Young Writers Society

Silence briefly fell across the room as James began to wonder how it was that three strangers, all running from someone or something, had come together in the same place - all a little confused or unclear as to how they got here.

Out of curiosity, and to seek clarity, he asked Aen a question.

"Could you ask Hali if he happened to be running from something as well?"

He gave a big nod and turned to Hali. "Were you running from something, too?" he asked. "Luke wanted me to ask you."

Hali hesitated. "Sort of. I disguised myself as a human to save someone, but things didn't go exactly as planned."

He nodded wisely - he was still trying to understand what exactly a hu-man was, but he could get the disguising part - and spun around to face Luke. "He was sort of running!" he reported. "He said he disguised himself as a hu-man and things didn't go the way he wanted them to."

"So we're all here because we're running from something. One way or another," James concluded. "That, or all of this is a sheer coincidence." But he had a gut feeling that it wasn't, especially after what he saw with the healing device Aen had. He knew that was not of his world.

He nodded in agreement, then promptly forgot about the whole discussion to check out the rest of the cabin instead. It was kind of obvious that was what they were doing, and he didn't get why it was such a big deal. Besides, this cabin looked pretty cool and he really wanted to find some other neat stuff hiding around.

After a little bit of searching, he found himself a tablet stick that almost looked like the one from his room - but this one was a super neat shade of red, not the ugly blue he was used to. He pressed the button on the side and a holographic screen appeared in front.

"Oooh!" he exclaimed, looking at all the options. "I've always wanted to play these games!"

James watched as Aen went over to yet another foreign object that didn't make much sense to him. At that point, he wasn't going to question it. He was more concerned about how he arrived there and if he should be concerned.

Because it didn't sound like the others had as an abrupt transition as he had.

"..." he looked over to Kratzer. "Moments before I saw the cottage, I was running through pounding rain, only to then enter the serene stillness of the clear-skied forest." He couldn't make sense of it.

"Which is the only reason I keep pressing for answers. Because never before in my life has the ground become dry beneath me and the rain stopped so instantly as it did minutes ago."

"I was running through an empty field with snow," Kratzer replies. "When I hit the edge of the woods it was suddenly, well, this," he gestures around.

James nodded, outwardly remaining calm, though inwardly he sighed in relief. Though Kratzer's news wasn't in any way comforting as far as logical explanations were concerned, he was glad that it wasn't just him. And seeing that trying to get Aen to go into more detail would be difficult, nevermind getting Aen to translate for Hali again, he wasn't sure how much he would get out of them two.

"Okay so... explanations for that. I have... one," he said, counting on his fingers without thinking. "And that would be that it was somehow magic motivated. But that only leaves me with more questions."

After looking back and forth between the two men and Aen, Hali went over to Aen.

"What are you doing?" he asked, sitting next to the boy. Then, casting a furtive glance at their companions (even though they couldn't understand his language anyways), he said, "I can barely understand what they're saying."

"I'm playing a game!" he said, plopping down into the closest chair. He started to swing his legs back and forth. He needed to figure out what game to play first, which was hard - he had never had so many to chose from! "And they're trying to figure out how they got here. It's kind of obvious, though."

Hali raised his eyebrows. "Oh? You know how we got here then?" A bit of excitement grew inside of him. If they figured out how they got here in the first place, then they should be able to leave the same way.

He studied Aen and the strange, brightly colored contraption in his hands that supposedly allowed him to play games as the boy began to swipe his finger across its surface. (Hali was skeptical, as games were more tangible than some sort of flat, thin thing. Games were things such as hitting a ball of seaweed between a group of dragons, or racing to see who was the fastest swimmer, or even lining up shells in order from darkest to lightest. But each to his own, he supposed.) There was definitely more to this one than met the eye.

"There's no possible way it could be anything but magic," Kratzer agrees. "So the question then becomes not how but why, no?"

He nodded, though his eyes remained on the holographic screen. "Uh-huh." He finally settled on a game. Once he had clicked on the small icon, he got himself comfortable in his chair and started to play the building game. He continued to swing his legs back and forth. "We're all got scared, so we hid."

"...What?" said Hali, his gaze flicking from between Aen and the 'game', which definitely was one of the most otherworldly things he'd seen in his life. "What makes you think we're all scared?" No one would admit it, especially if they were currently.

But maybe the kid's reasoning wasn't wrong. Although Hali had become somewhat accustomed to living among the humans, he had always feared being caught by the wrong people and never being able to return to the sea and his family. And he had been trying to escape at the moment he landed in this unfamiliar place.