"Well, ain't this a pickle," Peggy muttered to herself. She was standing in the middle of a narrow stretch of road made up of uneven cobblestones.
At both her left and right were cream-colored walls, the outer shell of buildings clustered tightly together. Cages of black iron covered the windows to prevent anyone from touching the glass while within, fabric curtains were drawn to prevent anyone from peeking in.
Although it was natural for the curtains to be still when the windows were sealed shut, it still sent shivers down Peggy's spine. Combined with this eerie silence, it made her feel like she was the last living thing in this world.
"Just how in the world did I get here?" she moaned.
That was a really good question.
It all started this morning. Peggy had the day off and decided to help Mrs. Arkans out with some grocery shopping. Mrs. Arkans would normally do it herself as part of her landlady responsibilities, but she had been feeling a bit under the weather lately.
"I am so sorry to make you do this, dear," the old half-snake lady said apologetically.
"It's okay, it's okay," Peggy reassured the lamia as she slung a big tote bag over her shoulder. "It's no trouble at all. Besides, it's the least I could do for all you've done for me."
But Mrs. Arkans remained apprehensive.
"Will you be okay by yourself?" she asked.
Peggy had a slight, dismayed frown.
"Come on, Mrs. Arkans," she said. "I'm twenty years old and it's not the first time I've gone shopping on my own. I'll be fine."
With that said, she headed towards a marketplace she had grown familiar with.
In some way, she felt at home at the marketplace. Maybe it was because of how it resembled the marketplaces she had been to on Earth.
Like the ones on Earth, the marketplace was packed with people crowding around stands and low shelves full of fresh fruits and veggies displayed at the forever open shop entryways. Some elderly folks loudly hailed one another and gossiped at the top of their lungs. Peggy had to dig deep and draw on her past experiences in a Chinatown marketplace to squeeze through and pick out the best produce of the lot. She managed to grab some decent tomatoes and broccoli, and even a pack of strawberries.
As Peggy strolled down the street, she took a look at the list to double-check what else she needed to buy. It was probably during that time that she must have taken a wrong turn and ended up in this empty, narrow alley. Too focused on the list, she didn't even notice when things suddenly got quiet around her.
"Well, I guess I should just turn back," Peggy said to herself. "I can't be that far away from the market."
She turned around, but the only thing she could see was more narrow alley stretching down for miles and miles, almost infinitely, with cross roads evenly spaced apart every couple of feet.
While staring ahead, her lips moved to form a word. But no sound escaped her throat, as if she was a TV on mute. It was just as well, since the one word she was saying was NOT something parents would like their kids to hear.
With a sigh, she muttered to herself, "Well, nothing to it but to do it."
And then she started walking straight down the alley, glancing left and right at each turn. She kept her eyes and ears open for any signs of life, in case there was someone she could ask for directions.
She found no one. There was no one else out and about. No one peeked outside when she yelled out for help. And while looking at turns at various cross-sections of the alley, she only saw more alley stretching out before her.
So Peggy kept walking and walking, and walking. But no matter how far she walked, the alley she traveled and stuck to showed no signs of changing. After a while, she couldn't help but start wondering if the path she had taken was actually in an endless loop. But just as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she found herself at a dead end.
Staring at the big, blank wall right in front of her, Peggy's shoulders slumped and she sighed in dismay.
"I was afraid of this," she muttered to herself while rubbing her tired eyes. "Oh, great. Just great!"
Despite her words, her tone and volume suggested things weren't great.
"Ugh!" She groaned and shivered. Except for her voice and footsteps, she hasn't heard a single sound, not even from a gust of wind. Everything was so still and silent that Peggy couldn't help but be creeped out.
She turned back, looked at the path that she had just taken and then cupped her hands over her mouth before shouting, "HEEEY! SOMEONE! ANYONE! I NEED HELP!"
But, as expected, there was no response.
Peggy sighed again, dropping her hands to her sides.
"I just want to get home," she whined.
But just complaining about it wasn't going to get her anywhere. With a plan to continue another way after taking a short break, Peggy sat down on the ground, leaned her back against the wall and looked up at the clear, blue sky.
"Now that I think about it, grownups used to scold me all the time about sitting on the ground," she muttered to herself. It used to be fine when she was a kid, but when she reached her teen years, her caretakers just wouldn't tolerate this simple act. "They really cared too much about what looks good or bad."
As she watched the clouds float in place, unchanging, a sound suddenly reached her ears. It was a familiar rhythmic ensemble of instruments, the likes that has likely endured hundreds if not thousands of years.
Peggy stood up and exclaimed to herself, "Is that the drumbeat of the Chinese Lion Dance?"
There was no mistaking that long-lived and upbeat traditional music. She had heard it too many times while growing up to ever forget it.
She turned right and left, and then stopped.
"I think it's coming from . . . over there!"
Peggy ran to where she thought the music was coming from, growing certain she was going the right way with the drum's rising volume. With her ears and the music to guide her, she turned left, and then right, and then right again. She ran and ran, and ran. Her sides hurt and her lungs felt constricted, but she could not slow down. Peggy was afraid that if she did, the music might disappear before she could reach it.
To be honest, when she decided to live in Ariela, Peggy never thought she'd ever hear that music ever again. It was absolutely strange that she would be hearing it now in a town like this. But she didn't think that far ahead. All she knew was that she needed to get to the source of that music, and fast.
However, when she turned one final corner, the music suddenly stopped and all was quiet in the back alley with a dead end. The alley was empty save for a single, round flower with yellow petals around a red center, and a tall, green stalk.
A sunflower, here? Growing in the middle of an alley over brick pavement? It was not the weirdest thing Peggy's seen since she started living in this world, but it was enough to make her scratch her head and go, "Huh?"
"What's this doing here?" she wondered aloud as she stared at the sunflower. She looked at it pretty intently. Something about it just drew her in.
I want to touch it, she thought.
She had no idea where that desire came from, nor why she had it. Peggy had never been much of a flower kind of girl growing up. In fact, she was normally kind of repulsed by flowers because of how they were such bee magnets.
Still, she could not resist taking a step closer to the flower, and then another, and then another. Before she knew what she was doing, she lifted up her hand with her eyes sort of glazed over. Her sluggish movements and lifeless eyes made her look like she was sleepwalking.
"Come closer. Come closer."
She could almost hear a voice coming from the flower beckoning her to approach it. But of course that must have been her imagination. After all, flowers can't talk.
Almost there, Peggy thought. Almost . . .
And then, with a flutter of fabric, a lady dropped down from above and gracefully landed on the ground between Peggy and the flower. She wore a dress of black silk with long flowing sleeves. Her skin was blue and her eyes glowed red, but her face gave Peggy the impression the lady was a fellow Asian. The lady’s dress looked like it belonged to Ancient China.
Startled, Peggy jumped back, eyes wide.
"You . . . Have we met somewhere before?" she asked.
The lady looked at Peggy with a thoughtful expression on her face, thinking how to reply. There was something childlike about her. And then she flashed a smile and then clapped her hands right in front of Peggy's face.
Peggy blinked from the loud smack. When she opened her eyes again, the sky was black and the only light came from metal lampposts with flickering candle flame.
"Wha-!?" Peggy cried out, staring up in disbelief. "It's night already?"
But it was so sunny just a second ago.
Rapid footsteps called her attention and she turned around. Boss came running towards her looking haggard and out of breath as if he had been running past his limits.
He stopped when he spotted Peggy and then turned around, shouting, "Over here! I found her!"
Peggy stared at Boss, baffled. But then, after a bit of thinking, she uttered, "Uh-oh."
She went on a shopping errand that shouldn't take very long, but before she knew it, night had fallen, and now she had a whole bunch of familiar faces out at this time swarming towards her while looking like they had just been through a boot camp exercise because they had been looking for something without rest. It was not hard for her to see where this was going.
"Well, young lady," Mrs. Arkans said, wearing a demonically angry face, arms crossed, "do you mind explaining to me why you were missing without a word for over FOURTEEN HOURS!?"
**********
It has been two hours since Peggy had been found and returned home. Now technically into the new day at One in the morning, the vampire Owner of the coffee shop was brewing some black tea with his back to the dimly lit shop floor when he heard a flutter of fabric. He turned around to see a lady, a vampire like him, dressed in a black, robe-like dress sitting at the bar counter.
"I figured you'd show up here, Mom," the Owner said to the lady. "Finally got tired of running around as a dinosaur?"
"Well, you know me," said the lady. "I get bored easily. So you were expecting me?"
"When Peggy described meeting a vampire lady in an Ancient Chinese outfit, I figured that was you," said the coffee shop Owner.
The lady tilted her head sideways with a puzzled look. "Chinese?"
"China's the Earth version of the Zhao Empire," her son explained.
"Oh," said the lady before taking a sip out of the cup of tea the Owner laid out in front of her.
After a brief pause, they got down to business.
"So mind telling me what's going on with Peggy?" the Owner asked. "I think I got the gist of it from her story, but I figured I should get the whole picture from you."
His mother put the tea cup down and thought a bit before speaking. She said, "I suppose I should start with the place Peggy had gotten lost in. It's just as you suspected, she had stumbled into a pocket dimension ruled by what I would call a pest."
"That explains why all the locator spells, divination magic and fortune telling rituals we used to look for Peggy did not work," said the Owner. "But by pest, do you mean that sunflower Peggy mentioned?"
His mother nodded.
"In other words, that sunflower was actually a demon."
"Some would call it that," the lady admitted. "But lots of my friends like to call it a pest."
"Lots of your friends are gajillion-year-old space monsters the size of planets," the Owner pointed out. "But we're getting off-topic. How did Peggy end up in a demon's territory? Was she lured there?"
His mother shook her head.
"No, this time around Peggy was the intruder," she said. "It was definitely pure accident she walked into that dimension. Because our side was in the wrong, I let the pest go. If I had done something to it, it would have riled up the other pests and start a war that no one definitely wants."
"Well, thanks for not stirring up a demon invasion, Mom," her son said. "But Peggy just walked into a demon's den? Just like that? How? I don't like hearing anything about demons, spirits and all that, but I do know our world and theirs should not mix. Without someone ripping open the wall between our two worlds, it should be impossible to get there by accident."
"It is possible with Peggy," said the vampire lady. Her eyes turned sharp and her face turned grim. "Peggy is what I would call Untethered. You know about Tethering, right?"
"Of course," said the Owner. "Tethering is like gravity. It's what keeps things tied to the world and stops them from flying off to another. You cut your own Tethering to leave one world and then anchor yourself with a new Tethering in the next world. But a new Tethering is usually automatic once you step into a new world. Don't tell me that didn't happen with Peggy."
"I'm afraid so," said the vampire lady. "I did say she was Untethered, didn't I?"
"Hey, hey, hey, that's not funny," the Owner said, rising from his seat with a troubled look on his face that he hadn't worn since the days of the Shadow Civil War. "If you're right, then Peggy's in some serious danger. There's no telling when she'd fall into another world or what kind of world she'd fall into next. For all we know, she could walk right into a lava pit in some Muspelheim-like fire world on her way to the kitchen for a late night snack! Something needs to be done about this."
"I know," said his mother. "But the best I can do right now is to keep an eye on her and steer her away from trouble."
"You can't do anything about her Untethering?" the Owner asked. "You, Emeron's number one expert on multiversal traveling?"
"If I could do something about Peggy's Untethering, I would have done so a long time ago," said his mother. "And then we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm sure there's a solution to this problem, but since I can't leave Peggy alone for even a moment, I have no way of finding it."
Her son sat back down and sighed, rubbing his temples.
"No wonder you've been sticking around so long," he muttered. "Looks like it's fallen to me to clean up your mess, again."
"I'm so sorry to do this to you, dear," said the vampire lady. "But do you already have a plan?"
"Who do you think you're talking to?" said the coffee shop Owner. "I've been nicknamed Ariela Kingdom's Fountain of Wisdom by Royal Capital bigwigs. If I haven't thought of something yet, I will soon."
