This is actually a really hard story for me to write. I like it though, and apologize for the speed of this chapter, but I never write very long tales and I figure if I get right to the point I might actually manage to finish it, someday…
Time alone woke up Emma. Slowly she uncurled beneath the blankets, idly wondering why her alarm hadn't gone off yet. She heard moving below her and knew her mom was up and fixing breakfast. Weird though, that she hadn't thought to wake Emma up… With a mental shrug Emma pushed off the covers and opened her eyes. Her first thought was 'Where'd my poster go?' then 'OMG where am I?!!" She jumped out of bed in full panic mode, a holler of MUM! on her lips, only to remember the Amish people. So, it wasn't a dream.
Sinking slowly back onto the bed Emma felt tears well up in her eyes. Though she'd said she knew it wasn't a dream, some deep part of herself had been secretly hoping. But people don't fall asleep in dreams. So much time never passed in dreams. And covers don't scratch in dreams. With a hiccup Emma began to cry. She missed her mom, the familiarity of her house and schedule. And she was afraid, very afraid. With no idea how she arrived, she was suddenly stuck in an Amish World that could be anywhere, with no means of communication and no idea how to get home. A few tears easily spiraled into full scale sobs and she buried her face in the rough fabric of the cot. Nothing made sense, nothing was fair and how the heck could it've happened? Was she insane? Was it all in her mind? The distant shufle of feet and tap of a table being set floated up the ladder. Taking deep breaths she forced herself to steady her breathing. "It's okay to cry," her mom had told her once when she and Katie had had a nasty fight. "But then you've gotta pick yourself up and be strong. Nothing will change unless you work to change it." The thought of her mom made her feel like sobbing even louder, but she pursed her lips resolutely. She could keep crying all day, but the only way to get home was to go somewhere. Of course, first thing was to eat breakfast, and learn Amish.
"I wish they had offered Amish at school." she muttered as she tried to ran a finger through her hair. The frizzy waves from the braids the night before were still there, with the added bonus of sleepy tangles and a few pieces of grass left over from when she'd used them as ties. "It would've been right helpful for people when they get randomly whisked into Amish World. Without warning I might add. Yes, warning would've be nice. Then I could've at least asked how to get to someplace English," she muttered to her self. In the kitchen she heard a chair scrape along the floor. Idly she wondered what Amish people ate for breakfast. Probably not cereal. It seemed anything created within the last few centuries, like since 1600's, the Amish people thought below them. "Well, they must," she reasoned. "Why else wouldn't they hate ovens. Or refridgeratros, or jeans and cars and English…" She highly doubted they had a English-Amish dictionary either.
"You guys probably don't have face wash or deoderant either," she told him as she climbed down the ladder. Alden didn't respond. "Nor do you likely have showers, if your lack of running water is anything to go by. The fact that you have such old fashioned 'toilets' - if I may really even call them that - doesn't speak well for the showers either. Which is very annoying, because I REALLY want a shower. Wait, Amish girls DO shave, right? Because if not… I just really need to go home. This Amish thing is NOT working out." Alden ignored her muttered rant, which was fine because he wouldn't've understood it anyways.
Alden was sitting at the table, munching on some fruit and a slice of bread. That sounded good so Emma helped herself, figuring if she wasn't allowed the apple, he would stop her. As she sat down at the table she quietly pondered possible means of escape form the Amish World. Train, bus, plane or car would be best but they didn't have them. Horses would have to do. As for directions though… she prayed Amish people had world maps. If those were too 'new' an invention… Emma feared for the poor soul nearby when she found out. An ear-splitting rant and book-throwing tantrum was sure to follow.
Alden was the one to break the easy silence. Setting his apple core down - thank goodness they were human enough not to eat it like a horse - he began to speak. After a bit of Emma looking blankly at him, his strange words flying over her head, the message finally got across: Lesson in Amish number one.
"I am Alden." he said. "You are Emma"
"Klna Alden. Nidd Emma." Emma attempted weakly. He shook his head with a grimmace. Not even close.
"I" he repeated pointing to himself. She screwed up the pronounciation. He sighed heavily. The lessons had begun.
XxXxX
Much later that day Emma was standing outside a building. Alden was talking with a woman who had slipped out very quickly and shut the door firmly behind her. Emma had no clue what was going on but it seemed ridiculously fishy as there were no windows on the building. Emma gazed at the sign and wondered what it said. If it was not an Amish city she'd've thought it a strip bar. As it was Amish World, and it was an old man who had brought her there, she doubted it. Hopefully it wasn't, because she would surely end up tramatized for life.
Fortunatly, her doubts were correct, and when she was ushered inside Emma found Alden had decided to get her Amish clothes. Bolts of fabric piled in organized chaos around the room and a already woman stood on one of three boxes in the center of the room. She was dressed in her undergarments, thus the no window rule, and Emma just sighed and rolled her eyes as she found Amish didn't even update their underwear. The woman wore a large, flowing under dress that tightened at her wrists and fell to the floor. The lady who had brought Emma inside motioned for her to undress, Alden had apparently informed her of the language problem while Emma was worrying about the whole no windows thing. Idly wondering what the Amish lady would think of her garments, Emma showed off her polka dotted wire bra and white panties. She laughed outright when the lady gasped and stared at her immodesty. The woman being clothed looked positively horrified. However, the one dressing her seemed a little to curious about how the foreign items were made and her stare made Emma very uncomfortable. Luckily, the lady helping her was quick to recover, and grabbed a pile of cloth from the shelf and thrust an under dress to her which Emma donned gratefully. Honestly though, the under dress seemed plenty covering enough. The white fabric was light, but not see through, and it was kind of fun to swish it around her legs, though Emma acknowledged that twirling in circles would not be appropriate at the moment.
The woman glared at her, and the rest of the visit was not so much fun. Poked with pins and overheated by too much clothing, Emma was forced to stand still as the ladies conversed in fast, harsh words, not caring she couldn't understand a bit of it. Or, perhaps, that was the point. They sized her up in a brown skirt and thrust into her arms a small top that was forest green and laced in the front. It was only after laughing at Emma's attempts to put it on that the woman helping her showed her how it worked. The bodice fit snuggly - they obviously knew what they were doing - and Emma laced it loosely. Unlike the stories of women fainting from tight corsets, the similar looking bodices were made of a light material that was actually a lot like a second bra. Emma was still glad to wear her polka dotted one though.
After handing her a belt, the working women, who were dressed very similarly, tried to hand her a pair of hard, flat-soled boots. That, Emma declined. Quickly handing them back, Emma rushed to put on her converse's. Their soft cloth and long-time relationship with Emma was not something she could just throw away! The shoes were a last connection to the English speaking world now that her outfit had changed. Beside, they'd barely show beneath her dress. Defiantly, Emma shoved her feet into them and yanked the laces into a quick double knot. The women looked distainfully at her choice of footwear, but they could hardly tell her what to do. They didn't speak the same language and Emma intended to take full advantage of that.
Only a half hour later, Emma was being shoved out of the store carrying her old jeans and tee shirt and dressed like an Amish girl. Alden handed over a few coins to the still glaring woman, and led Emma away down the street. "The woman doesn't like your additude," he told her quietly, picking up a monologue once more. "She says that you are too disrespectful. You apparently refused shoes and your strange dressing habits have made them worry about you. It is so strange, they wonder if you are a mage or someone from far, far away, or very wealthy, because you wear cloth they have never seen before. Is that so? I asked her, and she said "yes". I don't know much about fabrics, but the idea of an unknown fabric is strange. You are full of the Unknown, aren't you, Emma." She perked up at the sound of her name, but he kept going and she lost track of his words. "You speak different, you act different, you don't understand basic behaviors like how you walk and hold your head in the street and how you, even though I can't understand you, you seem to talk back like a boy. You also now were wearing strange cloth. I have many questions. I hope you will learn to speak quickly."
And so, durring that walk home, Alden decided that he would work very, very hard to teach her to speak. He talked to her constantly, asked her questions and encouraged even her one-worded responses. He asked her so many questions, like "How are you today?" and "Are you tired?" that sometimes she shouted at him in her language and sometimes she cried from pure frustration. Still, that frustration made Emma focus and try harder and slowly she began to pick out the little words and find sounds that could tell her basic ideas. It helped that Alden began to pick up the habit of gesturing exageratedly as he spoke. And when he saw a look of understanding flash in her eyes, he always grinned from ear to ear. And so it was that the first month passed. Emma no longer cried in the mornings, or at night, for English. And her desperate searching for a car down the road, a plane in the sky or a train whistle in the distance slowly ended. Perhaps it was defeat that softened her mood swings, perhaps it was the quiet sort of determination to leave, or perhaps it was just plain understanding that there were no such modern objects for miles around, but she softened and began to ease into the lifestyle of those around her.
A month had passed, and finally Emma was beginning to understand the harsh language of the Amish. As her skills had increased, she'd been given more and more talkative chores. Having graduated from counting up Aldens small stash of coins over and over again, Emma had been sent out to run a simple errand - gather a half dozen apples from the market. It was only a block away when Emma saw it. A woman with red hair was riding a horse down Main Street. Peasants of all ages were scrambling to clear her a path, but she seemed used to it. Her large palamino pranced excitedly down the road and at her hip hung a sheathed sword. On her saddle rested a shield. "Are you kidding me?" Emma exclaimed to herself. "Amish folk have KNIGHTS?!! How crazy, old-world obsessed are they? I thought they were just anti-progress Christians!" Staring blatantly at the woman, Emma watched her dismount and deftly tether the stallion outside a pub that was just feet from where Emma stood. Being of a curious nature, Emma casually walked nearer and listened to the voices. In the doorway the knight had stopped, talking to a man with a broken nose and mismatched eyes. Swigging a beer, he leaned casually against the frame and the knight had no need to move him. She stood just as casually before him and Emma assumed they were acquaintences.
"I _ came from the _" Emma could understand the knight saying.
"_ it's _ _ there,"the man said. By his voice, it wasn't very good.
"Yeah, they've got these _ _," the knight continued. Her brows furrowed and she seemed to bit the inside of her lip in thought. "Very _, they are. They _ men with great _! and fire, but it's not magic," The explosiveness of some unkown words caught Emma's attention. Big bangs and fire around humans? Whatever it was… "A _ _ was killed."
"Sounds like some sort of bomb to me," Emma said to herself in the Half-Amish she'd begun to use. With such a small vocabulary, it was often far easier to gesture out a few words than sit around feeling stumped at how to say it. The knight however, seemed angered by her words.
"What the _ are you talking _?!' she exclaimed, turning to face Emma. "My _ got _ by those _ _ and you _ to _ _?"
Emma stepped back in surprise. "No!" she stammered to speak in Amish. "I - I think of same - same in far city," Emma rushed to jam any suitable word into her sentence. 'I didn't speak bad! It was English not speak bad." Darn conjugating! Emma cursed to herself. I don't make any sense! The knight was taken aback at Emma's horrible sentence structure and the incorrect tense, placement, and choice of her words. "I speak little Tortallian," Emma added. Tortallian was the Amish word for their language. It was like how french said 'anglais' instead of 'English'.
"Do you speak _?" the woman asked her, but Emma just shook her head.
"You don't mean English, right?" Emma asked hopefully, but the woman just looked confused. "I don't speak the same," Emma tried to explain. "I have say that the object you speak at is same to a gun or bomb." The woman's eyes widened as she finally got that Emma was commenting about the weapons she'd just seen used
"You know of these _?" The woman asked, suddenly terribly excited. Urgently she asked. "Where - ? How - ? Men - understand!" Emma's eyes just widened. The woman's voice had gone so fast - only a few words had managed to translate in her mind.
"I don't understand," Emma admitted with a nervous smile. The woman was staring intently at her, and Emma suddenly noticed that the knight had purple eyes. The woman looked crestfallen. Muttering to herself and the man, she seemed to toss ideas around, but for saying slowly and clearly,
"I want you to help me, okay? If you know what these _ are, you are very _. Please come with me and we will talk." The woman's hand, which rested absent-mindedly on the hilt of her sword really left no room to refuse. Besides, the apples could wait and - Emma quickly realized - the woman must be very important to be a knight. She would have the strings to pull to help get Emma out of Amish World and if Emma really did help her, the woman would owe her a favor. By the knights reaction, whatever was going on was important. But most importantly of all, Emma was a curious person. Nodding decisively, Emma was quickly yanked away and hurried up the street. They were headed up towards the castle. What ever the issue was, it seemed VERY important.
