With each step he took under the scorching sun as Vex continued his ceaseless commentary, Kellen worried more and more that this was indeed his reality.

And reality was thirsty. Aside from the milk in his cereal bowl, he hadn’t yet taken a drink from his water jug when he’d been… he still didn’t know what he’d been. Killed? Knocked in a coma? He wondered if even knew his family was gathering around his hospital bed while in his mind he wandered across an endless expanse of plains, searching for a sister that wasn’t really there or lost.

At least he had company, Kellen thought. But the more and more Vex talked, the more Kellen wondered if silent solitude might not be a preferable option. Especially since Vex still wasn’t saying anything that made sense.

“… and then, I was like — whoosh! — and I shot this attack out of my mouth, and —”

“I thought you told me you didn’t exist before I came to this world?” Kellen asked the little round fox bouncing along at his side. “If that’s the case, are you making this entire story up?”

“Okay, one, I didn’t exist as a physical being, I was a spirit made of mana and I had enough self-awareness to know I waited a very long time for you to show up,” Vex said in his high-pitched voice between bounces. “And two, this may have been a metaphorical story.”

Kellen squinted his eyes, wishing a hat had been transported to this alternate dimension with him. The sun — and the talking fox illusion named Vex — were working together to give him a serious migraine. “That’s not a metaphorical story, it’s a made up one. There’s a difference.”

But Vex had already started talking again.

“We’re going to grow stronger and stronger until we’re the strongest mana beast and beastcaller that ever existed. I’m going to learn all sorts of cool spells and forms and you’re going to build muscles and —”

Even if he was only a figment of his imagination, Kellen thought it was rude to let the little fox be led on by his illusions. He stopped, hands on his hips, but Vex carried on talking and bouncing for several more steps before he realized Kellen wasn’t at his side.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Vex shouted, not missing a bounce. “We can’t stop here!”

“I just — I think it’s time we had a talk,” Kellen said, sucking in a deep breath. He didn’t want to crush the little fox’s dreams, but his expected reality was so far out of line that it seemed even crueler to let him go on believing that Kellen was some sort of Beastslayer, or whatever Vex had called it.

“Sure thing,” Vex said, bounding back at once. He jumped up and down from the ground to the height of Kellen’s face, so close Kellen took a step back for fear the fox would hit him in the nose. “What are we talking about, Kellen?”

Kellen took another deep breath. “You seem like a friendly little fellow, but I’m afraid you’re just a figment of my imagination.” Kellen squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the admission to cease Vex’s existence. “There, I’m sorry but I had to say it.”

“No worries!” Vex didn’t sound remotely phased. “What else were you going to say?”

Kellen opened his eyes to find Vex still appearing and disappearing from his sight with every bounce. He struggled to find his next argument.

“Umm. And I don’t know how to do magic, so I can’t help you. In fact, you should probably know that magic isn’t real.”

Vex’s squeaky laughter ran across the plains like a children’s toy stuck on repeat. “Is magic what you call mana?” the fox asked. “Of course mana is real. There’s mana in every living thing! Without mana, I couldn’t do this!”

Vex made a loud popping sound like a helium balloon. An instant later, a slightly different version of the football-shaped fox hovered in front of Kellen, but this time it had no legs and two fur-covered wings. Kellen shouted in alarm and stumbled backward, falling on his butt.

“Relax, it’s still me!”

The now roughly volleyball-shaped bat-fox hovered over Kellen as if his presence would be a comfort. Kellen drew in a deep breath to slow his pounding heart and struggled to his feet. Pop! Vex morphed back into his old shape and started bouncing again. Kellen jumped but stayed on his feet this time.

“If this.” Vex morphed into the bat form. “Isn’t magic.” Back again. “Then what.” Bat. “Do.” Fox. “You.” Bat. “Call it?”

In between each bounce, the small creature shifted.

“Okay, okay, cut it out!” Kellen said, anxiety rising to new heights. “I admit it! You can do magic.”

“Mana,” Vex reminded him with one last bounce and a pop mid-air into the fox. “And you don’t ‘do’ mana. You draw it.”

“But you were just said ‘if this isn’t magic then’ —” Kellen cut himself off with an exasperated sigh. “Forget it. Maybe you can do magi — use mana, but that’s because you’re a figment of my imagination. I’m just a regular dude from Idaho.”

“You used to be a regular…what’s a dude?” Vex asked, losing focus mid sentence. “Where’s Idaho?”

“I thought you knew everything about me?” Kellen said. This was good, if he could catch his hallucination, it might help him wake up.

“I do!” Vex gave a particularly high, insistent bounce. “I just have no clue what any of it means. What’s a pizza? I can tell it’s important, but that’s all I’ve got.”

“That’s not important right now!”

Vex let out a startled yell and flipped over backward midair, catching himself by shifting into his fuzzy bat form just before he hit the ground.

For a long moment neither human nor Mana Beast spoke. Finally, Vex gave a small cough. “Are you okay? You don’t seem too good.”

Kellen drew in a deep breath to calm himself. “I don’t understand what’s happening. I have no idea what’s real, where my sister is or…”

He trailed off and Vex landed on his shoulder, shifting back into his fox form so he could perch on Kellen without falling off. “Hey, it’s okay, all of this is brand new to me, too. We’ll figure it out.”

Kellen reached across himself to pat Vex. His fingers sank into the fox’s thick creamy fur like a down pillow. A moment later, Vex started purring, which was somehow reassuring. Kellen lifted the Mana Beast off of his shoulder and held him in his arms. Calmer, he studied the never-ending sea of grass. If Allison really was out there, he needed to be better equipped to find her. His stomach rumbled in agreement, but he felt his parched throat even worse than the hunger. But without no heading or direction, Kellen knew they could wander around in circles until he died of dehydration. He wished for a mountain or a tree or even a big enough rock that would give him a better view.

“Vex,” Kellen said.

“Hmm?” The little fox cracked open an eye, and the purring ceased. It seemed he’d almost been lulled to sleep, sitting in Kellen’s arms in the heat of the day.

“Can you change back into that bat thing? I don’t know about you, but I need to find some water.”

Kellen didn’t add it out loud, but a tiny part of him hoped Vex might spot his sister from up in the air.

“Can do!” With another pop, Vex’s shifted and the furious beats of his tiny wings soon carried high into the air until he was only a tiny black dot against the blue sky and midday sun.

“What do you see?” Kellen shouted up to him through cupped hands.

“Grass! Lots and lots of grass.”

Kellen’s heart sank. Hallucination, comatose figment of his imagination or no, couldn’t there at least be —

“Wait!” Vex was so high up, Kellen could barley make out his high-pitched voice. “I see a stream. And some trees!”

“How far away is it?”

“Umm.” Kellen barely heard Vex’s reply, so he shouted for him to come back down. Once again, Vex popped back into his fox form and Kellen caught him in his arms.

“You’re sure it was a stream?”

Vex nodded — or the equivalent of a nod. His entire body bobbed up and down in Kellen’s grasp.

“Yep! Most definitely water.”

“Okay,” Kellen tried to quell his excitement, “how far away do you think it was?”

Once again, Vex went blank.

“How many miles?” Kellen prompted.

“Yeah… I have no idea what that is,” Vex said.

Trying to be patient, Kellen tried another approach. “How long do you think it would take us to walk there?”

Vex shrugged his football-shaped body. “I bet we could get there before dark?”

Farther than Kellen had thought, then. He tried to picture how high Vex had been in the air, hoping to calculate how far away the stream and trees were, but it was impossible to estimate with any sort of accuracy even if he knew that math he needed.

“So, like six hours?” he asked, forgetting himself.

“Yes!” Vex said immediately. When Kellen looked down at him in surprise, his excitement faded. “Okay… if I’m being honest I have no idea what an hours is, either.”

Kellen fought back a sigh. At least they had a direction: west. At least, it was west if the sun moved the same in this bizarre place as on Earth. In a world where animals talked and changed shape at a whim, Kellen wondered what else he needed to prepare for.

“Can we get there before dark?” Kellen asked. “We can make camp there and —”

“I’d say it’s about three miles?”

Kellen looked down at Vex, who was still sitting in his arms. “I thought you said you didn’t know what a mile was?”

Vex hopped out of Kellen’s arms, bouncing excitedly. “I didn’t! But I had this weird feeling in the back of my brain, like I should know what it is, you know? And it was driving me crazy! The longer I thought about, the worse it got until it just popped into my head! And pizza! Why didn’t you tell me about pizza? Do you think we can try it sometime? I’m a Mana Beast so I don’t need to eat or drink, but if it’s as good as you think it is, I have to have it!”

Kellen stared. Was Vex reading his mind? He focused all of his thoughts on ice cream — not just ice cream, but French Vanilla specifically — and said nothing, just staring at the fox as he rambled on about all the pizza toppings that he didn’t know but thought might sound tasty. Kellen maintained his focus until Vex finally noticed him and paused in his ramblings about pizza.

“Why are you staring at me like that? It’s weird.”

“I wasn’t,” Kellen said, embarrassed at how ridiculous he was acting. He changed the subject. “Come on. You might not need food or water, but I sure do.”

As they set off, he started counting his paces, determined to keep track of how far they went, just to see if Vex was right in his claim of three miles. For the first hundred yards, neither of them spoke. And then, out of nowhere, Vex made Kellen forget all about his steps with one question:

“Do you put ice cream on pizza? Is that called a French Vanilla?”

Kellen bit back a shout of alarm and tried to focus only on his next step.

But if Kellen thought the miles were going to pass by in peace, he was sorely mistaken. Soon, he’d forgotten all about Vex’s discovery of ice cream as the bouncing fox attempted to educate him in everything and anything he knew. Most of the lectures were about Mana Beasts and Beastcallers and how their connection allowed them to use mana for an endless list of magical tasks. Focused on his every growing thirst, Kellen nodded and gave an occasional encouraging mumble but ignored Vex for the most part. That was harder to do whenever Vex interrupted himself to ask about random Earth things like cars, phones, and “a Google.”

Kellen did his best to explain, but every answer he gave opened up another can of questions until he finally settled for the evergreen standby used by any adult fending off a hyper curious kid:

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Kellen repeated for the dozenth time. By his estimate, they’d gone about a mile and a half. He’d sent Vex up in the air to check on their heading and the fox claimed they were still going in the right direction. Kellen found himself tempted to ask the fox to remain up in the air, but somehow only half-hearing whatever Vex had to say was more frazzling than experiencing the entire monologue.

“How much older?” Vex asked. “See, Mana Beasts grow in stages. First, there’s the Ward form, which is what I’m in now. Then they advance to Companions, then Guardian. And don’t worry, as I grow stronger, you will too. From Guardian, you advance to the Chieftain form. That’s the highest one most Mana Beasts reach, but we can do better than that! Beyond Chieftain there’s —”

“Trees!” Kellen shouted in surprise as they crested the top of a long hillside, revealing a narrow valley below. A single stream wound its way around the base of the hills, guarded by uneven rows of old cottonwood trees promising shade and rest. From his vantage point, the little valley looked empty, but Kellen was too thirsty to be discouraged that Allison wasn’t waiting for him. He rushed down the hill, Vex shifting into his bat form to keep up the pace. Sensing Kellen’s relief and joy, the Mana Beast yipped with excitement.

Gaining speed as he descended the hillside, Kellen ran wild for the water, wind and grass whipping past him as his legs moved faster and faster. He was only a few feet from the stream bank when he spotted a person rushing out of the trees, heading straight for him.

His heart jumped into his throat, first in surprise and then in terror as a bear the size of a dump truck burst into view, charging toward them.