Chapter 120: Sweat

What I had thought was morning dew weighing down my hair is actually my own sweat. My clothes are soaked through.

What is happening to me?

Strangely, I’m not thirsty, though I feel as though I must have sweat out 20 pounds of water weight.

I can’t believe the sky is sending me messages.

Or, alternatively, I’ve finally cracked.

I wonder which scenario is more likely.

Oh darling, I wish you were here.

But you’re not, of course. And I don’t really want you to be, because then you’d be trapped here, too.

Okay. Time to find a way out of here.

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Chapter 119: Morning Face

I wake up.

Don’t you hate that?

Waking up without even remembering that you fell asleep is always a little terrifying, even if you wake up in a lovely soft bed of moss and wildflowers.

The sun is high in the sky, but my bones are stiff. I wonder when I collapsed; how long was I out?

I try to stretch my feeble limbs, but can’t quite muster the energy to go vertical. Back down, on my back, I stare up.

There’s a series of clouds overhead. Cumulus, fluffy and meaningful.

Four horizontal lines.

A drop of water.

Lightning bolts.

Chapter 118: Steps and Steps

Night falls. I keep walking. There is a heavy dew condensing all over the grass and all over my skin. I feel clammy and my skin is stretched tight as a drum.

There are two moons; one pink and the other a dusky blue. The salmon-colored moon is full; the darker one is just a thin crescent. Clouds slide over both objects hanging in the sky, like silk sheets sliding over a mattress.

There’s so much beauty in all these worlds. I can see it, but I just can’t appreciate it. Not anymore.

I must keep walking. Gotta get out.

Chapter 117: Walkabout

My thighs ache from walking, but I’m afraid to stop moving forward. Some part of my lizard brain just won’t let me stop moving, afraid that if I stop again, I’ll be forced into an even tinier box, trapped in a smaller fishbowl.

The trees are getting patchier, and I’m coming up on the base of a mountain. I’ll have to camp soon, and try to climb to the top tomorrow. I need to get a better sense of where I am, figure out the lay of the land. But my legs won’t stop, they won’t listen to my commands.

Chapter 116: Requiescat

So, let’s recap.

I’m trapped in a new world with no exits.

Someone’s left me a message I can’t decipher.

Oh yeah. And my initials have been carved into a headstone.

Fuck. And. Shit.

So, I find myself asking the same question that’s been rattling around my bones for weeks now.

Now what?

I find that, for once, the answer comes easily.

I decide to go for a walk.

It really is beautiful here, a beauty that I might not have fully appreciated if I had just been passing through.

I still hate it here.

But it could be worse.

Chapter 115: The Bad News

I can’t make out all of the symbols. I mean, I can see them clearly. I just can’t assign a meaning to them.

I don’t see any of the usual traveler’s pictographs that I know indicate danger.

I do know one symbol, a smiling sun that indicates balmy weather.

There are three more pictures that I don’t know, however.

The first: four horizontal lines.

The next: a drop of water.

The final symbol: a bolt of lightning.

Oh, and there are two other symbols carved in the stone.

The first is the letter M. Guess what the other one is?

Chapter 114: Something Unexpected

I stand, and nearly fall back down again when my eyes fall on something at the base of a nearby tree. Instead of white flowers, there is a headstone carved from granite. It lies flat on the ground, and while it doesn’t look fresh, it’s definitely not old, either.

There are markings carved into the stone, and they are in a language I’ve come to know well.

It’s Margery-speak, our secret traveler’s code made up of scratches and pictures.

The good news: no spears, no trios of diagonal lines. No need to bear arms, no immediate danger.

The bad news?

Chapter 113: Rage Like Ice

My anger has cooled.

I’ve thrown myself against something that will not move with too much force, and I’m exhausted.

Though I’ve been looking for a way out, I haven’t been taking the time to actually look at my surroundings. So, gasping, I fall to the ground, curl on my side, and open my eyes.

It’s quiet, thankfully. A shady glen, small white flowers growing against the trunks of the trees. Mountains loom in the distance, I hear babbling water not very far away.

I turn over, my back against cool moss, bright clouds overhead.

It’s beautiful here.

I hate it.

Chapter 112: Kicking and Screaming

I scramble, I scratch, I scream.

There’s no way out.

There are usually a multitude of worlds thrumming under my fingertips. The precise number of exits varies from world to world, but it’s never less than ten. To have no options, no trails to follow…it makes my skin crawl.

I’m in fucking fish bowl, bumping at transparent barriers.

It’s not that I’ve reached the end of the line. It can’t be, things aren’t that clean, that linear out here.

I’m a spider under glass.

I’m a butterfly under a pin.

I’m going to die here. There’s no way around it.

Chapter 111: Useless Hands

And then, without warning, I hit a brick wall.

Not literally of course, but a painful impact nonetheless.

Usually, I can slide between timelines, between worlds. It takes practice, it isn’t always something I can do with a snap of my fingers. But it only takes a matter of seconds, maybe a minute or two, but I rarely need that long now that I have so many months of practice under my belt.

This world is different. I can’t feel the seams, can’t seem to find the way out. I can’t even find the entrance that lead me here.

I’m trapped.