You are locked in a waiting room.
There is a large amount of unhelpful information in the room, most notably, a sign instructing you to inspect your 'new body'.
You are still yourself, as far as you can tell, and you would normally disregard such an instruction as nonsense, but you're in a more open minded mood than normal because you remember being murdered by an otherworldly monster recently.
Oh, right. You also recently remembered that you were murdered. It seems a little odd that you would *remember* such a thing, but you're not about to complain about being mysteriously alive still.
In addition to this, the door to the waiting room is currently unable to be opened. There's a sign that says 'Please knock when you are ready to leave', and no handle.
You are understandably not in the best of moods, currently.
[[Politely knock in order to indicate that you are ready to leave.]]
"Someone better open this *fucking* door before I break it down!"
You accompany your carefully considered choice of words with some calm knocking on the door. The wood bends under the strain, but doesn't break. You keep this up for a few seconds, scuffing and denting the door in the process. If anyone's listening, they couldn't have missed it.
"Hey! Is anyone even there!? If this is a joke or some kind of hidden camera prank I'm gonna punch the first person who comes at me with a microphone unless you let me out *right now*!"
You stop and listen, trying not to huff too loudly. On the other side of the door, you can hear something that might be very light footsteps, maybe from a child. An unseen doorknob rattles.
As the door opens, you start to say "About fucking time!" at the same time someone else begins to apologize, but you both stop dead before you can finish a sentence.
[[Huh.]]
Whatever it is, it's holding the door open and standing in front of you.
It's a little taller than you are, so just over six feet tall. You're not sure if you should include the ears, otherwise, 5 feet. It's white, almost shimmering and incandescent, some kind of animal with the body of a person, with large lavender eyes in two tones. No whites, you note.
It lays its ears back and its eyes widen at the sight of you. It reminds of a cat, but not quite. Probably thanks to the shape of its snout.
"You're... I-!" It stutters at you. You note, in your surreal calmness, that it doesn't move its mouth to speak. In fact, it doesn't seem to have a mouth at all.
"Why don't you have a mouth?"
[[It takes you a moment to realise that you're the one who asked that question.]]
The creature doesn't seem to know how to respond.
"Well, uh, I... I don't... Need one?"
It blinks and shakes itself out of its stunned stupor.
"I mean, there'll be time for questions later! Come on, you have to see this!"
Without warning it reaches out and grabs your hand. You're so busy being distracted by the fact that this animal looking thing (person?) has what looks like a functional (if sort of vaugely paw-like) hand that when it pulls on your arm, you almost fall flat on your face.
You stumble and manage to catch yourself, and before you know it you're trying to keep up with this creature as it drags you along a path that winds between buildings. Its tail whips as it runs, streaming past you. With its pale white glow, it reminds you of smoke.
You ruminate on the fact that you're probably in shock as the town glides past and the creature practically drags you forward. The town isn't very large, less than a dozen buildings in total, and only grassy or paved paths. No roads. Outside of the cluster of buildings, there's grass and trees and shrubbery that extends up and around where the horizon should be, meeting at a point above you.
Fortunately, the town (and by extension, you) isn't entirely enclosed. A good third of the sphere you must be inside of is open to the sky, and stars are visible through the opening. It's this opening that you're currently being guided/dragged towards.
[[As the creature holding your hand drags you towards the edge, you idly consider that the unusual inverted planetoid you're currently inside would look like a cartoonish cresent moon, if viewed from the right angle.]]
It comes skidding to a halt, causing you to nearly fall over again, but its surprisingly firm grip keeps you on your feet. A good thing, considering that the edge appears to extend out over infinite space.
"L-look! They're all wrong!"
You collect yourself and look up from the edge, trying not to think about how thin the ground must be. You rub at your eyes with your free hand, trying to clear your vision, but it doesn't work.
It's almost as if...
The stars are swimming around, like a reflection on turbulent water. The night sky is ebbing and flowing, the points of light shifting and moving back and forth. It's pretty disconcerting to look at.
"That can't be right." You tilt your head in confusion and gingerly lean forward, looking to see the stars being blocked by the planetoid. It's happening all over, in every direction, as though the entire galaxy was being sloshed around inside a washing machine. "They can't actually be moving like that, can they?"
The creature shakes its head, letting go of your hand after it pulls you back from the edge. "There's no way! It's gotta be some kind of trick, or something. My alarm went off and I was gonna go let you out and introduce you to everyone but then I spotted this and, and... This is bad, I don't know what to do!"
It looks at you expectantly. You realise that it's waiting for your input on the situation.
[[You decide to provide an insight.]]
"What, you're looking at me? How the hell am I supposed to know what to do about this? I don't even know where I am! I don't know what's going on! I don't even know why I'm trying to talk to a monster like it's a reasonable, rational thing to do!"
The creature looks bemused. "You think *I'm* the...?" It shakes its head. "Look, we can talk about that later. I'm sorry I forgot about you in the cabin, okay? I'm not a monster, I'm Eve."
Eve reaches out and grabs your hand again, giving it a firm shake.
"Nice to meet you. We can introduce ourselves properly another time, for now I'm going to try and find Elder. She'll know what to do. You should have a poke around town and wake everyone else up, they'll wanna see this too."
Eve lets go of your hand and turns to face the edge of the ground, and then stops and looks back over their shoulder.
"Oh, right. The others won't look like me if they're asleep, they'll look like little floating flames. Just give 'em a nudge, and don't be surprised when they, uh, change. Meet you back here in, I dunno, half an hour? Bring everyone else, we have to talk about what we're gonna do."
Before you can respond, Eve leans out over the edge, crouches down, and springs out into the void. It's an impossible jump, dozens of meters out, the speed causing a little puff of dust to be blown past your feet. You boggle with disbelief as the white form streaks out into the starry void and then curves in the air, the glow trailing behind it as it arcs gracefully around the curvature of the planetoid's exterior, until the edge of the ground blocks them from your sight.
[[Just like that, you're on your own again.]]
Yep. Now it's just you, the dull ache in your chest, the inside of this hollowed out planet with its small town that you're apparently trapped in, the 'others' that are supposedly sleeping inside that town, and the night sky with its weird drunken shifting.
Maybe the company that Eve had provided wasn't so bad. It hadn't tried to attack you, at least. Mind you, that still only bought the ratio of weird creatures attacking you to weird creatures NOT attacking you to 50:50. But it was progress.
You tear your eyes away from the shifting mess of stars. Looking at them for too long was beginning to make you feel nauseaous.
Instead, you turn to face the town.
[[Failing any other options, you suppose that you might as well have a look around.]]
Thank you for playing Between Worlds Part 2!
This part was a bit shorter, but I'd like to think that things are properly set in motion now. Next time, we explore the town and meet a whole bunch of weird space light catfoxes!
If you enjoyed it, or found any typos, or perhaps both, let me know at [email protected] ! And be sure to check http://philome.la/twitakare for more entries.
Thanks for reading!