A pale teen hung from a cliff in the middle of a forest. Slipping a bit, he could feel his grip loosening. "Damnit. Shoulda listened to Lee. I do need to be able to do pull-ups." Muttering to himself, the teen scrambled at the cliff wall with his feet, trying to get enough leverage to pull himself up.
"No." The cliff had started making some very not-good noises. "No." His shoes had pretty flat bottoms, and couldn't get any traction. "Come on!" The bit of cliff he was hanging onto had started to pull away from the rest of the precipice. "Son of A—!" The earth finally gave way beneath his fingers, and he fell down, slamming into the leaf-covered forest floor head-first.
When the leaves settled, there was no sign of the teen.
o~0~o
As the sun rose over the horizon, a hand broke through the leaves, followed shortly by the body of a teenager clad in armor. Shielding his eyes with a hand clad in a gauntlet which left the fingers bare, he glanced into the sunset, the slowly turned and examined the forest about him.
"Oi, Kriemhild. Wake up."
"What is it, my Lord?" The voice ringing from the sword on the pale, armored teen's shoulder sounded like steel on steel, but was soft, like someone was striking knives together under a blanket in the next room.
"We're not in a temple, and there's no sign of one anywhere nearby."
"Hm. I'm not sure where we are, my Lord, but from what I can tell, we're offset from our last point in time by some fourteen months, negative."
"Tch, that's nearly as long as I've been doing this magic quest stuff. This place looks familiar, though. I'll see if I can pin down a location. Go back to sleep."
"Yes, my Lord."
o~0~o
The pale teen crouched at the edge of the forest, grinning. He ran a thumb across his nose (which was normal size and color, you're the one with a weird nose), and jogged, clanking, down the path. The backpack slung across his shoulders over the sword bounced in time with his steps, and the load didn't even seem close to its twenty pounds, he was so happy. His home would be two houses down, and ... there!
Pushing open the door carefully, the teen slipped through the house to his room with as little noise as he could manage, and began stripping off his armor, the tabard someone had made for him, the sword, and the bizarre, too-loose clothing he'd had to wear the past year.
"My Lord?"
"Sh, Kriemhild, be quiet for a bit, I can't let anyone know about you for a bit, and when they do, they won't be able to know you talk. That'll stick out here and draw scum out to try and steal you. I'd rather not have to stab them, so I need you to stay on the down-low for a bit."
"Yes, my Lord."
The teen squirmed into a dirty pair of skinny jeans and a randomly-selected t-shirt. He pulled his hoodie from the backpack he'd slid in front of armor and sword to block casual sight of them, and pulled it on for the first time in months.
Slipping back out of the house was easy as can be, compared to getting in. The pale teen waited ten minutes or so until his parents would be getting up, then barged through the door, calling loudly "I'm home! Sorry I was out so long!"
"Robbie! You should have called us," his mother scolded, bustling into the kitchen in a business suit. "I was so worried about you," she slipped a piece of bread into the toaster and popped open her briefcase. She retrieved a small packet and flipped through it.
His father ambled into the kitchen, retrieving a pre-made lunch from the fridge for his wife, then one for him. "She's right, we thought you'd be home by ten, and we could hardly sleep."
"Sorry," Robbie said, holding up his phone. "My phone went dead and I got lost in the woods. I didn't want to break something trying to get home in the dark, especially with no way to call 911."
His father ruffled his hair on the way out the door, "Good lad. Safety first."
His mother held her toast in her mouth, and tried to hold both lunch and briefcase in the same hand. She hugged him on her way past, saying, "M'yr f'th'r, sf'ty N'spct'r! Grmt tr 'nd pr'tiss." Robbie tried to figure out what she had been trying to say as she stuffed herself into the tiny car she'd been driving since her own years in high school.
Both his parents drove away, and Robbie slipped upstairs to reassure Kriemhild and take a quick nap.
o~0~o
Pacing frantically in his room, Robbie tugged on his chin hairs, "I can't believe I forgot I'd missed our date!" He wasn't ranting to himself, Kriemhild was leaning in the space between his bed and the wall, "I try to go in and be causal, pretend nothing's changed, and she tears into me! Oh, man, what do I do now?"
"I cannot advise you, my Lord. I am meant to guide warriors in combat and the great art of wa—"
"I know, Kriem. I just, I know it's been a year, but how could I forget? It's not like I forgot Wendy, that's why I got," Robbie's eyes track to the pack under his bed, "never mind, not important. I'll just ... I'll have to write her a song, that's it."
"I greatly enjoyed your war ballads, my Lord. I was unaware you wrote romantic ones as well. I look forward to hearing it."
"Well, I don't, generally. My band, we usually play stuff like you've heard. It can't be that hard, though, and with Wendy as inspiration, it'll be great!" Robbie nodded to himself, "I'll spend the day writing it, the band'll help me record it for sure, and we'll be set."
o~0~o
"Dude, this song sucks," Lee flipped his hair away from his face. "No offense, but ... This sounds terrible."
"Ugh, I know." Robbie smacked his head against the microphone. "I gotta make up missing our date to Wendy somehow, I thought a song would help."
"You'll just have to think of something else, man." Nate scratched under his cap, "You've got a couple songs you've written that're good, why not just dedicate those to her?"
"No way, they're all about blood and death and stuff. I gotta be romantic here. Sure, I wrote 'Cardshark Godslayer' for her from the start, but it's not really the sort of thing that'll make things up to her."
"Maybe try flowers and chocolates, dude. That always works for me."
"It's not enough for Wendy. I'll think of something."