Emerald. Emerald emerald emerald. That color haunted her until this very day, this very moment.
"No no. Not that. I need to find blue. That's what I need. I must find blue."
She clutched the old, tattered book to her body like a lifeline. It would keep her from falling off of the planet. It had always done that before.
Suddenly, she was aware that her eyes were not open. She was seeing darkness.
Hesitantly, brown met… blue. She was looking up at the sky. And it was blue. "Blue… Like…"
She sat up. Her clothing was fairly dusty, but nothing was ripped that she could see. The ground was all dust. There were a few dead weeds here and there, but the dirt was an ugly brown. She stood up, shaking the dust from her black cloak.
"Where…am I?"
Suddenly, her memories came flooding back. The tower. The boy. The castle, the children, the water… That girl.
Her brown eyes gazed around in confusion. This was nowhere she had ever seen before. Everything looked… so very dead. Lifeless.
But this was how everything had looked to her before… Hadn't it? The world had been dead to her. Everything except her small room in that tower.
"How… did I get here?"
Slowly, her jumbled mind began to sort itself out. There was… the girl and her companions. They had come to the castle… And there was fire. Water. She'd grabbed the book at the last moment and- Now she was here. But where exactly was 'here'?
Her chocolate gaze floated over everything once more, taking in details that were long forgotten in the dust. There was a farm house a ways off, although it seemed a bit damaged from this distance away.
"A farmhouse… Now why is that-"
Her whole body suddenly tensed. There was only once possible place she could be.
She was in that girl's world. The world of the little witch. The world of the "wonderful" Wizard.
She turned around and her fear was confirmed. Behind her, about a quarter of a mile away, were a few people, standing near what was the previous location of a house. They were that girl's family.
She must have been transported here with the Grimmerie's power. The water the girl had thrown on her must have done something. Some strange… transportation spell.
And now she was alone.
She finally released her death grip on the book and opened it.
Everything inside was unfamiliar to her. The book wasn't divulging any of its secrets like it normally had. The images on the pages were fixed, not translucent and moving as they were before. …Was there no magic in this world? Was that the problem?
How would she get back home to Kiamo Ko?
Her brain started to race. What was she supposed to do now? Food wasn't really a bother, since she hadn't been eating much lately in the first place. Nor had she been sleeping much. All of her research, her notes, were gone. Back in Kiamo Ko. Not that there was a place around here that she could continue it.
And were there green people in this world? She doubted it.
So what to do?
Well… She would have to walk. That would be the first step… She mentally rolled her eyes at her own stupid pun.
She worked her way out from between the weeds and onto the gravel road. The black hat thankfully covered enough of her face so that people passing by in cars wouldn't stare.
Clutching the book to her chest, she started off in the opposite direction of the missing farmhouse.