He woke up with his pants on fire and the sky was upside down. Which was weird because his back was cold. He blinked his eyes a few times, and rolled over. The world righted itself, and the sizzle of his pants hitting snow told him that he had made the right call.

On both counts.

He sighed theatrically. “Should not have done that.”

His head was now killing him, the pretty lines in the sky were gone, and his back was freezing.

He cracked his neck, which had been resting at a funny angle, and sat up slowly.

“Definitely should not have done that.” He made a note to himself not to poke at the nature of the universe until after he found out why he had woken up alone in a glade covered in smoke and fire.

He started feeling better about the day, already.

Seeing nothing interesting in sitting in the snow, in the shade of a tree, he rolled up and walked to a better vantage point.

He could see empty plains spread out in front of him, and strange trees that hugged low on the landscape.

“This is..” He threw a fist into the air. “Sooooo cool!”

And then nervously looked around the glade, reminding himself that no one could see him and that it wasn’t weird to celebrate the most interesting thing that had happened in his life.

Ever.

“Just wait until I can tell people about what just happened!” Not that they’d believe him, he happily thought to himself. That wasn’t his problem though.

Nope.

His problem was that he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

“Which I admit, could be a whole lot worse. Since I touched the livewire purple thing again, and could have hit my head on a rock. Or landed in the middle of an ocean!”

He tallied what he knew versus what had just happened. And took inventory.

Item: An event occured that sent him god knows how far away, certainly past any standard of civilization he was used too. From his dorm room in Santa Fe and also a really pleasant nap.

Item: He was minus shirt and shoes, but on the bright side he had pants and what looked like a single screw in his right pocket.

Item: it looked like it was about noon, so perhaps he was in the southern hemisphere, which would explain the strange looking trees.

Item: He wasn’t hungry or thirsty, and while cold if he kept moving and stayed out of the pockets of snow he probably wouldn’t develop frostbite. Probably.

Priority was getting in motion and staying warm. And finding shelter before nightfall. And keeping an eye out for help.

He started walking out into the plains.

--

Walking without shoes sucked, he decided. “Two stars, because the ambiance isn’t horrible.”

It really wasn’t.

The plains had opened up into soft rolling hills. The banks of which were slited with dirty looking snow. Frost clung to the lee side of the hills, and he kept himself sunward as much as possible.

He had been walking for about two hours, which was just about as much as he figured he had walked in maybe a year. His feet were distinctly ready for a break.

So he flopped over and took one, sighing contentedly when he slipped to the grass. The sun was keeping him rather warm, which was a blessing. Just a little break, he thought to himself. He closed his eyes.

--

When he opened them again he felt much better. It was also later in the day.

He yawned and stretched his hands above him. “Ah, well.” He relieved himself, and guiltily started walking again. He scooped up a handful of snow and let it melt in his mouth as he strode forward.

Fifteen minutes later he saw something that made him grin from ear to ear. A house sat alone tucked in between two hills.

“Lucky!” He started striding towards it purposefully.

As he got closer, more details struck out about the little house. Like the fact that half of it was burned down.

That was a detail he didn’t miss. Especially as he got closer. A one story, rustic looking cabin with shuttered windows, and a stone block chimney. At least there looked like a small stream nearby, because it didn’t look like they had electrical hookups here. Maybe a generator behind the back, he wondered. Also, the wood was purple, maybe from some strange stain or resin.

Standing in front of it, It looked like something epic had happened here.

The door of the structure was off its hinges and in two pieces, with several axe markings on its surface. There were multiple foot marks trampled into the mud in front of the entrance. Curiously, the burn damage looked like it was on the far side near the stone chimney.

He stepped in, and slowly let his eyes adjust to the change in light.

The inside was worse. The floor looked to be the same as the walls, roughly split logs. If you ignored all the coagulated blood, you could call it a real fixer-upper. He blinked, his enthusiasm momentarily stilted.

“Yeap, upturned table, small tracks of blood, every single container visible raided and tossed for food. Raccoon’s out here and fucking scary.”

He turned back to the front of the house.

“Aiiieeeeeyyyeeeee!” Letting out a distinctly unmanly scream, he jumped back from the corpse that was hanging from the wall near the broken door.

Deciding the corpse wasn’t going to move, he calmed himself back down. And then looked around to see if anyone noticed. Silence hung around the cabin.

The body was green. And very frozen. It hung from the wall by a hatchet which had pierced through its chest into the wall behind it, the hatchet’s handle broken and splintered.

Long pointed ears, at least three times normal size. Pointed teeth like a wolf. It was wearing simple furs that he realized he could smell even through the cold. It had definitely evacuated its bowels.

“Okay that fucking tears it.” He laid it out in his head.

Item: purple trees and unfamiliar landscape.

Item: tear in god damn space-time.

Item: actual goblins and violence.

Item: low tech cabin and no roads to speak of.

Synopsis: He was either in the wrong place, or the wrong time. Or both. There was always both.

“Yea, no god damn way this is Earth.” He felt a horrible drop in the pit of his stomach.

He had felt it coming the entire time, like an amusement ride that clanks you slowly to the top of a huge precipice. But it hadn’t been real until he said it out loud. Well, the goblin corpse had helped with that, he supposed.

The entire time he knew in his bones that he wasn’t home. And there didn’t look like any feasible way to ever get back to anything that he knew or loved.

The silence held for a long spell, the wind blowing through the holes in the cabin.

He suddenly brightened up again at a sudden thought.

The goblin corpse was also wearing shoes.