***

After a couple of hours I pull myself together sufficiently to go back upstairs. It’s getting busy already. At this hour it’s mostly townspeople who have spent the afternoon shopping and are meeting at the inn to compare the spoils. There will be a couple more days of this before the — more serious to some — commercial side of Market becomes more prevalent. The down-to-earth trading of livestock and crops and textiles. But first, the local inhabitants’ pent-up thirst for the latest luxuries must be assuaged. From the amount of buying that’s going on it can be assumed that Port Denhall is prosperous in its own right. I really haven’t seen much of it, I realise. Apart from a few short excursions I’ve pretty much been kept busy in the inn.

I’m being kept busy now, which is good. Alternately helping out Jalese with the serving and settling down to play a few tunes is keeping the memory of my encounter aboard the familyship nicely at a distance.

“You know what’s weird?” Lotan is saying. He’s had a bit to drink. I’m on one of my breaks. “We’ve been here… How long have we been here now?”

I start counting back. Samila gets there first. “A week. No. Eight days I think.”

“This is the eighth,” Kerilas confirms, taking his seat. He’s late.

“Jesus. Anyway, right, so we — somehow — jumped into this bloody roleplaying game and we’ve been here eight days and we haven’t been in a single fight yet!”

“Speak for yourself,” Kerilas says, and slouches back tiredly.

“But don’t you think that’s odd? Go eight days in a campaign and not even a single hit on the wandering monster table? That’s bad DMing there, that is.”

“Shit, what happened to you?” Samila says suddenly, staring at Kerilas. I take a proper look. Kerilas had positioned himself in a shadow, so it wasn’t immediately obvious, but he has bruises on his face.

“Nothing. Forget about it.”

“Fuck that!” Lotan objects. “Who did that? I’ll fucking smash their–”

“No you won’t!” Kerilas insists. “I said, forget it.”

Where’ve you even been going during the days?“ Samila prods.

“No-where.”

“Well, perhaps you shouldn’t,” she says.

Kerilas just sighs.

I stare at him. I don’t know what to say.

“Look, we’re a group,” Samila tells him. “That means you don’t wander off and get into fights on your own. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“Never split the party,” Lotan adds.

“Oh fuck off,” Kerilas mutters.

“Where do you go in the day?” Samila demands again.

Kerilas bites his lip. “I got a job,” he admits.

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter. Nothing to do with this. This just happened on the way here. Tani, get us a drink, would you?”

“I can probably Heal you…”

He shakes his head. “It’s okay. Don’t waste it. Drink?”

I sigh. “Okay.”

“And are you playing any more tonight?”

“Yeah, in a bit. I’m just taking a break.”

He nods. “That’ll be nice.”

I stand up and go to the counter.

By the time I return Kerilas is talking. I wonder what he’s already said. “We’re not heroes. We play heroes in a game because that’s the closest we’re ever going to get. We create these grand narratives for our characters to distract us from our own shapeless little lives for a few hours because it’s better than going mindless in front of a television. In the real world we just get on as best as we can, don’t we? And this world…” he prods the table a couple of times. “This world is real. We have to accept that. We have to accept the reality we’re presented with. It’s the least insane choice we have. And that means it’s really just little us, getting on as best we can. We’re not heroes.”

I don’t know what I feel about this. I see a tear fall down Samila’s face though, before she angrily wipes it away with her hand.

“So what do we do?” Samila asks, her voice shaking a little. She’s just holding it in. “Settle down here? Get jobs, make friends, raise families, live out our lives here as ordinary people?”

“There are worse things we could do,” Kerilas says.“There are worse places we could find ourselves.” And Kerilas would have the hardest time of any of us making a place here. Jeodin is the most open, the most tolerant society on this world. Anywhere else he’d already be dead.

I still don’t say anything about what happened earlier. The things the Satthei said to me. She met me once when I was little. She wants — no, that’s not strong enough: She intends to take me with her, on the ship. I know she does.

I think I don’t want to be in Port Denhall very much longer. I’ve discovered, to my own surprise, that I enjoy working in the inn, and the place seems nice enough. But after meeting the Satthei I don’t know. I really, really don’t know what I ought to be feeling about that. I just feel that we should be gone. We should be out and free on the ocean as soon as we’re equipped.

I think I’m longing for the sea.

“What about Gyrefalcon?” I ask aloud. “We’re supposed to be trying to find him, aren’t we? Simon’s out there somewhere.”

“Oh…” Kerilas says, as if remembering. He sighs. “Do you think it’s really likely?”

“Why not?”

He sighs. “You’re thinking that our world has primacy,” he says. “You think, ‘Simon must be here, because we were all playing the game,’ right? So we must all be here.”

“Yeah…”

“Look at it this way instead: Taniel, Samila, Lotan, and Kerilas were all being held in that slaver camp. Ken actually said it in the intro: They were held for a long time in appallingly abusive conditions being trained for something… horrible.” He fixes us all with a look. “He didn’t go into any details, he didn’t need to, it was just a way to signal to us as players that it’s a place we really needed to get out of.”

“Oh God…” Samila says.

“I don’t think they got out. I think it destroyed them,” Kerilas says. “Kerilas, Samila, Lotan, Taniel, it destroyed them. It traumatised them and it broke them, whatever happened back there. And that’s when the game started, for us, and that’s when we were pulled in.”

“Oh God,” Samila says again. She sounds short of breath.

“And just maybe that’s when we were invented,” Kerilas finishes.

“No!” Lotan objects. “That’s stupid. I’m not going to believe that!”

“Anyway my point is–”

“How do we know each other then?” Lotan cries, breaking to his feet. “How do we remember all this stuff that hasn’t even been invented yet here? Electricity, the internet, airplanes, cars…” he flounders a little. “Football, for Christ’s sake. Christ, for Christ’s sake!” he adds in a moment of inspiration. “There’s a whole real world we came from–”

“And a whole real world we’re in now,” Kerilas says gently. “With box-harps and elf-ships and songs,” he looks at me briefly, “and stories and legends all their own, and… and bumwool. Sit down, Lotan. Please?”

Lotan sighs, but he takes his seat again.

“What about global warming?” Samila asks. “Who would invent that? Who in this world could invent that?”

“Maybe…” Kerilas sighs. He’s thought about this. “Maybe they thought, if we came from a world with no future, we wouldn’t want to go back. Too much.”

Lotan tuts irritably.

“It’s not that hopeless,” Samila protests quietly.

Kerilas just holds her gaze until she drops her eyes.

“My point is,” Kerilas tries again, “Gyrefalcon wasn’t there. He didn’t share in whatever our characters went through. Maybe Barak did, but he died. There’s no reason to think Simon would come through.”

“No, your point is, Simon isn’t even real. Neither’s Ken, neither’s anyone else we know back home!” Lotan protests angrily. “Our families… Anyone!”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Jesus, listen to yourself! I can’t…” Lotan gets to his feet again. “I can’t sit here and listen to this. You’re saying we’re imaginary too, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Imaginary friends, from an imaginary world, made up by these poor bastards,” he indicates us four, “as an escape from… from whatever it is that was happening to them on that island. And at least two of them were magic users and were there a long time. A really long time.”

Lotan stares at him in palpable disgust. “D’you really hate the world– our world that much?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, but pushes away through the bar and outside.

None of us follow him. I don’t know why I don’t; I can’t begin to speculate about the other two.

“It’s just a theory,” Kerilas says.

“I was there… I mean, Taniel was abducted over twenty years ago,” I say, repeating what Satthei Fareis told me.

“Kerilas was there longer than that.”

I look at Samila. Her character isn’t even supposed to be that old. She looks distraught, trying to hold back tears.

“I’d better check up on Lotan,” Kerilas says. “Make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.” He gives me a look, and a glance aside to Samila. I sigh and nod and he goes.

We sit in silence for a little while.

“He seems to think we should be talking about something,” Samila mutters.

“Heh. Yeah.”

Silence.

“Samila–” I begin.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry, I–”

“Just Sam, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sami at a pinch.” A weak attempt at Lee’s old grin.

She looks uncomfortable in her dress, as if she doesn’t quite know what to do with her legs. (‘Put them together for a start,’ I want to say.) The bodice is done up very tightly; I guess in an attempt to minimise bounce. I’m doing the same thing and I’m not half so well endowed.

“Someone around here needs to invent the brassiere,” I say, to try to lighten the mood.

Sam does manage a chuckle. “Fucking right.”

“I can’t remember, there’s some engineering principle behind it, isn’t there? Counterwei– No, that’s not it.”

“Cantilever,” Sam says. “Same as suspension bridges.”

“Oh yeah, right,” I say, thinking she’s joking.

“No, seriously. Yeah, chances are no-one’s invented it yet, ’xcept the elves, probably keeping it to themselves.”

“Elf Boobs Don’t Sag,” I pronounce. She laughs out loud at that.

“Probably right, too.”

“You seem to know a lot about bras,” I comment dryly.

“Only from the outside.” There’s that grin again. “Ain’t nothin’ you can teach me about taking someone else’s bra off with one hand.”

I have to laugh. It’s so Lee. “There you go then. Invent the bra, make a billion Crowns, and start building a network of suspension bridges between the islands, put all the Marketeers out of business.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It could work!” I protest, wilfully disregarding the engineering challenges and limitations of the available materials. After all, any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology, right?

We fall silent again.

She starts, “Of all the things I’ve loved and lost, I miss my dick the most.”

She’s trying to put a brave face on things, I suppose. Making everything into a joke so it doesn’t hurt so much. Just like Lee would.

“Personally I think they’re overrated,” I say. Even with the joke-prim voice it might just be the most daring thing I ever said.

“Speak for yerself, missus,” she bats back. “I’ll have you know I have a deep and very meaningful relationship with my little fella. I promise you, the reunion will be very… touching.” Grin.

“Ew!”

Silence.

“I keep crying for no reason,” she says. “Get started and I can’t stop. It’s driving me nuts.”

“Yeah, me too,” I say. I have to say something.

“You think it’s the hormones?”

I shrug. “I don’t think you’re crying for no reason,” I say. “I mean, I think you’ve got plenty of reasons to be crying. We all have. You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

“Oh, it’s not… that’s not what I mean. I just hate not being in control of myself, you know? I hate it. I feel like everything’s… I don’t know. It’s like I’m trying to walk on ice all the time, you know? There’s me,” she puts a hand up, “and there’s this stupid body,” the other hand, two feet away, “doing it’s own thing. Some… stupid little thing sets me off and… Look, I’m fucking doing it again.” There are tears starting from her eyes. “I hate this. I hate being out of control like this. All the fucking time.”

She tries to wipe away the tears with the heel of her hand. I don’t know what to do for a while. Then I think, I’m being stupid. It’s really very simple. So I try to put my arm around her shoulders.

“Leave me alone!” she snaps, and shakes me loose.

“Sam, listen, you’re not going to do this boys don’t cry bullshit, okay?”

She sniffles.

“It is bullshit. You know that, don’t you? You’ve got to let this out or–”

“I’m letting it out all the fucking time! That’s the point, you idiot!” Sam snaps. “I really think I’m going crazy here!” She sniffles again. “On top of everything else I don’t even know when I’m supposed to be due.”

“Due?” I ask, stupidly. Then I catch up. “Oh.”

“God, you can be dense sometimes, Paul. You telling me it never entered your mind?”

“I…” I don’t have an answer to that. It actually hadn’t entered my mind.

Sam shrugs. “Maybe it’s different for elves.”

I laugh unintentionally. There’s an idea for a filk in that, I suspect. “Check out the ears,” I say, still trying to lighten the mood. “For all I know I get Ponn Farr every seven years and if I don’t get laid I get PMT for a whole year.”

“Ow, yeah.” Sam grins. “Okay yeah, that would be bad.”

“I mean at least you’ve got some idea what’s coming. I… Let’s face it we’re talking about a nonhuman biology here. I have no idea what my body’s going to do next.”

“Heh.”

“What?”

“You said ‘my body.’”

“So? It’s just…” I shrug and look away to hide my blush. I’m aware of her looking at me for a while.

Then she sighs, dropping it. “Yeah, maybe this isn’t normal. Maybe this is PMT. Jenny used to say it was actually a relief when her period started.” Jenny was one of Lee’s former girlfriends. She’d even tried role-playing for a couple of sessions. I liked her, but I think she thought I was weird. “Oh God.” Sam laughs incongruously at something.

“What?”

“Picture. Arwen in Sainsbury’s buying a packet of tampons.”

I chuckle. “Oh God, what do people use here?”

“I have no idea,” Sam admits. “More fucking bumwool or something, I don’t know. I mean, who’m I supposed to ask?”

“Ask Jalese,” I say, glad I can say something useful at least. “She already knows we’re odd.”

“Yeah? How odd?”

“I told her we’ve got amnesia. Haven’t said, you know, we’re from another world or anything. She knows it’s not the whole story but she’s okay with it. She’ll understand if you ask.”

Sam shudders. “Oh God. I just… I’m fucking dreading it, you know?”

“Half the adult population goes through it every month, Sam. How bad can it be?”

She gives me another look like I’ve said something really stupid again. Maybe I did. At least Lee has had girlfriends. He’s actually going to know more about this sort of thing than me. Even if it’s just ‘from the outside’, like the bra thing.