“Should we carry him over to the road so they won’t have to get like a helicopter or something? I mean, he isn’t in THAT bad of a shape, right?” Joey asked Bob inquisidly. In response, Bob shrugged, not knowing either. Joey shrugged back and decided that it would be much quicker for the proper authorities to get there if they were by the road.

“Right, let’s haul him up on my back,” Joey said after a little while of thinking, bowing down and holding out her arms. Bob seemed pretty confused by this movement, but got the gist soon and started lifting Paulie up, making sure to neither touch his legs nor sprain his own back, both of which were very hard.

But after just a little while of confusion and body-maneuvering, Paulie was successfully up on Joey’s back, who thusly decided to stand up. Paulie was still out like a light though, so Joey had to put in all the effort to keep him on her back, which, if you know what it’s like giving someone a piggyback ride is like, you know is pretty darn hard.

Me?

Well, the second Paulie was on her back I quickly climbed, with the speed and flexibility of a very small mouse, up to her shoulder. “Whoa!” she cried, “Hi!” I replied, giving her a big happy smile as thanks for rescuing me. She smiled back wryly.

Oh, right, where’d Clay go? Ah, Bob’s holding him, nevermind.

Well, Bob didn’t look too happy to be holding a lobster-sized crayfish, but I was glad they hadn’t forgotten him somewhere. Man, that would just have made me run up a wall! Well, not run up a wall literally, I’d do that whether I was mad or not, but you catch my meaning.

Not wasting any more time, our little group started trekking through the lush green forest, overgrown and magnificent, Joey leading the way with advice from Bob. As far as I could glean from their conversation, Bob usually walked in front because he always knew the way and was the slowest walker, but with this emergency on our hands, Joey, the quicker one who was also carrying Paulie, had to take the forefront.

Speaking of Joey, she seemed to be ignoring me. I was right there on her shoulder, but she never even shot me a gaze! I felt a little saddened by that, actually, but then again, we really did have to get to the road quick.

And that we did. Within a mere ten minutes, we had reached an asphalted country-road slithering it’s way through the forest. It actually came sort of suddenly, to be honest, but we hadn’t followed any specific trail, so this was really to be expected.

The second we reached the road, Bob fished out a cellphone from his right pant-pocket. It looked modern enough, with the large touch screen and all. Maybe this world was some kind of combination of modern science and magic and monsters? Man, that’d be so cool!

However, this idea was lost the second he started actually doing anything on his phone. He quickly tapped in 911, put the phone to his ear, and started talking. The whole talking-into-a-phone-thing wasn’t anything peculiar, but… wasn’t 911 being the emergency number just a bit too much of a coincidence?...

Hrmm.

Now that I think about it, didn’t Sidharta Gautama get reborn as a golden bird once? And that was in THIS world, not some golden-animal world. So, maybe…

I’m the weird one?...

There’s only one way to find out.

Scanning the rocky trench on the sides of the road, I quickly found a rock just the right size for my experiment.

Joey had already gingerly laid Paulie on the soft moss right where the trench ended and the forest started, so she was the prime candidate, especially since Bob was busy describing the situation and our current location to do, well, anything else.

“Hey!” I said to catch her attention since she was preoccupied with, uh, staring at Paulie in concern or something? I wasn’t sure what she was doing, but I needed just some of her time, so I said “hey” some more and poked her in the side of her chin. And after a mere ten seconds of constant sound-making and poking, she finally turned to me. “What do you want?” she asked condescendingly, but I didn’t mind the obvious(albeit strange) aggression in her voice.

“Hey, look at this!” I said, pointing to the rock slightly larger than myself, and before Joey could ask what she was supposed to be looking at, the rock floated about three decimeters into the air. Silence fell. I looked back at Joey. “You okay?...” I asked curiously.

Her chin had practically hit the floor, and upon seeing this unsightly grimace, I was unable to steel my will enough to keep it from falling back into the little heaps of rock in the trench.

“Wh-, what the hell was that?...”

I assume this means that supernatural powers are, as the name suggests, supernatural.

Did I mess up?...

The first rule is always to make sure any and all potential enemies know as little about you as possible-, I just assumed this was how everything was??

So, okay, um, I guess we’re on Earth, then?

Hrmm, the best way to find out would be if I could find any news about my own death, man, I can barely remember even dying…

“Did you do that?” I could hear a somewhat feminine voice ask far away.

Huh? Oh, uh, umm…

No?...

I shook my head and averted my gaze nervously.

“It WAS you!!” Joey accused loudly, enough so that Bob felt the need to reply with an angry shout as well. “Shut up, I’m talkin’ to the cops!” he shouted. “You do mean the medics, right?...” Joey suggested, one eyebrow elevated. “Oh, yeah, haha, of-, of course,” Bob agreed.

Joey turned back to me. “Look, I didn’t mind whatever weird mutations you had, but this is just…” Joey threw her hands in the air in frustration.

Hm. She hadn’t been like this just a moment ago. Perhaps, she’s so worried she’s taking out her frustrations on me?... Well, if that’s the case, then it’s more alright, right? Anybody would be emotional if their friend got his legs broken, and if they hadn’t found him, who knows what could have happened?

I looked down at the ground in faux shame to appease her.

“I-, I’m sorry… I know it’s not your fault you were born this way, it’s just…” she admitted, her voice filled with guilt. I smiled at her. I know how it is, don’t you worry! She smiled back weakly and wiped a tear from her eye.

“Ouiouiouiouioui--” we could hear a strange noise in the distance. Or, it would have been strange, if we didn’t all know what it was. All three of us conscious people lit up in anticipation, and within mere moments, the ambulance was in view, and it was the most ordinary kind, yellow with green squares and multiple blinking lights in all sorts of colours, and I suddenly realized that I probably wouldn’t want to be seen.

As Joey stared at the approaching ambulance with a big smile, I climbed up to her neck and dug my way into the collar of her jacket. She giggled a little and told me to stop, but I didn’t want to, and she soon realized exactly why. She stopped trying to get me out after that.

Peeking out, I could see how Joey and Bob waved their arms broadly and pointed to Paul. The ambulance quickly ground to a stop, and a couple of men dressed in yellow popped out, one came up to us to ask about various things and the others got a stretcher to put Paulie on. Joey quickly recalled what they were doing, how they did it, as well as why they went out and went to a road instead of calling for help down there. On account of my shyness, Joey did me the great service of omitting my presence from the story.

The man nodded and went through all the formalities, answered questions and was overall a really helpful and well-mannered man.

Within short, they carried Paulie onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. Bob decided to take a ride along with him in the ambulance to make sure they got there alright, and Joey would report the accident to the university they studied at. She specified it to be the “Saint Lawrence” University of Geology and Zoology.

I had never heard of it, but I was thankful she at least allowed me to know where the heck we were headed.

Joey apparently had her bike just around the corner at a nearby gas-station. She unzipped her jacket, forcing me into the light, and gently sat me down in the little bicycle basket at the front of her bike. The sun was just going down, and the sky was that way it only is every now and then, when the clouds are all collected here and there, but not right above, so it’s like looking at a gorgeous painting of cascading colours, all contrasting and complimenting, beautiful and alluring.

Joey quickly hopped on in the back, and as if to prove that her muscular body wasn’t just for show, she rode her bicycle at a quick yet manageable pace. The wind hit my face, but not in any unpleasant way, more in the wind-in-your-hair kind of way where it’s sp perfect and nice and I was so happy to have been reborn.