Michael

I blink awake slowly as come back to myself groggily as though from a drug-induced sleep. My mouth tastes stale and I’m feeling very tired and weak, a familiar feeling of waking up in a hospital has my heart racing and my breath increasing as I try to control the panic rising within me. I’m on Gaia; they have magic here so I should be okay. I’ve seen people more injured than I was in that fight brought from the brink of death using strange and magical means.

I tell myself as I feel for my body trying to locate what hurts and what I can feel still which is a relief as I feel my legs. I sit up slowly and the white sheet flows off exposing my naked chest to the chill in the air in the cold comfortable room. Then I realise that for the first time since I’ve been to Gaia I’m experiencing cold as an uncomfortable feeling instead of that vague awareness of temperature without being affected by it. I’m on a white leather bed shaped like a dentist’s chair to curve with the shape of my body. The walls are a smoky cream reminiscent of a wooden material found naturally in nature than an actual paint over naked concrete. There are dark purple flowers in the room in a vase with a beautiful stimulating scent that seems permeate the room, there are silver glyphs written onto the wall in lines like paragraphs from some sort of language.

There are other items of furniture from a couch to a fireplace in the room, most of the cushioning and coverings a beautiful white leather that scintillates as though taken from snakeskin. I look behind me when I finally place the soothing sound I didn’t realise I was hearing is the flowing of water and I find the little spring flowing out of the wall behind me. Bringing in with the water fresh flowing cool air from somewhere into this windowless hexagonal room. This isn’t creepy at all, it’s just waking in sudden comfort and luxury after travelling in filth for what feels like years to this.

I test my body as quickly as I can before stepping off the bed letting the sheet flow off looking around for a quick weapon. I see a heavy looking flash as the wooden door across the room opens with a slide and in walks a white-skinned man carrying a steaming cup and looking down onto a chart in his other hand. I move quickly jumping and grabbing the flash with a spin and sliding on the smooth wooden polished floor looking up to see who I’m facing. Our eyes lock but a moment but the little amused smirk I saw is enough to spur me on the attack.

I take three long steps and swing the vase then diving after it at where I expect my assailant to dodge but I pass through empty air rolling and coming up with arms defending against a counter but finding none as I stop my momentum. The man stands at where I threw the vase at him holding it lightly and watching my antics with that smirk still evident on his face.

‘’My wife will be very amused when I tell her this story." He says looking at me blinking his beautiful white eyebrows like some prince from cartoon animation. ‘’I’m Shea, Saya’s father.’’

I smile slightly as I remember I’m naked, my skin getting flushed as the temperature normalises in the room. ‘’I’m Michael, nice to meet you, Shea. May I have some pants please?’’

‘’Of course.’’

* *

The meeting with the rest of Saya’s family proceeds more smoothly as we move room to room with our elbows locked as she shows me around the house and introduces me the multitudes of her family and their many friends and guests simultaneously.

‘’Hey guy.’’

‘’Hey,

‘’Hi,

‘’Hello... oh, this must be your Michael.’’

‘’Yes,’’ Saya nods presenting me to yet another room of people in what I’ve figured out is an entire floor of a huge apartment complex with dozens of rooms occupied by a single family.

‘’Hi, I’m Michael,’’ I say casually with a wave.

‘’Hi Michael,’’ The chorus of three women says with a wave of their own, each of them a distracting beauty, each of them with similar features yet so different from each other that they don’t seem to be from the same race let alone the same family.

‘’These are my little sisters Hannah, Nikita and Anya.’’ She says pointing at each of the young beautiful and very different women.

‘’So we hear you’re from another world, I myself have an itch for travel. How was it compared to here?" The one named Hannah asks with an encouraging smile.

‘’Ahh... different I guess... But I doubt you could be travelling there at your leisure or I would have found out about that I think.’’ I manage to say after clearing my throat.

‘’Oh honey there is a way to travel anywhere but some places are easier to reach than others,’’ Hannah says casually and my heart skips a beat as a hope I thought I had long since quashed yanks at my chest.

Even as I’m turning to face Saya I get a pat on the back and a sending of ‘’later,’’ as though I could hear anything else after hearing it may be possible to travel to Earth. Maybe my family could still be alive, maybe that much time hasn’t passed, maybe this has all been a dream and I’ve been in a coma since the accident.

*

I’m escorted to a set of rooms that I will have alone while Saya stays in her own room, it looks and feels comfortable, warm but I hardly pay attention even after so much time has passed on the road. ‘Could actually be possible for me to get back home and no one has told me about it, no one has told any of us from Earth about it obviously because if they knew...

I take a breathe calming myself down and expelling the tension from my body as though I were taking off an item of clothing. I look at Saya standing with her eyes heavy on my watching with what seems to be both arousal and fascination, I grin. She has given me that look numerous times now, I’m not sure what it is she sees but it usually leads to a lot of kissing and patting, lately even sex.

‘’Tell me how I may possibly get home before you get any ideas to distract me,’’ I say watching her watch me.

‘’I wouldn’t dream of distracting you.’’ She says with a smoky voice folding her arms across her chest and clenching her fists.

My penis twitches but I remain unphased as we watch each other from across the room. Sometimes I think there is a side to Saya I’m yet to see like she has been using the kid gloves with me still. But I’ve been growing, and getting familiar with the rules of this world and to have survived that fight in the forest means I will eventually surpass her. No woman of mine will be the protector in the relationship, at least not while I still have my wits about me, not even one as capable as this one.

‘’How could I travel to Earth?’’

‘’Honestly, I don’t know. But Hanna has been hanging out with the fae lately so she knows a lot more than I would, I will ask her to look into it though.’’

‘’What do you suspect she could mean?’’ I ask still keeping eye contact as she starts tapping her foot.

‘’Most probably the Pathfinders. No one really knows anything about them but there are people in the Conclave and other places rumoured to be able to travel between worlds."

I think about that a moment, I’ve also heard something about pathfinding as a possible ‘’career’’ path when I was going through a sort of orientation back at the Compound.

‘’Okay,’’ I finally say and she nods back at me.

‘’Good, now get some sleep, someone will come to get you for dinner.’’ She says walking to me and engulfing me in a hug. We stay that way while, me in her warmth and her in mine, she turns and leaves the room closing the door with a soft click.