Back to the Real World: They Wait by the Door

Jordini sat in her study, as she always did, but today was different. She had just returned from Euthawal, after all. It was a miracle she could still find anything of hers in the mess of the room after being gone for a month. She laid back in her chair and sighed loudly.

If there was a single ounce of energy in her body, she couldn’t find it no matter how hard she tried. She looked at the calendar on her wall, now slightly coated with dust, and wanted to get up to change it but was already too comfortable to do so. Even having returned home, she still felt quite on edge. After all, there was no resting in Euthawal.

She wished she had a little longer with the characters, though. No, she shouldn’t call them that. MEAKS, that was what they called themselves. Of course, she could always go back, and the characters would be none the wiser of how long she’d truly been gone. But she’d need a long, long rest before that, and a bath, and some new clothes. Only now did she realize she looked very strange in these.

After the floating dust had settled, and Jordini was about to simply fall asleep on the spot, she heard a very large commotion. She craned her head up lazily, and tried to look out of a nearby window, but the curtains were shut. It sounded like a concert was being held just outside her door, but there were no singers, only crazed fans.

A long battle with herself ensued, trying to gain the energy to stand and see what was happening outside. Her limbs felt as heavy as lead. Around five long minutes passed (maybe? There was no way to tell.), and Jordini finally sat up, shaking herself awake and walking to the door.

Every step she took seemed to permanently affect her. The pain in her legs was so severe she thought it would never leave. Her walk was staggering and unsure, as if her body didn’t trust the floor underneath her feet. She stopped in front of the door, and after leaning her head on it for a couple seconds, opened it just a crack.

“Hello? Who’s there-”
The doorknob slipped from her grasp, and she was pushed back as a rush of people came into her house, exploring everything they could and looking at her with a sort of excited glare. Her spine shivered involuntarily feeling this many eyes on her. At length, she stood, feeling much worse now.

These people, although they looked like they were looting her house, were merely exploring it, flooding into all of her rooms in a sort of liquid mass. A couple stragglers stayed behind, staring at her wildly, but they soon left too. A shadow came over her, and she forced her aching muscles to get on her knees, saving her strength to move more. She looked up at the person above her.

She was a young girl, likely thirteen and just written a couple months ago. In fact, she looked quite normal. Her smile was far too wide for her face, and her teeth were pointed sharper than a razor. Her long gold hair went down to about mid-back, flowing elegantly like a river. Two tiny black horns protruded from her forehead. She had draped some sort of red fabric over her slim figure, which looked almost strikingly like a curtain.

The girl bent down over Jordini and seemed slightly shocked, but her smile never changed. The two looked at each other for a long time. Then, the girl pulled Jordini up and stepped back a bit. 

“Hi! Oh my gosh… I never thought I’d actually meet you! Ah! I’m sorry about them, by the way.”
“Okay-”
“Did we come at a bad time? You look tired. Were you sleeping?”
“I was about to…”
“That explains it! Well, I’m Auryn. And you’re Jordini! Only my favorite author! I’m your biggest fan!”
“Uhm… thank you.”
“Yeah! I wanted to meet you because… I sometimes write about you.”
“About me?”
Now, up to this point, writing fan works about someone else, even yourself, was quite odd, and not yet accepted in society. In fact, even admitting that you’d ever done it was to ensure you’d be cast out of your friend circles. It was quite odd that she should admit this, especially to her. So there had to be another reason she was telling her this.

“And… uhm… one of the first ones I did… I messed up on it.”
Jordini thought she knew where this was going, so she said, “Do you want me to go through it and tell you what I think about them?”
“That’s not what I mean… Jordyni, you can come out now.”
“Who, me?”

“No…”

Soon, another person, wearing a witch’s hat with a blue veil and ribbon, stepped forward, covering their face with the hat.

“H-hi…” Jordyni stammered.

“Are you shy? Is that it?” Auryn asked.

Jordyni simply nodded in response.

“Wait… don’t tell me you…”
“Yeah… I accidentally made you appear. At least I did it wrong, so there’s not… exactly two of you.”
“How did you even manage that? Isn’t that something you’ve got to manually do? You have control over that.”
“That happened before I ever learned to control it…”

Jordini stared incredulously at this version of herself. She was quite lucky that she had been written the way she was, and not however this Jordyni was. Jordyni, from what she could see, was strikingly like her, even wearing the same clothes but with all of her red accents changed to a soft baby blue. She started shaking violently.

“Sorry, she doesn’t like strangers much.”
“So… how did you manage to get such a different result from the actual me?”

“Huh?”
“Well, I’m sure you can tell that I don’t act like this. Nothing’s wrong with that, but I’m just a little confused.”
“I was making this alternate world where you were sort of quiet and reserved. I think I did it too much. Because now, she won’t talk to anyone but me unless it’s by writing stuff down.”
“Hm. Say, other me, do you wanna talk to me? I wouldn’t mind sitting down with you in my study and having a short chat… that is, if all the people in my house could leave.”
Jordyni, still burying herself in the hat, shrunk down, slouched, and nodded. Auryn looked behind Jordini to the staircase, looking for them.

“I’ll try and get them out. For now, maybe you can get Jordyni comfortable?”

“Alright-”
By then, Auryn was gone. So, she started for the study, but upon seeing that Jordini was too shy to follow her on her own, she took her hand gently and led her there, talking to her the whole way and trying to reassure the shaking, nervous girl.