Evangelina set Eldest down, she loved rereading scenes with Oromis in them. He was her favorite character, along with Glaedr of course.

I wonder what it would be like to go there . . . She thought to herself. It would be great to be a dragon rider and have my own dragon and meet Oromis and Glaedr. She imagined flying over Ellesméra on the back of a golden dragon. She could see his wings flap on either side of her, the trees bowing in the wind blow her.

Yeah . . . That would be great . . . After lying on her bed and meditating on that for a while she turned off her lights and put the book away, she had to get to sleep, tomorrow was Wednesday and she had to go to school.

Evangelina, or Eva, as her friends called her, was a tall high school girl. She had average grades, she liked to hang out with her friends after school, she was a Junior, and she loved reading. She was also quite skinny, (she lived in Seattle and Seattleites where very into staying healthy) she had boyish short black hair, black eyes, and was very pretty.

Eva fell asleep almost instantly, even though she wasn't really tired. Most of her dreams where about school and she had one nightmare about being unable to turn in a huge project to her language arts teacher Mr. Danvers. Part way through her dreaming however, she suddenly got the strange and unsettling feeling of free fall. Then a fuzzy image started coming into focus.

"We must hide the eggs!" said a deep musical voice.

"Yes, the Eldunarí as well!" said a female voice.

Eva could not see the scene clearly but she could tell that there was a small crowd of very tall people and behind them where sparkly colored cliffs or something.

"What say you, Vrael?" A dull shock of surprise bolted through Eva and she thought: What a strange dream I'm having.

There was a long pause then Vrael spoke.

"Hide them in the rock of Kuthian. That is the safest place for them,"

Eva awoke from her strange dream with a shiver. Her room was freezing. She got up and looked around. It was winter but usually her house didn't get this cold, it felt like the inside of a freezer.

"Mom! Can I turn the heat on!?" she yelled and opened her door. As soon as she did she screamed, the first genuine scream she had ever screamed.

Instead of the boring carpeted hall that should have been outside her door, there were rolling snow covered hills.

"What the hell!?" she screamed. Where am I? What happened to Mom and Dad and Kate? Where is my house? Where is my boring carpeted hall!?

She slammed the door shut and dove back into bed. It was a dream, that was it, just a dream. She closed her eyes and tried to fall back asleep but then remembered that she couldn't fall asleep in a dream and got up and pinched herself. It hurt but nothing happened. She tried it again. Nothing.

Then, taking a deep breath, she got up and opened the door again. Well, since it isn't a dream I should go and see where I am. The snowy rolling hills were still there, but this time she took the time to examine them. There were a few leaf less trees but it was mostly hills. The sun was just rising, bathing the snow in warm yellow light. She shivered as she stepped outside and hugged herself trying to get warm.

Her room was on the inside of a large cave, the front of the room was set just at the mouth of the cave so that when she went outside she was walking barefoot in the snow. The room had been somehow torn out of her house and shoved into the cave, she could see the sink and toilet from her bathroom still connected to the other side of the left wall, and the navy blue siding on the right side. There was just enough room for her to squeeze between the room wall and the cave wall to reach the innermost part of the cave, but she went back into the room to look for some warm clothes instead. She found a fluffy North Face jacket, some blue knitted gloves, a pair of thick socks, and a fleece winter hat.

She kept all her casual wear shoes in the kitchen down stairs so the only footwear she had was dress shoes, dressy boots, and slippers. She decided that slippers were the warmest and put those on; they were bright purple and had purple bunny heads on the toes.

She walked out as far as possible and saw that the cave was set in the side of a large rock outcropping that stuck up out of the ground. She walked around the rock a bit and discovered a strong river a few miles away surrounded by forest, she could see the light reflecting off the water through the branches.

She traveled all the way to the opposite side of the rock and was surprised to see what looked like a small city. It was made up of mostly skinny white towers and was shadowed by a cliff. It reminded her of the little picture of Ilirea in Eragon's Guide to Alagaësia.

I wonder if I could get help there. She thought. The city was very far away, it would take her most of the day to reach it walking. Well, I've got nothing to lose. I need to find out where I am, and I need to find out how to get back home. She walked as fast as she could back to her room and dug her secret stash of snacks out of the closet. It mostly consisted of candy and chips but it was better than no breakfast. She opened a bag of Doritos and popped open a can of warm Coca Cola. When she was finished eating she dumped everything out of her backpack and packed some gummy bears, more soda, rice crackers, and a change of clothes. She wished she had something like beef jerky but junk food would have to do. Then she took a water bottle she found hiding in her closet and walked to the river.

One of the great things about Eva was that she always knew what to do when odd things like this happened, not that she had ever been transported into a cave in her sleep, but when bad things happened she was always a step ahead.

The water in the river was ice cold, she drank from the water bottle then refilled it and put it in the little water bottle pocket on the side of her backpack. Now at least she didn't have to drink soda for energy.

The trees surrounding the river where mostly deciduous but there were a few evergreens amongst them. Eva admired how the trees looked like frosted sweets with the snow piled on top of the branches and icicles hanging below, so when she left the little forest she was sad but she wasn't sad for long. The hills were covered in one foot high snow which made crossing it very difficult; Eva had to lift her feet up to knee height in order to walk. As she walked she began to wish that she had donned the dressy boots instead of the slippers even if they were high healed, at least they wouldn't have gotten soaked. Twice she had to stop to warm her feet by rubbing them in her hands.

When the sun was high in the sky, Eva was nearly there. She could see the white towers clearly, it looked exactly like Ilirea with the cliff hanging over it. Maybe Paolini got the inspiration for Ilirea from this place. She thought. It was a spectacular sight but she was far too tired to be interested, all she wanted to do was sit down and rest. So when she reached the outer wall of the city she leaned on it and cleared away the snow with her feet do she could sit. In her tired state it didn't occur to her how odd it was to have a city surrounded by a wall but once she had rested up and drank some water the oddity struck her.

No one has walls around their cities anymore, there's just no point with airplanes and everything. She looked up at the wall and was shocked to see a person in armor up there. Is this some sort of amusement park? She wondered. She got up and began walking around the wall searching for an entrance, eventually she found a giant gate where a road connected to the city and a couple solders holding pikes stood guard.

She walked toward the gate in awe until the solders lowered their pikes to bar her way.

"State your business," said the guard on the right. Eva stared at the solder in confusion.

"Um . . . I was wondering where I am. I'm kind of lost," The solder gave her an odd look and said with a sneer:

"This is Urû'baen, doesn't everybody know that?"

"U-Urû'baen?" she asked in astonishment. That was impossible, unless someone decided to make an Urû'baen theme park.

"Yeah, Urûbaen, now what's your business?" the man was looking her up and down as though he had never seen a person wearing a North Face jacket before, but then she remembered that she was still wearing her pajama bottoms and bunny slippers and realized he must be wondering why that was.

"Um . . . Ok, this is going to sound totally crazy but my room like disappeared from by house while I was sleeping and now it's in like a cave and I saw this city and I was all like I could find help there so I walked across the snow over here and got my slippers hella wet and now I'm here and I have no idea what the hell's going on and I'm really hungry cuz all I had to eat was a bag of Doredos." When she was done she had to take a few breaths. Once she caught her breath she looked at the solders expectantly and found that they were staring at her like they thought she was crazy. A long awkward silence followed and Eva began to wonder if they were the ones who were crazy.

"Um . . . Hello?" She waved her hand in front of them. The solder on the left looked at his companion and said:

"Should we let him in?"

"Him?" Eva asked, confused. "You mean me? Cuz I'm a girl." At this both solder's jaws dropped.

"A woman wearing men's clothes!?" the solder on the right asked, rather loudly.

"Um, actually these are in women's sizes and I bought them in the women's section," she said confused. "So there not men's clothes," this only seemed to confuse the solders more. Eva glanced impatiently at the city inside and was astonished to find that the whole place looked like a medieval city. She saw women walking about in dresses carrying infants or holding the hands of toddlers, and men leading horses and loading carts. The streets where all cobblestone, there were more solders carrying swords and spears, she saw a couple dressed like a lord and lady. Wait! Am I . . . Am I really in Urû'baen? In Alagaësia!?

She looked back at the two guards with a new understanding of them, and realized that she might not get into the city now that she had rambled about things they didn't understand, they might decide that she was crazy and not let her in.

"Er . . . Was I being confusing before?" The solders starred.

"Um, I was just kidding, I'm not a woman, I'm definitely a man . . . Um, my beard hasn't started to grow yet but I'm sixteen, heh heh," the solder on the right came out of his state of shock first.

"Don't joke about things like that lad!" He said, looking very annoyed.

"Now out with it! What's your business!?"

"I-I need to buy rations for my travels, I'm going to Carvahall,"

"Carvahall? Where's that?"

"It's in Palancar Valley," The guards inspected her for a moment then let her pass with a warning:

"And don' you dare cause any trouble!"

"I won't," she promised, and hoped that she wouldn't. As soon as she entered the crowd, she became confused, there were so many people and the ones closest to her stared, she got shoved around a lot and even pushed to the ground and stepped on. When she finally made it out of the crowd she was in a dark ally. She could see another crowd of people at the other side of the alleyway, she was trapped, it was either the crowd behind her or the crowd in front of her, she paused for a moment and chose the crowd in front of her.

She ran to the other side of the ally and began pushing through the new crowd, exactly what she was looking for she had no idea, perhaps more solid evidence that she was in Alagaësia, perhaps a way back to her own world, either way all she knew at the time was that she wanted to find something, and she did find something, something she really, really did not want to find.

She pushed through the crowd until suddenly she popped out like a piece of popcorn and fell on her face. She could hear the sound of armored feet and horse hooves. The crowd went silent and she had the distinct feeling that she was in a place that she ought not to be, she began lifting herself up but before she could stand up a man yelled:

"Get out of the path of your king!" She got a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach; she looked up and saw a beautiful horse drawn carriage surrounded by solders. It was carved and gilded, and had purple velvet curtains on the windows. Then she noticed the solder standing in front, he was glaring at her and she immediately knew that she was in more trouble than she had ever been in her entire life, combined!

"Er . . . Sorry?"

"Sorry!? Sorry!? You're not getting away with a sorry!" She began to shake, mainly with nervousness, she had no idea what to do and she was pretty sure no one in the now silent crowd was willing to help her, and on top of all that she was pretty sure that Galbatorix was the one inside that carriage and he definitely wasn't going to let her off with a sorry and an awkward curtsy.

"Um . . . I'm really, really sorry?" The man gave her a strange look.

"What's going on?" a deep velvety voice said from inside the carriage. The hair on the back of Eva's neck stood on end as she heard the voice, definitely Galbatorix's. She really had screwed up this time!

The solder that had confronted her walked over to the carriage with a look of dread upon his face, when he reached the door he opened it a crack and talked to the king in a quiet voice that Eva could not hear. As they spoke Eva started inching toward the crowd hoping that no one would notice, but before she could go more than two inches the solder came back and announced:

"His majesty: King Galbatorix!" Eva froze to the core. Is he coming out to punish me himself!? Cold sweat began pouring down her neck and she went pale.

A solder opened the door to the carriage, a foot came out, then another, the people within view of the king gasped and bowed. Then the door closed and she could see him, he looked exactly as he was described in the books. He had tan skin, a sharp face, an old golden crown on his head, eyes as black as his hair, a short beard and his body was built like a wardrobe. His dragon hide cape swooshed as he turned and walked toward her.

Her heart began pounding like crazy and she kept her arms tight against her body. What would he do? Would he whip her? Cast a spell of pain? Kill her?

When he was close enough to put his arm on her shoulder he stopped and looked down at her, he didn't look particularly angry, he looked more intrigued, interested.

"What is your name?" he asked in his velvety voice.

"Evangelina!" She squeaked. He nodded to himself and repeated her name several times as if trying to memorize it. "Evengelina, Evengelina . . . Evangelina . . ." She was as stiff as a board.

"Where are you from Evangelina?" He asked with a smile.

"Seattle, Washington!" She blurted without thinking. No wait! I can't say that! But too late, she had said it.

"Seattle, Washington? Where is that?"

"Ah . . . America . . ." I may as well tell the truth from now on. She thought.

"America . . . That isn't in Alagaëia is it?"

"No," He considered her for a moment, taking in her face, her jacket, her hat, her soggy slippers and pajama bottoms, then he said:

"Come and ride in my carriage. You will sleep in the citadel tonight."