Allen + Lera - Crossing Worlds

[fixed_distance]

Who: Allen and Lera
When: Sunday
Where: Allen's place in the Nenakret
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: N/A

Welcome to Zenderael, Lera!



She was grateful she was not claustrophobic or scared of the dark.

One moment, Lera had been walking outside on a Sunday morning. She opened the door to her apartment complex, wearing a light jacket and blue jeans, with her sword and gun sheathed and holstered on her belt. The next moment, she found herself swallowed into darkness. At first, she was mortally terrified, thinking that somehow she went blind or died or found herself within an abyss.

Then, she realized, she was in an Earth man's closet. It was pitch black, but running her fingers over clothes revealed a few jackets and blue jeans. Unfortunately, the closet did not really prove comfortable, so she was left with the knowledge that her apartment complex's door led to a closet now -- a deeply troubling thought -- and no way to express this.

When she tried to get her phone out of her coat pocket, she dropped it on the floor instead.

And then three hours went by. She had so much time to mull over what happened that she missed the obvious answer: this was some manner of new dimensional shenanigan, that dumped her in the room of a man who was, she decided, out too much on a Sunday. She was dreadfully bored instead of scared by the end of it. But then she heard doors opened and boredom immediately melted into relief.

She pounded loud on the inside of the closet door. "Let me out! I'm stuck in your closet! Please!"
When Allen opened his door only to hear someone banging and yelling from within his closet, his stomach dropped a little, but not for the most obvious reason, which was concern for his personal safety in the face of an intruder.

No, it was more that his rented room in Zenderael, small though it might be, was generally a reliable respite from other people.

He was perfectly capable of handling them when he had time to prepare himself for it, but that wasn't really the case when you came home to someone hollering in your closet. His immediate, irrational impulse was to simply close the door and leave again, perhaps forever, but that would neither resolve the problem nor provide any assistance to this person who, it became increasingly obvious, was in some distress.

So, after a moment to convince himself that the universe was not out to get him and that the inevitable social discomfort of freeing someone from his closet could not possibly outweigh the drawbacks of leaving her there, he pulled open the door and immediately took several large steps backward.

"There you are," he said, making it almost a question, an uneasy expression on his face. He planned to ask her what she was doing in there, but with any luck, she'd tell him without prompting.

Lera almost tumbled out of the closet. Her feet scrambled a little, but she caught both herself and her balance with only minimal effort. The sudden animation seemed to persist, though; she had been cooped up in there long enough to be on edge. She shook her limbs out and -- rather embarrassingly -- bounced up and down to loosen herself up. She took a few deep breaths.

"Thanks," she finally said. "Some asshole mage put a portal or something in the front door of my apartment complex! Who--who would do that sort of thing?"

She pointed at the closet.

"I hope you don't get more," she said, not even puzzling through the fact her large complex had not coughed up more people into Allen's closet. She pursed her lips, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. "Where is this, anyways?"
"This is... Zenderael, I'm afraid," he answered.

Well, it seemed he had one more for the map...

Amazing. His own closet, the destination of a cross-world jump.

"What," Lera said, rather than ask. "No way."
He was dressed like an earther, so it seemed plausible he was pulling her leg.

Sadly, he had no reason to do so.

"It happens to the best of us," he said, holding up his arms in a shrug. "More specifically, you're in the Nenakret, so things could certainly be worse."

Lera's shoulders slumped. He had no reason to lie -- barring insanity or something she did not think of, but the realization was too much to let herself embrace paranoia -- and that meant she was in Zenderael. A hundred things hit her at once. If Harriet and Duncan were wrong, the merge would never come, and she would never see her family and friends again. She had no job or no belongings suddenly. And, perhaps most immediately, at least two inhumanly powerful beings wanted to kill her.

She sat down on his bed, chin resting in her hand.

"Sorry," she said, then, coming some to her senses. She stood up in a hurry, remembering her manners, and looked suitably embarrassed -- and decided to pretend she had not slumped down on his furniture like he owned it. "That is lucky, yeah, but..."

Lera turned and looked at him. "Are you from Earth, too? Your clothes all look Earth-like."
His brows knitted as she sank down onto the bed momentarily. It hadn't escaped his notice that due to proximity, and, perhaps shared circumstances, he might be her most logical source of aid now that she was stranded. The idea was a bit overwhelming. He wasn't sure what help she might ask for, or what he ought to take it upon himself to offer.

For now, an introduction was probably best.

"I was pulled over from Fall City about a month ago." He offered a hand in greeting. "Allen Marks."

It was on his profile on the forums, if she'd thought to read it.

"Fall City?" Lera asked, voice filled with surprise. "Me too. Small world, huh?"

Not a very good statement, she thought. They were not on the same world at all now. Her expression fell even as she spoke it. Lera's eyes turned to the side, then, and she shook her head to clear it. Her eyes looked up to him, as awareness settled in. She did know who he was; he had even sent her a PM the other day. Her mouth opened up, her face becoming surprised, and then she smiled.

"Lera Savinkov--Firecracker, on the forums!" she said, a little too energetically. She shook his hand with a bit more force. "We spoke there just the other day!"
"Small multiverse, perhaps?"

Her identity -- and the fact that they'd communicated so recently -- surprised him. Hadn't one of the people who replied to his survey mentioned being pulled across to the home of someone they'd contacted across worlds a short time prior?

But that was silly. People contacted one another across worlds every day, now, and weren't constantly being pulled into one another's homes.

In all that speculation, he'd forgotten to really respond to the development in any meaningful way, though.

"Ah!" he said. "An extremely small multiverse, I suppose."

"It really is," Lera said. She smiled at him.

She looked over her shoulder. Some of the excitement of the idea of being in Zenderael set in. Part of her wanted to barge out and find a window, to look at the Nenakret, her favorite city, with her own eyes. See people walking the streets; see the same things that made her feel such wonder that day with Noelle and Dallen in Bastantown. It would have been rude, though, and she did not want.

She might need the help of someone from Earth here, after all.

"Why do you keep all of the Earth clothes?" she asked. "Avoiding going native?" She looked back at him. "Did you join any of the guilds?"
"I can barely dress myself sensibly in earth clothes," he admitted, although his clothing looked expensive and possibly even tailored, so it probably seemed like an odd thing to say. Although the fact that he was wearing a jacket in summer did lend some credence to the claim.

"Figuring out how to look respectable in Zenderael's apparel is a bit more than I can handle at the moment."

At her final question, he nodded. "I'm a mage, actually..." He glanced over at a staff propped in the corner, with a small smile that suggested 'can you believe it?'

"Your clothes are pretty fancy, actually," Lera said. Of course, fancy did not necessarily equate to fashionable, but she did not seem to believe him all the same. She tilted her head sideways, mouth opening -- and then she nodded her head.

She saw the staff. A smile crept across her face.

"It's amazing," she said. "That all of this exists, that can people can do such things. I--" She would need to find a guild. She would have to think on that, now; it was all in a vacuum. It was necessary to protect herself, but she also needed information. "Did you appear here? Or just come here?"
"Near here," he said. "I was fortunate enough not to arrive in a closet, though."

It was amazing, the guild powers. More than she even knew, perhaps. He knew only a few spells, and those hadn't been mastered, but to work even the simplest spell -- to watch reality bend -- was incredible.

"Yeah, that was kinda crap--I mean, at least it was yours. What if it was an abandoned room?" Lera asked.

She probably would have knocked the door down, then. She probably would have knocked Allen's closet door down if he had not been along soon, though. She was already starting to feel just a little stir crazy in there.

"Glad it wasn't Bastan, though." She hesitated; that brought thoughts of Acher to mind and everything complicated that came with it.
"That wouldn't have been good," he replied.

"With people blindly leaping across dimensions from one world to another, a safe jump is actually rather remarkable, I would think. A person might wind up all sorts of unfortunate places."

He considered some of those unfortunate places, but decided not to share them out loud. Partway into a wall, or deep in the wilderness, or in the ocean...

The sorts of places you could not later self-report for an online survey.

"Yeah, that'd be very bad," Lera said. "Though I haven't heard a lot of cases of people dying from it--ah, but if it was remote areas with monsters..."

She paused.

"I won't be able to work on the map you gave me," she said. "I'll need to send it to the people at work, maybe they can make use of it. And tell, um, tell everyone where I am..." Sorry, Allen, she was thinking aloud.
"Ah. Actually you might be surprised at how well you can stay connected to Earth from Zenderael. It might be possible to continue your work remotely, if it's done through a computer."

Although... come to think of it, she probably used specialized computers in her work -- complex mapping software and all that -- the mistake occurred to him a moment after he said it, along with a somewhat exaggerated concern that it had sounded foolish. He had to remind himself that it was, in the grand scheme of things, probably only a small blip on her radar.

She had just crossed worlds, after all.

"It's certainly simple enough to let people know you're all right, though. Getting your bills forwarded here, not so much..."

"Thank God for auto pay, huh?" Lera asked with a laugh.

"Probably won't work at my office," she added. "The computers are pretty powerful and we gotta do a lot of field work -- go out and take measurements, make sure the sensors got everything right, sensors you can't get by satellite." She shrugged her shoulders. "I was able to communicate with a lot of people in Zenderael, though."

She looked at him, a thoughtful look crossing her face. "Did you ever play it, when it seemed like it was only a game?"
"Ah, right, I suppose not, then."

At her question, he folded his arms, slightly uneasy. What a tricky topic that was.

"I didn't." Curt and neutral, with a tinge of discomfort.

'Did you?' followed in his mind, but went unsaid. What would he say if she had? It was a fascinating topic -- he was studying it, in fact -- but it was also one he had mixed feelings on. It was entirely possible that she had played it, and that was.... ... simply not a thing he wanted to discuss in an unexpected interaction with a woman who had materialized in his closet.

The discomfort is hard to miss. If Lera knew him better, if she was not already feeling like she was walking on eggshells in this new place, she might have pressed for more. The conclusion she reached was wrong: he was lying. Maybe he was trying to protect himself from a psychotic alt, maybe he was simply guilty. Whatever it was, it said more about Lera than Allen.

"Yeah. Well, um..." She trailed off. Maybe she should excuse herself shortly. "I suppose we're neighbors, now, at least sort of--ah, not that I plan to live in your closet."

She flashed a smile. "But I probably will stay in the Nenakret." Further from Acher, with an army between them. "Maybe we could--ah--maybe we could get some coffee sometime. Or, ah, something." Her smile grew awkward. "You're the only person from Earth nearby I have met, I suppose that is what I am saying."
"Well, you haven't exactly had much opportunity to meet anyone," he pointed out, an effort at humor. She hadn't technically gone outside his residence yet.

"Ah, but certainly. Yes. Is there anything you need help with? I don"t mean to send you off into the great unkown, but I'm not sure of your plans from here..."

"Oh, well, um..." Lera hesitated. "I will probably join the spellswords. I was part of the Army before."

The United States Army, if her accent was any indication.

"It seems like it would be easy to settle into. And if I am here permanently, well, ah, I will need a career of some sort. I can't well ask or expect to live off handouts from friends back home and help from people." He shook her head. "You, ah--you must be a scholar, if I had to guess?"
He nodded at her answer -- joining the spellswords sounded like a sensible course of action if she had the experience to back it up.

"Graduate student in psychology," he answered. "Now that I'm here, I also work at the World Library -- helping digitize information."

"I probably used some of your information," Lera said. "What we could find digitized we used."

Him or someone like him.

"Thank you, though, I appreciate it." She straightened her back out, standing up taller, and looking a little more confident now that she could be sure he would not tell her that he had no time for her. He seemed friendly enough. "I guess I get to see Paris, too."
"A two-for-one special," he replied, his tone joking, but a smile only added as something of an afterthought. He wasn't exactly one for unexpected adventures, so he found himself searching for a way to politely end the encounter. Checking in with her later under more ordinary conditions would be far preferable.

"Ah, it's been a pleasure meeting you, Lera, odd circumstances aside."

"Sounds like," Lera said, returning the smile, even if she saw the way his was slower to come. "I'll leave you be. I'll write you once I've gotten a chance to make sense of everything!"

She waved at him, before she opened the door and walked out. It wasn't until she closed it and made her way down the hall that she realized she should have asked for questions.

By then, though, the fact she was walking through Zenderael -- and all the sense of wonder that entailed -- began to set in.