Sophie gulped down the rest of her nasty tea in the hope that it would clear her head up a bit more.

“Can't you like, heal me or something?” she grumbled. “At least get rid of this hangover?”

Elowen shook her head. “I’m not a healer,” she began, and she looked like she was about to go into another one of her long winded explanations, so Sophie held up her hand again.

“Just – just hold off on the more talking thing, okay? We'll talk more later.” Sophie realized that she was fully at fault for her head hurting so much this morning, and that Elowen was just trying to be helpful, but she was not feeling so happy about the prospect of wandering out into unknown territory alone and hungover. She couldn’t help but wonder what good it was to be a Shrine Priestess anyways if the shrine spirit couldn’t even fix a hangover.

“Alright,” she said. “I need – well, I need a lot of things.” She glanced around at the kitchen, and began opening some of the cabinets. “I definitely need food. Hopefully something that tastes less terrible than that tea. And maybe a hot bath.”

“Oh! There are baths in the village! At least from what I can remember,” Elowen replied, as if that made the situation any better.

Instead, Sophie’s heart sank further. Right this rustic little place didn’t appear to have running water.

Great. Just great. Sophie shook her head, muttering obscenities to herself as she opened yet another empty cabinet. What, was the previous priestess some sort of ascetic? So far Sophie had found surprisingly little other than the spices and some dried rice. She definitely didn’t have it in herself for that sort of lifestyle.

Sophie pulled out the heavy bag of rice from a bottom cabinet and wondered how long rice was supposed to stay good for. She honestly wasn’t even sure she knew how to make rice without a rice cooker. She basically lived off of takeout anyways.

She opened the bag anyways, half-contemplating trying to make some just to avoid making a trip to the village today, but the rancid smell rising up from the bag stopped her in her tracks.

Nope. No rice today. She had been brave enough to try to boil the water, but she was not about to eat that. Okay, so she was definitely going to have to make that trip to the village.

She sighed, mostly to herself. She would just have to see what the village shops had when she got there. She had no idea what to expect as far as food went, and she doubted Elowen would either, judging by the fact that she had lived here for potentially years while subsisting on… mana.

Sophie hoped there were shops in the village. She hoped there was even a village.

She frowned, kicking the bag of rice in frustration. How long had Elowen been here alone? What if the village didn’t even exist anymore?

Nope. Not thinking about that. It wouldn’t help. Maybe if she thought hard enough, she could manifest the village. There was still the off chance she was dreaming, right?

Right??

Well, either way, what did villages usually look like in video games? There would probably be some sort of shop right? Or maybe a market where she could buy some food.

“Money,” Sophie said, almost gasping the word out loud in realization. If she went to the village, she would most likely need to buy food. She felt around in her pockets, but her wallet was missing. Along with her keys and her cell phone. Damn.

Not that American currency would do any good wherever she was now.

But it still annoyed her on some base level. Her memory of the end of her night was hazy, but she did remember having a bag when she joined her coworkers at the bar after work. She must have stuck everything in there at some point. She wondered if she left it there or if one of her coworkers took it back for her.

How did she even get on the train without her phone though? Did she get on the train? If not, where did she even find the portal? Her memories were completely and utterly gone. A total blackout.

“Money?” Elowen’s soft voice interrupted Sophie's pity party, probably for the better. Sophie looked up to see the wide, curious eyes of the shrine spirit. “I think there's probably some in here…” Elowen trailed off as she floated back towards the small living space next to the kitchen. She hovered near the desk, her feet just inches from the floor, and gestured at the drawers.

It was going to take Sophie a while to get used to the whole hovering thing, but she wasn't so callous to ask Elowen to pretend to be human just for her.

“Maybe in here?” Elowen suggested, pointing to the top drawer, and Sophie made her way over.

She slid open the drawer to find a small brown pouch along with a stack of what appeared to be letters written in an unfamiliar script. She slid the pages out from under the pouch, shocked to find that she could read them. It appeared to be some sort of correspondence, but it wasn’t in English.

She glanced up at the shrine spirit in shock, suddenly unsure how she had been communicating with her at all.

“What’s wrong?” Elowen asked in a language that was definitely not English, and yet sounded completely natural to Sophie’s ears.

She opened her own mouth to reply, suddenly unsure of what would come out. “I can read this,” she said in some language that she was sure she had never heard in her life. “I can speak! I can understand you. But how? It’s not –”

“Oh, that,” Elowen waved a hand at Sophie. “Last night when you came through the portal I couldn't understand a word of what you were saying, so I gave you a Universal Language blessing.”

“A blessing?” Sophie asked, and she was surprised to find Elowen’s face looked a little pinker than it had previously.

“Please don’t make a big deal of it,” Elowen said. “You would have gotten one anyways. Just at a much higher level…”

Sophie shook her head though. “I don’t understand. What does that mean? A blessing? How can you just make me understand a new language?”

Elowen looked nearly relieved at Sophie’s question this time. “Oh! Of course you wouldn’t know. Well, blessings – they're like special favors or abilities that we can grant to those we deem worthy. Most people get them when their mana levels reach certain tiers based on their class but we can also grant abilities if we see fit.” The spirit seemed to color a bit further at the explanation. “I might have cheated a bit by giving you yours. You hadn't yet agreed to become a priestess, and your mana levels are very low.”

“I didn't agree at all!” Sophie complained, not liking the weird judgemental tone Elowen took when talking about her mana levels. “But whatever – I mean, how does it work? I can read this now.” She shook the pages at Elowen, but Elowen just looked at her blankly.

“It’s a blessing,” the spirit repeated, as if that should explain everything.

Sophie stared down at the words on the page that she could somehow read perfectly, even though they were not in any language she had ever seen in her life previous to ending up in this fantasy world. Her mind spun with the impossibility of it all. And then she looked back up to the confused, mostly transparent spirit floating in front of her. Levels? Blessings? This was definitely some sort of video game.

She shook her head, giving it up already as a lost cause. “Nevermind,” she said. “It's not important.”

At least she could speak and even read the local language. It didn’t matter how. It would have been terrible to be stranded here and not even be able to communicate.

She placed the letters back down in the drawer – she would have to go over them later. She was hopeful there was some information in them that might explain a little bit more about what her duties would be if she really was going to do this shrine priestess thing.

She picked up the pouch instead, opening it to see several silver and copper pieces and three large gold coins with the silhouette of a woman holding some sort of plant on the front. She had no reference as to whether this was a lot of money or very little and somehow she doubted Elowen would know either. She didn't even bother asking.

She shoved the pouch in the back pocket of her work trousers, wishing she had her bag with her.

“Okay,” she said, feeling a little more determined now that she had money to spend. “So which way to the village?”

“What! You're leaving to go now?” Elowen fluttered nervously around Sophie.

“You’ll find me much more agreeable once I get something to eat,” Sophie promised. “You can tell me all about this shrine stuff when I get back.”

Elowen shook her head, though. “You can't go out looking like that.” She gestured to Sophie's perfectly serviceable slacks and blouse as if they were somehow horrifying.

Granted, Sophie had slept in them on a rather dusty floor. She brushed some of the cobwebs off of her arm. “What's wrong with what I'm wearing? It’s a little dirty, but I don’t have anything else.”

“Oh no,” Elowen said firmly. “You can't represent the shrine looking like that. Here.” She floated over to another corner of the room to a large, heavy-looking trunk that bore a striking resemblance to the ‘hope’ chest that Sophie remembered from her grandmother’s room as a child.

Sophie followed skeptically, lifting the heavy lid. Dust slid off in a puff, and she immediately regretted the decision. Especially since the trunk was full of musty garments. She pulled one out carefully – it was a formless grey thing shaped mostly like a dress with long sleeves. Exactly what she expected some sort of ascetic nun to wear.

“I am not wearing this,” she declared and immediately placed the garment back in the trunk where it belonged. “I am willing to accept a lot of things. But I am not wearing anything that looks like that.”

Elowen frowned. “But it’s tradition! You don't look like a priestess at all!” she complained. “Just look at me!”

Sophie took a long look at Elowen’s attire. The spirit wore a sleeveless white shift dress with a simple rope belt at the waist and plain brown sandals. Sophie had honestly just assumed Elowen’s outfit was some sort of spirit thing. But of course the clothes would be different here, too. Everything was different.

Sophie shook her head, holding firm to this one thing. One small shred of her sanity in this weird new world. “Nope,” she said. “I’m not wearing it. I’ll ask around and see what shrine priestesses are wearing these days.”

Making the promise nearly physically pained her, but she would probably do it. She didn’t want to stick out too much, and judging by what Elowen was wearing, Sophie had a feeling that she might do just that wearing her black slacks and blouse.

But regardless, she wasn’t going to wear the awful grey thing. The clothes probably all belonged to the previous shrine priestess, and Sophie still didn't exactly know what happened to her. She had a sneaking suspicion that the other woman must have died or something, and wasn’t that just creepy to think about?

She closed the trunk, deciding she would probably have to go through it later, as well, and stood up. She wobbled a bit, but her head felt a little clearer than it did earlier this morning. Maybe the half-disintegrated tea had some caffeine in it after all.

“Right,” she said, brushing more dust off of her clothes. “Time to go.”

“Fine. I’ll follow you as far as I can,” Elowen said, floating behind her, and it was little encouragement. What kind of fantasy world was this? Did Sophie need weapons? She really regretted not paying more attention to video games instead of reading all of that romance manga.

She made a note of the broken window on her way out of the shrine. If she was going to live here, she should probably get someone to fix that, too, and maybe just take a look around the place. Did they have home inspectors in fantasy worlds? Probably not.

There was only one path leading away from the shrine, and when Sophie stepped out into the courtyard, she forced her feet to walk towards it. It was broad daylight, and the forest ahead of her looked like any other forest Sophie had ever seen. She would be careful, but she didn’t see any way around it. She would have to find food eventually.

She made her way to the path with Elowen following close behind.

Elowen hit some sort of invisible barrier when they were barely off of the courtyard, though. Sophie could tell by the slightly undignified squeak the spirit made.

Sophie looked over at Elowen, and the spirit glanced back towards the shrine, as if it were physically pulling her.

“I can’t go any further,” she said. She sounded slightly panicked. “I could before,” she said. “I just know I could. But I hadn’t tried since you got here. The stone must be getting really low now.”

The spirit looked more upset than Sophie had seen her, and somehow it pushed Sophie forward.

“I’ll be back,” she promised.

She hoped she was right.