Lost

She sat up, rubbing the delicate grains of sand from her eyes. It was…really bright, she realized. It hadn’t been this blindingly sunny a moment ago, had it? Or…had it? Where had she been a moment ago? Hadn’t she been falling? That didn’t make sense, though. She shook her head, blinking her eyes until they started to adjust. Didn’t matter, anyway. She awoke on a grassy hill that was covered in wildflowers; their scent filled her lungs and pushed all less-important matter back into the less-visited sections of her mind. The meadow was surrounded by a loose grouping of trees that probably would have qualified as either a forest or a jungle. From somewhere beyond the tree line, she could smell the sea air, wafting through pine trees and heat-ripened tropical fruit. And towering above it all to her left was the tallest mountain she’d ever seen, from which rose a pale grey column of smoke.

“Um, hello?” she asked nobody in particular. She stood up, taking a deep breath of the fresh air. It had a taste to it; that struck her as amusing, for reasons she couldn’t immediately put her finger on. “Hello? Anybody?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and re-opened them, shaking her head at her surroundings. “Okay, this is just…weird.” Where the hell am I?

Brushing a few errant blades of grass and flower petals from her faded black jeans, she wriggled her toes inside her sneakers and stretched. It was as if she’d been asleep for days; she felt more rested and relaxed than she could remember having felt for years. Also, hungry. Her stomach growled, clearly annoyed at her. She patted it reassuringly through the t-shirt she wore beneath her plaid shirt and electric purple frock coat. A moment of panic surged through her as she searched through the pockets, which were, to her relief, not so empty as she’d feared. Her cell phone, mp3 player and wallet were here, all tucked into their individual pouches.

This reassured her for a moment, until she lifted one hand to her throat and felt… nothing. It was gone, she noticed with a start, but couldn’t quite recall exactly what it was she was looking for. Had there been something around her neck? A necklace, a chain… anything? She shrugged; just like that, the sense of it fluttered away from her, vanishing past care or concern.

She pulled out her cell phone and frowned. “No missed calls, no email, no texts… oh. No signal. Crap.” With a reassuring glance around her to ensure no adults were around, she corrected herself with a satisfied grin. I’m almost sixteen, I think I’m allowed to swear when I want to. “Or, shit, anyway.” She paused a moment, and when she heard no parental rebukes, she exhaled deeply. “Silver lining? Check.”

A bell pealed in the distance. It was faint and distorted, but very certainly a bell of some sort. The girl tried to determine the source, but with the surrounding vegetation, it could be from almost anywhere. Well, I know it’s not coming from you, she mentally told the mountain. Process of elimination for the win.

Slipping the phone back into its pocket, she turned until the smoking volcano was behind her and began walking down to the tree line in search of civilization. She paused a moment on the border, hearing a flood of animal noises floating out at her, but she knew she couldn’t very well stay in the meadow until she died of starvation, so she continued on.

The heat struck her instantly, and she stopped to move all her things to her jeans and her shirt so she wouldn’t lose them while she carried her jacket in her arms. Heat or no heat, she loved the jacket far too much to leave it here. Wherever “here” is.

Now that she was well inside the trees, she realized why it had seemed so unusual before. Pine trees stood alongside tropical evergreens, moss-covered red cedars and thick-trunked banana trees. Ferns and bamboo stalks were scattered among thick vines that hung down in a decidedly creepy network of vegetation, and, everywhere she looked, things seemed to be moving.

Just keep walking, she thought, maintaining that as her mantra as she pushed her way through the dense undergrowth. Twice, she saw the mountain looming down out of the corner of her eyes; each time, she’d swallow back her frustration, turn until the mountain was once again directly behind her and resume her march.

After more than an hour of walking, she emerged - dirty, sweaty and with a small collection of mosquito bites - once more into the sunlight. What she saw was shockingly unexpected enough that she nearly stumbled over a fallen branch that lay in her path.

The hill she was descending continued down until it met a latticework of cobblestone streets and ramshackle brick buildings that surrounded a broad cove, with deep enough water to support a dock system at which were parked – docked, she corrected herself – a dozen or more tall-masted ships. The sun was halfway down the sky, poised to slip below the horizon directly ahead of her, and sparkled brilliantly off the innumerable crests of the ocean. The wind coming in from off the ocean struck her head-on, and she shrugged her jacket back on.

“Hot, cold, volcanoes and sailing ships, what the hell?” she breathed. “What is this place?”

“Oh ho! A new arrival!” The voice from above startled her, and she spun around in place until she looked straight up. Above her, a young boy – perhaps three or four years her junior – floated downwards, wearing what could only be described as a superhero outfit, complete with cape and a skull-and-crossbones emblazoned across his chest.

“Well, now I know I’m dreaming,” she muttered, her eyes taking note of a small sword that hung at his waist.

“Dreaming?” The boy laughed. “Nonsense! This is real, I assure you, fair lady!” He hovered an inch or two off the ground, but she remained several inches taller than him.

“Uh-huh…And who would you be? Super-pirate?”

He scoffed at that. “No, good lady, I am none other than the Pirate Hunter, leader of a small but notorious band of rebels who fight against the evil machinations of the forces of…evil.”

She managed to hide her smile. “Yeah, all right, um, Pirate Hunter. Can I call you Pirate Hunter? Or is it, like ‘Mister The Pirate Hunter’ or something?”

“Pirate Hunter, if you please,” he replied with a bow. Eyeing her coat, his eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be a…pirate, perchance?”

“What? Pirate?” her eyes followed his to her coat. “Oh my god, no, this is just - - I mean, I got this at… I’m not a pirate. I’m just…well, I’m just a girl. Totes not a pirate. Promise.”

He seemed content with her answer. “And who might you be, then?”

She chewed on her bottom lip, not yet sure if she felt like telling this obviously crazy person anything about her.

“Ah!” he exclaimed after noting her reluctance to answer. “Amnesia! It happens to a lot of new arrivals. Well, fear not, it should pass in time. Or it might. Either way, until then, I shall call you… ‘Lady’. Yes, Lady – I believe it suits you wondrously!”

“Lady,” she echoed, dryly. The Pirate Hunter was too enthusiastic to her to be angry with him, however. She sighed. “Fine, Lady it is, then.”

“Splendid!” He glanced back over his shoulder down into the bay, and seemed both content and slightly disappointed by what he saw – or didn’t see – there. “Well, Lady, it would seem I have no Pirates to hunt today, so I shall earn my valor by showing you around our fair town.”

She was already attempting to refuse his offer before she even knew why. In the end, she decided it was going to be less effort to simply allow it. “Fine, lead on,” she said, gesturing ahead of them.

“Come with me, Lady, I will be both your guide and your sworn protector!”

She recognized a faint touch of an accent in his voice. “So, where are you from, Pirate Hunter – are you from, like, England or something?”

He looked at her as if she’d grown a pair of wings out of her nose. “Ing-land?”

“It’s a…“ She shook her head, thinking better of the direction that part of the conversation might eventually lead. “Never mind. It’s somewhere else, I guess. So, what’s this town called?” she asked, gesturing ahead of them at the smattering of buildings.

Her question stopped him briefly. With a shrug, he continued hovering forward. “It doesn’t really have a name, I suppose. It’s just the town. Only one town, so if anyone who lives here mentions the town, everyone else knows what you’re talking about.”

“That makes sense,” she conceded. “But what if I was talking to someone else who wasn’t here?”

“Who else would you tell?”

The question didn’t stump her so much as the implication. “Does this happen a lot,” she began, “people just showing up here like I did?”

“That’s how everyone comes to Uphoria,” he said simply.

“Euphoria?” she repeated.

He shook his head. “No, Uphoria. With a U.”

She wondered briefly how he could have known how she had pictured the word in her mind, but decided instantly that there just might be things about this place she’d be better off not knowing.

Before she could respond, they’d arrived in the town, and his attention instantly shifted to their surroundings. “These are all houses, here – the people who work in the fields, and do all the boring jobs around Uphoria live here. Up ahead is the outdoor market.” His grin broadened appreciably. “That’s a great place, you’ll love it.”

As they continued on, the monologue ensued. “Down there are the docks. They’re pretty empty today, but they always fill up later. Scary place there for the unprepared: full of pirates, malcontents and worse. But it’s a great place for people like me.”

“People like you?”

He placed his fists against his hips and stuck his ten-year-old-boy chest out as far as he could. “Superheroes.”

She managed once again not to laugh. Just barely. “Superheroes?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a…superhero?”

His answer was quick and matter-of-fact. “Yes.”

“Like, with superpowers?”

“Yes,” he responded proudly.

His conviction surprised her, but then again, he was floating about a foot off the ground, which all by itself made for a fairly convincing argument. “What kind of powers? Like, what can you do?”

“Oh, the regular superhero stuff: flying, super-strength, heat vision, all the basics.”

She nodded appreciatively. She’d never read comic books as a child, but she’d watched all the movies and conceded that there seemed to be something of a theme as to their powers; at least, there was at least one thing most of the franchises had in common. “Well, what’s your…what’s it called – your origin story? You know, were you an alien that came to earth and got powers? Or was it a failed experiment, a radioactive insect or something?”

He laughed, reminding her that she was talking to a boy, after all. “I don’t have anything like that. Things here just are; they don’t need something like that to make them happen.”

“So anyone could have superpowers?”

He rolled his eyes as if her question was the stupidest thing since unsliced bread. “No, dummy. Only superheroes have superpowers.”

“Could I be a superhero?”

Pausing again, he looked at her with a renewed scrutiny and curiosity. “I don’t know, Lady. Could you? You have to really want it.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“I do?” he shrugged.  “Well, it is kind of easy, I guess. You just have to want it, that’s all.”

Her brows furrowed, disbelief evident on her face. He’s just a kid, she thought. He just can’t wrap his head around it, whatever it was.

In spite of her certainty, however, his next words sent a chill up her spine. “You have to want it more than anything.”

His words continued to resound in her mind as he led her through the marketplace. On display in the various shops were all manner of incomprehensible goods, ranging from the garish and remarkable to the ridiculous and unimaginable. Strange clothing that might have seemed right at home across the canvas of a surrealist painter and crates of fruits and prepared animal carcasses which she couldn’t identify stood side-by-side, all the while her de facto tour guide prattled on as she struggled to keep her bearings.

This isn’t possible, she insisted. I’m dreaming, there’s no other explanation. No way this can be on Earth, let alone New York City.

At some point, the “Pirate Hunter” had stopped rambling, but the silence was almost instantly filled by the sounds of raised voices. She snapped out of her confused state to realize that a few nearby vendors were pointing at him and screaming angrily. He was floating a bit higher than he had been before, and she suddenly noticed that he appeared to be shoving some sort of pastry into his mouth, a mischievous grin on his face.

He mumbled a barely-comprehensible “sorry!” before launching himself away from her and into the sky. The furious shopkeepers stared after him for a few moments before turning their attention on her; it was instantly obvious by their renewed accusations of “thief!” and “troublesome kid!” that they believed her to be some sort of partner in his shenanigans.

She’d shoplifted once, when she was younger, but her mother had grounded her for a month and she’d never done it again. But in the face of this angry mob, her response was instinctive in spite of her innocence. She ran.

Shrill whistles resounded off the buildings and streets, and people hurriedly ducked back inside the doorways as she came running past. She remembered from an old movie about how most criminals were caught while they were on the run; she’d need to find a place to hide, quickly, before she was seen. Even as her mind formed those thoughts, however, a pair of men in dark blue uniforms ran around the corner just ahead of her. Both had nightsticks in their hand, and the one on her right began furiously blowing his whistle the moment they spotted her. Confident that the bulk of the crowd remained behind her, the best option was to plow on ahead. Didn’t want to take those stupid self-defense classes in the first place, but now I get to see if paid off, she thought with a grimace. Fine, Dad, you get one ‘I told you so’, and that’s it.

She kept her speed up, running straight at them until the last possible moment, where she dodged to the left, staying on the opposite hand of the man with the whistle. As she’d hoped, the two constables ran into one another in their attempt to grab her; the man on her left took a swing with his club and nearly clobbered the other. She struck with her left hand into the man’s stomach, catching him off guard and driving the air from his lungs in a burst that launched the whistle from his opened mouth. With her right hand, she grabbed his nearest arm and spun him about as she rolled in the opposing direction, using the momentum of her spin to place him face to face with his partner. They met head-on, and were already falling to the ground as she completed her spin and resumed her original course.

The adrenaline of the brief encounter was already filling her veins; she could feel the rush as her body enjoyed a burst of speed, and her thoughts returned to what the Pirate Hunter had been telling her. I just have to want it, more than anything.

As the end of the street approached, she felt it – a conviction, a certainty that she could do anything, whatever her mind could imagine. I can fly, she realized.

She could hear the voices behind her, raised in anger and frustration that this girl was going to elude them in the one direction they could not follow. Taking one last step on the stony streets, she raised her face to the sky, arms akimbo, and launched herself upwards…

…and collided, full speed, into the door ahead of her. The power of her impact nearly took the door from its hinges as she crashed into the small house and threw down in the middle of their living room. By the time she’d managed to catch her breath, she was surrounded by the blue-uniformed men, who were polite enough to wait until she had her wits once more around her before slapping a pair of manacles on her wrists and marching her off to the jail.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Geez, all this place needs is a dog with a ring of keys in his mouth,” she muttered, looking around the grimy cage they’d placed her in. It was roughly 15 feet in a square, with iron bars floor to ceiling forming two walls, and mortar-framed rocks for the others. An uneven wooden stool and a bucket lay on their sides on a mat of old straw. The smell of the room gave her the impression none of the cell’s previous occupants had ever used the bucket, and the guards only applied a new layer of the straw in between guests. Her head had stopped pounding an hour after they’d brought her here, removed the manacles and left her to her thoughts. Without much else to go on, though, her mind had been full of only the darker variety. The trouble was, some of the detail in her memory was becoming fuzzy.

Okay, so it’s not a dream, and I haven’t just always lived here, unless this is some part of the city I’ve never seen. Plus, that Pirate Hunter brat said I was new, so there’s that. But where am I? When am I? Did I time-travel? Did I get kidnapped by aliens? She sighed in frustration. I should have read more comic books when I was a kid, maybe this would make more sense.

As she paced the small confines of the cell, she stepped on something metallic – she found the edges of it with the toe of her shoe and flipped it over, revealing a scum-crusted tin plate. She was suddenly grateful they hadn’t given her anything to eat or drink, for her appetite instantly vanished. The adrenaline rush from earlier had already faded, leaving her feeling weak and drained on top of a hunger that was painfully distracting all by itself.

The window ledge was just lower than shoulder height, so she was able to look out easily enough. Out the single window, she could look out on the whole of the town, and even see down into the lagoon. Her cell was a bit higher than the rest of the town, she discovered, with a sheer cliff descending straight down onto jagged rocks some forty or fifty feet below. The room felt like it was spinning a bit, so she held one of the bars as she looked away, letting the coolness of the iron pull her back from her vertigo.

On closer inspection, the stool didn’t look terribly offensive; she set it aright and sat down on the least grungy half, and looked out at the deepening sky.

Great. I’m in a freaking Johnny Depp movie. Only, without the Johnny Depp.

Once an hour or so, a guard would pass by the outer door and peer in, as if assuring themselves that their prisoner was still there, or alive – it wasn’t exactly clear to her which possibility concerned them more – and gradually the sunlight streaming through the mote-filled air faded into moonbeams.

 She’d just stood up to delicately stomp the pins and needles from her feet when she heard a soft pssst! from outside the window. Peering out, she frowned at the sight of the Pirate Hunter himself, holding another boy with his left hand.

“This is your fault, you know,” she growled. “They think I stole some of that food, too!” I wish I had, she added silently. I’d still be in a cell, sure, but at least I wouldn’t be so hungry.

“Shhh!” the Pirate Hunter whispered. “We’re here to rescue you.”

Her eyes narrowed; she didn’t know if she could trust this kid yet. Still, if she had to choose between the jail cell and a crazy person, she might as well choose the person on the outside of the bars. “What are you going to do? Do I need to stand back?”

Instead of answering her directly, he floated up until the boy he was carrying was more or less eye level with her. This other boy raised his free hand, in which he held a small bag.

“Take a deep breath and put your hand inside,” he instructed. “And don’t panic.”

“Don’t panic?” she repeated dubiously. She’d been in the process of reaching towards the bag, but his final admonition made her think twice. “What’s in there?”

“Everything,” he smiled back proudly at her.

“I mean, is something going to eat me? I don’t know if I should…”

Voices behind her startled them all. “Hey you! Stay right where you are!” A pair of the guards was inside the outer room, the closest one fumbling through a ring of keys.

Caught between fear of the constables and fear of the unknown, she chose the unknown, taking a deep breath and sliding her hand into the bag’s opening.

It felt for a moment as if she was falling through a hole in the world – everything screamed past her at impossible speeds, a great patch of cold darkness swelling up over her until it had engulfed her completely. She nearly screamed, but stopped herself short. He said to hold my breath, she thought, forcing herself to try and relax. Reaching out her hands, she felt…nothing. There was no air around her.  And not just air, she realized further, but there wasn’t anything else here but her. Nothing at all.

The cold was a shock to her, as well. It felt like the darkness was made of needles, all burrowing under every inch of exposed skin. Vertigo assaulted her senses and in her panic, she opened her mouth and lost the last of her air. She felt it rush past her face like bubbles in the deep, vanishing like sea foam.

She flailed in the dark emptiness, trying to scream out but lacking the requisite breath to do so. Fear crept up her legs, clawing at her, scratching at her skin. She struck out at it, kicking, punching – it wrapped itself around her, nearly crushing her arms to her sides in the process. Then, with a mighty heave, it flung her from the darkness and onto a wooden floor.

Her first breath burst into her lungs, and instantly a dozen hands were patting her on the back while calming voices reassured her that she was safe, now. Everything was blurred, tears still filling her eyes moments later as she was eased into a nearby chair. The first thing her vision latched onto was too unusual to be true; it resembled the enormous face of a King of Hearts.

Squinting didn’t correct the obvious illusory quality of her surroundings; it simply brought it more sharply into focus. Weirder and weirder, she thought, confused. What kind of rabbit hole did I fall down?

As she struggled to get her bearings, she realized that not only was the room itself – walls and ceiling, too – formed of eight foot tall playing cards, but that it was also, at the moment, practically filled with children.

Pirate Hunter was here, standing towards the back of the room. Beside him stood the young boy he’d had with him outside her jail cell, having just deposited her on the floor. The rest of the children – the oldest of which was still probably four years her junior – stared at her with apprehension and shocked silence.

“Is she a grownup?” one asked in a trembling voice.

Another child shushed the first. “Don’t get her mad!”

For a moment, she thought she’d arrived in the middle of a Halloween party. The children were dressed in a variety of costumes, ranging from cowboy to witch, from clown to space samurai, from spy to astronaut. The oddity of it all at last overwhelmed her sense of decorum.

“Okay, what is going on here?” she demanded. “Where is this, and who are you?” She turned around to face the Pirate Hunter and the boy with the bag, and pointed her finger at it, even as he closed it and adjusted it across his shoulder. “And what was that?”

His eyes widened, and he glanced nervously at Pirate Hunter, who nodded encouragingly.

“It’s – it’s a b-bag of holding,” he stammered.

“A what?”

He took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s called a ‘bag of holding’; all the greatest adventurers get them, you can store pretty much everything inside of them, which is great when we go into the dungeons, because this one time I fit like a dozen swords and five or six giant tapestries, but we had to roll them up first so they’d fit, and…”

She held up a hand, palm forward, to silence him. “Okay, never mind, I get it. It’s one of those ‘bigger on the inside’ things, I understand.” She pointed at a random child – a girl dressed up like a hockey player. “And, you: where are we?”

“It’s Fort Solitary,” the girl answered, less timidly than the boy who’d answered the previous question. “It’s where we live when we’re not adventuring.”

“Adventuring?”

All the children nodded enthusiastically.

“Okay, let me come back to that one later,” the older girl shook her head. “Superlad over there already tried explaining where this is, so never mind that. But how did you all get here?”

No one answered; they all looked at one another, confused expressions on their mostly dirty faces.

“What, you don’t know?” She asked. “Or you don’t remember?”

Pirate Hunter laughed. “Why does that matter? We’re here now.”

“It matters,” she insisted.

“Why?”

She paused at his question. Why does it matter? “Well, I… well, I just want to know how it happened.”

The young witch removed her pointy hat, revealing a baby dragon, curled up on the top of her head. It snuffed a small puff of smoke from its nostrils, clearly annoyed by the disruption of its nap, but the girl took it down and cradled it in her arms, scratching the eye ridges atop its head. It stopped fussing and began to purr contentedly. She looked up at the older girl and smiled.

“You came here because you wanted to be happy. This is the place happiness comes from.”

“Happiness?” It seemed an odd word, now that she said it aloud. It felt intangible, like a breath of mist on a cold winter’s evening.

The hockey player girl nodded. “What makes you happiest?” she asked; it seemed a simple enough question, but as she asked it she and the other children exchanged mischievous glances.

“I don’t know,” the older girl replied honestly. “Sleeping in, I suppose. Or summer vacation.”

“Wrong!” the children yelled in unison.

The outburst startled her. The dragon raised its head and snarled out a tiny spark before lying back down again.

“Hey! Don’t do that!” she chided them. “It’s…creepy.” As her pulse returned to normal, her brows furrowed, forming a single line between them. “How do you know that’s wrong?”

The Pirate Hunter’s voice rose above a suddenly quiet room. “It’s just how it is, Lady. If you asked any of us what our happiest memories were, we wouldn’t know either. It’s just like that here. But it doesn’t matter,” he added, “because here we have everything else we need to make us happy. Right, guys?”

“Right!” they exclaimed, in varying degrees of enthusiasm.

Half the kids cheered and ran from the room right then, scattering out to engage in who-knows-what-kind of shenanigans. A few others shook her hands or hugged her and their excited voices raised the volume of the room substantially. The Pirate Hunter floated over to her again.

“It takes a little bit to get adjusted,” he explained. “We’re about to have supper, though, so if you want to join us, I promise you’ll feel better after you’ve had something to eat.”

The other remaining children chimed in, “Eat! Eat!” and pulled at her hands and the sleeves of her jacket.

But she shook her head. “No, I…. I don’t know. I’m just tired. I think I should lie down for a while.”

The expression on the boy’s face made her feel guilty, as if she’d just insulted his dog. “Okay,” he said, somber. “Your room is right up those stairs and on the right.”

A little girl dressed like space samurai – complete with a blue glowing sword – walked up and put her arms around the older girl. Her hair was all done up in a dizzying number of long black braids that stuck out in every direction.

“Don’t go, Lady,” she whimpered.

Patting the young girl’s head, the elder girl didn’t quite know what to say. “It’s okay,” she said, “I’m just going to take a nap and I’ll be right back.”

The tiny warrior looked up at the Pirate Hunter, who shrugged. “It has to be her choice, Master Ki-Anna. What would Yoga say?”

She shot him a look of annoyance, her eyes lined in red. “It’s Yoda, and he’d say Shut up, you will.” She turned and ran from the room, trailing behind the sound of young tears.

“Did I upset her?” the older girl asked Pirate Hunter after the young girl had run away.

“She’ll be okay. She just doesn’t like saying goodbye to people. None of us do.”

“But I’m not saying goodbye, it’s just a nap!”

He merely nodded, gesturing upstairs. “Well, go on up,” he said.

Weirdest kids ever, she thought, trudging up the folded large straight that made up the stairs and 2nd story landing.

There were several doors on the right hand side of the hallway, but one was open and had her name written on the outside in still-wet finger paints. Stepping inside, she nearly laughed at the delightfully bizarre array of furnishings that had awaited her. At the far wall was a tremendous four poster king-sized bed, with blankets that looked to be nearly a foot thick. A large closet to her right seemed all but stuffed with every piece of clothing she could have imagined buying or wearing, while the left wall was covered with toys, musical instruments, sports equipment, every possible thing she might have dreamed up to fill the ideal room, only most of it looked impressively old. Windup tin toys and wooden marionettes, nothing that required electricity. Glancing around the room, she realized there were no power outlets. Probably not a good idea to have electricity if your home is made out of a deck of cards, she conceded.

She took an hour or more to look through it all, but eventually lethargy began to take its toll. Looking once more at her cell phone, she sighed. “Not a lot of cell phone towers around here, I guess,” she grumbled. She turned the phone off and shoved in back into her jacket pocket and tossed the jacket over the back of the room’s only chair. Lying down on the bed, she promised herself just a nap, and closed her eyes.

If she truly slept, she could not say; but in the darkness of near-sleep, a scattered image came to her like a dream.

Around her, past her, rushed the wind. Flying – falling? – with her were countless spinning, glimmering facets of glass that looked like gems twinkling in the night sky. Beneath her rose the city streets, bumper to bumper with the usual traffic; cars, taxis, buses, all honking at one another and no one making progress. Sirens in the distance. Tears upon her face. Something in her hand.

Before she met the sidewalk, a loud and distorted bell rang in the distance, shocking her back awake. Her eyelids snapped open, and she sat up in the plush bed, gasping for air. It took her several moments of panicked assessment to remember where she was; in Fort Solitary, in Uphoria, in her room made of playing cards, on top of the world’s most comfortable bed.

The dream – what had she been dreaming, again? – slipped from her thoughts as her eyes fell upon her favorite t-shirt and jeans that had been left slung over the chair by the far wall. She giggled and jumped from the bed to quickly dress.

It was her safari shirt, a soft picture of a cuddly lion on the front. It always made her feel ferocious. She slipped on a pair of red sneakers and ran downstairs, following the smell of bacon and cinnamon toast. By the time her feet reached the bottom stair, the lingering fears of the brief dream had vanished completely.

Downstairs, only the little space warrior girl was there to greet her. Her face beamed in a glorious smile at seeing her enter, and she held up two pieces of bacon she’d just plucked from a bush outside the kitchen window.

“A bacon tree?” the lion girl exclaimed. “That’s awesome!”

“Wait ‘til Summer, when the pancakes are blossoming,” Master Ki-Anna giggled. “Everything smells like chocolate and maple syrup!”

A plate was waiting for her, covered in thick sizzling bacon and two slices of toast, smothered in butter and cinnamon sugar. She sat down without another thought, her mouth watering.

Ki-Anna held out a tall mug that was moist with perspiration. “Chocolate or Strawberry?”

“Strawberry!”

By the time the mug was placed in front of her, she could see a deliciously pink liquid had risen to the brim. She broke off half the tender bacon in her mouth and held it for a moment. It was just bacon, right? And bacon can’t be a bad thing. Even bacon on a tree – that’s natural bacon, so it had to be good. She took a big bite of it and mmmmmm’d in delight as she followed it up with a long draw of the strawberry milk.

It was going to be a good day, the girl with the lion shirt decided, and she and Master Ki-Anna laughed and discussed their plans for the day while the food vanished into their mouths.

 “This is the best bacon EVER!” the little lion girl exclaimed, in between bites. She pushed a stray strand of hair back from her face and finished off the last bits of the food, wiping her hands off on her pants.

She sat staring at her plate, trying to remember what it was she’d been thinking of before. There was something she was supposed to do, wasn’t there? Someplace she was supposed to go?

“Let’s go play outside!” Ki-Anna said, bolting from her chair, laughing.

The lion girl nodded, hopping up as well. Whatever it was, it could wait. She was only eight, after all, and eight year olds didn’t have to think about stupid stuff.

The two young girls laughed and ran from the room. A large robot stopped to let them climb aboard and it clomped off into the fields of Uphoria, there to find their next great adventure.

In the room they left behind, the Pirate Hunter floated from behind a wall where he’d been observing, unnoticed by the two girls. Beside him hovered the shadow of a man, intangible and incorporeal, with eyes filled by greed and fear.

The boy nodded towards the Shadow. “You were right, my Lord, she stayed after all.”

“Of course she did. I knew she would never go back.”

“How did you know? A lot of them don’t.”

The shadow paused before responding, as if weighing how much it could trust this boy.

It smiled at him, its mouth lined by gleaming, sharpened, teeth. “Because I’ve tasted what she dreams of –she is very much like….” The Shadow shook its head, letting its words trail off. “She reminds me of happiness, so of course there is nowhere else she could go but here.”

“You’re really smart, my Lord.”

With a scoff, the Shadow corrected him. “I am clever, you mean.”

Blushing in embarrassment, the Pirate Hunter bowed his head in deference. “Yes, I’m sorry,” he said. He recited the ancient words: “I behold your cleverness, my Lord.”

The Shadow allowed the pirate hunting superhero a moment longer to appreciate its undeniable cleverness before vanishing away into the corners of unexplored Uphoria. There was yet much to do, it considered, and many great adventures yet awaited it.

To be Continued in “Into the Dust”