Welcome to Limbo

Chapter 1

It took longer than she cared to admit to figure out the place granted wishes, wherever she was. She arrived walking down a long hall. Literally walking, she appeared midstep and simply carried on her way. The hall was plain, blank tired walls and drab tile floors, that besides their material were overall uninteresting. Tile always was pretty, even when it was the color of dirt. A shame really, she thought, tile is one of those few materials that deserves to be made into something pretty, like sea glass or silk.

As she continued down the hall, it began to look a bit different, a bit nicer. The ground settled into a dusty cream color, and the walls began to take on a less disappointing white that wasn't quite pale enough to make one uncomfortable. Bright shades of white had a way of making one uncomfortable, it brought up ideas of marriage and stains, both stressful things that didn't exactly need to be thought about. This shade of white was nice, comfortable even. The change in scenery was processed, and seen as just that, nice, and comfortable even.

See, as far as May was concerned she was a fairly smart human being. No she didn't have straight A's in her classes, nor did she have a high paying after school job, but as far as street smarts went she was awkward but smart. She liked to think that she was fairly self aware which, as far as she was concerned, was the most important quality in someone with street smarts. So when she began to notice the changes she processed them, placed them on sticky notes in the back of her brain, waiting to be applied.

This place was unfamiliar, and even sort of scary, but it was new. That was the weirdest thing about this place, she thought. The emotions she was battling weren't leading with fear, they were leading with excitement. No sane person should be able to say they felt so excited in a situation like this but she was. She was filled with it, pumping through her veins and filling her with the need to explore the place with changing walls and unfamiliar hallways. This place was something different, and to May, different meant salvation.

And so she continued down the hall, focusing on the small changes of the hall until they became bigger changes. The hall began to widen, and more halls began to branch off. The walls shifted to hold windows, and open up into small rooms with everyday items in them. Most held clothes and jewelry, but some had makeup and even furniture. The farther she explored the more familiar her surroundings became, until she knew where she was.

"Really?" She yelled at the empty shopping mall, continuing along a string of department stores, eyeballing their contents. "I wake up in some magical changing hallway that's secretly a department store?" With no one in sight May felt free to yell into the absence and fill it with her incredulity. "At Least give me a food court or something!"

And there she found one. Farther up the halls as she searched for any store with something remotely resembling food she came upon it.

This was processed as strange, finding just what she'd been previously begging for, and was thus filed away in her mind for a later point. But right now her notes were shoved out of the way to make room for the smells of food wafting from the restaurants, or whatever the word for the companies selling food in the food court were called. Not much point in remembering the word under any circumstances, but in this case there was even less point, she was already rushing to the counters and searching for workers.

Now, this led to another showcase for May's exceptional self awareness. She knew stealing was bad. Stealing is bad. It's a universal fact. Just as the sky is blue and the earth is round (she challenged people to fight her on that one), stealing is bad. But this lead her to another train of thought. If someone steals something, and there is no proof that it belonged to anyone to begin with, could it really be considered stealing? Obviously someone made the food, but the hallway changed by itself, it's not much of a stretch to think that food could make itself now is it. This led to another train of thought, the food could be poisoned, or rotten, or she could be living a modern form Persephone's forcible stay in the underworld. And these thoughts were carefully considered for a full three and a half seconds before her stomach growled and she began a low prowl around the room considering her meal options.