The attendant nodded, made a note in her book, then took Ferrith’s paper and filed it away somewhere out of sight. Once she seemed satisfied her record-keeping was in order, she pulled a lever on a metallic contraption sitting on the desk next to her. It was a simple device, with maybe twenty or thirty levers spiraling out from a central hub, like spokes on a wheel. As she pulled the lever, a small slip of paper pushed out of a slot in the center. She looked at it for a second, then reached across the counter to hand it to me, saying, “The wait time for Oxenraith is less than five minutes.”

“Thanks,” I said. I looked at the ticket I’d been given. It was made of plain white paper, though embossed heavily with copper gilding. The letters were swooping and fancy. The effect was a little disorienting as my translator tried to match the style with its overlay text and failed to get all the artistic curls to line up. It read:

Admit 1: Adult

Oxenraith, Raith, FSR

August 9th, 2022

No Refunds.

I was pretty certain the likelihood of rissians happening to use the same date and year formula I was used to was zero. The translator seemed to be doing its best to guess at the date. Or maybe it wasn’t a guess? I had no idea if it could know the date on Earth, if even I didn’t. The attendant cleared her throat louder than necessary. “Sir?” she said. “If you could keep the line moving, sir?”

Ferrith put a hand on my shoulder and steered me away from the counter, off towards the right. He pointed to the hallway leading deeper into the building, which divided the service counter in two. “Walk that way and show them your ticket,” Ferrith said.

I started walking, then stopped when I realized Ferrith was lagging behind. I turned around to see him just standing there. “Wait,” I said. “You’re not coming with me?”

Ferrith shook his head. “I did my job. You’re not my problem anymore. If you find yourself back in Haemir, you can ask for me at the Adventurer’s Guildhouse. It’s right off the main square. Big, blocky building. Can’t miss it.”

I blinked. I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid I would never see Ferrith again. Before he could stop me, I darted forward and tried to wrap him in a hug. My arms didn’t reach all the way around. His armor made him feel hard and cold. “Thanks for all your help,” I said.

Ferrith didn’t hug me back. He just looked down at me. “What is this? What are you doing?” he asked.

“Hugging you goodbye,” I said.

“What does this ritual accomplish? You know I can barely feel this, right? I’m wearing armor.”

“I don’t care,” I said. I released him. He frowned down at me. “You’re the only person I know in this world,” I explained. “I’m going to miss you.”

“You’re… odd,” Ferrith said. His frown lessened slightly, becoming a flat line. “We probably won’t meet again, but if we do… I wouldn’t hate it.”

That felt like the closest I was going to get to Ferrith admitting to any sort of affection for me. I took what I could get. He gave me one last nod, then turned away and headed for the exit. Soon, he was just an unusually dressed stranger in the crowd, then… he was out the door. I was alone. Alone in an alien world. Alone and dying of cancer—I couldn’t forget about that. The thought occurred to me I was under no obligation to actually travel to Oxenraith, but the more I tried to revel in my newfound freedom, the more I realized the idea of going off on my own somewhere was more tantalizing than the reality. All I had to my name was a broken iPhone and a few golden pennies. Even the blanket and bedroll I’d been given at the church was gone—I’d forgotten to ask for them back after Ferrith threw them in his bag at the Broker’s. Well… maybe I wouldn’t need them. Maybe it would give me a reason to track Ferrith down the next time I was in Haemir.

I turned on my heels and headed for the hallway. The city watchmen posted at the entrance eyed me, but didn’t ask me to stop. I saw a flow of traffic dividing midway down the hall at a small desk with two employees standing at it, with people going into the building keeping to the left and people leaving keeping to the right. I followed the flow of traffic. The two Porters each handled a different line of traffic. Before reaching the desk, I watched the people in front of me hand their tickets to the woman processing our line; she checked them, then waved a silvery wand over them and handed them back. When my turn came to have my ticket checked, I did my best to copy what I’d seen.

I held out my ticket to the tall gray skinned woman. She smiled extra wide at me, which put me off-balance as she’d basically been a robot for everyone in front of me. “Are you traveling with your parents today?” she asked.

Oh. That explained it. “Uh, no. Just me.” I raised my ticket up another inch.

“First time?”

“Yes,” I answered, internally mortified at all the attention she was giving me. I started worrying about the line stacking up behind me.

“Wow! First time at the Porter’s and you’re all alone? That’s so brave of you!”

I was committed at that point. There was no way I was going to tell her I wasn’t a child just because I was so short and scrawny by rissian standards. I gave her a lopsided frown. “Thanks,” I said, hoping that if I didn’t engage, this interaction would end faster.

The uniformed woman took my ticket and gave it a careful inspection. “Oxenraith?” I nodded. She pointed down the hall, then twisted her finger to the right. “You’ll find the Doorway to Oxenraith on your right when you get to the end of the hall.” She tapped my ticket with her little wand and before my eyes, all the copper embossed on the paper turned bright green. More magic. When she was done, she handed me back my ticket, but then pinched my cheek before I could get away. “You better eat your vegetables if you want to grow up big and strong!”

“I’ll try to do that,” I lied. I had stopped growing years ago. As I continued down the hall, I tried to figure out how old I must look by rissian standards. Being that they were all colorblind, they probably just saw me as a pale kid that hadn’t gone through a growth spurt yet. 12? 13 years old? Either way, I could tell it was going to cause problems later.

All thoughts of age-related complaints fled my mind when I entered the main lobby. It was both alien and familiar in the most peculiar way. I could tell I was on the inside of that massive copper dome I could see from outside the building based on the way the ceiling opened up like an indoor stadium. It was even crowded with people like a stadium. But that’s where the similarities to things I’d seen before ended. The walls looked to be three stories tall. Just before the curve of the dome started, massive windows circled the perimeter to let in natural light from outside. Masterfully painted on the underside of the dome was an idyllic vista of an afternoon sky, with a towering mountain range to the left and an ocean spreading off into the distance to the right. It nearly created the illusion of being outside. There was even an image of a blue-scaled dragon swooping through the air over the ocean. It was as impressive a mural as I’d ever seen—certainly the largest.

The inside wall of the domed chamber was lined with massive trees at regular intervals that had been cut down to trunks of a uniform height and width. Each tree trunk had a tunnel carved into it that was wide enough to drive a compact car through. As far as I could tell, all the foot traffic led in and out of those carved tunnels, with the exception of several on the opposite end of the chamber that had thick metal gates pulled down to close them off. Ferrith had mentioned “Doorways”. That must be what the tree tunnels were.