The one with the interlude

(Confused author note: Who are those 3 people from the US/ from somewhere using a VPN routed via the US that seem to click on this story 30 times a day? There aren't even as many chapters and I'm so confused! :D)

Dear reader,

I do not know who you are. In fact, I don't know whether or not you are at all. Maybe these pages will remain forever unread. But I am addressing you anyway – I have always been able to sort out and understand things best when I explained them to others. Yes, I am that annoying know-it-all who, when learning in a group, will waltz over you with all her knowledge. It makes me feel better about myself. Sorry, I know I suck that way.

Anyway, I will explain to you what happened to me, or what I perceive has happened to me. And you, dear reader, may draw your own conclusions from it. Or not. Maybe you will use these pages to light a fire. That is really up to you.

Here it goes: I woke up. I had this feeling that sometimes one has after a really good nap. The kind of nap that you awake from with a bolt, thinking you just missed the school bus - only to realize you are over 30 years old and have not seen a school from the inside for well over a decade. I was drowsy, confused. I felt for my smartphone to check the time because I really wasn't sure whether it was 3 in the morning or possibly already Christmas. I wasn't able to find my phone though. You see, dear reader, my phone is always on my nightstand. That is probably where it still is at this very moment. Sadly, my nightstand was not where I was. So, bummer. Like any millennial I am more or less attached to my phone and not being able to find it results in many tiny heart and panic attacks. I once accidentally put my phone in the fridge after I unloaded my groceries and let me tell you, fridges are very well insulated – not only temperature-wise but also when it comes to sounds – nobody can hear you ring!

Anyway, since my phone was 404, I tried for the light switch of the lamp on my nightstand. Same problem though: Nightstand still was not where I was in that moment. Again, bummer.

It probably took me a whole minute to realize that I wasn't in my bedroom. In a bed, yes. In a bedroom, check. But in my bedroom? Nope. Not my room at my parents' house either. Or any other room that I had ever been to. Neither a hospital room.

For a moment I was sure I was still dreaming but I have never been a lucid dreamer. No matter how strange my dreams were, I was never able to question them (and that one time when I was with Michael Jackson and we were riding on flying bikes – that should have told me something, especially since he had already been dead for a few years by then). And none of my dreams ever came with smell. However, the smell of lavender was very much present. It was then that my senses came back on like the lights after a blackout, one after the other. I felt the linen bedsheets under my hands, noticed I was wearing socks – which I never do in bed. People who do that are sick and need help. I felt my body being hugged by the gymshark set (ombre, turquoise) which I had gotten for my birthday.

And finally, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. There were only a few tiny windows in the room but they let enough light in so that I was able to tell that it was early in the morning, shortly before sunrise. I even found my trusty running shoes arranged neatly next to the bed. Which, dear reader, I would never do, meaning I was not alone.

I probably aged a good decade in the following moments and my pounding heart could be heard through the entire house. Panic hit me again but not the millennial-smartphone-panic but actual, proper panic. Because, just ask yourself, what would be your first thoughts if you found yourself in a strange place with no memory of how you got there? Mine were: Someone abducted me, locked me in. I was probably going to be raped, maybe tortured and killed. Not necessarily in this order.

I was literally frozen in place for a few seconds. And by 'literally' I mean figuratively because it was pleasantly warm (but the Oxford English dictionary allows literally to be used in this very un-literal way so I feel like I should be allowed to do that too). It was a little like the ice-bucket-challenge – the shock of the ice-cold water hitting you and rendering your body immobile for a brief moment that, to me, felt very long. I have never, in my entire life, felt as horrified as I did in this particular moment.

I have seen all the horror movies. Well, not all of them but enough. Panicking was not going to get me anywhere. Be like Sherlock, I thought. See what you can deduce. And let me tell you, dear reader, that was not much. No sockets, no lamps. The internet probably sucked. But without my trusty smartphone, which made up about 85% of my brain capacity, that was the least of my worries.

When I noticed that the door to the bedroom was open, I was a little relieved for that had to mean one of two things: Either my kidnappers were idiots and there was a miniscule chance that I could deal with them, or there was no harm intended and at least the part about being locked in was not accurate. I scanned the room for something to be used as a weapon anyway (remember, I have seen the movies, I know what to do) but the room was mostly empty besides spare pillows, an armchair and a mannequin. There was a huge trunk as well, filled to the brim with weird clothes that would serve me very well in a bad taste costume competition, but that were unfit to help me in my current situation.

I breathed so my heart would stop beating in my ears before I put my shoes on, ready to run if I had to.

When I had finally calmed myself down, I tiptoed to the door. There were stairs that led down into a small dining room with high ceilings. I recognized it as a dining room because there was a sizeable table that, next to a fruit bowl, had a few candlesticks on it – candles lit and all. They were bright enough for me to properly inspect the room. No lamps, no sockets, no phones. The building reminded me of some that I had seen in open-air museums where they displayed the way of life from hundreds of years past.

Enter the witcher. The sneaky white-haired ninja stood there all of a sudden, giving me a little jolt. Curiously enough, I did not feel scared (not much anyway) even though that would have been a reasonable reaction. Because, dear reader, you must know that I am not half as clever as I like to pretend I am, and even in a possible life and death scenario my brain likes to get hung up on details, which led to the following train of thought:

His white hair did not match his face. To me he looked like someone in his mid or late-40s at most. But then I figured his hair was dyed to look like this, very accurately at that as no dark roots were showing. He had his shoulder-length hair in a ponytail, a short but full beard and therefore, I concluded, must be a hipster, just a little taller and broader than the average specimen. Hipsters, at most, are annoying but not dangerous. You can quote me on that.

I pride myself on being able to tell fairly quickly if a person is likeable or not. And I came to the conclusion that Geralt (that is his name) was nobody to be scared of. The way he talked to me gave me the feeling that everything was going to be okay. I found him quite easy to be around and very pleasant in general. This is hard to explain but I felt like we quickly connected in a way that I rarely click with other people. Maybe you have experienced this too where you become friends with a stranger incredibly fast because everything just seems to fit so perfectly? And you feel like you have known each other for years and not just days or weeks? It happened about three times to me in my entire life and the resulting friendships have always been incredibly special. Other people I might have known for decades longer but I never felt the same closeness to them. Isn't it funny how that works? Especially in this case where there was no common ground at all between the two of us. A healthy dose of quasi-Stockholm-Syndrome might have accelerated the process though...

I am saying this now that a few days have passed since this initial meeting. We talked a lot and I feel like I know him much better than I should.

But that happened later, of course. During this initial encounter I could only tell that, unlike with other strangers, he did not scare me or make me feel uncomfortable but quite the opposite.

Dear reader, maybe you don't understand how strange that is but I am someone who doesn't like strangers very much, especially men. I don't like to talk to them, I absolutely despise being touched by them. They make me feel queasy. Not Geralt though. I felt, considering the circumstances, at ease.

Okay, from here on it's getting messy. I would love to write this down in a structured way but I can't. The chaos in my head won't let me. But please bear with me.

Geralt had strange golden eyes, soft and warm, with pupils like those of a cat. I figured that he must be wearing contact lenses even though he basically proved to me that his eyes were very much real. But I am stubborn. It was going to take me a while to understand what was going on - because I'm also pretty dumb (just putting it out there – I am aware of it).

He had several scars in his face but they did not diminish his good looks in any way. Yes, you read that right. I, possibly being in mortal danger, was still ruled by my ovaries. Though at this moment I only faintly realized that he was handsome – handsome in a way that a lot of people were before you actually got to know them. Personality, after all, is what creates attraction to me. And while I considered him generally pleasant, I did not feel drawn to him at all in that initial moment. I flirted with him anyway – that was an automatism that I had picked up at work. Everything becomes easier when you compliment people from time to time. And I guess I wanted to make myself more likeable, just in case my impression of him was wrong and he was not who I perceived him to be.

My working theory at that point was that he was an actor – even less reason to be afraid. Everything was a well-orchestrated play where they would pretend to live in the Middle-Ages and I amongst them. I am calling this the Austenland-Realization because it reminded me of the movie of the same name.

I really wanted to believe in this scenario. To quote Sherlock Holmes: Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Makes sense, right?

Time travel isn't possible where I come from, not even talking about transporting someone into an alternate universe. Following the logic of my favorite literary detective, there was only one explanation: My environment had to be fake.

But the longer I stayed, the more doubts piled up in my brain. Finally realizing the truth happened over several stages.

Let's start right at the beginning: Someone I know agreeing to me being drugged and abducted. Have I so gravely misjudged my friends and family, all of them people I have known for at least a decade, if not my entire life? Improbable? Yes, absolutely. Impossible? No. After all, this could have started out as a joke, planned by my friends, where boundaries were grossly overstepped but that had seemed like a good idea in the heat of the moment. My birthday had only been a few days ago, it did make sense. To a degree anyway.

But the list of things that did not quite go hand in hand with my theory grew quickly. Big things, but also small things that were not immediately apparent. It was on the third day that I realized that I had not seen a plane or any marks that would suggest that there were planes. No helicopter noises, no skydivers, no zeppelins, no flashing lights of space stations in the evening, no nothing. Where I live, the sky is never empty. But apparently absence is harder to notice than presence, so it took me a while to consciously become aware of it. An empty sky: Improbable? Yes. Impossible: Not at all, especially now that public life and air travel were mostly shut down for virus reasons.

There were a lot of things about Beauclair, too, that only got to me afterwards. I consider myself a rather creative person, meaning I can come up with a whole bunch of reasons as to why things that should have been suspicious were not. The mental gymnastics I had to do in order to keep my illusion going weren't even that exhausting. I didn't realize it back then, it was like my brain automatically filled in all those gaps for me. Probably because there just seemed to be no viable alternative even though Geralt tried his best to convince me - without further traumatizing me, as he told me later on. Otherwise he would have done a couple of things that might have actually convinced me… Lighting a candle is one thing, blasting fire from your hands is something entirely different, don't you agree?

So, what am I even talking about? Assuming this, the entire city, was a tourist attraction, an expanded stage play, there still should have been signs for emergency exits (because legal requirements etc.). Just as an example. Not even talking about the size of the city, its realistic look and all the 'actors' that were required to keep the play going. But someone could have built it somewhere in a legal grey space (thinking about some godforsaken piece of land in the Chinese countryside for starters; I don't think there is any country in the world that has more modern ghost towns than China). I don't doubt that this would have been an insanely expensive affair but someone could have built something like this. Improbable? Absolutely. With a healthy dose of batshit crazy (looking at you and your Mars-travels, Jack Ma). But impossible? No, not technically. Again, the alternative was something that was actually physically impossible.

There was more though, that famous 'one more thing'. Something that had nothing to do with what I saw. Some sort of sixth sense was tingling at the back of my mind permanently and prevented me from wholly believing in what I wanted to be true. Like I said, all these realizations came in stages. And while my spidey-sense was the first one to go off, I simply didn't realize it back then.

Every little thing that didn't fit my chosen narrative made me guess my theory more, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not.

But still, the alternative, all of this being real, was too much to stomach. Just on top of the fact that this alternative just seemed even more unlikely, no, impossible. I mean, magic and time travel and world travel into an alternate reality? Seriously? I make fun of people who believe in horoscopes and all that crap. Obviously, I was not going to just accept things like 'magic' because they seemed at tad more likely than someone building a town that was used as a huge stage. Sherlock wasn't wrong. But I didn't realize that some fundamental parameters had changed, that something that used to be impossible was not impossible anymore. I find it hard to blame myself for that because how could I have known?

What else was there to do? The landscape was empty, I was not going to get anywhere without a car. And, in all honesty, even in that moment I was able to appreciate the beauty of the land (after all, this big city child loves nature and quiet). Sometimes the wisest thing to do is to grab the lifeline to sanity that is thrown at you (or that you made up yourself) no matter how feeble it is. Consequentially, I played along as it was the only thing I could do. Geralt was not going to give me the answers to my questions so I had to wait and see.

I am fairly certain my reaction to all of this would have been quite a different one had I known what I know now.

But I didn't know better. Until I did, when he fought an actual monster. The incredible speed at which Geralt moved, the obviously very real monster… The metallic stench of his blood is what I remember most clearly. Everything else went by in a blur but that I'll remember forever. And the way his wound healed? There was so much blood, I saw how deep the wound was for just a brief moment, but all that was visible in the end were a few scratches. Nothing more. If that is not supernatural, then what is? It was later that night that I realized the sky looked different from the one at home. I know next to nothing about stars but I've always been able to find the big dipper. It was not there. It is beyond me how I managed to oversee this but I guess I was just taken in by the sky's general beauty. Where I live light pollution makes it impossible to see any stars at all, turning the sky of Toussaint into an absolute overkill for my eyes. Like van Gogh's Starry Night but on all the drugs at the same time.

In retrospect I consider myself lucky that all these realizations came in stages. Otherwise it would have been too much for me. Well, it still was too much for me, but it would have been too much in a way that I'm certain I would not have recovered from. Does that make sense to you?

Magic exists. I have to write it down so I can better wrap my head around this fact. It does exist. And believe me, dear reader, when I say I've tried to cogito ergo sum the shit out of this. René Decartes would be proud of me (if he ever existed). Maybe nothing is real and we all are just brains in tanks, living in a simulated world like Neo and his buddies in the Matrix did. But, either way, this new reality felt exactly as real as the old one. So either both are real or both are not real. But they are real (even if they are unreal) in the same way. This world is not in any way less than the one I'm from. I thought about this a lot because another explanation would be that this is all a dream, that maybe I got hit by a car or whatever and now I'm as comatose as a cucumber. But, like I said, this world felt absolutely real so I ruled this option out. I just knew, with absolute certainty (spidey-sense!), that it was not even an option at all.

Therefore, I resign myself to the fact that I am in a different world. A world that is not only different from mine in terms of magic and beasts, but that also exists in a time period that I would roughly classify as the Middle-Ages.

It was after Geralt finished his bath and I saw all the scars he was covered in. That's the moment that it finally sank in, when I truly understood the consequences. His scars made it real. Why? I don't know. Maybe all these scars meant that there have been and were going to be more monsters, more fighting, more injuries, more stitches. That there was a past to this and, therefore, also a future.

The consequences of that hit me like a ton of bricks. I cannot describe it other than I felt like my soul was torn from my physical body, like I was experiencing some sort of dissonance that was too strong for me to handle. I left a wet Geralt standing there, who was wondering what the hell was going on with me and drew all the wrong conclusions from it. I just couldn't talk to anyone, it was too much for me. My vision got blurry, my head felt like it was about to explode - other than that my body seemed to be completely numb. All I wanted to do was to scream until my throat couldn't make a sound anymore and cry until there was nothing left in me (but I didn't because I'm a big girl and I wanted to do that at night, in bed, when nobody could see me). Why, you wonder, was I so dramatic all of a sudden? I'm not entirely sure either. It probably had something to do with that last bit of realization: What did I leave behind?

You must know, dear reader, that I am a real person. With feelings and such. It's been a few days, surely my parents and brother are worried sick. I miss them and it pains me so much that I can't tell them that I'm okay. I have these horrible images in my head. My funeral, the casket empty, since I'm not there. My family crying about their lost daughter who simply vanished. This is so much worse than dying – at least then they would have had closure. But now they will forever (?) wonder what happened to me. It is eating me up that I have no way of telling them. I would gladly accept the fact that I must live and die in this world if I could just tell them that I am okay. My heart is broken. What wouldn't I give for a call from my dad because the printer needs fixing? A message from my mom, containing some funny-unfunny video that someone had forwarded her? Or some way too long voice message from my brother, asking me something that he could easily figure out on his own if he could be bothered to type the question into google?

Yesterday I cried my eyes out on Geralt's shoulder. Poor witcher. Never in my life could I have imagined a situation where I would voluntarily lean on a stranger like that. It is so unlike me. I used to be tough and independent – where did that go? I hardly confess these kinds of sorrows to my closest friends. Not that I ever had sorrows that compared to waking up in a different world.

Incidentally, this was also the moment I realized that I had gotten to like him a lot. He held me, had his strong arms and big hands wrapped around me so firmly – they were probably holding me together, keeping me from shattering into pieces. I was leeching onto him and his warmth as if my life depended on it. Which, let's be honest, it probably does.

Again: Hindsight. I think I might have felt drawn to him since very early on. Initially because he was something of a safe haven in a world full of unknowns (also Stockholm-Syndrome, can't emphasize that enough). Later, because he made me feel welcome. Because he cared for me despite having no obligation to do so.

When he held me, I realized I was already familiar with the way he smelled – because he had always kept so close to me, something, that I hadn't even been aware of. Which is ridiculous just considering his physical presence alone. But all those hours together in the saddle, all those times he lifted me from that same damn saddle, all the times we sat together and talked…

As I said, I can only deal with so many things at once and developing a crush onto the handsome guy who had picked me up wasn't a priority. It's probably a good thing though. It might distract me occasionally from feeling sorry for myself. But I don't think that anything will come from it, after all I have nothing to offer him. Because what do I have that someone with superhuman abilities might want?

It's beyond my control anyway. When he hugged me, squeezed my pieces back together, I realized how lonely I had been in that past half year of isolation and social distancing. Since I hadn't fancied accessories like e.g. a breathing tube in my throat, I had hidden away in home-office, had barely met anyone. I stuck with all the regulations to protect me and people weaker than me. And now I was reminded of how great physical affection feels. Turns out I'm pretty damn needy. Or he's just a terrific hugger. Or he's a terrible hugger and my standards have just decreased a lot. Who knows?

Anyway, he now knows I'm weak and lost. No matter how much effort I put into rebuilding that façade, he won't ever believe me again.

They say it takes one to know one. He appears to be like me to a degree – hiding certain things behind the façade which he shows to the world. And he's very good at it. It's been some time and I'm constantly surprised to discover more patience and gentleness behind his scarred outer shell.

So far I could not have wished for a more gracious person to have picked me up – but how long will that last? I have no way of supporting myself. The moment he loses interest in me and sends me away, I'll be on my own. In a world that plays by different rules, in a world that renders all my abilities, all my studies completely useless.

He does not say it though. He has assured me, in the most believable way, that I will be cared for. He seems so sincere that I want to believe him but I am too rational for this. Because why on earth would he care?

Here is the list

Negatives

- I'm not home

- My family must be in pain about my sudden absence and I can't do anything about it – it's driving me mad! I can't handle the thought of my loved ones suffering

- My future is uncertain

Positives

- Geralt is caring for me in a way that no stranger ever did and I think I really like him

- This world is beautiful

- Maybe there is hope once I learn about this place?

So, here is the plan: I will live in this world, get to know it better, try to find a place for me. Maybe there is something I can do to make sure I can live here – financially speaking. And when that is settled I will figure out if there is any way I can be brought back home. Or maybe I can find some red slippers, click the heels together and that's how it works? Tried it already with my sneakers, obviously I was not successful hence my wasting this ink.

I'm still hoping, every morning, that I wake up in my bed at home. With all those crazy things that have happened, shouldn't this be an option, too?

Home. Home. Home. Maybe if I write and think about it enough, it'll just happen?

I will try my best not to let my sadness and worries get me down. I cannot change what happened and crying about my parents and brother won't do anything for me. I will try, to the best of my abilities, to appreciate everything that is good about this new place and take my energy from that. After all, I am just a human and I need something good in my life to hold on to. I cannot thrive on fear and worries. And me being sad and hopeless will help neither my family nor me.

Also: Terrific big man hugs.

But there is one thing that really bothers me. Dear reader, you are probably familiar with the feeling of your sock slipping off your foot while walking in your boots? That annoying feeling where you know it is not actually going to slip off but creates a permanent tension because it still feels like it will? I was struggling with this sock, except it was not on my foot but on my brain. I wonder what it means? This feeling has been present all the time but it intensified after my little breakdown. I know it sounds odd, but I feel like my body and mind aren't properly fused together – in a way that yoga can't fix (also: I hate yoga).

Dear reader, I wish I could learn your thoughts concerning my predicament. Would you act differently from the way I do? Have you maybe figured it all out already? Do you know what happened to me? Will you, in the future, be able to tell what happened to me, knowing what you know?

And most importantly: Do you know WHY it happened?