My mother fed us a fast dinner, tuna-fish sandwiches and corn chips, before starting on laundry. On Sundays, if I wasn’t with my friends, I’d usually be messing around on my wiki or chatting with friends on my phone. I could plausibly be doing either while in my bedroom, so I said I’d be upstairs, wished my family goodnight “in case I didn’t see them again before going to bed,” and went back to my room.

When I opened my door, Lilah sat bolt upright from the bed, ears perked straight up.

“If I were my mother, you’d be caught,” I said quietly. “Game over, you’re out.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “I was just taking a little nap, that’s all,” she said, just as quietly, moving to a kneeling position. “I got bored when you were gone for that long.”

“Yeah, I get it. Next time just take the blankets off and nap behind the bed.” I pulled up my phone and started some music playing on the bluetooth speakers on my desk. Something classical and mellow; I figured it would be closer to the sort of music she was used to, whatever that was.

Lilah, still on the bed, looked at the speakers in confusion.

“I just put on some music so they wouldn’t hear us talking,” I said.

“It’s really cool here, you know?” She leaned forward and stretched like a cat, arms straight out, hands on the bed, butt in the air, and tail sticking straight up. She held the attractive pose for the length of a yawn, then slid her legs off the side of the bed and stood up. “There are so many wonders here.”

“I guess it’s true. They don’t seem like wonders when you get used to them, though.”

“That’s a real shame,” she said, walking over to my desk. She poked at the speakers with her finger. I noticed the claw had retracted, leaving a small flap of skin where her fingernail should have been. “Is this where the music is coming from?”

“Basically, yeah,” I said. I held up my phone. “The music is actually stored here; those speakers are just playing it.”

She giggled a little. “I didn’t realize music was something you could store. That’s like storing laughter, or love. It’s sheer magic.”

I smiled as she put her face close to the speaker. Lilah was right. In fact, just having her around and viewing things from her perspective was making the most ordinary things, like beds and speakers, seem like fanciful luxury. I was seriously lucky that of all the places she could have appeared, it happened to be in my pantry.

“So what were things like where you lived?” I said, seating myself at the foot of my bed.

“I live in a forest in the south,” she said, failing to mention what she was south of. “On a mountain range near the ocean. The hot season’s unbearable, but besides that, the weather’s nice.” She moved to the other side of the desk to look at the other speaker. “There was a city nearby, and a few villages. I’d travel from settlement to settlement, watching the people.”

“So you lived in the wild?”

“Of course! I’m an Emissary of Nature!” she said, looking back and smirking at me before turning back to the speaker. “I’d hunt. Sleep in the low boughs of trees. Play jokes on travellers.” She picked up one of the speakers, looked underneath it, and then held it to her ear, which twitched in protest.

“Speaking of which, what does it mean to be one of Nature’s Emissaries?”

She looked back at me, then put the speaker down. “Huh. How do I put this? I guess I’ve got to start with the basics. So... there are lots of Emissaries. One Emissary for each kind of animal. We’re born to normal humans like anyone else, but called to protect the wild, so when we grow up, we leave our families to join the other Emissaries in the woods. When we die, we’re reborn as a different human somewhere else.”

She came and sat right next to me at the foot of the bed; a good distance away but closer than I’d have dared to. I slid away a bit, putting an extra inch between us. “We can feel what the forest wants,” she continued, “and so we act as its representatives when we make contracts with the villages, like for logging rights or hunting rights. Sometimes the humans try to take more than we’ve agreed to let them have. That’s a big mistake. Then we get to go drive them off.” She smiled and held up a hand, and I saw the claws extend a full half-inch.

“Do you kill them?” I asked nervously.

“Not if we can help it.” She inched towards me again. “Usually it’s just a small group of loggers or poachers. Two dozen Emissaries showing up at once and roaring at them is enough to make them run, and then we chase them for a while to make sure they don’t forget.” She smiled, and pulled her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “It’s fun.” Her voice was low. I realized that sitting this close together let us talk more quietly, which was good.

“So the people? Are there, like, knights and wizards, or…?”

She looked at me quizzically. “Kind of. Knights and sorcerers. No wizards, they’re just old wives’ tales. How do you know about them, though?”

“How do you know about Corgis?”

“They’re in stories. They’re an animal that lives in science worlds. It’s practically a trope now.”

“We’re talking about the little yellow dogs, right?”

“White and yellow, with the long bodies? Yeah,” She smiled. “They’re cute. When in doubt, add a corgi to your story and it’ll give the audience something to relate to. But it’s the same with a lot of the stuff here. Little computers in your hands that you use to command the electricity around you? That’s just what science worlds are like. You mentioned cars. Those are like tiny little houses on wheels, barely big enough to hold a few chairs?” She waited, and I nodded. “Yeah.” she said, “that’s a staple of science world stories. Authors or bards only omit them if they’re trying for a specific kind of science world that wouldn’t reasonably have them.”

“See, we’ve got stories about fantasy worlds that have knights and wizards in them. And dragons? Do you have dragons?”

Lilah nodded. “The fat, fire-breathing lizards?”

“Yeah, those. We’ve got the same sort of stories.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Lilah said. “We’re both telling stories about each other’s worlds.”

“That doesn’t make much sense. I mean, it’s not like all fantasy stories come from the same world, right? Is there another world for each story setting?”

Lilah shrugged. “I’m not sure it actually matters. I’m from there, you’re from here, so unless world hopping is somehow a common thing, ours would be the only two that matter.”

“It’s just weird that we’d have stories like this. Why do you know about Corgis, but think Christians fight vampires? Why do I know about dragons, but not Emissaries?”

“Why do we care?” asked Lilah, looking at me quizzically.

“Aren’t you curious?” I asked. “Something weird is going on here.”

“Well yeah,” Lilah said. “I got transported into your pantry. That’s pretty weird.” She rolled her eyes and smiled at me.

“Are you worried about getting home?” I asked.

“I’ll want to eventually, yeah. But I’m a nomad. I only spent a few months a year by my lake. I usually wander from city to city looking for something exciting to do, so it’s really cool to be able to accidentally wander to another world!” Her smile fell for a moment, and she rested her chin on her knees. “Still, I wouldn’t want to stay here forever. I’d want to find a way home.” She paused for a moment. “Think I’ll find a way to get back?”

“I’m sure you will,” I said.

“Liar,” she said, and she stuck out her tongue.

I shrugged, smiling with a bit of chagrin. “Okay, fine, yeah. I actually have no idea. But so long as we’re able to keep you hidden from my family, I’m happy to host you for as long as I can.”

She smiled back at me. “Only until the snow melts. That’s as far as I’ll need to stretch your hospitality.”

We talked together for a long time. She asked about all sorts of stuff, like what the walls were made of, what animal hair was used to make the carpet, how many people in my world had beds, and so forth. Every aspect of every item in my room was a possible topic for conversation. Except, surprisingly, she didn’t ask how any of the electronics worked. I guess that made sense, though. If I saw a crystal ball, I wouldn’t ask how it worked. It was just “Magic”. That’d be enough for me.

Save for dinner, we spent all evening together, late into the night. Eventually, I had to turn in; I had school the next day, and I couldn’t afford to be a zombie through it.

I let her have the bed. Instead, I took some extra blankets from the closet and laid them on the floor so I had someplace to sleep too.

Tomorrow would be an exciting day.