Seph stared for a moment, but too many things had been the same. It made sense.

Except that it doesn’t.

“Since when is Earth overrun with angry leaf monsters?” The woman in front of her met her raised eyebrow with a marble grin.

“30 years ago. We think. I dunno, I got back about four years back.”

“’Back’? As in, you were on Earth before?”

“Yeah! I was a coed! Sophomore in sociology at WMU! Ah, such a simple time…” She made a dramatic gesture and sighed ‘dreamily’ off into the middle distance.

Seph regarded the six-foot-tall stone goddess in front of her with incredulity.

“You? Went to college?”

The woman giggled again.

“I wasn’t always made of marble. Most of us come back different. I figured you’d get that, with the horns and all.”

Confusion pushed her incredulity aside.

“Horns?”

The girl tapped her forehead with a marble finger.

“You didn’t know?”

Seph felt at her own forehead. It felt normal enough, albeit slightly warmer than usual. She went to smooth her black pixie cut back and stopped. Sure enough, twin horns now protruded from her forehead, just below the hairline. They were short and dull, maybe an inch long and twice that across. They felt smooth against her questing fingers.

“What the fuck?” She tried to pull them off, and it felt as if she were attempting to yank her head off. Frantically, she tugged harder. She felt the panic pouring through her, rising and washing away all rational thought as she tried to yank the foreign things-

Warm, smooth hands gently stopped hers. Marble fingers unwrapped her shaking digits from the bony nubs, and held Seph’s hands. Warmth seemed to spill into her from the touch. Her turbulent thoughts stilled and she looked up at the troll, now holding her hands.

The woman gave a sympathetic nod.

“I’m sorry, I would have tried to break it to you a little more gently. You’re not human anymore. You’re-“

She stopped and gave Seph a once-over, eyes lingering on her chest. Seph realized her blanket had slipped below her breasts and extricated her hands to snatch it back up, blushing.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you are. What does your status say?”

Seph gave her a blank look.

“My status? Like a video game?”

“Yeah! Didn’t you see the notifications? Little blinking dots around the edges of your vision?”

“Why would my HUD have a video-game status screen on it?”

It was the statue’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“HUD? From what? You don’t have any internal tech or you’d be dead.”

Seph stared.

“My helmet?”

The woman stared back, silent. Seph raised a hand to tap it and hit her bare cheek. This time, the blush was crimson and burned all the way down to her chest. The cot chuckled creakily as she crossed her arms over her body protectively.

“Right. My helmet, which… I’m not… wearing…”

The woman stifled a grin and nodded.

“Just will your status to appear. Don’t overthink it. I’ll help walk you through it.”

Instead of complying, Seph searched her face.

“Why are you helping me?” When she realized how that sounded, she hastily amended, “I mean, I’m grateful and I would have died without you taking me here but why do more? What do you get out of it?”

The statue seemed to mull this over for a bit.

“When I stumbled back into the world, I was found by an adventurer who was an old hand at the Talk and didn’t particularly give a damn about our mental health. He had the whole thing down to a two-paragraph speech that he rattled off and then pushed us on our merry way. Asshole.”

She gave Seph a sardonic grin and continued.

“My head was spinning, and I missed most of it. I had to figure out how to survive on my own. Luckily, I’m made of rock and these new bodies come bundled up with a whole new set of instincts. I survived. Barely. And I swore I wouldn’t do that to anybody. I stay with newbies until they’ve figured themselves out. Pay it forward, you know?”

Seph tried to digest this and nodded, slowly. She was having a hard time focusing. She was hungry and the nude beauty across the room was not helping. The nude beauty looked a little embarrassed, and muttered.

“Plus, you’re cute.”

Seph grinned and hugged herself a little tighter.

“Says the 6-foot statue of a goddess, who insists on lounging around naked”

The woman… blushed? Maybe it was just the light, but her cheeks seemed to be a bit more grey-green than white for a moment. She knocked on her stomach. The click of stone on stone echoed around the room.

“When your skin is made of rock, clothes just break too easy. Plus, we’re on the edge of nowhere. There aren’t many people who bother coming this way, so why bother with modesty.”

That made sense.

“Are you alone here?”

“Naw, there’s Ian but he’s a harmless drunk. He’s the Guild contact out here.”

“Guild contact?”

“Oh! Yeah, the Adven-“ The troll’s reply was cut off by Seph’s stomach, which was making its emptiness known. The stone woman giggled. “Okay, enough chit-chat. We need to get you food. You haven’t eaten in days.”

Seph nodded, although the giggles had sent certain parts of the statuesque beauty jiggling, which had made her arousal feel a little more pressing.

“I’m starving.” Seph looked over the troll woman cautiously. “Uh, do you have any food for squishy people?”

She nodded.

“We do. Ian’s an Elf, so we have some food for him. I’m not sure that’s going to help though.”

“Why not?”

“I have my reasons. Lets see what you are, to find out what kind of grub you need.”

Seph looked at the blinking dots in the corner of her vision and hesitated. She knew they weren’t messages from Emily. There was no reason to be afraid of them, but she still shied away.

Status.

She saw the flicker of something in the air in front of her, and then the world greyed out.