was the mirror-image girl (pretty clearly the strict woman was her mum now that my brain was functioning properly, they looked too much alike to be anything but close relatives) with the dad and a sibling. I thought it was a little weird to have a family portrait in a guest room, but it was a pretty painting. I love me some details, and the amount of tiny details fit into the clothing of the family was simply astounding. It wasn’t a big painting, but it still must have taken years to complete, what with all the folds of the clothing and the vast amount of embroidery and shimmering gems. No one’s skin was an even tone, the natural coloration and the lighting was taken into consideration, jeez, you could almost see the pores! And the flower the older sibling was holding even had a minuscule beetle hanging out on it, how cute was that?

But enough fawning over a painting, it was dinner time. I decided to bear my shame for the sake of my despairing stomach, opened the door, and saw a young man clad in a grey-blue bathrobe-looking thing. He bowed deep to me, his long ponytail falling over his shoulder. When he righted himself, he beamed at me, he was ecstatic to have me here. What a weirdo. And the blonde girl was also there, backed by a young woman with a blunt bob cut that suited her terribly, wearing the same bath-robe dress as the male servant. The blonde girl’s clothes were just as folk dress -inspired: a cream tunic and harem pants with bright red patterns and embroidery. Her wavy hair was gathered on a poofy ponytail on the side of her head. Her face was still eerie to look at, it really was like a photograph of mine from a few years back. Well, her eyes were a bit rounder and wider, and overall her face was a bit plumper, but you get the idea.

She said something to the servants, and they left to mind their own business. Then the blonde girl waved at me to follow her, all the way down back to the ground floor dining room, where the huge table was set. I hadn’t paid much attention to it the last time, but it was covered with several tablecloths – but not in any semblance of order. Just every imaginable colour and a lot of different sizes, some of them plain, some striped, some embroidered, just thrown on it. And okay, they had smoothed out any wrinkles, but not straightened anything. It was a mess of a dining table.

The strict woman and the foppish man were already sat, at the end as one might have imagined. The blonde girl drew out a chair for me from the side closest to them, and herself settled down next to me. Scullery maids, or whatever they’re called these days, started bringing out plates and cutlery, and I was glad to see that at least these people ate with forks and knives, I wasn’t that good with chopsticks and never even knew about other types of utensils. I was examining the lacy border of the porcelain plates when a young boy burst in out of breath, apologizing for being late or something, I would imagine, and sat down next to his sister.

Sitting in the middle of a family felt so wrong, why was my seat set here? I mean, it would be rude to change seats now but I wouldn’t have minded being sat somewhere else from the start.

There was some small talk, and valiant but truly useless attempts to include me. The younger brother looked at me warily from behind his sister, and was the only quiet one. He said a few words every now and then, and most of them were “Oona”, which seemed to be the girl’s name. The oldest sibling was nowhere to be seen, possibly a rebellious teen or out of town for now? Probably wouldn’t be too far-fetched to assume she’d been sent to a boarding school, rich families like doing that.

The grub arrived on splendid silver trays, and interestingly enough comprised mostly of greens. Like 90% vegetables. There was some bread thrown  in there, and a cute little dessert pie, but only one roasted bird of some sort, too small to be chicken. Not sparrow-sized either. I followed the family’s example and piled on the greens, and only took a few slices of the bird. My watch said it was only four thirty, where were the filet mignons? I would have understood a light meal on the evening, but it wasn’t even getting dark yet. I think. The dining room seemed to be in the middle of the manor, all the windows were outside in the hallway, and my seat didn’t give me a view of one. Maybe my watch was broken.

Dinner was a noisier deal than the pre-dinner, oddly enough, but quickly finished. As the servants started collecting the dishes, the mum led everyone else to a study on the other side of the manor. The design of the place was pretty odd – the rooms were in the middle of the building, with the corridor running around them, so the study the family and I ended up in had no windows. There was one tall but thin bookshelf, and a large table surrounded by plush chairs. An old woman and a middle-aged man were sitting at the table with a small pile of books set to the side. They got up to bow to the family. The dad started talking with them quietly, while the mum finally decided it was time for introductions. Why those couldn’t be done at the dinner table was beyond me, but whatever. At least I could finally call them by name instead of position.

The mum was Alehleh. Easy enough name, kinda pretty, if a bit child-like. The dad was Soonee, you’d think also easy, but then he looked ready to cry when he heard me try it out. I really sucked at pronunciation, it seemed. The girl was Ritideea, not Oona, and her name was pretty difficult to say, but unlike her dad, she wasn’t bothered by the butchering of her name. The R rolled, and the stressing seemed to change every time she said it. But she recognized her name when I said it, so good enough. And finally the son, Keenahty. He was super shy, around ten years old, and looked as much like his father as Ritideea looked like her mother.

When I introduced myself as Mimi, they all smiled patiently but also shook their heads, and Soonee corrected me with “Rititeea”. I didn’t get what that was about, and had no theories. Soonee was crestfallen. Alehleh, apparently the head of the family, ceased the nonsense by calling the two strangers to action.

First went the old woman – she introduced herself as Kaorahtsil, and proceeded to speak. I didn’t understand a word, predictably. I wasn’t exactly on Earth anymore. But she changed languages two more times, expecting something, and I couldn’t explain she wouldn’t find a language I spoke a mere few light years away. So I just said “Hi, my name is Mimi, Earth is probably in another section of the universe.” Then she admitted to the family that mine was a language she didn’t speak.

Then went the man, Sessan. He didn’t try languages, but maps. That small pile of books was atlases. I leafed through all of them, already knowing England wouldn’t be in any of them, but wanting to please him anyway. Everyone was very surprised by this development. They had never met anyone who came from so far away. They couldn’t wrap their heads around how I got here. Sessan in particular insisted I must have come by ship, over and over, and it was only after I shook my head for the fifth time that I realized… I had zero clue what he was saying, but still knew he meant ships. Wow, wasn’t that weird? Was this that translation spell I vaguely remembered screaming about earlier? Pretty crude, not very effective, but a start!

Hey wow, would you look at that, I had gone from thinking this was a town of larpers to 100 per cent believing in magic. What the hell.

But the spell didn’t work both ways. I could somewhat understand the man, but he couldn’t understand me at all. Oh, he tried, again and again, first asking about ships, then flying(even though it was plain on his face he thought that was a laughable option), then he gave up travel altogether and instead tried to find out something, anything, about my home country. He picked up on the one-way nature his spell, frustrated and confused, but no one could explain it. After this he stopped the spell, leaving me completely out of the loop as the family held council. It took nearly forty minutes for them to come up with a possible solution, and none of them liked it. Ritideea was the one who came up with the idea, but despite that the only one who hated it even more was Soonee. And after a good half hour of arguing, they reached an agreement. And thank God for that, it was exhausting to just sit there as an outsider.

After that, the servant boy from earlier took me to my room, pulled a salty snack pastry out of hammer space and hovered behind me as I ate. What a creep. I had to shoo him out quite forcibly. A little later a tailor who liked grumbling to himself came in(allowing the servant to charge back in) and took more measures of me than I had imagined existed. He made a lot of notes, talked with the servant who smiled goofy the whole time, and grumbled all the way to himself. Then he took every single measurement again before getting the hell out. I didn’t need this crap at quarter past eight.

Ritideea knocked on the door, and wanted to give me a tour of the manor. Why not, it was a bit early to turn in. And the place was quite nice, it never hurts to look at pretty things.

The third floor was mostly bedrooms – a ridiculous amount of bedrooms. Each of the three wings had about five bedrooms, and their shared bathrooms. A few had their own, I supposed those were guest rooms. Starting from the base of the first wing, first there was a guest room, then a study, then from the corner Alehleh and Soonee’s bedroom, which shared its bathroom with Keenahty’s room. Then was my guest room, the bathroom, and Ritideea. After her was a store room, containing a veritable mountain of painting supplies and canvases of several sizes. There were even a few spare easels. Another sparse guest room ended that wall, after which the third wing started. Most of the rooms in the wings seemed to be in use, but none of their occupants were present. Gigantic manor and so few residents. Was it holiday season or something?

We went down the smaller set of stairs by the third wing, and came out to a hallway. This one also contained two nicer guest rooms, and a locked door to the third wing. What was more private than the residents’ bedrooms? Ritideea’d had no problem letting me peek in those. The other two wings had one guest room and one dormitory each. In the main part of the manor, behind the two guest rooms, was a library – my favourite room in the manor so far. Jam-packed full of simple shelves, themselves bursting at the seams from all kinds of books, like a struggling public library. It felt like home. Much better than the ridiculously huge, mostly empty ballroom. It was wood-pannelled of course, for that extra oomph of bragging. The grandest piano I had ever witnessed stood near the outer wall, and the loo was so fancy pooping in one would have felt like defacing an artwork. The living room with a big, round coffee table surrounded by plush pillows was a bit more to my tastes, but the balcony on the front of the manor offered the most boring view ever: a paved courtyard, the steel gate, and the streets and houses behind it. What sucked even more was that the larger balcony at the back of the manor was barely any better. These people just did not understand gardens. There was a pretty cool fountain at the centre of the courtyard, but as you might have expected, it was paved. There were some minor bushes hugging the walls, but nothing beyond that.

This time we used the bigger staircase, which brought us in front of the dining room. The ground floor had the weirdest floor plan ever – the rooms were in the center, while the corridor ran on the outside. The rooms got shitty lighting. Even the most open room, the drawing room at the end and adjacent to the dining room, with its three open archways had to rely on electricity. The kitchen didn’t even have a door to the corridor, the air must’ve gotten stuffy there quick. Ritideea let me take a look from the door in dining room corner, but since there were people working, I didn’t want to disturb them. We continued on, turned the corner, did not go to the third wing, and came to a Roman bath. The water was faintly pink, warm, and smelled of flowers. I might take a dip there sometime, even if it was clearly meant for the important guests. Some night when I couldn’t fall asleep, then.

The rest of the rooms on the main part of the mansion were the same kind of spartan meeting rooms that the interpretor and the mage had interrogated me in. The first wing had four very lavish guest rooms, both with their own ridiculously fancy bathrooms bigger than my bedroom, obviously for the important important guests. The second wing was much the same, except it also had an extensive jewellery display. Several kilos of precious stones and pearls, just sitting there. Hate to think how much money they wasted on the jewellery they did wear.

Come to think of it, the family dressed oddly humbly. Even Alehleh, the most high class and rich-bitch of them all, wore comparatively simple dresses and necklaces. She could have gone for ermine capes and ball gowns, worn fist-sized diamonds on both ears and a whole family of rubies on her neck, but she didn’t.  Sure, she did exude wealth, but you wouldn’t have guessed this much wealth. They were also pretty chummy with the servants, not dismissive and snobbish. Did that mean the actual masters of the manor were away right now? One of the lived-in rooms on the second floor had to her parents’, maybe they were the snobs. Though I didn’t remember any of the bedrooms being especially snobby. But who else but a tried and true snob builds a home like this to their family? Thus, someone had to be a snob, and I suspected Alehleh’s parents.