AN: This one is submitted in honor of my first reviews! They next few will be out sometime next week and longer out of necessity. This one is longer (if only a little) out of my desire to both bring a little more context and to procrastinate (It's amazing how much energy you find to do something when you don't want to do anything else).


So appearances could be deceptive.

To begin with, she was in the US apparently, not that the earlier accent hadn't given that away. San Francisco to be exact. At least – that's what the rather loud woman who'd walked by had said. Where in San Francisco, she wasn't quite sure yet. She was still a little dazed.

The thing was, she'd been in the French-ish speaking countryside less than half an hour ago. She hadn't tried apparition since the end of the war, hadn't been near anything resembling floo powder in years (decades, centuries maybe, if she was honest with herself), and unless someone had learned how to turn her coffee cup into an international port key without her knowing, something besides the random (trans-dimensional?) travel was off.

Usually these things had a pattern to them. A certain amount of time passed. The last place wouldn't look or feel remotely like the next place. This was different. This San Francisco felt familiar. The people, humans, looked familiar. The various technology, though different, wasn't all that dissimilar to that of the last. So something about the pattern had changed or was in the process of changing.

Something other than the fact there was a green, scantily clad woman hanging on the arm of an otherwise normal looking guy. She tilted her head, quirked an eyebrow, and followed the pair with her eyes as they walked obliviously down the street. It wasn't entirely new but, well, it certainly didn't happen every day. Or would it? Sip, savor, swallow, bite, chew.

Another difference that convinced her this wasn't her San Francisco – not that she'd ever been before. 'A plausible future?' An interesting thought, one that she would dedicate precious brain cells to later.

At the moment, the other eyebrow was joining the first. A blue - 'Person? Surely not' - with - 'are those antennae?' … joined the previous couple in a decidedly comfortable manner. Decidedly comfortable. 'Well, I'll be … Hmph. So, liberal society. Or at least pretty open.'

She stretched her legs out in front of her, took another sip of coffee and a bite of her '- Danish? Hmph, pretty good.' Her bottom was starting to go numb from sitting so long on the curb. In fact, her neck was kinda getting tired too, all this swiveling back and forth in an attempt to process all the new *cough* sights. So she took to staring straight ahead while the coffee slowly worked its own unique magic.

Eventually, another thought filtered past her slightly less sleep muddled (and very possibly still overloaded) mind. 'The city itself seems off too.' She just couldn't put her finger on it. Why did the city seem so different (and when did she stop considering the whole being randomly displaced thing different and off in and of itself?)?

She looked out over the futuristic San Francisco landscape. Sip, savor, swallow, bite, chew.