Aeva went from freefalling to being unconscious to… what the heck even was this? It was uncomfortably warm, and her vision was blurry. She could see light and shapes, but that was about it.

Well… she was alive… but, considering this was what she could see, she must have had some head trauma. She hoped Lukas was alright. Nothing she could do now but wait and listen.

Her hearing seemed to be a little fucked up too, sounds just a bit muffled, but she could hear well enough. There were people talking, but she didn’t recognize the language. It sounded like gibberish to her. It wasn’t some european language or whatever - she knew enough of them to tell what it was if that was the case.

No, this sounded completely alien to her. There was a woman whose voice was soft and high, and a man… no, two men. They sounded different. One was older and gruffer, and then the other sounded young. They were distinct but with a different language it was hard to pinpoint who was talking.

They sounded concerned.

Suddenly, she was lifted into the air and brought close to a man’s face. With someone that close, she could see fairly clearly, though for some odd reason the colors seemed dull. She didn’t recognize him… well… she didn’t even recognize his race.

He looked like a weird elf with tan skin and golden cat eyes that looked glittery. He had a tight ponytail of white hair tied back behind his head. He was looking at Aeva with a furrowed brow, and she tried to speak out in surprise, but all that came out was a soft “Ahhh” cooing sound.

Fuck.

Hah… this was a joke, right? She was hallucinating, right? This wasn’t… that wasn’t possible… None of this could be possible. She would wake up and this would all be a dream.

Aeva got brought to the woman’s chest and held there, close enough that she could see that the woman looked similar to the man. White hair, tan skin, weird eyes. Her face got shoved against the woman’s breast, and that absolutely embarrassing and strange event pretty much confirmed what was going on.

She was in another world… and she was a baby.

Double fuck.

Okay… okay, think Aeva, think. What normally happened in shows and games like this? God knows she had played a LOT of it.

She couldn’t control her limbs very well, and the same seemed to go for her voice. She didn’t know the language, so it’s not like that’d help even if she could.

The only way to correct this problem wasn’t too great either; sitting around, pushing herself to do a weird baby version of exercises, and observing for context. Language was never her strongest subject. Most of what she read wasn’t exactly what one would call high literature. She never had patience for all that “pride and prejudice” and “catcher in the rye” bullshit.

She needed something that demanded and kept attention. She was always that way. She had courage to spare and never hesitated to act, much to her brother’s chagrin, but that meant she wasn’t afraid to ask her English teacher why they were wasting time learning boring shit instead of practical skills, or ask her history teacher nearly daily how any of this would matter after graduation.

They said something about forgetting history makes one repeat it, and they weren’t pleased when she stole the wind from their sails by saying that didn’t count with propaganda.

Needless to say, the idea of paying attention to every little thing to learn a whole new language… Well, they did say the best way to learn the tongue is to submerge yourself wholly in the culture.

Desperation to have literally any idea what was going on would do that to you.

While this boredom problem may sound like no big deal to some, they didn’t understand. She wasn’t bad at school because she was dumb; she agitated the teachers, but had A’s for days. She just thought. All the time. It did not stop.

The idea of being stuck in a form and situation where she couldn’t even run off for her own entertainment was a terrifying idea.

She was imprisoned in a body too weak to respond in a place where she couldn’t stimulate her mind. This was the worst kind of nightmare. The kind that bled right into sleep paralysis. Something she was familiar with.

But this time there would be no metaphorical daybreak to wake her, and no Lukas to save her from herself.

The thought of Lukas brought to mind him lying there, limp. Alive, but who knew how long for? Definitely not for at least fifteen fucking years!

The best case scenario was that her brother was here, in this world. The same as her. But even then, who knew where he could be? The odds of bumping into him, when who knows what he would look like… And according to some of the stories this reminded her of, he might not even be what was traditionally considered a person!

What if he came back as some kind of monster?! This was real life, not some fantasy, adventurers didn’t become fucking besties with monsters, they KILLED THEM!

The panic mounted, the frustration about her own situation switching to a heart pounding fear for her brother, far worse than the time that led to this situation.

Unlike that time, there wasn’t shit to do about it. She could barely see. She could barely hear. She could barely move. And there wasn’t a thing she could do for her brother. She didn’t even cry, her panic too all-consuming for that emotion to even bubble up to the top.

In the back of her mind, she thought about how worrisome this would look to her new “parents”. They had a weirdo for a baby. If she could, she’d have a nervous laughter surrounding her.