"Sophie, it's me! I'm the real Ford, he's the shapeshifter!"
"No, I'm the real Ford! The day we met, you tried to turn me in for bounty!"
"Don't listen to him, Sophie! You once had a friend named Kira who saved your life!"
Sophie glanced between the two Fords-the real Ford and the imposter-and threw her knife in the blink of an eye, sinking the blade into the shapeshifter's chest. Except...the shapeshifter didn't shift. It still had Ford's face, full of pain and betrayal. Sophie's stomach lurched as "Ford" morphed into the white, slimy creature with a hideous grin. Ford fell to the ground, Sophie's knife buried in his chest. Sophie wanted to scream.
She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She could only watch.
The shapeshifter's eyes turned yellow as it emitted a horribly familiar high-pitched cackle, growing in size until it towered over Sophie in a vast shadow. "YOU KILLED THE WRONG ONE!"
Sophie jerked awake, chest heaving in ragged gasps as tears streamed down her cheeks, and frantically took in her surroundings. Nothing but cold and emptiness. No warm, reassuring hand on her shoulder, no voice telling her that it was just a dream, that she needed to breathe and that everything would be alright. She grasped her metal leg and squeezed the cold, unyielding material, trying to remind herself that Ford was okay, that she had lost her leg to save him...but it wasn't enough.
She thrust a shaking hand into her pack until her fingers found worn leather. She pulled out Ford's journal and hugged it to her chest, breathing in the scent of aged parchment mingled with the faint smell of smoke from the fire that had gone out hours ago. She clicked on a small, blue light and opened the journal to the first page.
Recording my thoughts helps to clear my mind and keep at bay the loneliness that sometimes threatens to overwhelm me...
She flipped to another page. Tonight, I woke from a disturbing dream. Either B has an influence in this dimension or my own mind is conjuring these nightmares; sometimes it is difficult to tell...
Sophie flipped to the point where Ford's writing ended and dug in her pack until she found a pen. She paused an inch away from making a mark on the page. Would Ford be okay with this? Part of her wondered if this was admitting that she would never find him again...she fiercely shoved that thought away. She gazed out at the surrounding darkness, then back at the journal. Writing as if Ford would read it could work... What the heck, this just might save my sanity.
She took a deep breath and put pen to paper. Her handwriting wasn't anything to be proud of, but at least it was legible.
Hey, Ford. I don't know when you'll see this, but I hope it's soon. It's just...you left your journal behind, and for now it's the only physical thing that I have to remember you by. You know how lonely it gets, hopping dimensions, and I thought that if I wrote in this, it would help. The thing is...I miss you. Like, really, really, miss you. I've been looking for you for awhile now...I think it's been about six months? Jheselbraum told me that you were in your home dimension. I hope that there's something of home left for you there...
She wrote about the nightmare, her fears, a few things that Jheselbraum had told her, what the past few dimensions had been like. Slowly, her tension and anxiety bled out as she poured her thoughts onto the pages. The sun rose, she broke camp and continued her journey.
Sophie wrote in Ford's journal every chance she got after that, writing each entry as if it was a letter to Ford. The pages never seemed to run out; she wondered if the book was bigger on the inside. Overtime, her handwriting improved. At one point she tried to sketch a large, gentle creature with shaggy blue fur and spindly legs. It looked like her little brother's scribbles when he was three. She just stuck to writing after that.