Snow.
Her eyes fluttered open. Her scrambled brain was slow to take in her surroundings, as though she was waking from a deep slumber. She fought through the disorienting haze as she tried to remember what strange course of events had happened to lead her to this moment. The dull ache in her limbs gave a painful pang as she tried to sit up. The skies above were dark and torrid, raging with tempestuous storms. And in the midst of it all, there was snow. It fell all around her, peacefully draping her presence like a fuzzy, white-gray curtain.
No, she realized as the little flakes sizzled and burned her skin, faster to wake now. That isn't snow. That's ash.
She sat up to see the world around her aflame. Where the mausoleum once stood was a smoking pile of rubble. The once lush green grass was now charred as the fire danced across the garden.
"Comet," she coughed. "Comet, wake up!"
She could see his body from a few feet away, a bruised, disheveled mess sprawled across the debris. Regaining her senses, she knew it was time to act fast.
"Come on, Comet, you've got to get up," she shook his shoulders. "It's not safe here."
He began to stir. In the ominous light of the surrounding wildfires, Star could see his muddled expression as he gazed up at her with great confusion.
"Where...where are we?"
"I'm not sure," she told the dazed boy, "I just know we need to get out of here- now."
Above her, the storms were still rolling through. Roaring thunder accompanied fierce gusts, fanning the flames of the burning graveyard. Her heart grieved at the sight of once beautiful rose bushes blazing in the smolder. This place was a disaster.
Her heart pounded as she raced through the field, Comet at her heels. Ahead of them, the once-proud crystal barrier had shattered into a thousand pieces, shards of the glittering stone jutting out of the ground.
What happened here?
No- that wasn't the most important question. Wherewas she? Where was 'here?' Despite looking identical to the location she was just in, Star knew deep down that she was worlds away from home. Ruberiot had not come with them, after all. A touch of guilt swelled her heart as she worried about the songstrel's wellbeing; he'd been so excited about the supposed discovery, only to have been caught up in something much more dangerous than he had bargained for.
They passed through the great golden gates that stood watch over the garden, effectively making it out safely. Star turned back to watch the fields burn. Debris and ash clouded the air, the grand mausoleum still sending great huffs of smoke into the sky. Her only way back had been destroyed.
"Star," Comet rubbed his temples, a the purplish, bruised beginnings of welt coloring his forehead. "Are you okay?"
"I...I don't know." The adrenaline of waking up in the middle of Armageddon hadn't completely worn off yet. A quick lookover showed some cuts and bruises, but she seemed to have fared better than her parallel self. "But I think I should be asking you that question. Your poor head…"
"I think I hit it pretty hard when we...fell? Crash landed? Whatever. But I'm still alive and kicking, so no complaints, I guess."
But internally, she was panicking. Her only known gateway to home was in a smoking pile of cinders and soot. The only witness to what had happened was Ruberiot, and who knows if anyone would believe him or not? And if they did, would that land her in even more trouble, if she ever got back? And she hadn't even returned Marco's calls-
Marco.
She took her compact out of her purse. Her fingers felt big and clumsy as they trembled, nervously scrolling through her contacts book to find his entry. He hadn't had a chance to reply to her text before her butthead of a Ghost Grandma had blasted her into the realm of storms! Her heart said a fervent prayer as she desperately dialed his number...only to be met with an error message.
We're sorry! The number you're trying to dial cannot be reached.
She dialed again.
We're sorry! The number you're trying to dial cannot be reached.
Again and again she re-dialed the familiar number, heart swelling with fear when the call refused to go through.
"I-It's not working," she says. "Why isn't it working? Come on, come on…"
"Star," Comet said. "It's not going to work. You and I both know we're not in your version of Mewni anymore, and I know for a fact you can't make calls across timelines. Believe me, I've tried."
She slumped to the ground feeling defeated. What a failure of a friend she'd been. Marco had anxiously been trying to get ahold of her- possibly in danger- and she couldn't even stay in the same timeline to take the darn call! If nothing else, at least this served as a confirmation: they weren't on the same Mewnian soil as before. They'd traveled through space and time and crash landed in the center of calamity.
"Do you think...we're back in your version of Mewni?"
"Honestly? Who knows," Comet stared at the grounds below with a wistful look. "But my gut says we are. I really hope otherwise, though...this place is a wreck."
Star rose to her feet, the severity of the situation sinking in.
"Come on," she beckoned. "We need to get out of here."
"Out of where?"
"Out of here, out of Mewni. Maybe it's your Mewni, or some twisted version of mine...heck! Maybe it's, like, the parallel vampire mermaid version of my mom's Mewni. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised! I just know that it's not safe to stay here anymore."
"What? Why not? How is this any more dangerous than anywhere else we could go right now? We don't have a lot of options."
"We were nearly struck dead. And newsflash, we're still on the same burial grounds- in a parallel universe, maybe, but it's still wicked bad mojo. I don't think we need to stick around and give whatever forces are in play a second shot."
"Star, come on. Why can't we at least go to the castle and figure out which version of home we're in? Why do we have to leave Mewni all together?"
"Don't ask me," she argued as she helped him up. "Ask the massive welt forming on the side of your head. You know, the one you got when we were pulled through the swirling vortex of doom!"
He placed his hands on her shoulders as he rose from the ground in an attempt to steady himself. Star was patient in helping him, worried that the blow to the head he had sustained had altered his sense of equilibrium. She gave him a quick lookover, analyzing him for any major wounds or injuries.
"Huh," she mused. "Now I'm wondering if I hit MY head."
"What?"
"For a second there, I could have sworn that I saw Marco's scissors sticking out of your…"
The wide-eyed look on his face was all she needed to see. Catching him off guard, she swiped the cobalt blue handle out of his pants pocket.
"No. Way."
Now he'd gone and done it. The deer-caught-in-headlights look he had plastered to his face was very appropriate as the fury grew within her chest.
"Explain this," she demanded, voice seething with white-hot anger.
"I had to steal them! He was seconds away from blowing our cover, Star!"
"What were you even doing around Marco?! I told you to stay out of trouble!"
"And I told you that you should stop lying to your best friend! Looks like we both have trouble following directions," he snapped back. "I was just trying to help, I swear."
"No," she clutched the stray strands of her blond hair, panic rising from within. "No. No. No, no, no! Ugh! You're unbelievable!"
Not only would Marco be left alone with no clue as to where Star had gone, but he would be rendered trapped on Earth, too- now with the belief that her 'boyfriend' was no better than a scissor-stealing criminal. Star knew Marco better than anyone else in the entire galaxy, and she could say with absolute certainty that this was going to have a horrible effect on him. This was going to send his anxiety skyrocketing through the ceiling, doubly so now that she had gone missing. She wondered if he was panicking right now too, and hoped with her whole heart that Jackie or Janna or some kind soul would be there to console him.
Please, please, just let him be safe and okay.
"We're leaving," she forcefully demanded. "We're getting off Mewni before whatever curse we unleashed can send any more wrath our way."
"No."
"What? What do you mean 'no?'"
"I'm not leaving. I'm staying here and I'm going back to the castle."
"Going to the castle?! Are you crazy?!"
"It's different here. If I'm back in my realm, my parents should be able to help us. From their perspective, all that happened was that I disappeared in the middle of the night and never came back. Obviously, something is really wrong here and everything is falling apart. Maybe it's time we stop trying to figure this all out on our own and get some help."
"And if we end up bringing even more trouble to your version of mom and dad? Or maybe even up in a crystallized heap? I don't think so! I'm hightailing it out of here!"
"Fine."
"Fine!"
Even as she stomped away from the scene, she couldn't help but feel like separating was a big mistake. The idea of losing her only partner in this strange new world sent her heart into frenzied palpitations...but she also firmly believed that staying here was a recipe for trouble.
Her palms were tense as they tightly clutched Marco's dimensional scissors. They were the last piece of him she had, the final memento of the one person she desperately wished were here right now. The silver engraving on the blades still had that glossy, brand-new sheen- he loved these things, and rightly so. He'd proudly earned them himself, after all. How devastated he was going to be, now that he would never get them back.
The corners of her eyes began to fill with tears at the thought as she ripped open a new portal.
It seemed that, no matter where Star found herself in the infinite vastness of the universe, she always ended up back on Earth.
Sure, this wasn't HER version of Earth- but it was still Earth all the same. Star wondered what it was about the planet that made it so incredibly comforting. Was it simply the warm familiarity of it all? Earth wasn't like any other realm she knew of. As much as she enjoyed the adrenaline rush of a tooth-and-nail battle, there was a definite charm to the monotony of a laidback lifestyle. The mellow, breezy days she'd spent there were a comfort, and perhaps that was why she had decided to return to it during this time of peril. Even if it wasn't the same Earth from her timeline, it would still be the same, soothing place, inviting her to take refuge while she figured out what to do next.
But as Star stepped out of the portal, she was leaving one battleground and entering into another.
The powerlines dotting the streets shook violently against a gale-force wind, the cables squealing and squeaking as they bounced against the black backdrop of night. Beneath her feet, the asphalt that was once recognizable as a road had become a jagged, rocky collection of deep potholes and harsh craters. Along the roadside, the tangled roots of once mighty oak trees were unearthed, sprawling away from their trunks as they stretched toward the sky.
It wasn't just Comet's version of Mewni that had fallen apart- his version of Earth had collapsed as well.
Even amongst the chaos, Star recognized this street. She'd recognize it in any dimension. It was Tijera Lane, the cul-de-sac leading to the Diazes house. Tijera, Marco had explained once. It's Spanish for 'scissors.' They named our street that because it cuts through Bestia Boulevard- oh, and that's just Spanish for 'beast'. No reason for that one...I hope?
As she traversed the dreary, disheveled, now abandoned street, the path of which she knew by heart, she had never felt more lost in her life.
Braving the tempest, she continued on.
As an unearthed patch of road went flying above her head, it occurred to Star why the horrible atmosphere felt so unnervingly familiar. The last time she'd experienced such a stew of chaos, she'd been trapped in a time loop. She thought back to that day in math class. Reality had been severely wrapped there, just as it was now. The more times she had re-looped that day, the more things had spiraled into abstract weirdness. It was all because of her refusal to solve that dumb math problem, Omnitraxus had explained. Apparently, that moment had been shared across all of Star's timelines, and by refusing to do the math, she'd diverged the timeline away from the cluster and nearly collapsed them all.
Fixing that problem had been so simple: she had only had to live through the moment. All it took was attempting to solve the math problem and everything went back to normal. But no matter how she looked it it, there was no easy fix this time around.
Two versions of herself were never supposed to meet- that much she knew. And she'd went against that good common sense out of her own selfishness. She'd crossed the timelines and had no way of fixing it now. With no way back to her world, she couldn't separate from Comet now. The fabrics of timespace were going to unravel, and with it, everyone she knew and loved.
She reached her destination. Her heart plummeted at the awful sight.
Her eyes began to fill with tears to see her home-away-from-home in such a demolished state. A majority of the shingles had been ripped from the roof, scattered about the yard in pieces. The window panes were shattered, the most gaping holes modestly covered by cardboard and duct tape. The only shutters to remain attached were chipped and sagging.
The Diazes' house looked like it had been abandoned for decades. What remained was merely the ghost of what had once stood. Her sanctuary had been shattered.
Curiosity overcame her. She approached the doorstep, as she had done so many times before, but this was the first time she had done so with great fear. The gnawing anticipation of what awaited her inside was the only thing pushing her forward.
It came as no surprise that the door was unlocked- or perhaps the locks had long since broken. Star slowly pushed the red wooden door open, producing a deafening creak. As it opened, no light poured through. It was dark.
She cautiously crept into the house.
She wanted to cry out, call out all their names, beg for someone to be home- but her voice was small and raspy and stuck in her throat, and no matter how she tried, she could not muster the courage to find it. She remained silent instead.
The only light in the house was faintly glowing in the living room. She pressed on, holding her breath as she entered the room, mentally preparing herself for whatever she might find.
The television set was still on- the source of the glow. The screen was black, with plain white text and scrolling red letters at the bottom. Star nearly jumped out of her skin as the eerie emergency alert system tone blared through the speakers.
"EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM," the robotic voice read the text. "A MANDATORY EVACUATION HAS BEEN ISSUED IN YOUR AREA OF: ECHO CREEK. A MESSAGE FROM YOUR LOCAL CIVIL AND NATIONAL AUTHORITIES WILL CIRCULATE SHORTLY. PLEASE LISTEN AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. THIS ALERT WILL REPEAT ON A CYCLE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE HAS BEEN GIVEN.
A long list of surrounding counties scrolled across at the bottom of the screen.
Thankful that the haunting emergency tone had temporary stopped, Star examined the rest of the living room. From the small light of the T.V., she could see the wallpaper peeling from the walls. The couch was upright, but severely disheveled. The coffee tables were laying on their sides, table legs facing away from Star. The thing that struck Star as most curious, however, were the many, many opened tin cans surrounding the T.V. set.
She advanced into the creepy room, raising one of the cans with a stream of magic from her wand.
The dirty label read "Grandma Beckett's Hickory Baked Beans!" Examining the rest of the cans by the light of her wand, Star found they were all emptied cans of preserved food- some beans, some corn, some tuna…
How old were they? Someone had obviously stayed here long enough to have accumulated all these empty cans. Were there squatters? Unlikely- it looked like everyone had evacuated. Maybe these cans were from a while ago-
She was thrown to the grown, a sharp kick causing a flaring burn to her side.
Now facing away from the television light, it was too dark to see who her attacker was. She scrambled for the light of her wand- oh no, her wand! Where was it?! The force of the kick had sent it flying across the room-
Caught horribly off guard, she didn't even have time to collect her senses before being forcefully shoved against the wall.
Just inches from her face were a pair of half-crazed eyes, dark umber irises alight with fury and fear. The face surrounding them was bruised and smudged, surrounded by a dark halo of messy hair that had slipped from atop her sloppy ponytail. She was tall, with tawny brown skin and a tattered red hoodie.
"Talk," she commanded, voice seething with impatience. "Before I kill you. Who are you, where did you come from, why do you have magic, and most importantly, what did you do to my best friend?"
Author's Note:
I just want to give a quick shout-out to everyone who has been reading this as it updates- thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your patience! I've been very, very sick with some long-term illness, but gradually recovering now. :D
I thought I would share my playlist of a few of my writing/inspiration songs for this story as an extra thanks. Let's jam out together :) suan .fm/mix/SJbZIUtVz Once again, THANK YOU!