It had just started snowing when I got out of my car. A cold wind had picked up and momentarily buffeted my face with snowflakes. I grabbed the pile of stapled papers on the passenger seat and hid them inside my coat as I walked. I hate the snow and I hate the cold, and I hate them both together. Whenever the weather got like this, the familiar aches and pains in my knee came back. I pushed through squall until I got to the doorstep of my destination. After ringing the doorbell, I knocked a few times with no answer. Just as the cold was getting to me and my body started shivering, I tried the handle. It was open and I sheepishly walked inside and started taking my winter garb off.

“Jamie!” I called out, “It was too cold I let myself in” I could hear the shower running in the background. Her apartment was your basic two-room. Bathroom and Bedroom in the back, combination kitchen, and lounge in the front.

“Yeah, that’s fine!” She called back to me, “I don’t know why you bother knocking anymore, grab something to drink and warm up.” I never felt comfortable barging in on others’ lives. It was a big joke among my extended family and childhood friends that I always waited outside when paying a visit.

I got out of my winter garb and put the kettle on. She probably meant warm up with an alcoholic drink. That is how our discussions usually went, but I was hoping for something that would actually stop me from shivering.

By the time I was pouring the tea, Jamie came out to her kitchen. She shot me a look before grabbing some cheap whiskey and pouring two glasses. Then she drank one and refilled her glass before sitting down at the table with me.

“So, what did you think of it?” She said, motioning to the pile of papers.

“I liked it, but its so different from your other stuff. What brought on the melodrama teen romance?”

“It’s a melodramatic teen romance adventure.”

“It’s still different from most of the stuff you wrote before.”

Jamie was a writer and had more than a few books under her belt. Almost all of her works were fantasies in the same setting. She had built a kind of extended universe through her works by only writing about a single world often called the Tales from Aurelia. It all began with a series of web novels that eventually got picked up by a publishing company. Her first books were high fantasy, kind of like a founding myth. They followed the rise of Emperor Aurelius. It’s your typical heed the prophecy save the world type story. Aurelius and his family are forced to flee their empire after his father, emperor Skandar’s death. Spurred on from learning about the prophesied downfall of humanity, he and his allies go on to reforge the empire and thread enough alliances to face the calamitous evil. Her later works followed the ebbs and flows of this new empire and its surrounding lands by zoning in on small political battles and small-time adventures. She enjoyed the setting so much that she even penned an unofficial settings guide for dungeons and dragons and was also the administrator on an Aurelia wiki site.

Her latest works were the pile of papers on the table. It was a series that supposedly followed the fall, and then the rise of Caterina Severian the daughter of a high-ranking nobleman. She had finished writing the first book in a trilogy. Which only followed the girl's fall. Caterina had a lonely and somewhat perilous childhood. Her mother died while she was young, and her stepmother became a natural enemy. Her position as heir was constantly at threat, especially because she was the useless and magicless black sheep of the family. The first novel is told through the perspective of the character Gyra as she comes into conflict with Caterina at Royal Academy. Gyra is Caterina's foil. Born to poor aristocrats, she received love and compassion from her family and was born with a strong aptitude for magic. These conflicts are mostly driven by Caterina’s obsession and jealousy as her fiancé, the young Duke Rollo, begins to fall in love with Gyra. This culminate in Caterina’s expulsion and broken betrothal from the capital and the academy after trying to murder Gyra.

Through the epilogue, we switch to Caterina's perspective, where she is being shipped off to a one of the Severian country villas after her expulsion. The real tragedy of the novel is that Caterina's obsession and jealousy were spurred on by a love curse. Her curse is only lifted after her engagement ring, the item that cursed her, is stolen off her finger by a group of bandits. Her only friends and trusted allies are cut down in front of her to a man. Had it not been for a passing benefactor, Sir Rictor, she may have been kidnapped or worse at the hands of the bandits. But, the knight was able to drive them away.

“Same as always, I just felt like I had to write it,” Jamie said as she absentmindedly stirred her tea. “So do you like it or not?”

“I like it, in fact, I stayed up through most of last night reading it. The ending was pretty shocking though, I spent a few hundred pages disliking her only to feel guilty in the end."

“No wonder you look so tired, here I thought you were actually doing some work,” Jamie beamed at me. “It sets up the next novel, which follows Caterina clawing her way up in the world and unraveling the mysteries of her curse. She replied. "Gyra's story isn't finished yet and she has a few POV chapters as well."

"Then what about the third?"

"I haven't fully...visualized it yet, but their two stories will continue as they get caught up in reclaiming the northern territories. I was thinking of calling it The Reclamation."

“Because Caterina reclaims herself or because she helps with the reclaiming the Lysian wastes?”

“Both, maybe I’ll call it Reclamation of Love, you know, since she will have reclaimed her the love of herself in the second and she’ll find her true love in the third.”

The conversation went on like that well into the night. This happened just about every time Jaimie had me look over a new work of hers. Jamie is my younger cousin, but we might as well be clones since for as long as I can remember we’ve shared the same ideas and interests. We were both athletes until my accident, both book nerds and scholars. Most importantly, we both loved fantasy. And, while I didn’t write anything that didn’t pertain to my job as a historian, Jaimie still saw me as a valued resource of input for her works.

After a while, she tried to pour me another glass of whiskey, but I declined. One was enough for me, and if I didn’t leave right now with the snow stopped, I might be snowed in for the weekend. On my way out, Jaimie gave me the manuscript for the second book and slipped the old one on top of it. “Same time next week? And, check the first one again would you? Just to see if there’s something I should change?”

“Change? If anything, I’d try to help Caterina have an easier time. I mean, the part where she realizes just how many evil deeds she committed is hard to stomach...” I replied. The scene was harsh. Caterina gets physically ill as she regains her sanity. For the first time in years, she can view her actions with a clear head and it leaves her defeated.

“Yeah, even writing that hurt. I didn’t plan ahead, so making her the main character of the rest of the series was just from inspiration, but then the horror of her situation dawned on me as I continued to write.” This wasn’t unusual for Jamie. She wrote all her works in a similar almost frantic manner, where the words seemed to flow through her onto the page.

On my way out, my knee continued to act up. Getting chilled and then sitting for such a long time stiffened it forcing me to limp a little as I went on. Thankfully I wasn’t parked that far away. I got in, turned the heat on, and let it wash over me for a few blissful minutes. I yawned; the lack of sleep combined with the heat was making me seriously drowsy.

Distracted, I pulled out of my spot without looking and only realized my mistake too late. Bright lights, whiplash, and a sharp pain as my face smacked against the steering wheel were all I experienced before I lost consciousness.

The sheets were soft. I stretched out my legs and arms like a starfish and held them there for a moment feeling my muscles work. I was lying in a large and comfortable bed. Must be the hospital. I felt my head, and sure enough, the pain of touching the bandages reminded me of my face being flung into the wheel. It would be a miracle if my skull wasn’t cracked. That didn’t matter to me too much, I was just happy to be alive. My life wasn’t incredible, my parents had passed away, many of my dreams had not and probably would not come true, my body was slowly succumbing to age, and I was more socially awkward than I cared to admit. That being said, I couldn’t help but smile. It felt like my perspective had changed after this near-death experience. This could be a sign that I should redouble my efforts and change my life for the better. I could start working out, add more classes, maybe even ask Professor Willows if she wants to get a coffee…

But, as I looked around, it dawned on me that this probably wasn’t a normal hospital. For starters, my bed was at least a queen size, and the headboard and frame looked wooden. More importantly, the floor was unvarnished hardwood, and the walls were made of exposed stones and mortar. The entire room was positively medieval, there were even dyed tapestries and rugs. The windows had no screens!

As I was looking around, a door to my right opened and a young woman not yet in her twenties stepped in. She had brown hair, soft features and was dressed in a grey tunic with short sleeves that ended at her mid-thigh. She didn’t look like your typical nurse. “Young lord, you’re awake?” She said as she rushed to place the tray she was holding on the nightstand beside the bed. It had a clay cup and a wooden bowl filled with what looked like steaming porridge.

I tried to speak but only a dry croak came out of my mouth. She seemed to understand what I was doing and handed me the glass.

“Umm thanks,” I said, feeling incredibly awkward. “So, where am I?”

She looked at me confused for a moment before realization crossed her face. “Ah, yes after you fell off of your horse, we had to bring you back to your room.” She exchanged my now empty glass for the porridge. “Please eat.”

“Oh thanks,” I said, feeling even more awkward as I accepted the porridge. “…Wait, I didn’t fall off a horse, I got in a car accident!”

“Young lord, there were no carts involved, you were thrown from your horse and almost split your head on a rock.”

“A rock? No, it was the steering whee- never mind,” I said while rubbing my face. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I just want some short answers ok?”

She looked confused but nodded.

“Who are you? Why do you keep calling me young lord? Where exactly am I, like latitudinally because it was definitely snowing last night?” I fired off in rapid succession, as I pointed to the window where bright sunshine and warm air flowed in.

After a long and frustrating conversation, I was fairly convinced that I had been kidnapped by some weird stalker who found out Jamie’s identity. If it hadn’t already been a chore to sit up and drink water, I would’ve bolted by then. Everything she told me matched up with my knowledge of Jamie’s fictional world. I was Gettorix Batvi, the son of a retired army officer who was recently granted nobility and placed as a marcher lord on the northern frontiers of the Aurelian Empire. To be specific we ruled a fortified valley inside the palisades, a mountain range that separated the empire from the wastelands of Lysia.

I was convinced she was a stalker until the servant handed me a mirror upon my request. Instead of the face of a pudgy 29-year-old history lecturer, I was greeted by a totally different face. It was a boy’s face barely having hit puberty. A boy with emerald eyes, shoulder-length black hair, and tears streaming down his face from the realization that something had gone terribly wrong.