The first thing I noticed was the silence.
But it was the wrong kind of silence. The desert has a silence that is full and deep, a living quiet that hums with the weight of ancient things. This was a thin silence, an empty space where a voice I had known my entire life used to be. The Sandsong was gone. It was like my heart had stopped beating, but my body had forgotten to die.
My eyes fluttered open. Pain. Not from an injury, but from sheer sensory overload.
Green.
The color was everywhere, an aggressive, impossible green that clawed at my vision. In my world, green was a rarity, a precious sign of life found only on the tough skin of a crystal-cacti. Here, it was an ocean. It coated everything in a thousand different shades, from the dark, almost-black of wet leaves to the bright, sickening lime of new growth.
I pushed myself up. My body ached, a deep, resonant throb of having been pulled apart and put back together incorrectly. I wasn't on sand. The ground beneath my gloved hands was soft, yielding, and cool. It was covered in a slick, dark mud that clung to my clothes.
"Where...?" The word came out as a croak. My throat was dry, but the air... the air was thick, heavy with moisture. It smelled of things I had no names for: of damp earth, of rotting leaves, of sweet, cloying flowers. It was suffocating.
I took stock of myself. My desert wrappings were soaked with a clear liquid. My satchel was still at my hip, its contents likely ruined. My hydro-canteen was still strapped to my chest, a comforting weight. And in my hand, still clutched with a grip of stone, was the teardrop crystal.
It was different now. The brilliant, terrifying light was gone. It was now just a smooth, cool, translucent stone. Beautiful, but inert. A silent witness to the crime it had committed against my reality.
"You," I whispered, holding it up to the strange, grey sky. There was only one sun here, a pale, weak circle hidden behind a blanket of grey clouds. "What did you do?"
As if in answer, something wet hit my forehead. Then another. And another. I looked up as a gentle, persistent shower of water began to fall from the sky. It wasn't a sandstorm, it wasn't a downpour from a burst aquifer. The sky itself was... weeping.
I stood there, a girl born of sand and sun, while a world of impossible green and soft rain tried to wash me away. I felt a laugh bubble up in my chest, a hysterical, broken sound. "Of course," I said to no one. "Of course it rains."
A snap of a twig broke through my stupor.
Instinct took over faster than thought. I dropped into a low crouch, my hand hovering over the hilt of the crude shiv I kept in my belt. My eyes scanned the dense wall of... trees. That was the word from the Before-Times stories. Trees. Giant, woody stalks that reached for the sky.
A figure emerged from between two of them. It was an old man, his back bent with age. He carried a woven basket filled with mushrooms and herbs. He wore simple clothes of brown and green, and his face was a roadmap of wrinkles, but his eyes were sharp and clear. He stopped when he saw me, his eyes widening slightly.
"Gods above," he breathed, his voice raspy. He wasn't looking at my weapon. He was staring at my clothes, my desert mask, my entire being. "You're a long way from... well, from anywhere, child."
I didn't relax my stance. In the Expanse, a stranger was a threat until proven otherwise. "Stay back."
He held up his empty hands, a universal sign of peace, I hoped. "I mean you no harm. I am Kael. I was just foraging." He took another look at my attire, soaked and covered in mud. "That gear... it's not for the Whisperingwood. Are you from the Sunstone Wastes?"
My mind raced. Whisperingwood? Sunstone Wastes? The names meant nothing. They were sounds without history, without a song. "I don't know those places," I said, my voice steady despite the chaos in my head. "I am from the Expanse."
Kael frowned, a genuine confusion creasing his already wrinkled brow. "The... Expanse? I have traveled far in my years, but I have never heard of a land by that name."
The confirmation hit me like a physical blow. This wasn't just a different part of my world. This was somewhere else entirely. The crystal hadn't just moved me. It had… replaced me.
"Are you lost?" the old man asked, his tone softening with pity.
I finally straightened up, the shiv feeling useless in my hand. Was I lost? How can you be lost when you don't even know where you are supposed to be?
"Yes," I finally admitted, the word tasting like defeat. "I think I am."
He looked up at the weeping sky, then back at me. I must have been a pitiful sight—a desert creature drowning in a forest. "You cannot stay out here," he said, his voice firm but kind. "The night brings its own dangers, and you are not dressed for this cold. My village is not far. There is warm stew and a dry roof."
He offered me a choice. Trust a stranger in a world that made no sense, or face the unknown alone, with none of my skills, none of my knowledge, and without the guidance of the Sandsong. In the desert, I was a survivor. Here, I was a child.
I looked at the impossibly old man, then at the impossibly green forest that felt more dangerous than a thousand Dune-Maws. For the first time in my life, I had no idea what the right move was.
So I chose the only move I had.
I nodded.