Fantastica

2:Meet the Mayor

I was being torn apart. I was being put together. I tried to scream but either my mouth wasn't there or my ears weren't because I couldn't hear it. The world around me was swirling and twisting so fast that I wanted to throw up but I couldn't do anything. I don't think I could move. Dissolving, melting was the green grass and blue sky, seeming to reveal a passage of sorts. A brief limbo composed of shifting galaxies.

As these moments went on I became aware that I was not quite tumbling but instead being handled. I started to become aware of a set of cold hands adjusting me like a Barbie doll and that same singing voice. In the oddness around me, a face suddenly became corporeal.

She was beautiful with full lips and Victorian curls. Her teardrop eyes seemed to carry within them galaxies of their own. All in all, I was stunned. Not just by her beauty, though. Thing was, she was orange. Orange and crystalline. And she was singing something so saccharine and powerful that it pulsed through my bones. The crystalline girl studied me and smiled.

She winked at me like she'd just made a decision. I felt her hand me something. It was a cold, metallic, and hard something. Just as I was about to try and look at it, sharp pain stung my shoulders and I woke up.

***

It was soft beneath me. Before I opened my eyes I noticed that. It felt like summer too with the warm breeze. My eyelids fluttered open. Where was I? It didn't feel like Earth. It just didn't. I tilted my head up to look around me. I was under a willow tree and surrounded by...people?

I mean they were humanoid. Ish. Some were scaly like lizards, some were made—and I mean literally made!— of plants. A good portion of the group assembled didn't even have human legs. Those ones had either a vague smoky shape in the form of legs or were half horse. Others were scattered throughout the crowd such as a boy with feathers all over and a beak and a blond boy who looked as lanky as a flagpole. The crowd parted like the Red Sea (though I'm pretty sure the Red Sea didn't whisper half as much as these guys did) and through stepped a sepia-skinned woman with eyes as blue as the actual Red Sea.

"What do we do with her?" Someone from the crowd asked the woman, casting an accusing hand at me. "Turn her in to Malius?" There was fire and an accent in her voice.

The woman who'd parted the crowd shook her head, studying me. "No, Hadeel. Those days are over."

"Then what do we do?" Another voice asked, sounding fearful.

The woman hesitated, as if she wanted to say 'I don't know' but couldn't. "We protect her."

Murmurs passed like wildfire through the crowd again but I didn't hear the words said because the world decided to go dark again.

***

When I woke up again, I found myself again on something soft but this time, it wasn't grass. It was a bed. Which meant that someone had moved me which actually was kinda creepy when I thought about it.

Once I looked past the bed, I could see that woman sat in a simple wicker chair to my right. And I realized that she was not really a woman. She looked maybe eighteen at most, but more like sixteen and of maybe Indian descent. The girl gave off an air of professionalism, though, with her dark hair tucked away in a bun and her blouse spotless. Sleek white gloves covered her arms almost to her elbows. The other thing I hadn't realized was how out of place those bright blue eyes looked contrasted with her bronze skin.

"Good morning. Though I believe it is past noon by now." She sounded posh. Posh and British. I didn't know how to respond. Had I been kidnapped? Had I collapsed during my running away, passed out and been kidnapped? She didn't look old enough to be a kidnapper but her face was so calm and neutral that perhaps she was a sociopath. Or a Vulcan. "You must be confused as to where you are and who I am so let me begin by assuring you that you are in a safe place here." She paused as if expecting me to speak.

I didn't. I didn't know what to say. Was I dreaming? Had I gone into like, a coma where I'd dreamt up those weird things like the orange lady and the plant people and woken up here? Despite the girl's clean white gloves and professional demeanor, the room itself didn't look like any type of medical facility. The walls were simple wood and the curtains were a weird shade of blue.

After waiting a second or two, she continued. "As for where 'here' is, that is a far more complicated answer. The town you are in and of which I am mayor is called Folletto. It does not belong to a country in the strictest sense of the word but rather it falls under the jurisdiction of an entire planet. In fact, an entire, well, dimension."

Wait, what? I thought. I had a lot of questions but when I tried to piece them into a question, it didn't come together quite cohesively. It was like trying to build a sandcastle with your bare hands. It didn't help that I was still in the process of waking up.

Another pause. Another expectation of words. Another gap which I did not fill because I didn't know how to fill it. "I apologize if you are afraid but could you please speak? Your silence is becoming rather, er, unnerving."

I tried to find the right words to say. They say first impressions are very important. I cleared my throat. "I-I'm not afraid."

"Oh, good, so you can speak. I was beginning to fear you were deaf and/or mute. Not that anything would be wrong with that, it would just have made this quite a bit harder. So I believe that now that we are properly conversing, I should introduce myself." She stuck out a hand. "My name is Alaira Smith." I took her hand and she did most of the effort the shaking took. She looked at me expectantly. It took me a second.

"Jewelia Seong." People rarely asked me for my name. They'd either asked my parents or asked no one at all. Sometimes they'd go on talking to my parents about me and why I was on crutches and all that, without even a single word said actually to me.

"Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise, I guess. Where am I?"

"Well, for starters you are in the recovery room in Folletto's City—"

"Wait, recovery from what?" I then noticed that she was tapping her knee in what seemed to be sets of three.

"Recovery from— well it is hard to explain. Recovery from transdimensional travel."

"Transdimensional travel?" I said. Um, what? I thought.

She nodded. "Yes, transdimensional travel. You aren't on Earth anymore. Now you are in a dimension known as Fantastica. Yes, I know, not the greatest name," Three taps. "but I swear I'm not making this up. There is more than one dimension out there and you have been brought to this one from Reality."

"Wait, brought by who? And how did I get here?"

She blew out a breath. Three taps.

"That," she said carefully, "is a long story"