Book One, Chapter One -- No Need for Watches
~*~
Along the winding roads in North Carolina were the last standing areas of a dense forest. There, a group of people had built a camp and christened it "Ridge Haven", and hordes of Jr. High and Sr. High students flocked to the Christian camp every summer and winter. All saw and agreed that this, indeed, was good.
In the winter of the year of 2003, a group of nine teens from First Presbyterian Church in Prattville, Alabama were attending the week-long "Youth Winter Blast" camp session. To their delight, it snowed the night before they arrived, and they enjoyed their first few days there with many snowball fights and pieces of snow down the backs of others' shirts. These teenagers were Christien Phileman, Elizabeth "Efad" Milton, Justin Layor, Aaron Sidnay, Elizabeth "ET" Talley (both Elizabeths had been given nicknames to prevent confusion), David Talley, Suzanne McCord, Claire Rouze, and Kevin McGorma.
Christien emerged from his cabin one afternoon to see his group of friends and a counselor walking past, though they were ten or twelve yards away before he saw them. "Hey, wait up, guys!" He called, running to catch them.
Efad, who was in the rear of the group, glanced over her shoulder at him. "Oh, there you are! C'mon, we're on our way to Shepherd's Hall. Noah said something about a scavenger hunt at breakfast this morning." Noah (just "Noah" to the campers) was the head director of the camp for that year; incidentally, there was no director for the Jr. High students, so Christien was able to join his friends in the Sr. High camp.
Suzanne shivered. "I hate the cold. Can't we find the first van back to Alabama? At least there's no snow there..."
"You just want to get home to your horse," Efad commented dryly.
"What's wrong with that?"
"I hope this isn't like the scavenger hunt from last year," Claire moaned, pulling her jacket closer around her. "Only a git like Noah would've gotten us out of bed at one in the morning..."
"Yeah, I remember that." Aaron idly kicked at a small mound of snow alongside the road. "He told every cabin that one of their campers had been missing. That one girl in Efad's cabin was freaking out to tears..."
ET merely shrugged. "I guess this is what happens when we miss a year."
David scowled at his sister. "It's not MY fault we had to stay home last year -- you were the one who was too weak to get out of bed."
"I just didn't want to come last year," Justin spontaneously declared, though no one had asked the information of him. "I wanted as much time to sleep during Christmas break as I could get."
Kate, Efad's sister, rolled her eyes. "I don't know how I managed to get you crazies in my cabin! It's my first year as a counselor, for crying out loud!"
"Maybe that's why the girls are with you," Kevin pointed out. "The directors knew you were from our group two years ago, so maybe they thought you'd work best with people you know."
Christien laughed. "Knowing Noah, he probably threw a dart at a dartboard to decide."
As they reached and entered the dining hall, they saw a group of young adults in the corner; Kate quickly jogged across the caffeteria-like room to join her fellow counselors. The teenagers shrugged, found seats around a table, and volunteered Aaron and David to find where the hot chocolate was being hidden. After a few more minutes of fellowship, a tall young man, whom Christien immediately recognized as Noah, stood on top of a chair and gave five rhythmic claps. Every camper and counselor echoed the clap, then fell silent.
"Are you ready for a scavenger hunt!" He bellowed, grinning at the applause and shouts of "WHOO, YEAH!" and the like. "Get into your teams, then! Wicked Awesome Mullets: Kate and Sam's cabins, over here! Backstreet Girls: Brooke and Andi's cabins, over there! Number Fours: Doug and Ryan's cabins, the other over there!"
A great shuffling commensed between campers and counselors, and after a moment, all were in their respected teams.
"How did we get stuck with a name like Wicked Awesome Mullets?" Suzanne hissed in Claire's ear.
"Ask the guys -- they're the only ones in Sam's cabin, after all," she whispered back.
Noah surveyed the crowd and nodded to himself. "Counselors, you have the first clue for your team. Ready? GO!"
~*~
"I still don't like scavenger hunts," Justin grunted, trying to dodge a branch as it flew back at his face. "Noah must be wrong in the head or something to think this fun."
Efad grinned at ET and they spontaneously broke into song. "He's distoibed, he's distoibed, he's the most distoibed--"
The mixed response from their peers consisted of laughter, moans, groans, and a surprised "You know West Side Story?" from Sam.
David shook his head. "They could recite that movie off the top of their head if they wanted to."
Kevin removed his hands from his ears and grimaced. "Now, we never let Efad pick the movie to watch on movie nights. EVER."
"You just don't know good movies," the girl casually called back to him.
"I DO know good movies, and that wasn't one of 'em. Too many people sang, the pants the guys wore looked like tights, and nothing exploded!"
Kate snorted. "Boys," she muttered under her breath, almost in a disgusted tone of voice.
The company fell to silence, having no more to say upon the subject. It was a moment later that a glint caught Christien's eye, causing him to stop in the middle of Aaron's, Claire's, Kevin's, and Suzanne's walkway.
"Oof!" Aaron managed to keep himself from falling over the younger boy. "What's the deal, Chris?"
Christien bent over and brushed debris off of the spot from which the light had come. "...I saw something shining over here," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. A curious noise escaped him as he unearthed a golden watch, still in amazing condition.
Kevin gave a low whistle. "Wow, that's a nice watch."
Suzanne peered at it over Christien's shoulder. "I wonder who at camp has a watch like that... it seems to nice too wear in the middle of the woods."
At this point, Efad, ET, David, and Justin had noticed that their friends were missing. "Hey, what's the holdup?" David called as they walked towards the stopped teenagers.
"Chris found a watch," Claire informed them. "We're trying to figure out who at camp had one like this."
Efad, when she had gotten close enough, beckoned with her hand to see the watch in question. "...dang," she breathed, taking a closer look at it in her palm. "I don't know, but it's NICE... who on earth would wear a this kind of watch on a hike?"
"That's what I said," Suzanne muttered, her eyes following the piece of jewelry as it was passed back to Christien.
"But why would someone just leave an expensive watch lying around in the middle of nowhere?" David scratched his head, frowning at the watch. "Maybe it's just me, but something doesn't feel right about it being here."
Justin poked at the face and raised an eyebrow. "It's dead, anyway. It must've been out here a good while -- it takes a long time for a watch battery to die."
"C'mon, guys, they're getting ahead of us," ET called, heading back towards the counselors.
As the others took their first step to catch their counselors, Christien noticed that the dial on the side had been pulled outward; with a sigh, he pushed it back into the watch face and started to follow his friends, but froze mid-step as the world around him seemed to stop. The wind that had been blowing through the trees had frozen the limbs and leaves in midair, and even the snow that had started to fall was in a state of suspended animation.
Kevin, Efad, and Claire glanced around at the same time, having noticed as well. "...what's going on?" Efad asked slowly, throwing a glance towards Kate and Sam. Unfortunately, the two counselors had also been trapped in the stopped flow of time. "Kate...? Sam? Oh man, this is bad. This is very, very bad!" This brought the other five to a panicked state, having taken note of the surreal surroundings themselves.
Aaron tried to take another step, but found that he (along with everyone else) could not move his feet, nor could he fall over from losing his balance. "It's getting worse," he grunted, looking about warily. "What the heck's happening?"
No one was able to answer, for in the next instant, the ground seemed to fall out from underneath them. They barely had time to scream before they hit a hard surface horizontally, and most were immediately knocked unconscious from the blow. Christien gasped, trying to regain the ability to breathe, and strangely felt a shrinking feeling as he, too, fell blissfully out of consciousness.
~*~
"Christien... c'mon Chris, this isn't funny, please wake up..."
With a heavy moan, Christien managed to bring his mind back into thinking mode. He knew he was in one piece (though he knew his back would be bruised from the collision with what he imagined was the ground), but he couldn't move anything; his limbs refused to respond, and even his eyelids felt as though they were two-ton weights. Also, it wasn't cold anymore... what had happened? He could remember the woods disappearing, the ground being yanked from underneath his feet, the watch---
The watch! Where was it? Christien's once-heavy eyelids snapped open, only to be blinded by the sunlight from above him. Hadn't it been overcast before...? Forgetting his aches and pains, he tried to sit up much faster than his body was ready for. "Where's the watch?" He murmured, hearing his own voice hollow in his ears. Was his speech really as slurred as it sounded?
A voice sighed, as though either exasperated or slightly afraid; Christien was still unable to tell which. "You've still got it with you, don't worry -- it's on a chain around your neck. But... Chris, I don't know where we are."
He managed to open his eyes again, squinting to adjust to the amount of light around him. He was lying on his back in the woods, but they were different from the trails at Ridge Haven, and he kept wondering why on earth the weather had changed...
It was a moment before he realized that Efad was crouched beside him--- at least, he THOUGHT it was Efad. He knew it was her voice he'd heard, but... she didn't LOOK like Efad anymore! She no longer had her hat or her ponytail, but instead curly chestnut locks that she kept trying to brush out of her eyes. ...no, it WAS still Efad -- her eyes were the same light brown with the comfortable, unmistakably warm feel about them. "...Efad? W-what happened? Why are you--"
"I don't know," she interrupted, "but you are, too. Look: I don't know where we are, I don't know where the others are, and I have no idea why we're like this!"
Christien felt a fearful twinge crawl up his spine. "One thing at a time. What do you mean, 'you are, too'?" Without another word, she carefully helped him to a nearby creek and showed him his own reflection.
"See? We're different from who we were..." Efad said, almost panicked.
He stared in disbelief, for what she said was true: his normally straight, neck-length brown hair now looked exactly like her unruly curls, only differing by a lighter shade. His face and eyes had stayed the same, but somehow, he knew something was amiss. He felt... unexplainably different, somehow.
"How did this happen?" He asked slowly.
Efad sighed. "It had to be that watch. It's the only explanation I can think of! After you picked it up, that weird, eh... time-warping thing happened, we're all separated by the time we're conscious again, and we don't look like ourselves anymore! It has to be the watch!"
"But it was just a watch someone lost in the woods!" Christien protested.
"That's obviously what someone wanted us to think."
He let out an exasperated sigh. "But-- there's no such thing as time-warping watches! It's impossible by every law of science on earth!"
A chill passed between them as Efad added, "...on earth."
"No way. Not ever! It's just not possible! We CAN'T be in another world!"
"Never say never." She sighed heavily and glanced around at their surroundings. "...about now, I'd be willing to believe anything."
A thunderous crash broke through the silence in the underbrush, causing the two to jump and whirl to face the noise. To their surprise (and delight), a shout of, "Nice one, Grace!" echoed the crash; it had to be Claire and David... no, that had been Aaron's voice! Christien could've sworn he heard David's and ET's recognizable laughter from the same direction as well.
"Claire! We're over here!" Efad shouted, standing to try and spot their friends as they came.
The noise and movement stopped. "...was that Efad?" ET's voice asked.
"It was!" Claire shouted joyously. More crashes and tearing through of the underbrush ensured, and the girl burst through the bushes to tackle Efad in a hug. "How did y'all get over here?" She asked. "We were looking everywhere for you!" Claire, too, had changed -- instead of being half a head shorter than Efad, she had apparently grown to nearly match height with the older girl; her hair, too, had been changed into dark curls, and for the first time Christien noticed that his, Efad's, and Claire's clothing were all alike: short leather breeches, undershirts, vests each a different color, and cloaks secured about their necks. They were all barefoot as well, though none had noticed the difference until now.
Efad grinned. "It's been a long day already, I guess. Where are the others?"
"Right behind me. But you won't believe what happened to them--"
At that moment, ET, David, Aaron, and Justin forced their way into the clearing. ET was the same height as the three former (though she had been a head taller than Efad) with the curly hair and clothes to match; Justin was slightly taller, his normally short blond-brown hair was in a long braid behind his back, and he wore what appeared to be a tunic-like shirt with pants underneath; David and Aaron, however, looked exactly the same as they had been (with the exception of a clothing change, similar to that of Justin's, and swords around their belts) easily stood two or three heads taller than the rest. Efad's jaw fell open in surprise and she shouted, "what the HECK?!" when she saw the two abnormally tall boys.
Aaron held back a laugh as his eyes fell on her. "Um, Efad, I always knew you were shorter than me, but..." he choked out a snort before he could stop himself, which caused Efad to frown rather nastily at him.
David, trying to look as if he was not amused, shook his head. "Well, either we grew or you guys shrunk..." This caused Aaron to cough, trying to cover his fit of laughter.
Efad's face grew even more red with impatience at Aaron as she stormed up to him and grabbed him by the collar. "I might be shorter, but I could still kick your butt into the ground if I wanted to," she snarled angrily.
It seemed Aaron's wit would never end. "How?" He wheezed. "By kicking me in the kneecaps?"
"Good idea," she hissed. Before anyone could stop her, she delt a swift side kick to his knee and watched him fall in pain and surprise. She still looked rather irked by the time he regained his footing. "Don't make fun of me."
Everyone else took a cautious step back, not wanting to find themselves in the middle of a rampage; though it took a good amount of effort to make Efad truly angry, it was still possible (and rather frightening). When her expression became more cheerful, Claire asked, "have you two seen Suzanne or Kevin? They weren't with us--"
"Or with us," David added.
"Nor us," ET finished, shaking her head.
Christien sighed and shrugged. "No, we haven't seen them, either. We were hoping they were with you--"
"We're right here," Suzanne's voice interrupted. Everyone jumped and whirled, surprised that they hadn't heard her or Kevin approach. Suzanne, dressed now in a tunic-like shirt, sleek boots, leggings, and a bow and quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, was leaning up against a tree; Kevin, who was beside her, was wearing grey robes, a hat similar to that of a witch's hat, and was holding a staff in his right hand. "Where have y'all been?"
"Right here," Christien muttered, sighing. "And while it's good that we have everyone together again, we still don't know where we are... do we?"
"I have a suspicion that it's that watch's fault," Kevin snorted, glaring at it as it dangled around Christien's neck. "I mean, one minute we're in North Carolina, and the next we're somewhere else in someone else's clothes!"
Justin shrugged and shifted positions where he stood. "...it could be worse, though, right?"
"It IS worse, Justin." Efad sighed tiredly. "I have a feeling that, even if we're still on Earth, there's no way of getting home..."
~*~
Along the winding roads in North Carolina were the last standing areas of a dense forest. There, a group of people had built a camp and christened it "Ridge Haven", and hordes of Jr. High and Sr. High students flocked to the Christian camp every summer and winter. All saw and agreed that this, indeed, was good.
In the winter of the year of 2003, a group of nine teens from First Presbyterian Church in Prattville, Alabama were attending the week-long "Youth Winter Blast" camp session. To their delight, it snowed the night before they arrived, and they enjoyed their first few days there with many snowball fights and pieces of snow down the backs of others' shirts. These teenagers were Christien Phileman, Elizabeth "Efad" Milton, Justin Layor, Aaron Sidnay, Elizabeth "ET" Talley (both Elizabeths had been given nicknames to prevent confusion), David Talley, Suzanne McCord, Claire Rouze, and Kevin McGorma.
Christien emerged from his cabin one afternoon to see his group of friends and a counselor walking past, though they were ten or twelve yards away before he saw them. "Hey, wait up, guys!" He called, running to catch them.
Efad, who was in the rear of the group, glanced over her shoulder at him. "Oh, there you are! C'mon, we're on our way to Shepherd's Hall. Noah said something about a scavenger hunt at breakfast this morning." Noah (just "Noah" to the campers) was the head director of the camp for that year; incidentally, there was no director for the Jr. High students, so Christien was able to join his friends in the Sr. High camp.
Suzanne shivered. "I hate the cold. Can't we find the first van back to Alabama? At least there's no snow there..."
"You just want to get home to your horse," Efad commented dryly.
"What's wrong with that?"
"I hope this isn't like the scavenger hunt from last year," Claire moaned, pulling her jacket closer around her. "Only a git like Noah would've gotten us out of bed at one in the morning..."
"Yeah, I remember that." Aaron idly kicked at a small mound of snow alongside the road. "He told every cabin that one of their campers had been missing. That one girl in Efad's cabin was freaking out to tears..."
ET merely shrugged. "I guess this is what happens when we miss a year."
David scowled at his sister. "It's not MY fault we had to stay home last year -- you were the one who was too weak to get out of bed."
"I just didn't want to come last year," Justin spontaneously declared, though no one had asked the information of him. "I wanted as much time to sleep during Christmas break as I could get."
Kate, Efad's sister, rolled her eyes. "I don't know how I managed to get you crazies in my cabin! It's my first year as a counselor, for crying out loud!"
"Maybe that's why the girls are with you," Kevin pointed out. "The directors knew you were from our group two years ago, so maybe they thought you'd work best with people you know."
Christien laughed. "Knowing Noah, he probably threw a dart at a dartboard to decide."
As they reached and entered the dining hall, they saw a group of young adults in the corner; Kate quickly jogged across the caffeteria-like room to join her fellow counselors. The teenagers shrugged, found seats around a table, and volunteered Aaron and David to find where the hot chocolate was being hidden. After a few more minutes of fellowship, a tall young man, whom Christien immediately recognized as Noah, stood on top of a chair and gave five rhythmic claps. Every camper and counselor echoed the clap, then fell silent.
"Are you ready for a scavenger hunt!" He bellowed, grinning at the applause and shouts of "WHOO, YEAH!" and the like. "Get into your teams, then! Wicked Awesome Mullets: Kate and Sam's cabins, over here! Backstreet Girls: Brooke and Andi's cabins, over there! Number Fours: Doug and Ryan's cabins, the other over there!"
A great shuffling commensed between campers and counselors, and after a moment, all were in their respected teams.
"How did we get stuck with a name like Wicked Awesome Mullets?" Suzanne hissed in Claire's ear.
"Ask the guys -- they're the only ones in Sam's cabin, after all," she whispered back.
Noah surveyed the crowd and nodded to himself. "Counselors, you have the first clue for your team. Ready? GO!"
~*~
"I still don't like scavenger hunts," Justin grunted, trying to dodge a branch as it flew back at his face. "Noah must be wrong in the head or something to think this fun."
Efad grinned at ET and they spontaneously broke into song. "He's distoibed, he's distoibed, he's the most distoibed--"
The mixed response from their peers consisted of laughter, moans, groans, and a surprised "You know West Side Story?" from Sam.
David shook his head. "They could recite that movie off the top of their head if they wanted to."
Kevin removed his hands from his ears and grimaced. "Now, we never let Efad pick the movie to watch on movie nights. EVER."
"You just don't know good movies," the girl casually called back to him.
"I DO know good movies, and that wasn't one of 'em. Too many people sang, the pants the guys wore looked like tights, and nothing exploded!"
Kate snorted. "Boys," she muttered under her breath, almost in a disgusted tone of voice.
The company fell to silence, having no more to say upon the subject. It was a moment later that a glint caught Christien's eye, causing him to stop in the middle of Aaron's, Claire's, Kevin's, and Suzanne's walkway.
"Oof!" Aaron managed to keep himself from falling over the younger boy. "What's the deal, Chris?"
Christien bent over and brushed debris off of the spot from which the light had come. "...I saw something shining over here," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. A curious noise escaped him as he unearthed a golden watch, still in amazing condition.
Kevin gave a low whistle. "Wow, that's a nice watch."
Suzanne peered at it over Christien's shoulder. "I wonder who at camp has a watch like that... it seems to nice too wear in the middle of the woods."
At this point, Efad, ET, David, and Justin had noticed that their friends were missing. "Hey, what's the holdup?" David called as they walked towards the stopped teenagers.
"Chris found a watch," Claire informed them. "We're trying to figure out who at camp had one like this."
Efad, when she had gotten close enough, beckoned with her hand to see the watch in question. "...dang," she breathed, taking a closer look at it in her palm. "I don't know, but it's NICE... who on earth would wear a this kind of watch on a hike?"
"That's what I said," Suzanne muttered, her eyes following the piece of jewelry as it was passed back to Christien.
"But why would someone just leave an expensive watch lying around in the middle of nowhere?" David scratched his head, frowning at the watch. "Maybe it's just me, but something doesn't feel right about it being here."
Justin poked at the face and raised an eyebrow. "It's dead, anyway. It must've been out here a good while -- it takes a long time for a watch battery to die."
"C'mon, guys, they're getting ahead of us," ET called, heading back towards the counselors.
As the others took their first step to catch their counselors, Christien noticed that the dial on the side had been pulled outward; with a sigh, he pushed it back into the watch face and started to follow his friends, but froze mid-step as the world around him seemed to stop. The wind that had been blowing through the trees had frozen the limbs and leaves in midair, and even the snow that had started to fall was in a state of suspended animation.
Kevin, Efad, and Claire glanced around at the same time, having noticed as well. "...what's going on?" Efad asked slowly, throwing a glance towards Kate and Sam. Unfortunately, the two counselors had also been trapped in the stopped flow of time. "Kate...? Sam? Oh man, this is bad. This is very, very bad!" This brought the other five to a panicked state, having taken note of the surreal surroundings themselves.
Aaron tried to take another step, but found that he (along with everyone else) could not move his feet, nor could he fall over from losing his balance. "It's getting worse," he grunted, looking about warily. "What the heck's happening?"
No one was able to answer, for in the next instant, the ground seemed to fall out from underneath them. They barely had time to scream before they hit a hard surface horizontally, and most were immediately knocked unconscious from the blow. Christien gasped, trying to regain the ability to breathe, and strangely felt a shrinking feeling as he, too, fell blissfully out of consciousness.
~*~
"Christien... c'mon Chris, this isn't funny, please wake up..."
With a heavy moan, Christien managed to bring his mind back into thinking mode. He knew he was in one piece (though he knew his back would be bruised from the collision with what he imagined was the ground), but he couldn't move anything; his limbs refused to respond, and even his eyelids felt as though they were two-ton weights. Also, it wasn't cold anymore... what had happened? He could remember the woods disappearing, the ground being yanked from underneath his feet, the watch---
The watch! Where was it? Christien's once-heavy eyelids snapped open, only to be blinded by the sunlight from above him. Hadn't it been overcast before...? Forgetting his aches and pains, he tried to sit up much faster than his body was ready for. "Where's the watch?" He murmured, hearing his own voice hollow in his ears. Was his speech really as slurred as it sounded?
A voice sighed, as though either exasperated or slightly afraid; Christien was still unable to tell which. "You've still got it with you, don't worry -- it's on a chain around your neck. But... Chris, I don't know where we are."
He managed to open his eyes again, squinting to adjust to the amount of light around him. He was lying on his back in the woods, but they were different from the trails at Ridge Haven, and he kept wondering why on earth the weather had changed...
It was a moment before he realized that Efad was crouched beside him--- at least, he THOUGHT it was Efad. He knew it was her voice he'd heard, but... she didn't LOOK like Efad anymore! She no longer had her hat or her ponytail, but instead curly chestnut locks that she kept trying to brush out of her eyes. ...no, it WAS still Efad -- her eyes were the same light brown with the comfortable, unmistakably warm feel about them. "...Efad? W-what happened? Why are you--"
"I don't know," she interrupted, "but you are, too. Look: I don't know where we are, I don't know where the others are, and I have no idea why we're like this!"
Christien felt a fearful twinge crawl up his spine. "One thing at a time. What do you mean, 'you are, too'?" Without another word, she carefully helped him to a nearby creek and showed him his own reflection.
"See? We're different from who we were..." Efad said, almost panicked.
He stared in disbelief, for what she said was true: his normally straight, neck-length brown hair now looked exactly like her unruly curls, only differing by a lighter shade. His face and eyes had stayed the same, but somehow, he knew something was amiss. He felt... unexplainably different, somehow.
"How did this happen?" He asked slowly.
Efad sighed. "It had to be that watch. It's the only explanation I can think of! After you picked it up, that weird, eh... time-warping thing happened, we're all separated by the time we're conscious again, and we don't look like ourselves anymore! It has to be the watch!"
"But it was just a watch someone lost in the woods!" Christien protested.
"That's obviously what someone wanted us to think."
He let out an exasperated sigh. "But-- there's no such thing as time-warping watches! It's impossible by every law of science on earth!"
A chill passed between them as Efad added, "...on earth."
"No way. Not ever! It's just not possible! We CAN'T be in another world!"
"Never say never." She sighed heavily and glanced around at their surroundings. "...about now, I'd be willing to believe anything."
A thunderous crash broke through the silence in the underbrush, causing the two to jump and whirl to face the noise. To their surprise (and delight), a shout of, "Nice one, Grace!" echoed the crash; it had to be Claire and David... no, that had been Aaron's voice! Christien could've sworn he heard David's and ET's recognizable laughter from the same direction as well.
"Claire! We're over here!" Efad shouted, standing to try and spot their friends as they came.
The noise and movement stopped. "...was that Efad?" ET's voice asked.
"It was!" Claire shouted joyously. More crashes and tearing through of the underbrush ensured, and the girl burst through the bushes to tackle Efad in a hug. "How did y'all get over here?" She asked. "We were looking everywhere for you!" Claire, too, had changed -- instead of being half a head shorter than Efad, she had apparently grown to nearly match height with the older girl; her hair, too, had been changed into dark curls, and for the first time Christien noticed that his, Efad's, and Claire's clothing were all alike: short leather breeches, undershirts, vests each a different color, and cloaks secured about their necks. They were all barefoot as well, though none had noticed the difference until now.
Efad grinned. "It's been a long day already, I guess. Where are the others?"
"Right behind me. But you won't believe what happened to them--"
At that moment, ET, David, Aaron, and Justin forced their way into the clearing. ET was the same height as the three former (though she had been a head taller than Efad) with the curly hair and clothes to match; Justin was slightly taller, his normally short blond-brown hair was in a long braid behind his back, and he wore what appeared to be a tunic-like shirt with pants underneath; David and Aaron, however, looked exactly the same as they had been (with the exception of a clothing change, similar to that of Justin's, and swords around their belts) easily stood two or three heads taller than the rest. Efad's jaw fell open in surprise and she shouted, "what the HECK?!" when she saw the two abnormally tall boys.
Aaron held back a laugh as his eyes fell on her. "Um, Efad, I always knew you were shorter than me, but..." he choked out a snort before he could stop himself, which caused Efad to frown rather nastily at him.
David, trying to look as if he was not amused, shook his head. "Well, either we grew or you guys shrunk..." This caused Aaron to cough, trying to cover his fit of laughter.
Efad's face grew even more red with impatience at Aaron as she stormed up to him and grabbed him by the collar. "I might be shorter, but I could still kick your butt into the ground if I wanted to," she snarled angrily.
It seemed Aaron's wit would never end. "How?" He wheezed. "By kicking me in the kneecaps?"
"Good idea," she hissed. Before anyone could stop her, she delt a swift side kick to his knee and watched him fall in pain and surprise. She still looked rather irked by the time he regained his footing. "Don't make fun of me."
Everyone else took a cautious step back, not wanting to find themselves in the middle of a rampage; though it took a good amount of effort to make Efad truly angry, it was still possible (and rather frightening). When her expression became more cheerful, Claire asked, "have you two seen Suzanne or Kevin? They weren't with us--"
"Or with us," David added.
"Nor us," ET finished, shaking her head.
Christien sighed and shrugged. "No, we haven't seen them, either. We were hoping they were with you--"
"We're right here," Suzanne's voice interrupted. Everyone jumped and whirled, surprised that they hadn't heard her or Kevin approach. Suzanne, dressed now in a tunic-like shirt, sleek boots, leggings, and a bow and quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, was leaning up against a tree; Kevin, who was beside her, was wearing grey robes, a hat similar to that of a witch's hat, and was holding a staff in his right hand. "Where have y'all been?"
"Right here," Christien muttered, sighing. "And while it's good that we have everyone together again, we still don't know where we are... do we?"
"I have a suspicion that it's that watch's fault," Kevin snorted, glaring at it as it dangled around Christien's neck. "I mean, one minute we're in North Carolina, and the next we're somewhere else in someone else's clothes!"
Justin shrugged and shifted positions where he stood. "...it could be worse, though, right?"
"It IS worse, Justin." Efad sighed tiredly. "I have a feeling that, even if we're still on Earth, there's no way of getting home..."