Race Through Time:

Enter Eight Pilgrims

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-OOMPH!"

This was probably not the best way to start Chapter Two in Rosetta's opinion, but this is how it ended up with.

After what seemed to be an eternal lifetime of traveling in a rainbow tunnel located in the middle of the universe, she landed rather roughly in what appeared to be a plain of grass. The young demigoddess groaned in pain as she got up and looked around, only to realize that she wasn't in Storybrooke anymore. Instead, she was in some sort of mountain range, with elevated green plateau, and a river flowing eastward. The sky was clear blue with a few hints of white clouds.

"This isn't Storybrooke…" Rosetta realized. "Where…"

"Hey! You there!"

Rosetta turned to see someone heading towards her. At first, it appeared like some man dressed in a red shepherd's outfit and carrying a shepherd's crook, but when the man got closer, it turned out that he had the head and tail of a brown shepherd dog with an old man's white hair. Rosetta somewhat felt nervous because this man had partial animal features, but also calm because of the fact that she was used to humanoid animals like Fidget and her father was the god of jackals.

"Are you alright, lad?" the shepherd asked in a very kind voice. "We saw you falling from the sky through what appeared to be a portal."

"We?" asked Rosetta.

"Forgive me, my child. I forgot that this might be an overwhelming moment for you. What is your name?"

"Uh…Rosetta."

"Lovely. My name is Aaron and I'm a Parson."

Right when Aaron mentioned that he was a Parson, a series of flashback occurred to Rosetta. She had read about the adventures of pilgrims in the Book Of Life. Right before she got dragged in the mystical portal, she was reading a frame tale about pilgrims.

"You…wouldn't happen to be heading for the Canterbury Shrine?" she asked. Aaron's eyes widened.

"Why…yes," he said. "Are you?"

"I'm..." Rosetta looked around. "Frankly, I'm not really sure why I'm here. All I know is that I was reading this book called CANTERBURY TALES that told the story about diverse people going on a pilgrimage to a mystical shrine in Canterbury…and then for some reason, the book began glowing and…I ended up here."

"You wouldn't happen to come from the Land Without Magic, my child?" Aaron asked, as he sat down on a nearby rock.

"You've been there?"

"I haven't, but I'm familiar with the stories of the Evil Queen's Dark Curse, a kingdom going to another world without magic before returning thirty years later and going to that other world…again. You'd be surprised by the number of minstrels I've encountered telling me all those stories."

"I got transported from the Enchanted Forest with my parents to that other world the second time. How come you didn't?"

"Not everything can be affected by curses like the Dark Curse." Aaron waved his crook around, showing the highlands that surrounded them. An eastern wind blew in his and Rosetta's hair. "These highlands are the Eastern Highlands. They are so far away from the Evil Queen's Castle that the powerful magic of her curse can't reach it without succumbing to neutrality."

"You're not telling me that you spend thirty-one years ditching a curse just by staying in these endless highlands?" Rosetta asked, beginning to panic.

"No, we spent a year walking through this endless highlands," a new voice entered. Another person appeared, only this time, it was a man with a pink pig's head dressed in a blue reeve's outfit with a small leather satchel attached to his side. "Aaron, who is that human?"

"It's only a child, Isaac," Aaron said.

OK, this is getting weird, Rosetta told herself. A pig-headed reeve named Isaac. And to think that about half a year ago, we were dealing with a crazy man named Isaac Heller who tried to imprison everyone in Storybrooke into an alternate universe.

"You mean a human child who just fell from the sky through some portal," Isaac the Pig Reeve replied rather rudely. "If it turns out, she's one of Darwin's lackeys!"

"Evolution must really be underrated with snouty mammals," Rosetta said sarcastically. Isaac's eyes popped open with injured pride while Aaron laughed at Rosetta's remark.

"You really are a hilarious one, my young one," he said. He looked above his head and saw grey clouds beginning to form in the sky. "God's tears might fall upon us. Come, Rosetta. We can't leave you out here in these deserted highlands on a rainy night while you could be by a warm fireplace with us."

"Aaron, are you mad?" Isaac exclaimed as Aaron got up and put a gentle hand on Rosetta's shoulder, walking with her up a cliff. "We can't let some stranger camp with us!"

"Have a heart, Isaac. Where else can she go in these vast highlands? Besides, the choice will also go to our fellow pilgrims."

The three of them walked up the cliff until they reached the top, where six other animalistic people were setting up camp. One of them, a swan dressed in a grey prioress' outfit, saw her two fellow pilgrims approaching with an unknown human child.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed when she saw that Rosetta was beginning to shiver. She quickly walked to her (Rosetta noticed that the prioress had a swan's webbed feet) and took off her long grey cape before putting it over Rosetta's shoulder. "Who could leave such a sweet child in the middle of the Eastern Highlands?"

"This is Rosetta," Aaron said, which got the attention of the other five pilgrims, who quickly abandoned their posts in order to gather around Aaron, Isaac, and Rosetta. "She accidently got transported here from the Land Without Magic."

"The Land Without Magic?" a man with a barn owl's head (with actual reading glasses!) dressed in a black clerk's robe with red sleeves asked. "I assume you were a victim of the Evil Queen's curse."

"During the second one," Rosetta admitted.

"Fascinating!" the owl said in glee.

"Back to reality, Maurice!" Isaac snapped his fingers. "Aaron thinks that we should let the human girl camp with us and that we must all vote on it."

"She has a name, you know!" Eglantine scolded Isaac. "I vote that Rosetta stays with us for a while."

"I agree with Eglantine," Maurice said. "Besides, we could learn a lot about the world she comes from."

"I'm not very sure," a brown bear-headed monk said. "We've been traveling in these highlands for a year and we are close to reaching their border. Is it a coincidence that Rosetta arrived at the same time?"

"So you're neutral, Harry?" Aaron asked. Harry nodded.

"I'm going to go with Harry," a six-armed spider (standing on two legs) dressed in a grey tank top, teal pants and handcuff bracelet, and black boots, said. "I'm just the mechanic here."

"So Harry and Dwight are neutral," Aaron said. "Eglantine, Maurice, and I are positive. Isaac is negative. We have two more to go. Anaïs?"

Anaïs was a Wife of Bath and quite a fat hippo. She wore a cream-colored turtleneck, a long blue skirt that didn't hide much of her weight, a yellow belt, red socks, and black shoes and hat. A gapped tooth could be seen sticking out of her mouth.

"I don't trust strangers," she simply said in a gruff voice.

"You chose to travel with seven complete strangers when we offered you the opportunity to go to Canterbury," Eglantine said, giving an angry glare at Anaïs.

"Well, I vote that she stays."

All eyes turned on a man who could have been in his early twenties. He was very handsome with his tan skin, sandy blonde hair, sharp black eyes, red-and-white squire shirt, purple trousers, black belt with golden claps, and brown tan boots. But it wasn't his handsomeness that made her look in complete shock.

"You…you…are…a Batrishan?" Rosetta stammered.

"A Batrishan, that I am," he said. "Tristan the Squire. Pleased to make your acquaintance."