Trapped

23.

"What the- what just happened?" Jason asked and looked around.

"How did we get here?" Angela asked sounding just as perplexed as Jason.

"Eudoxia brought us here" I said, using the Pearl's real name.

"Who's Eudoxia?" Jeremy asked and everyone looked at me with befuddled expressions.

"The Pearl," I said and it was like a lightbulb went on in their minds as their faces lit up.

"Okay, so she obviously brought us here because someone we know must be here, right?" Zac asked and I glared at him for a moment. I know Eudoxia told me not to hold it against him and I understand that he wanted to bring back his father, but I was still mad at him. He betrayed me, he used me for his own gain, but the thing that bothered me the most was the fact that he put all my friends' lives in danger aswell. He could have just brought me here, but instead he brought everyone I cared about too.

"What, is it such a ridiculous assumption?" He said while he laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. That's when I realized I was still glaring at him and I quickly masked my angered glare.

"No, your right." I said and looked away from him. Then I walked ahead into the little town and they all followed me.

"Wow, this place is so different from towns back home," Jeremy said in awe, which made me pay a bit more attention to the town around me. 

The town was busy and there was a variety of market stalls in every street. Some were selling fruits, others had spices and some had clothes. I looked down at my clothes and my eyes widened. I was wearing the same denim shorts as the day we first came to this world. My T-shirt and shorts weren't as dirty as I remembered, probably since the water of the lake rinsed it in some way. I still had a scarf tied around my leg and I was wearing my plain black sneakers with white laces.

Then I focused on the scarf around my leg. I took it off to see what the wound on my leg looked like but found that it was nonexistent. There wasn't even a trace of blood on the scarf. "What the..." I whispered to myself. To make things even weirder, I noticed that all my wounds from before were healed, my scraped arms were fine and I asked the rest to check my shoulders for the claw marks of the wolf and they all told me that there was nothing odd except for the ripped material of my shirt. 

"Hey, Luna, if we get back, can I have your shirt? It looks really cool with the strips that are ripped over your shoulders," Angela asked and I chuckled at her question.

"Yeah sure, you can have it if you want, I'm definitely not going to wear it again." I said and she grinned widely. 

While I was focussed on my shoulders I noticed that the backpack that I had last seen before we fell into the water was gone as well. After a while of inspecting myself I looked back up to see the town around me. The people were also mainly dressed in casual clothing and some of them were very dirty. I guess it wasn't a strange thing to be dirty in a place like this where danger lurks around every corner. I wondered what kind of dangers the people faced here and then as if to answer my question a large eagle, almost three times the size of a normal eagle came swooping down into the town. 

The town's people scattered around and took cover when it's massive claws dug into the shoulders of a young boy that was standing in the street and eating ice cream. The eagle picked up the startled boy who started screaming and the eagle flew away with him. The boy dropped his ice cream cone and it splattered on the floor.