Marin was falling, falling far.
Hey body jolted, she wasn't falling anymore.
She wasn't cold anymore. She was warm, very, very, warm. She couldn't move.
Opening her eyes, she was in front of a fire place. Her house didn't have a fire place, her parent's had had the chimney and fireplace removed to save on the utility bill. The rug Marin was looking at was a style she had never seen before. The couch or bed she was in was in a rustic design but it also looked newly made.
"Shelly! She's awake!" A man yelled to deeper in the house.
Marin shivered and tried to reach out of the bundle of blankets she had been swathed in.
"Don't move." He told her. "You nearly died of cold."
A clay cup was proffered to her for drinking. She was able to get one hand around it. It was some kind of herbal tea, it was also blessedly warm.
"Are you OK?" the older man asked.
Marin wanted to cough, with a sore throat, "yeah."
"What were you doing out there dressed like that?" He asked Marin, as a woman came in with a tray of food.
"Where am I?" Marin asked him. 'I'm alive. What is this even?'
"Icicle Inn, dear." the woman said. Laying the tray of soup and a bread roll on an ottoman next to Marin.
"What?" the name bothered her and Marin did not know why. "Where?" she looked around, grounding herself. 'I must have completely lost it.' She was convinced that she was finally as crazy as she was afraid of. She had been in North America in September. Where had she gone? How? "When?" 'How?'
"The north pole dear. In September. how could you forget?" Shelly told Marin.
That made even less sense. "Uhh."
"She needs rest, Shelly. Leave her be." He said, shuttling off Shelly somewhere else in the house.
Marin freed her other arm, she needed to hold the cup with both hands. Her stomach grumbled. The night had been very dark and that morning before breakfast felt a very long time ago.
"Here." He came back and gestured to the tray. "Eat something. The food will help keep you warm."
The roll didn't taste like any bun she had had before. It was fresh, whatever the ingredients. Marin would not have been able to tell yeast from flour, just that as she mindfully ate the bread, it was unfamiliar to her. The Green tea had a floral scent as well, and not one she recognized either. 'Is there a flowery green tea I just don't know of?'
"Um, thank you?" Marin offered the man.
He felt Marin's forehead and nodded to himself. "You're gonna be all right."
He sat down on another chair in front of the fire. Clinking and noises came from the kitchen, Shelly was doing something in the small house.
"But uh," He peered behind Marin, towards Shelly's noises. "I have a favor to ask."
"Umm," Marin buried her words in her bread roll.
"I thought I'd seen it all, until you knocked on the door, tonight of all nights as well."
"Mm, hmm." was all Marin said.
"Shelly, my wife, she still doesn't believe our girl is gone."
Marin was suddenly very uncomfortable. These people were not ruddy in the face, they had been crying.
"I don't know how you got here. At this time of year, you would be dead dressed like that. It only takes a few minutes to freeze to death from cold here."
"I still don't know where here even is." She turned the cup in her hand, she was out of tea.
"You know where north is, don't you?"
Marin rolled her eyes, "I know what north is. But I don't know how I got here. OR where here is. And now you're asking me-"
"Shh, keep it quieter, please. I don't want to disturb Shelly."
Marin hissed the rest out, "I would like some answers before doing any favors." she picked at the blanket wrapped around her, "I am grateful to have not frozen, I just. I don't know what you're asking."
The man sighed and sidled as close as his chair would allow. "My wife, I- do you have family?"
Marin sighed, "I do, but I don't know where, other than south of here." She thought that her home might be further away than just 'South.'
"Everyone else lives south of this place." He told her.
"I gathered." She told him. "About this favor?" Thinking that, 'I must be dreaming. When I wake up I'm going to call Jamie just to hear her voice again.'
"It's my wife, I'm afraid she's denying her grief. But there's" He sighed, "It's more than that. I just want her to be comfortable."
Marin didn't say anything.
He continued, "She's always been fragile, now, with Janine-" he choked up, "with her gone. I'm afraid she won't hold herself together. You know what I mean?"
Marin remembered the funeral of her other best friend, Danny. It had been barely a month later before Marin had gone mad. Marin had been having minor problems for months before, but Danny going had pushed her the rest of the way over the edge. "I think I know what you mean too well." Her grief had made everything harder, include hold herself together.
"So you understand, about my wife being…delicate? She doesn't see things the way the rest of us do"
"Mmm." 'That makes two of us,' Marin thought.
"I just, where are you from?"
Marin guffawed, "Nowhere around here."
"Nowhere, eh?."
"Well, you speak English, so we can't be that far from North America."
"North who-now? English? What language is that?"
"What." Marin put her cup down and rubbed her eyes. "What country is nearest here going south?"
"Country? There haven't been countries in a long time. But Corel is the next nearest larger town across the north seas."
"What. What do you mean no countries?"
"Did you come out of time, girl? Wutai is the only independent country left."
'No.' She realized 'Nononononono.' The names clicked in her brain.
"Every other city or state is under control of the benevolent ShinRa corporation."
"What?!" After crying aloud, she swore in her mind, 'I'm fucking dreaming.'
"Is everything all right in their Henry?"
He waved her down reassuringly and shouted back to his wife. "We're fine Shelly. Everything is fine."
"Is Janine eating yet?" Shelly yelled from the kitchen.
"Yep, the bun is gone. Delicious! Right?" He asked Marin.
She only nodded. Thinking, 'Corel, Wutai. ShinRa. Fucking ShinRa. I'm in a fucking video game. This isn't real.' "None of this is real," she mumbled under her breath.
"All gone Shelly!" the man shouted back.
Shelly went back to doing whatever she was doing in the kitchen.
"Keep your voice down, please." He hissed at her.
"Who's Janine?" she asked, whispering.
"My daughter." He whispered back. "My late daughter."
Marin buried her face in her hands. "I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming. I'm going to wake up and call Jamie about this crazy-dream I had where I was stuck in Icicle Inn-whatever." she mumbled to herself in a stream of words.
Looking back up at Harold, she rubbed one of the blankets between her fingers, she even sniffed it.
Marin couldn't remember feeling that cold in a dream. She had not had nightmares since she was little. The fire smelled like a fire. She hadn't been this warm in a dream either. She didn't remember if she had ever tasted tea or bread. She vaguely remembered eating and drinking. But this was real, more real than anything she had ever dreamed.
Even her hallucinations had only ever been sound, someone mumbling at a distance, before it had become someone calling her name from far away to giving her advice she refused to follow. Distant whisperings before she started blacking out. Whatever happened after that was gone from her memory. But she always came back to herself later, to live with the consequences of what she had done, that she couldn't remember doing.
And now Marin was in the house of someone she had surprising things in common with. Marin wasn't afraid of Shelly becoming violent. Even Marin knew that her own punch was so rare in any situation resembling hers. People who became ill this way were far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
Marin gathered her thoughts. She was trapped in a video game, Final Fantasy Seven in fact. She recognized the names before that fucking corporation had been mentioned. This was surreal for her. But it also felt, smelt, and seemed real. As real as her own bedroom.
The man watched Marin, concerned "Would you like something more to drink?" He asked her.
Marin only nodded.
Harold had her tea refilled too quickly for her to form another question.
"I think my real family is very, very far away from here." she said.
"Everywhere is far from here."
"I need-" she cut herself off. She didn't know what she needed. Marin didn't know where to go or what to do.
Her sniffles were gone, she was still hungry, the aches from the flu were gone. Marin wanted to stretch. She also wanted to run and hide.
"Are you OK?" He asked her, concern in his face as he felt her forehead again.
Marin nodded, "I will be."
She glanced in the direction of the door outside. At this point she was expecting all the characters from the game to come bursting in.
Marin needed more time, she needed more information. She thought, 'Maybe everything is over and done with and I have nothing to worry about.'
The 'northern lights' had been peeking out from behind the curtain of mountains far from the town. They weren't northern lights, they were too low.
Marin remembered, she had been playing this game hours ago. Those lights were a wound in the world as bits of Lifestream were trying to heal the hole in the ground. They tried to heal the wound the same way that a cut bled until platelets could scab over the wound.
'Of course I'm in a video game I've played a bunch of times.' She thought to herself.
"I need some time." was all she could say.
"Are you hungry?" He gestured at the broth on the tray.
She nodded. "uh. Umm."
"Yes? Do you need help lifting it?"
Marin shook her head. "What was her name again?" She lowered her voice to ask, "Your daughter?"
"Janine."
"I guess. Maybe. I don't know." she shook her head, "It doesn't seem right, to lie to Shelly." Marin looked in her broth. "But I've been there. It was my friend. And the grief, it hurt." She thought to herself, 'I was never the same after Danny died. And now I have black outs.' Marin squeezed her eyes shut, the tears still escaped.
He rubbed her back reassuringly, "It's all right, you don't have too. What matters is that you're safe in here."
She silently asked herself,'Am I?' "Um, yeah. Thanks." she said aloud.
Marin didn't know what to do or say, so she went with it, anxiety and all. She regretted letting the couple call her by a dead girl's name for about a week.
Then after a week of food, shelter and a warm bed in the freezing north, she hardly gave it any further thought.
'Janine' kept to her room and bed. The girl had been sickly for a long time. It was a wonder that her clothes fit Marin well enough to stay inside. She could keep to herself on the days she missed her binders, holed up in her room where no one could see Marin be uncomfortable in her own skin.
Watching the town be itself from her window.
There seemed a community to the place, from watching the locals out Janine's bedroom window. The couple barely had visitors to the 'sick house' in town. Harold clearly had friends out of the house and a job. Shelly kept house and brought food to Marin/Janine.
'Small town, big bigots.' Marin thought, when she noticed that people avoided this house. Leaving Shelly and Harold to their business.
From the little bedroom under the peak of the roof of the tiny house. She had a smaller window with glass that wasn't exactly smooth. As well as thick curtains to keep out the freezing draft.
Shelly would bring Marin hot coals in a bed warmer to keep the bed warm. 'Icicle Inn' as Marin knew it, was very cold all year round. And the nights were absolutely freezing. Even in the 'autumn' of September in this world.
Marin could watch the town from her south-facing window. She could see people bustling about through nearly-smooth glass. It must have been hand blown as smooth as could be managed.
She could not make out much from the faces, people were bundled up, so thickly, from the cold. Only the way they moved around or to each other.
Marin could also observe the two black helicopters land just outside the town, and the people that spilled out of it in warm uniforms.
Through the glass, she couldn't make out any sign on the vehicles. Though She knew of only one organization that deployed black helicopters on this planet. 'ShinRa,' she thought of that word like it was a curse.
Marin, as Janine, sat in the second-closet house to the biggest one in the tiny village. That one was some abandoned manor house that was kept locked. She suspected that she knew exactly what was inside, secrets.
And from her tiny window she had the best view to the scene that unfolded below the town.
ShinRa made it's presence known, but otherwise did not hassle the locals. Not even the tourists that had come here this time of year.
Harold had filled her in on the happenings over the week. There had been a boom the night she had appeared in the snow, a bright light.
It sounded to Marin like a shooting star had come to earth and exploded just above the surface of the ground, north of town. Not that far away from Harold's house in fact.
Marin had stumbled through the dark, to the door of this very house. Before anyone had been outside, it took a while to dress warmly enough to go out in the cold here.
The whole town had been looking over a particular spot come morning.
A circle in the earth, like a bomb had gone off, exposing the dirt below the permanent snow-cover over the ground. No fallen star or meteorite had been found.
Marin understood that meteorites acted like that, but the locals had not. Someone had thought that a bomb or a weapon had gone off. There had been arguing about an asteroid vs a weapon vs something stranger.
Marin was kept in her room, using the name of a sickly girl that no one barely new. Janine had been too sick to have played with other kids.
The room had been very lonely with only her two 'adopted' parents as visitors. There was nothing to do but sleep or watch the town. It had been driving Marin up the wall.
Janine had had a few books to herself, but she was no bookworm. There were only vintage-looking fiction novels that didn't interest Marin. They had the appeal of being the popular media of a video game world. But it was more exciting for her to replay a memory of a video game or book, from earth, in her head. Thinking, 'I'm sorry, Janine, I was just never interested in popular fiction.' Even if that 'normal' was a world with monsters and magic, the regular fiction here was just people being people.
Someone in a long, black, fur-lined coat knocked on the door downstairs. The visitors had finally made their way to this house.
Marin wrapped another blanket around her, the room was warm enough, but she felt like shivering.
Thinking to herself,'A fallen star might be how I got here. But how did I get from my home on Earth to this snow?'
She sipped the last of her cold tea. The visitor downstairs hadn't stayed for long. Whoever they were they did not have questions for a 'sickly' girl. And the black coat proceeded out of Marin's sight, to investigate whatever had happened.
Marin thought,'I miss you Jamie.' She wanted to be held by someone that didn't feel a stranger. Even her damn mother would be a welcome sight now. She'd rather be in that house than here. This was not her home, her home was her home.
Marin regretted the thought. This house was tense and uncomfortable, but in a different way than the one she had grown up in. This was not her house, these were not her real parents, in Icicle Inn.
And as strange as this place was, it didn't hurt to exist. It was stressful to be bored, but in a different way that merely existing with her real family. Jamie was not a phone call away anymore. Her mom's cat wouldn't warm her bed here.
Her mom was not here though, no screaming, breaking things, dark moods or anything. There was no way she would see Jamie here though. For a day, she had forgotten why she hadn't seen her friends in so long. No TV, no video games, no nerdy conventions, no crafting things to keep her busy. None of the comforts of home that she used to distract herself from her mother. No way to apologize for ghosting Jamie, no friend's house to retreat to to get away from her parents.
The ShinRa people were back in view, dragging a sled to the north end of town. Things had quieted down some. There was a knock at her bedroom door.
"Yes?"
Harold poked his head in, "How are you?"
"OK, I guess." she brought her voice down, "I was dying of boredom. What's going on out there?"
Harold shrugged, "The headman couldn't get anyone to agree on if a bomb went off or something fell out of the sky, or if one of the monsters north of here was getting too close to town." He shrugged. "The hunters had already been over the area, there's nothing to find out there." He looked her in the eye and looked away, abashed. "Yep, nothing unusual happened. So there was nothing to tell the nice man from ShinRa that was knocking at our door. I think he said he was an Auditor from General Affairs?"
Marin squeezed her lips together then licked them. "Thanks?" The name of the department reminded Marin of something, she put it aside for now.
"You're welcome. Janine." He turned to leave.
"Oh wait."
"Yeah?" Harold put his head back in the room.
"Is there really nothing to do?" She asked.
"People work or help with tourists in the day, chop wood, and so on. But..."
"And hobbies?"
"Janine she-I mean you-read a lot."
Marin looked down at the floor, "I read other kinds of books. I'm sorry." she looked around the room. "Before I-" she cut herself off "I make and sew things, and play music." she shrugged, "I understand if crafting supplies are hard to come by in a town this remote." she smiled a little. "I just, even if she- if I didn't before. I just need something to pass the time."
"What sort of musical instruments do you mean?"
Marin shrugged, "A few" she named off the six instruments she knew how to play at a beginner skill level. Icicle Inn didn't have guitars or pianos. It turned out that an ocarina flute was a Wutai instrument that they also didn't have. But Harold would try to find what he could for her.
After a few more hours, the sled was dragged back to the helicopters, it had some things piled on top. They might have been rocks, those people had found something after all.
Harold had found her a few things with which to play with. As well as some note paper she could write music onto.
Marin didn't know what to do or say here. At the top of the world, where nothing was happening, Marin tried to keep up her music hobby. For now, it was all she had. It calmed her nerves enough that it gave her time to think and figure out what to do.
Bundled up against the cold, Marin had finagled Harold into walking around town with him. With snow goggles and even a scarf to cover her face. 'Janine' was able to go about town, chaperoned.
Marin had been getting stir crazy before whatever had happened, had put her here. Even with the wind and cold biting what little of her skin was still exposed. It was good to walk around for once.
Marin nodded to the next person Harold introduced her too. It was another one of his friends. She was looking around, paying half attention to the people that asked Harold how he was, how Shelly was. And how it was so good for Janine to be strong enough to leave the house and walk around a bit.
The real Janine had died days before. She was buried in the back yard, with the rest of the family remains. For Shelly's sake, Harold hadn't told anyone. It was very sticky and awkward.
Marin had no idea how much she looked like Janine. But Shelly had bought it, and with Marin so bundled up, she was close enough to looking like Janine to pass. People saw Harold and heard him introduce his never-seen sickly daughter Janine. So that's what people saw when they looked at Marin.
She was momentarily distracted from another friend of Harold's, in this town, everyone knew everybody, even if Janine had not left her own house in a long time. People in town knew of her.
Marin caught sight of a familiar umbrella walking away from them.
"Hold that thought," She told Harold, zipping after the umbrella.
"Janine?" He looked about to follow.
"Be right back!" she called back to him.
The person Harold had been talking to said something about his daughter getting better. Marin was quickly moving out of earshot.
There wasn't very far to go. Even though Icicle Inn was bigger than the video game had led her to believe, it was still a very small community. Small enough to cross on foot even in the miserably cold weather.
Icicle Inn was cold to very cold all year round. With half the people there were tourists there for the resort half of the village. And when the weather was merely cold, Marin was told that the number of visitors would triple. Some might even be foolish enough to try to climb the mountain range north of town.
This meant that Marin quickly caught up to that dumb umbrella. As it went around the corner of someone's fenced in yard. It was merely a picket fence, to remind the neighbors of the property line, the short fence offered no real privacy. Nor did the fence hide Ardyn from view.
He just stood there with his back to her, watching some people freeze in the winds of downhill skiing and snowboarding just outside of the village.
It was all Icicle Inn, but Marin defined the 'town' by the areas that people lived in it all year round.
Marin approached 'Ardyn' full of questions.
"Found your own 'costume' to 'play' in I see." He said.
"What are you doing here?" she said.
"Hmph." Was all he said.
"How did you get here?" she asked, then the flood gate opened. "How did I get here? Why am I here? Are you even really Ardyn? What-"
He interrupted her, "Haven't you figured it out yet?"
She looked confused at the back of his head, "What? no. I-"
"And where is your token?"
"What token?"
"That thing I gave you the other day."
"What? The coin?" Marin patted her pockets out of habit, "I left it at home."
"Is that what it looks like?" Ardyn mused.
"You gave it to me!" Marin demanded.
"Then you lost it." he stated.
She flexed her hands in her mitts, imagining squeezing nothing in particular. "I didn't lose that coin. I was at home, and now I'm here."
"Mmm." He only gave a non-committal sound.
"You're being an idiot. What is going on?"
"I'm not the one asking the wrong questions." Ardyn told her.
"Oh for. Is this the part where you're going to be all cryptic and give me no real answers? Can you please, tell me what's going on?"
"I will admit, at least you're being polite."
"That's not an answer." She told him, sighing, "Then what should I be asking?"
"I'd only be doing you a disservice for giving you all the answers now." He smiled in an Ardyn way with a lopsided grin.
Marin held her forehead with one of the giant mitts. "Then why even show up, looking like him?" She gestured at his outfit. The only difference from when she last saw the man, was that he was no longer soaked with rain. He only had a rime of snow on his shoes and the hem of his layered clothes.
"Hmm? I still look like who?"
"Don't you even know what you look like?" she asked.
"Why yes, I believe I do. You, however, need some work."
"Work? With what I look like? Excuse me for not wanting to freeze to death."
He laughed, "You mistake me. I meant how you see me. But yes, those clothes are abysmal. They aren't even yours."
Marin covered her mouth, she want to shout at him. "What is this even about?"
"I came to check on you, move things along as it were, replace your token." His not blackened fingers were wearing Ardyn's finger-less gloves. He appeared to be in many layers, yet they weren't warm enough for this weather. He held something in his hand and curled her mitt around it. "Mayhaps you don't lose this one."
Marin cupped the tiny object with her giant mitts.
It was a simple moon pendant, missing it's necklace chain. She had played that video game too. Someone's necklace pendant from Final Fantasy Fifteen.
"This isn't the coin." She told him. She had to play cold potato, taking one of her mitts off, so she could get it into a pocket without dropping either in the snow.
"What does it look like?" He asked her.
Marin set her jaw, "You gave it to me. Don't you know?"
'Ardyn' shrugged. "I was hoping that this talk would be more productive. What do I look like to you?"
Marin scrunched her eyebrows. She thought he wanted more than the most obvious answer, but that was all she knew to say. "You only look like Ardyn?"
The man made a very Ardyn-like melodramatic bow.
"What are you, really?" Marin asked him.
"As much as I would like to entertain that question. I don't think you have the time for a useful explanation."
Marin frowned at him, "Yeah, fine. I'm just a silly dumb woman. Who nobody tells anything until everything blows up in my face. Are you going to give me some real information, or just be cryptic with answers or more questions?"
He chuckled, "If you're going to be flustered that easily, there's not much I can do to help you."
Marin rolled her eyes, even though the snow goggles made that gesture invisible to the man, whoever he really was. "Can you at least tell me something?"
"It's very cold today."
Marin rolled her eyes again. "Something useful. Please and thank you."
"Well, now that you've said please..." he trailed off, pausing dramatically. "I was hoping that you would know better than to ask me what you yourself can figure out on your own. But in return for being polite, I warn you against whiling away your time here. Mayhaps leave, travel the world, and what it has to offer while you're still here."
"It's dangerous out there alone," Marin intoned. Some line from some other game.
"What if I told you it was less wise to stay here Marin, I mean Janine or whatever your name is now."
Marin glared at Ardyn, she had never told him her name, either of them. "You have any other questions with which to answer my questions?"
"What do you want?" He asked.
Marin's lips thinned, "What sort of question is that?"
"Now who is answering a question with a question?"
Marin sighed, trying to keep her cool. This whole thing was frustrating her to no end, for nothing. "What do I want? What do I want." She folded her arms across her chest. "I want to go home."
"Do you really?"
Her eyes narrowed from behind her goggles, she wanted to believe it herself. She wanted to be back on earth, but not her mom's house. "I want to go back to earth."
"Hmm? And what else?"
"I want to see Jamie again." She swallowed, she hadn't wanted to say it out loud. But this guy was leaving her flustered.
"Anything else?"
"Why? Why ask me? I didn't ask to be here. So what does it matter what I want?"
"Hmm? Oh nothing. Nothing at all."
Marin gave the guy the side eye. It even sounded like Ardyn's sarcastic 'I know nothing, yet i secretly know everything' tone from the game Ardyn was from. "So why even ask me? Is it gonna cost me?"
He smirked in a very Ardyn-like fashion. "Finally, the right questions. they're just being said a little out of order."
Marin opened her mouth to ask further.
He continued before she spoke, "Anyway, who is that heading over here?"
Marin turned to see that Harold was catching up to her. Turning back to Ardyn to ask her next question. He wasn't there anymore.
She looked down at the ground where he had stood. The wind kicked up, driving the eternal snows and the lack of footprints Ardyn had left behind.
Marin was alone when Harold approached.
"There you are," He said. "What are you doing back here?"
"I thought I saw someone I recognized." she stared off to the ski hills ahead of her.
"Oh, really? Did you, did you know them?"
"Nope. No idea who they were." Marin lied. Though she didn't think any explanation of 'Ardyn' would be useful.
"Well, it's cold. So how's about we go home?"
"Sure."
Marin held the moon pendant in her hand. She touched it with her other finger just to be sure it was real. Whoever they really were, they weren't Ardyn. He was a fictional character that she really heard and talked to, but 'Ardyn' was jut a mask for whoever he really was.
This token he had given her, it was a physical object. She figured that the coin was still in her bedroom, on another planet.
Some jerk, wearing Ardyn's visage like a mask, had given her some instructions and fucked off on her with no concrete answers. 'Keep this token.' He had told her, 'don't stay here.' as well. Everything else had been confusion and riddles.
She threw the pendant as hard as she could against the wall. The thing plinked twice after she threw it. The object made a little noise hitting the wall and again as it bounced on the wooden floor.
Harold had given her a calendar, with a date. He even supplied her with Janine's birthday. But it was meaningless. Even the nonsense of living in a world where the calendar made sense. How the yesterday she knew on Earth, was the same day in September here, yesterday. But had no emperor Augustus in this world's history, it made no sense. It could have been the year 2082 CE here. It really didn't matter.
Her brain was still full of so many bits of the game, not that it was very useful to her right now. Icicle Inn from the game was not the one she sat in. It was like the game she had jut played was a sketchy shadow of the place she sat in.
And out there, somewhere, the events of the game were possibly happening right now. That made her shiver again. Classic story, about love, revenge and trying to save the world. While Marin huddled for warmth in a blanket, and time passed her by on two planets.
The Wound was still chilling the air north of here, so as far as she knew, the events in the game were not behind them.
She fought the urge to punch that arrogant dick, Ardyn, in his face. A sentiment shared by the characters that Marin had played in the game Ardyn was from.
'Last time I checked, Ardyn was cursed with immortality, not a world-hopper,' she thought to herself.
Whoever, or whatever, she had spoken to, they wore Ardyn's face, clothes, and body language like a hat. He had hinted that it was just a guise.
Her first conversation with him had been a week ago. The whole thing had been weird, but she couldn't remember if he had introduced himself or if she had said the character's name first.
"Augh!" she cried to herself, going to the floor. She poked around until she found where the pendant had landed.
The whole thing felt like an annoying trap. Her instincts told her what the mystery person was asking of her. But right at that moment, she had nothing else to go on.
Things were weird and would likely only get weirder from here. She really didn't want to stay in this house. But she also didn't want to go it alone in the wider world. Not without Jamie or another friend by her side. Honestly, she would rather be back on earth than gallivanting around this world. Who knows what kind of trouble or death she could find here?
Video games were so much more fun when the dangers in them were imaginary.
Licking her lips, she added the moon pendant to the chain already around her neck.
She had not been allowed to wear the ring Jamie had given her while in the hospital. The meds they had given her had the nasty side effect of making her favorite clothes not fit anymore. Even her baggy clothes were getting tight, if she had vegetated at home any longer. That left Jamie's ring unable to fit Marin's finger. A few weeks ago, Marin had put the ring on a necklace and wore all the time at home. The little fake emerald set in cheap silver might have been a humble gift. But it was from Jamie, and that made it valuable to Marin.
'Jamie,' She pleaded to herself, 'I miss you.'
Whatever the 'man' had wanted or asked of her. She didn't want it if it came from him. Not even Jamie, who was safer on Earth anyway.
Putting the necklace back under her shirt, where her 'parents', Harold and Shelly Dwyer, wouldn't see it. She picked up the weak tea. Re-wrapping herself in blankets to reclaim some warmth.
