She doesn’t know anything but tiredness as she stirs awake, startled by the shafts of sunlight peeking through a thick canopy when she sits up. Warmth envelops her being, refusing to part even as she folds her arms out and stretches. Something in her back crackles as she twists her torso from side to side, groaning when the pressure relieves off her joints, leaving a pleasurable sensation in its wake.

Around her, the world focuses into sharp clarity. She blinks. Sucks in a breath; holds it, lowers and pinches her arm until blood wells to the surface. The pain shatters whatever placid state she’s in. The haziness vanishes. Instantly, her muscles bunch together. Adrenaline spikes as she swivels around, mouth gaping open at her new surroundings.

Because this cannot possibly be real. It must’ve been a dream, a hallucination, a drug-induced fantasy that simply messed with her perception of herself. Residues of those visions still linger, aptly stored where she remembers specific details. When she checks her back, she finds the same backpack she’d worn in that tumultuous, distorted dream, and the box that ended that dream stranded a few feet away, sitting atop a mossy log covered with spores. That's enough evidence.

To realize. How. Screwed. She. Is.

Shaking, she stumbles over to the box and seizes it in both hands, the lid slamming against the wooden side again and again as she shakes it, praying for the mysterious light to come back and whisk her away back to her hometown.

That first time, she remembers with startling clarity, it had taken seconds for the tendrils to lash out and wrap around her torso, neck, and legs, somehow shrinking her to fit into the box and then disappearing in a blinding flash of light.

There’s no such thing this time. No matter how much she shakes it, the box remains empty. Where simmering air had hovered over the plain interior, regular air stands in its place, crushing any hopes she has of returning home.

Just to check, she moves to pinch herself once more, when she realizes that her wound is still there, bleeding freely, although clots have begun to stem the flow. Then she notices the odor lingering around her--the sulfuric stench of decay, permeating even her clothing when she lifts her shirt up to stifle the horrible smell. How had she not noticed before?

Her boots drag away layers of brownish, rusty soil when she turns, taking in the alien world around her. Purple hues dance off the trees, themselves dozens of feet tall, their lowest branches tall enough so she won’t accidentally brush against them. High above, great crimson clouds dominate the sky, tinted a darkish pink that borders on lilac. Droopy flowers possessing the richness of pearls hang from the branches clustered closest to the trunks, a few already in bloom, their brilliant red cores forcing her to look away.

What shocks her the most are the two suns rising ever-so-slowly over the horizon. Distant mountains block most of the sunlight from blinding her, but she sees enough to know that her eyes aren’t deceiving her. Two suns instead of one. They’re blinding in their splendor. She looks away not because of the burning intensity, but because her eyes begin to tear up.

She sinks to the ground, one hand clutching at the earth, the other pressed over her stomach. Nausea threatens to overwhelm her right then and there, but it’s the grounding feel of each particle digging into her hand that stops her from emptying the contents of her stomach.

It’s obvious when she’s dreaming and when she’s awake. There’s a certain degree of realness that she can place whether she’s in one state or the other, and she feels awake in this state. Feels the type of innate knowledge that she’s wide awake and all of this is actually real.

Which means that she can’t go back. Because when she flips the lid open, there’s nothing. Nothing but an empty hollow that mirrors the void that’s sucked out everything beneath her and left her stranded here.

She sobs, clutching at her chest, her heart racing until she fears it will tear itself free from her body. Her limbs shake from the strain of laying on the ground, supporting the rest of her quivering body. The world seems to come crashing around her, narrowed to the single tree before her, striated and purplish, the bark appearing to have glitter scattered across the ridges and knots marring its otherwise perfect features.

She doesn’t know how long she lays there, sobbing, feeling as if she’s about to have a heart attack. Images of her past life flash in her memories. Precious memories of the world she was ripped away from, the world she doesn’t know if she can ever go back to, because this--she raises her head slightly and looks around herself--shouldn’t be possible.

Yet the yellowed note taped to the bottom of the box told her otherwise. Gave her the warning of crossing barriers and losing everything she had. But why would she have listened to some random message probably written by somebody looking for a few laughs?

She should’ve listened. She couldn’t have listened. She’s tempted to scream, but manages to hold back. The last thing she needs is to scream until her vocal cords tear. The urge to do so builds up at the back of her head until she lets out a strangled cry, punching the dirt, the particles digging into her knuckles.

After a while, she stands on shaking legs, the pit of her stomach cold, hard ice. There’s nothing out here that is even remotely related to Earth. None of the nature she sees resembles anything back home. She wipes away the last remnants of her tears, brushes the dirt off her knuckles, stands straight, bites back another sob when she picks up the box and packs it into her backpack.

Maybe it doesn’t work now, but it will later. It has to. It will. This renews a bit of her strength and motivation. She takes the first step towards nowhere in particular, just to test herself. All around her, the terrain is the same, save for the mountains where the twin suns are barely cresting over the snowy peaks. They’re small enough that she knows they must be dozens of miles away, if not more.

It’s so easy to let despair consume her. It’s so easy to imagine herself crumpling to the ground, waiting for herself to wake up and find out everything is a whole hallucination. That’s the easy way out, but she refuses to give up. Even when the dam in her heart threatens to burst. Even when her brain’s screaming as her logic collides with her reality.

Step after step. It’s refreshing to feel that she’s taking her first steps on this new world, knowing that it won’t slip under her again and dump her somewhere anew. The smell intensifies until suddenly, she notices it doesn’t smell that bad anymore. Her throat constricts as she passes what little saliva she can muster down her throat. The heat coats her, a protective embrace that warms the dread in her core with every minute she spends here.

But the dry air makes it difficult to take more than shallow breaths without hurting her lungs. The trees loom everywhere, their trunks glittering enough to warn her that perhaps they are dangerous. There hasn’t been a single insect or animal she has seen since arriving here--the stillness of everything unnerves her as she strains to hear anything other than the occasional creaking of branches.

She supposes that’s better than protecting herself, undefended, against whatever alien horrors might prowl this world. The best weapon she has is a pair of scissors she brought over with her, so she pulls those out, feeling foolish as her fingers cinch around the two circles, blades open. What can they do against anything?

It’s the best she has, anyways, so she sticks with it, swallowing down her pride. She pats her pocket for her cell phone, then quickly yanks it out, pocketing the scissors and checking her WiFi signal at the top. Her disappointment at seeing the empty signal doesn’t trump the spike of adrenaline when she hears something crash behind her. She swivels around, hand clutching the scissors tightly, her other sliding the phone into her pocket.

From a good minute’s run away, the top of a tree disappears from the canopy, and the ground shakes as a thump thunders beyond the grove of trees she’s staring through, trying to make out the tree that fell. Moments later, another tree disappears, leaving a noticeable gap in the canopy, but she still can’t see where the tree was felled.

Then she notices that it’s closer. A low, sad groan echoes across the landscape, chilling her to the bone. She backs up, careful not to touch any trees in fear of what they might have, eyes trained on the area where the two trees fell. Surely enough, a third crashes, and this time she catches a quick glimpse of brilliant orange flash in between two tree trunks.

Before she turns to run, a pale ivory tusk impales the frontmost tree. Splinters shoot towards her. One collides with her backpack as she squeals and lifts it in front of her. She drops her scissors, hands tangled on the backpack straps. The rest bounce off the surrounding vegetation and fall. The impaled tree begins to groan, the base severed by the tusk, and the tree’s falling towards her.

She sprints. Faster than she ever had to before. Her legs are a blur of motion beneath her, arms pumping to keep stride with her lower half, and she doesn’t care if she runs into vegetation. Behind her, the same low groan from before catches up to her, much different than a tree splintering and falling. She risks a second to glance back.

A heaving mass of orange fur charges towards her. Through the tufts of rough straw-like orange fur, she catches rippling muscles propelling the creature faster and faster, so fast that anything on Earth would quickly get overtaken. The same tufts spread out over its head, but she sees two glowing embers where eyes should be, and a protruding snout with a horn near the base. Pink clashes against the light orange fur growing beneath its mouth, the pink of a nose with wriggling appendages set just above its mouth.

Too focused on gasping for air, she doesn’t see the root until her foot catches on the underside, sending her sprawling forward. She shoots her arms out, the impact jarring the bones of her hands and arms and sending a jolt of pain through her left wrist, her entire body hitting the earth with a thud. She feels a harsh burn where the skin of her forearms was scraped off.

The creature is nearly upon her. She acts without thinking--she heaves herself to her feet and makes one last lunge to the side, thorns of bushes dragging against her clothes and arms as she hits the other side of the bushes just when the behemoth barrels past where she’d lain moments ago, the creature’s momentum too great to sway its direction sideways.

It's great body plows into several of the purple trees, cracking them at the base and shoving their damaged trunks forward, the impact enough to stop the creature’s movement. It lets out a guttural noise that resembles burbling water mixed with a raspy undertone, its feet shuffling so that it faces her.

Those twin embers sear a hole into her soul, but she can’t get up. Her lungs are aching from the dry air she’s breathing in rapidly, her legs dead weights, her arms burning and the weight of her backpack suddenly a million times greater. She struggles to push herself up, biting back a scream when another jolt of pain pierces her left wrist. The creature hasn’t advanced, not yet--it’s probably waiting for her to make another move and leave it to suffer at the hands of physics.

But biology clamps its iron hands around her heart and squeezes until all of her energy disappears. The box bites into her back, a last reminder that this is where she’ll die because of the impossible events that stranded her here. Because of some magical box that stole her away when magic shouldn’t even be possible. Not in her world.

She licks her lips, savoring the last moments of her life. Her throat is too hoarse to scream, although she can try. She feels everything she touches--the soil underneath her hands, the dry air scratching up her lungs, the temperature too oppressive, searing her exposed neck as the two suns climb higher. Sweat trickles down her face, mingling with the lone tear she manages to produce.

It’s not fair. None of this is. The creature’s nose twitches, and it begins to walk towards her, a slow gait that means it’s realized that she cannot run anymore. Her breaths grow rapid, her heart a hammer ready to shatter her chest to rip free and run away from what’s about to happen to her.

She’s not ready to die. Not yet. She can’t die, she doesn’t want to, but she never had a choice--

A blur of colorful motion crashes into the creature’s side. Bright red spurts from its side as the sharp flash of metal drags down its hide, the wielder clinging to the animal as it bucks wildly. The wielder leaps free, the blade held in one hand, the other free, a human hand.

It’s a boy. He’s not much older than her, and to her shock he’s wearing a blanket tied around his neck, the design stitched with stars. They catch each other’s gaze for a moment before the boy slices at the creature’s leg. It howls, collapsing, the tendons severed and bleeding freely. He doesn’t waste time sliding the bowie knife into his waistband and helping her up. Her wrist radiates pain, but she doesn’t complain.

Between the broken howling of the creature while it struggles to get up, he manages to ask her one question through the wall of noise.

“Who are you?”

She blinks, dazed. She checks her forearm for the crescent-shaped wound, her heart sinking when she sees it’s still there. This is real. The boy is real. Which means she almost died. Somehow, the realization doesn't scare her. It's a fact she accepts, but can't react to it at the moment.

She feels his calloused palm touching her own, which means she's alive.

Alive. This time, the first emotions get dredged up from her core, but she keeps a composed face.

“I’m Cora.”