“Maybe the real monsters are the friends we met along the way.”

Many things were a mystery to Elaine. Biggest of them all was the existence of Flat Earthers, but the point was; she knew she didn’t know many things. Some of these things she could have addressed simply by doing a Google search, but she usually never bothered to. Things that didn’t interest her weren’t worth the effort of pressing ctrl and T and typing her question. But if given a choice, she would have definitely done it at that time.

Would Professor Google have the answer to “how to interact with a snake-person” though?

She found herself sitting near a campfire with a blanket over her shoulders. The hot flames warmed her frigid body. On the opposite side was a... pile of snakes. That was the only way she could describe it. They came in many different colors and were mostly different species, probably. But they all worked together to break firewood and toss them into the fire, like a single organism.

How they managed to arrive to that point was a memory she’ll likely never forget.

It was a simple tale, though. Immediately after Elaine threw the stone at it, which the latter dodged almost magnificently, a cold gust of wind sent her crumpling to the ground. Spending an unreasonable amount of time submerged in the cold lake then being hit by the wind literally took her breath away. The snake-person quickly went away. It returned with a parcel of stuff, which turned out to be a blanket to cover her with and the essentials to start a fire.

The sight of the many snake heads taking turns blowing on embers was strangely heart-warming.

That memory was what kept her calm. Surely, anybody who would do that for someone of a different... race was a good person, right?

Was it even correct to call it a ‘person’?

“----?”

It spoke. She was sure of it. She raised her head and made eye contact with the snake head located at the middle of what looked like its chest. It gestured towards her, pointing with one of the snakes on its arms, then grabbed what looked like his shoulders and imitated a shivering motion.

It was asking if she was still cold.

She shook her head and forced herself to smile, enduring the resulting pain that came from her face. The other party’s shoulders sagged in what looked like relief. It was impressive how well they could communicate what they felt through just body language and facial expressions. Well, it was only her who could do the latter, but whatever. There was a limit to what they could communicate, obviously, but between strangers with nothing to talk about it was enough. Though she could imagine that it wanted to ask her where she came from; because she wanted to ask it the same thing.

Then the most embarrassing thing happened; her stomach growled. Loudly. It was enough that every snake stopped what they were doing and stared at her wide-eyed. The heat on her face could have started a fire.

“Ugh...”

She groaned and hid her face behind her arms. For a second she thought maybe it would have been better if she had been left alone to shiver. Then she remembered that there was still a pile of those bitter fruits beside her. So she reached out, hoping to at least alleviate her stomach’s anger a bit when—

“Ow!”

She recoiled. One of the snakes reached out and slapped her wrist before she could grab the fruit. It then shook its head and started shoving the fruits into the parcel it had with it.

Why?

It then ‘stood up’ and walked away, bringing its bag and its spear with it. One of the snakes gestured at her to wait by making a downward motion. It then ran into the forest. She had a theory – a guess as to why it did, and surely enough, it returned with a bloodied animal the size of both her legs with it.

It looked like a giant ferret with the belly of a pig. Peculiar.

It skewered the animal with a long, thick branch while it prepared a small tripod using shorter ones – such was the benefit of having a body essentially made up of limbs. When it finished, it placed the tripod next to the fire and not over it, which betrayed her guess that it was going to make use of a Dutch oven-style method. Then it took the skewered animal and embedded one end of the excessively long twig on the ground, letting the middle part rest on the tripod and the meat sit right on top of the fire.

It looked like half of the usual open fire roasting setups campers in her world made, but nonetheless it did the work and used fewer materials.

While they waited, it took one of the fruits from earlier and split it in many smaller pieces using the blade of its spear. Then it laboriously removed the seeds by... biting them off and spitting them out into the fire.

Couldn’t he just let her remove them by herself? Sure there were a lot of them and they were practically invisible, but it wasn’t that hard. And what was the harm anyway?

Soon it finished deseeding a piece and handed it to her. Then she thought, were those snakes poisonous? They’ve bitten off the seeds, but wouldn’t that put some poison into it? Nevertheless she accepted and found that she couldn’t help but bow her head in appreciation. It nodded at her and returned to deseeding another slice. She stared at it while she ate sparingly, trying to avoid embarrassing herself any further. It was hard at work all by itself removing seeds, tending to the fire, rotating the meat and a few of its snakes were even coiled around the spear and keeping watch over their surroundings. It was incredible.

She was warm and fed and even had a blanket to protect her against the occasional frigid winds that passed through. But most importantly, she felt safe for the first time in a while. It wouldn’t poison her, she felt.

“Thank you.”

Her words caused it to stop again. Several of the snakes stared at her, and after a moment of silence some of them simply nodded again while the others tilted their heads. Then they went back to work.

She smiled. It appeared that at least some of what she wanted to convey was received. Words of appreciation might actually be universal.

Then it occurred to her that it might have been the one she encountered earlier at the lake, and the snakes she saw swimming about were parts of him, possibly scattered because of her wildly flailing about. In other words, her first interaction with it was a kick to the gut.

Her face heated up in shame and she found herself burying her face behind her arms again. It wasn’t her fault, probably, but it was still not a very good first impression.

“Uuu...”

A groan bubbled from her throat. She considered apologizing, but specific sentiments like those were hard to deliver from simple gestures. She was already bad with people, so she feared making another mistake. It wasn’t like she knew it was that kind of... person. If it turned out to be a threat to her life then she’d have been glad to have done it.

... Ah, but was that just an excuse? Maybe she really should just apologize. It was the right thing to do either way. If words of appreciation were universal, then maybe it was the same with those of apology.

Like the great philosopher and motivational speaker Shia LeBeouf once said: “JUST DO IT.”

“Don’t let memes be dreams, huh?”

Questionably motivated, she put on her most sincere face and looked up. But instead of seeing her benefactor, a chunk of roasted red meat the size of her face greeted her instead.

The slightly charred smell tickled her nose. It was presented to her by a red snake, which was biting onto an exposed bone near the center of the meat. It looked like it was still rather raw near the bone, but it didn’t matter. The hungry shouldn’t complain.

She held it by what looked like the animal’s feet. They had no seasoning, so the only thing she could smell was some burnt fur and smoke. Regardless, it was food, and her mother had drilled it into her to not waste any. It would be rude to not try it at least.

So she bit into the meat – and almost choked.

It wasn’t just ‘rather raw’, it was still raw. Right, it hadn’t been five minutes since the meat was placed over the fire. Of course. She had been too busy musing to herself to realize. But what could she do?

The particular snake that gave her the meat looked at her in what she could only perceive as expectation. Every other snake on its main body busied themselves with other tasks, but she was sure they were all paying attention.

“... Mmm...!”

She smiled and nodded her head.

... What else could she have done?

Elaine had never held a weapon in her entire life. Though she was all for the second amendment, the idea of owning one herself had never crossed her mind, even after going through a Call of Duty addiction phase. Her neighbourhood was quite safe anyway, and for some reason people were afraid of her mother despite being a frail-looking flower vendor.

She would be lying if she didn’t imagine herself wielding a sword and saving cities from giant monsters. However after a lack of discovery of any powers within her, the idea of a heroic future quickly became absurd.

So why was she holding a dagger and hiding behind a large tree?

That might have been her fault. No, it was definitely hers.

After she had eaten the leg, suffering through the urge to throw up all the while, she noticed that the animal was still over the fire. A cursory guess told her that it had been almost an hour. Though the many snakes her companion had were only taking small bites out of it every so often, the entire animal had been mostly reduced to just scraps. Eating the meat earlier was more of a test of her endurance than a meal, so she felt hungry still. And surely, anything left over the fire that long should already be well done, right? If she tarried for any longer then there wouldn’t be any left.

“Umm!”

Two snakes looked at her, one of which was tilting its head questioningly. She pointed at the roasted meat and made an eating motion. One of them raised its head in acknowledgement and the other one nodded. Soon enough another piece of meat was presented to her.

That was easier than she thought.

Elaine had to use part of the blanket she had to hold the meat. It was really hot and even steaming from the smoke and fire. But most importantly, the smell was absolutely delightful.

The taste – Elaine had taken a bite from the bulkiest part of the meat – was quite good. It wasn’t as impactful as the smell of freshly-roasted meat, but it didn’t disappoint. It was comparable to one of those cheap roast meat available on supermarkets. She hadn’t been starved of modern tastes for long, so she took it with stride and simply enjoyed herself.

The meal would have been absolutely perfect if she had an entire bowl of rice with it, but she wasn’t even sure if rice existed in that world.

Oh woe is her if it didn’t.

She then saw the snake-person get up and walk towards the forest, gesturing that it was going to get another one. Right then a good deal of guilt blocked her brain from thinking straight, so without putting much thought into it she stood up and elected herself to help it. Every snake head looked visibly stunned. It was only until she was given a dagger and pointed towards an animal peacefully eating grass that she realized what she had gotten herself into.

“Alright, Elaine. All you need to do is to distract it. Simple. Animals have been scared of you all this time, right?”

What made the snake-person special then? And more importantly, what made the leech monster from last night an exception? Who knows?

And who cares? Was it too late to back out? Probably not, but she was going to do it either way. Why?

Well the real question was: why not?

So she tightened her grip on the dagger, took a deep breath and made peace with her ancestors. And with a leap—

“Grahh!”

She bellowed at the top of her lungs. She tried to appear as large as she could by stretching her arms out and over the beast.

“...”

It was supposed to be scared, right? Instead it stared at her with what looked like dead fish eyes. She felt like if it could talk, it would be murmuring to itself ‘what the fuck is this woman doing?’ It didn’t even budge from where it was.

“... Rawr?”

The more she stared at it, though, the less it looked like the animal she had eaten earlier. Yes it still looked like a ferret-pig thing, but it had furry wings, horns and even a bony tail tipped with spikes.

Weird. Anyway, why was it not scared?

Suddenly the animal cried out. It was a shriek filled with shock and pain, not of fear. A snake had latched onto one of its legs with its teeth, and soon several more came out of the bushes bit the animal everywhere they could. It thrashed and cried out, trying to escape until a spear was thrust from the bushes and into its neck, permanently silencing it.

In a sequence of events commonly only found in old slasher films the many snakes started to dismantle the animal, removing every part of it that made it different to her meal. They did so by wrapping their bodies around the part and then squeezing hard until it came off, similar to constrictors in her world.

The sounds of bone breaking and capillaries bursting made her squirm.

After a couple of minutes observing a dead-animal-turned-snake-playpen, the individual snakes started to converge and take on the familiar appearance of a walking Cthulhu horror. It produced a cloth out of nowhere and started wiping the blade of its spear with it. The result of their efforts was a bloodied carcass that looked exactly like the animal they roasted over the fire.

Though she barely did anything other than make a fool out of herself, Elaine found herself short of breath. Her heart was similarly racing. It wasn’t because of fatigue, no. She’s had ample rest already.

She stared at the beast again. It was bloodied everywhere and had a face twisted in shock and terror. She saw herself in the animal and thought of the night before. Would her face be in the same state if she had died from those leech-like monsters? At that moment she learned, unwillingly, how animals felt when they were killed for food.

She felt bad for a moment. But only for a moment, then she remembered how it tasted. Her stomach growled again.

... Yeah, she was still going to eat it.

As noon came Elaine’s heart was occupied by mixed feelings. Though the day was not yet over she felt a kind of fatigue she could not mistake as anything other than the kind she only experienced late at night. Having the kind of internal clock an inexperienced online gamer could only envy her for, she knew exactly why that was so.

“... Around ten hours from sunrise to noon... huh?”

The day cycle of that world was definitely way longer than her old one. Was that a good thing or something bad? Also, it was definitely autumn because despite the sun being high up in the sky the weather was still cold and dry. It was especially so up on the mountain where she sat.

She pulled out a water flask made of woven leaves and drank sparingly from it. It was the size of her head and had no cap; the only way to close it was by tightening the thin vine around its neck. Of course she had no idea how to make one herself, so how did she come to possess it?

Then she held onto the blanket over her shoulders and smiled.

Whatever that snake-person was, it helped her out immensely. She couldn’t thank it enough. Not only did it give her the gift of fire and food, it also stood guard when she accidentally fell asleep from a full stomach. Feeling the safety it provided in her subconscious, she managed to pull off more than four solid hours of sleep without meaning to. And when she woke up, it was still there with her, tending to the fire and its spear. As if that wasn’t enough, when she bid it goodbye it presented her with two water flasks and escorted her to the mountain.

Yet she forgot to apologize to it.

Shameful, but it probably didn’t mind. Why did it help her as much as it did anyway? Not being able to communicate was a major setback. She was agitated that she wasn’t able to learn its reasons. But she felt like she was going to learn why sooner or later. After all, people in stories like hers tended to learn more than they needed to at some point in time.

She sighed and looked back. The cave’s entrance looked unwelcoming, just like how she remembered it. Home, sweet home. Though the thought of following where the snake-person lived crossed her mind once. The spear it carried, and even the dagger she had held were relatively well-made, so that meant there were blacksmiths in that world, right? And if blacksmiths existed then there should be an accompanying level of technology. But in the end she decided not to push her luck. Besides, she was curious about something.

Since the day wasn’t even halfway done, she should have more than enough time and then some to finish what she wanted to do. She also found a way to do it.

She went back out and collected what she needed. The most important item were the fruits she’d been eating the whole day, then several large branches and as many pebbles as she could carry. Without a bag she was forced to use the blanket over her shoulders to carry them. Having to go back down the mountain was an ordeal, and she regretted not collecting them beforehand despite having already made up her mind before she even returned to the cave. Anyway, after obtaining what she thought was enough, she went back towards the chamber, groaning about the labor she had to subject herself to. Did that count as honest work? Probably.

It was a relief that the cave’s interior felt like an air-conditioned room. It was always cold and dry inside, except inside her chamber where the magical glowing stone heated the area around it to near summer-level temperatures. There she started her preparations.

Elaine had never blamed her coin for any bad decisions it had made for her. She acknowledged that all of the times she had left her choice to fate were done by her own volition. In her case earlier she was even thankful of the result; after all she had managed to achieve all of her goals and more when she went to the forest. But in a sense, her coin was there only to make decisions for her when the need presented itself.

There wasn’t anything holding her back from running with the other choice afterwards.

That was the plan, to explore the cave itself. Thinking back; if her flip had a different result, how could she explore the cave without a source of light anyway? Considering how she never went against a flip she might have actually tried to go through the cave blind.

“Thank you, Lady Liberty.”

The solution to her problem came as an inspiration from earlier, back when they shared a humble campfire. When they were about to leave, it scattered the still-lit campfire with a swing of its spear before it kicked soil over it. At that point she noticed that some of the burning fragments were not from the firewood. They were circular and burned for quite a long time. Curious. Then she remembered that when her companion deseeded the fruits, they threw the seeds to the fire instead of just throwing it away. It had been around five hours since the seeds have been thrown to the fire yet they still burned nicely.

It was a long shot, but it was worth the try. There were many other possible reasons why the seeds were thrown into the fire. Elaine simply banked on a wild guess. After skewering one of the fruits on a branch, she carefully approached the center of the chamber where the stone glowed dimly. She wasn’t sure if the stone was hot enough to ignite the fruit, or if the fruit could burn in the first place. Surely it was. After all, just approaching it made her eyes water. But after a few moments in contact with the stone, the fruit started to release steam. Was the water inside it evaporating from the heat? The fruit shrivelled as more steam escaped it until it abruptly ignited.

Success! Elaine had to scurry away from the stone in a hurry; the heat from it felt like it was cooking her skin, and most importantly it hurt her burnt face a lot. But nonetheless the sight of the fruit burning brightly on her makeshift torch made her excited – then nervous.

“Wait... I was eating that?”

She groaned. She wasn’t going to suddenly go out in a blaze of glory, right? Surely not. She’d seen other animals eat it before, so it should be safe.

Probably.

Whatever, she thought. It was too late anyway. After seeing that her wild guess was correct, she went to work making six more like it. When one was about to go out, she could just light another one before it does. She just had to be mindful of when it would show those signs. Whatever those signs were...

It didn’t take her long to finish all of her preparations; she didn’t have much with her in the first place. She tied the spare torches around her waist with vine, and wrapped the stones and her water flasks with her blanket and slung it over her shoulders.

Torch on hand, she walked away from the comfort zone of her dimly-lit chamber and into the darkness.

The place where she stayed was to the left of a branching corridor barely a minute’s worth of walking from the mouth of the cave. The path afterwards took but a few seconds, allowing her to see the glowing stone right at the fork. The other path, however, had nothing to offer. It was neither lit nor did it allow any natural light to shine into it. She hoped that there would be more of those glowing stones as she went further in, but there was always the possibility that the stone was a rarity of nature.

As she stood at the entrance of the corridor, the light from her torch also revealed to her one detail she missed in the dark.

“Wow... that’s scary.”

It wasn’t exactly scary as it was intimidating. The path was simply big – absurdly big. If a mini cooper could fit into the path towards the chamber where she stayed, she estimated that the fuselage of an entire jumbo jet could fit through the other with space to spare.

She gulped a mouthful of saliva once, a privilege afforded to her by the water containers she had.

“Oh well. Here we go.”

The first step she took was like the beginning of a new adventure. It was more than the feeling she had when she went down the forest. At least there, she knew what to expect. After all, it was a forest; how much could forests differ between worlds? But for someone with zero experience and interest in spelunking, exploring a cave was to her an alien thing to do. Would there be giant monsters inside? Insects? Glowing mushrooms, perhaps? Her imagination filled her with both excitement and dread, balancing itself out just enough to keep her feet moving forwards.

The first couple of minutes walking was uneventful. She hadn’t seen any traces of dark scorpions waiting in the dark to strike at prey or anything else yet. There were a few insects here and there, all peculiar and foreign in appearances, but nothing too stunning. The only problem she had was with the cold, damp air, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t bite her lips and endure. Back in the woods the wild animals mostly left her alone or ran away, but the cave critters treated her similar to the animals that were in the lake; as if she wasn’t there. Was it because they had no interest in a half-naked human wandering with a fruit torch? She hoped that it would continue until the very end.

Soon she arrived at the first branching path. One of them lead downwards, further into the belly of the planet, while one of them stayed level with the path she was on.

Normally, she would rely on her coin for those kinds of choices, but she wasn’t there simply to explore; she had other reasons – one of which was to look for another source of water.

The lake was cool, clean and welcoming, sure, but it was far too troublesome to walk for almost two hours every day just to get drinking water or take a bath. She was also exposed above ground; a cave was much more secure despite how bad the darkness was for her sanity – as long as there were no monsters. Anyway, if her limited understanding of geology and general physics was correct, water tended to pool at deeper locations. Hence, she did not need to flip a coin to make her choice; she just needed to take the downward path each time.

Before she proceeded, she reached into her blanket for a stone and placed it at the center of the path where she came from. Having markers would allow her to find her way back up faster, or just generally prevent herself from getting lost.

The next branch made a coin flip necessary, as both paths lead downward. She continued on her way, judging gradient and flipping coins whenever needed, and succeeded in passing through seven of such branching paths when she met her first obstacle.

“... Eugh...”

It was a spider. A giant one. She estimated that it was at least the size of german shepherd. It was also carnivorous, obviously, given by the fact that it was eating a large rodent when she encountered it. Fortunately for her it looked to be content slurping its rat slushy as it completely ignored her presence after sparing her a single glance. Doubtless it would kill her if she disturbed it, but she wasn’t going to let herself become a living meme by doing so. Hence she managed to get past it without harm.

The next event was more urgent. Because she was so busy looking around she failed to notice that her torch had almost extinguished itself. Her second torch barely managed to light up before the first one had gone out completely.

“Okay, my bad,” she grumbled and smacked herself in the head lightly.

She planned to stop after she had run out of stones or after she had used up her third torch. Judging by the number of stones she had used up at some point, she guessed that the latter was likely going to occur first.

The cave was relatively dry even with the damp air, and the corridors weren’t hard to walk on despite being barefoot. It was actually a relief; Elaine was ready to get down and dirty with any kind of terrain she encountered as long as it was passable, but of course she preferred it if she didn’t. Anyway, the state of the paths tugged at her curiosity, but she couldn’t quite point out why. In the end she decided to ignore it.

By the way, she hadn’t seen any sources of water yet.

After a while her bag had grown light. A cursory shake told her she only had a handful of stones left. Her third torch was also about to go out. She had been exploring for almost two hours already, which meant that she had to spend roughly the same amount of time to go back to where she had come from. It was a miracle that she hadn’t encountered anything that expressly wanted to kill her. The most dangerous thing she’d met was a giant mantis-like insect that perched itself on the left side of the wall. After carefully walking around it, just outside of what she thought was the limit of its reach, she realized that it was just being wary of her.

She’d seen the bones of small animals and the drained exoskeletons of insects. There were also carcasses in the process of being dismantled by the many scavengers that inhabited the cave, similar to what happened with the leech monster from the night before, and there were also some corpses that were left to rot. She thought she’d seen everything that the cave had to offer besides a source of water.

But it wasn’t until she set her fourth torch alight that she noticed something – something white, and shone roughly under the light of her fire.

“A... are... those...?”

She knew it was a bad idea, but her curiosity took control of her motor functions. She had to make sure, she thought. But the closer she looked the more she was sure of what she was staring at.

She didn’t notice because the light of her previous torch had dimmed to the point where seeing the walls of the cave corridors had become almost impossible, but the bright light from a freshly-replaced torch showed that she had somehow walked into a gigantic cavern.

Inside of that cavern, right by the entrance, was a large pile of human bones stacked almost twenty feet high.

“-- ----- -----, ---- - -------- --------.”

A voice. It was feminine, but most importantly, it wasn’t something she heard with her ears. It was as if something talked to her directly to her brain. The sight of the human bones and the sudden foreign intrusion into her head shocked Elaine so much that she dropped her torch and blanket to the ground and ran away. But before she managed to reach the entrance of the chamber, a wall of flame burst from the ground to prevent her passage. Its appearance came with a burst of heated air strong enough to knock her down.

The sight of it caused her heart to sink. There was no escape. She could only stare at the blaze in front of her with a wide open eye.

Hesitantly she turned her head around. Despite the curtain of fire behind her she still couldn’t see much of the cavern she was in; it was just that large. Most importantly she couldn’t see whatever it was that talked to her.

“------- -- -- ------ ----.”

The feeling of something talk directly to her mind was extremely unnerving. Elaine had already been shaken by the tower of human remains and the wall of fire, and the voice speaking to her did nothing to help at all, even if it didn’t sound hostile.

Then the ground shook. It wasn’t just her butt trembling, either. The ground trembled at the approach of something large, heavy; terrible. Elaine felt her senses sharpen, almost as if she was eager to see what it was.

Contrasting heavily with the inferno behind her, gentle blue light slowly started to flood the cavern. It came from floating things that loosely populated the chamber, similar to fireflies but more magical. It became apparent to her that the cavity was much larger than a baseball stadium, with a ceiling that reached a hundred or so meters from the ground. The entire chamber was dotted with small, elevated ponds that glowed a magical harmony of green and blue. There was also a seventy or so-meter tall crystal in the middle of the chamber that reflected every color of the rainbow. All in all, it was as if she had stepped foot into a high fantasy fairy world from the cruel reality that was above ground. She felt like it wouldn’t be long until she started seeing elves and fairies frolic on top of the pristine waters, with the tips of their toes barely touching the surface.

“-----.”

Then something extremely cold touched her spine. The sensation caused her to jump forward in surprise. In a reflexive attempt to reprimand the culprit, she turned around to shout until something got caught in her throat.

It was a fairy. It must be. The dainty, transparent wings with a peculiar shape couldn’t come from anything else. But instead of a small child the size of her palm, she saw a little girl who looked and was scaled like she was barely a teenager. Early tweens?

She barely reached Elaine’s shoulder in height; since Elaine was around a hundred-sixty centimetres tall, the girl must have been approximately a hundred-thirty five, give or take. She had golden-blonde hair tied to a ponytail by... something that wasn’t a ribbon. It was an orb that shone a dim green. Then, her clothes; it didn’t leave much to the imagination. She simply had a strap of cloth barely three inches across over her chest to hide the important bits and another one around her waist with twice the width. Thick gold chains were wrapped around her wrists and ankles and went all the way up to her elbows and knees. She also wore a similar chain snugly around her neck.

Were chains the new fashion? It was a rather odd but strangely stylish choice.

Elaine couldn’t help herself from becoming enchanted. Though she walked on solid ground, her movements were effortless, graceful, lighter than the air. Her walk was like fantasy embodied; a princess of a magical world taking a stroll in on a garden of roses. The ground parted where her feet fell, afraid of touching her pure white skin.

The girl stopped barely a meter away from where Elaine stood; the chains on her body made a gentle ringing sound as it rubbed and hit against each other. An angelic smile formed on her face. She reached out with her small, fragile hand and called out.

“--- --.”

Question marks flooded her mind. The voice called out directly to her mind, yet the girl never opened her mouth even once. It must have been some form of telepathy. At the very least Elaine could rest easy knowing she wasn’t hearing imaginary voices in her head.

“-----? --- --- ---- -- ----.”

Without panic messing up her cognition, Elaine realized that the girl’s voice sounded quite otherworldly. It may just be because the girl was talking directly to her mind, but the result was still disquieting. It was comparable to listening to a distant child’s voice in the mountains, allowing every syllable to echo cleanly, eerily.

She continued staring at the girl – beautiful, like a masterpiece of sculpting given life. Her smile made her look even more captivating. But after a while, her smile disappeared. The girl pulled her hand back and—

“Ow! Cold!”

– slapped her. The child’s hand was colder than ice and produced a mix of burning and freezing sensation on her left cheek. Thankfully she didn’t slap the other side or Elaine would have been rolling on the ground.

“------ -- ----.”

“What?”

Of course. She couldn’t understand. The fact that the girl was trying to communicate with her had slipped Elaine’s notice. Elaine had become too occupied with her appearance and form that the child’s words eluded her attention due to the complete lack of ability to comprehend them. Aware of their inability to communicate with each other, all she could do was to tilt her head questioningly; similar to what she did with the snake-person.

The girl looked annoyed. Then soon that face disappeared as well and was replaced with a look of innocent revelation. She reached out with her hand once again. That time, it was to touch the locket on her chest.

It quickly turned cold. Later, it became painfully so. But just as it did the girl pulled her hand away. A brilliant, proud smile appeared on her face. Elaine found herself only able to smile back at her.

What happened? She didn’t know. But her chest felt really cold.

And the girl—

“Hello. I’m Alice. Welcome to my temporary home.”