The walk back to the shrine felt a lot shorter than the trip there, even considering all of the bags Sophie had to carry back with her. When the trees around the path grew sparse and opened back up into the land near the shrine, Sophie was surprised to find Elowen waiting anxiously at the very edge of the courtyard as if she hadn’t left her spot from earlier.

“You’re back!” the spirit cried out. She looked like she would have flung herself at Sophie if not for the invisible barrier or whatever it was preventing her from leaving.

“Yep,” Sophie replied. She didn’t stop to chat – instead, she made her way directly to the shrine’s entrance as Elowen hovered around her.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d return,” Elowen sniffled.

“Where else would I go?” Sophie grumbled. At least she had some sort of shelter here.

She opened the door to the shrine and sighed. It was just as dusty and decrepit as she remembered it. In fact, with the haze of her hangover gone, it somehow looked even worse than before. She hefted the bags back into the living quarters in the back, which only looked a smidge better, and set everything down on the floor.

“Someone’s coming over tomorrow to fix the window,” she told Elowen, deciding to ignore the spirit’s lack of faith in her. “We have to get this place cleaned up a bit.”

Elowen nodded eagerly, and then her face fell. “Oh, I do wish I could help. I lost the ability to manifest ages ago.”

Sophie sighed again. Of course the spirit wouldn’t be able to help. She hadn’t really expected it. But – “So you could have helped in the past? Like you could pick stuff up and touch things?”

Elowen nodded again. “Why, of course! When I have a stronger mana source, I am just as solid as you are.”

“Well, that would certainly be helpful.”

Sophie started pulling items out of the bags and setting them on the table. There were several things at the market that she didn’t get because she had no refrigerator, but they made her think that maybe some people do have some way to keep things cold. Until then, she stuck with basic items that she knew were shelf stable. Like root vegetables and a small bag of fresh rice. She didn’t even bother with something like flour. It’s not like she’d know what to do with it anyway.

“Hey, what should I tell people?” she asked, as she opened up the cabinets, frowning at the contents. And what was she going to do with all of this stuff? She tapped her foot, staring at the dusty, half disintegrated remains of the previous shrine priestess’s pantry.

She glanced over at Elowen when she realized the spirit hadn’t responded yet. The spirit appeared to be cautiously touching the items Sophie put on the table, but her hand kept going right through them. The sight made Sophie wince.

How frustrating would it be to lose the ability to touch anything? After you had had it for so long? It’s not like she owed Elowen anything, exactly, but she wanted to help the spirit.

“Hey,” she said again, a little softer this time, and Elowen finally glanced up at her, eyes wide. She immediately put her hand behind her back, as if she got caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. Sophie shook her head.

“What should I tell people?” she repeated. “Like, if they ask where I’m from. People in the town kept asking…”

Well, mostly one person kept asking – Acacia, the friendly baker – but Sophie was sure it would come up again.

Elowen blinked in confusion. “Can you not tell them what you told me?”

“That I came from a different reality? That I walked through a portal in front of the shrine and the –” Sophie waved her hand at Elowen. “The friendly neighborhood shrine spirit asked me to be her priestess?”

Elowen nodded sincerely, obviously not getting how ridiculous it at all sounded. “Sure,” the spirit said. “Although they probably won’t believe you.”

Sophie snorted. “That’s the problem,” she said. “I don’t want to sound like a total weirdo.”

She shook her head again, starting to pull items out of the cabinet, glancing at them. There were a few dishes that appeared finely crafted, some pots and pans that were definitely salvageable, but all of the food products would have to go.

“Hmmm,” Elowen agreed, but she seemed totally stumped. Possibly because she didn’t even really believe Sophie.

No… Telling the truth about where she came from didn’t seem like it would help anyway. Not unless she found someone skilled in trans-dimensional magic. But from what Elowen had already told her, that wasn’t really a thing here.

Although the portal had somehow transported her from her original world. Getting the portal working again seemed like the best first step. And for that, Sophie probably needed to actually try to do this whole shrine priestess thing.

Which probably meant she needed to come up with a more plausible backstory. She’d have to work on that.

She started pulling more things out of the cabinets and making a pile of dishes and cutlery that she’d have to figure out how to wash somehow. This whole no running water thing was going to get old really quickly.

After clearing out all of the items in a few of the cabinets, she looked over the pile of stuff that was accumulating on the floor and decided to move it all to the entrance of the shrine. She’d ask the person from the Crafter’s Guild what to do about it when she came tomorrow.

Then, she dusted out the cabinets as best as she could with some old rags as Elowen watched on with rapt fascination. Finally, she placed all of the items she bought haphazardly in a few of the cabinets. It felt weird just sticking potatoes and onions and the other stuff she bought directly on the bare shelves, but what else was she going to do with all of it?

She stepped back, surveying her handiwork. It would do for now. She paused, and in the moment that she did, panic crept up her throat.

But she pushed it back down. No, she really needed to make this space livable. If she was going to figure out how to get the shrine running again – how to get that damn portal working – she was going to have to live here for who knows how long. Panicking was not helpful.

Instead, she found a broom and spent several hours sweeping and wiping things down as Elowen floated around her. She continued making a pile of stuff that needed to be disposed of somehow, although she had no idea how. It was getting to be dusk when she stopped. She was hungry, and she really needed to figure out a light source.

Right. She forgot about the lamps.

“How do I get these things to turn on?” she finally asked Elowen, pointing to the strange lamps. “Do I need to go, like, pay our electric bill or something?”

Elowen blinked at her curiously, seeming to turn her words over and over, but eventually she just shook her head. “They use mana,” she said simply.

“Mana…” Sophie replied. She hadn’t gotten around to asking Elowen more about how all of this mana stuff actually worked. She supposed that might have been useful in between all of the cleaning. “Okay, so… mana. But how?”

“You can channel mana into anything made of mana stone,” Elowen explained. She waved a hand at one of the lamps. “Just – hmmm, well I suppose just try placing your hand on one.”

“I have to touch them?” There were a lot of lamps in the room. It would be such a pain if she had to touch each one to light them up any time she wanted a light source.

Elowen giggled at her reaction. “Well, right now you probably need to. Your levels are so low, and you desperately need to train.” She waved a hand at Sophie as if to indicate her general condition was bad, and Sophie scowled, annoyed again at the spirit’s teasing.

“Fine,” she grumbled. She walked over to the wall, carefully placing her hand on one of the strange stone lamps avoiding the cobwebs. The lamp felt gritty with dust under her palm. Okay, so maybe she didn’t clean everything in the shrine. She could probably spend an entire week cleaning. But even with a few cobwebs, the space was more livable than it had been.

“Now, focus your mana and direct it into the lamp,” Elowen explained, as if that meant absolutely anything to Sophie.

Sophie didn’t want to admit that she didn’t understand though. Especially not after Elowen’s teasing about how bad her skills were. Mana was just energy right? She remembered going to a tai chi class once in college and trying to feel the ball of energy in her hands. What had that been like?

She closed her eyes, trying to sense anything. It reminded her of meditation. The more she stood there, focusing on her breathing and the sensations in her body, she realized could feel something, maybe. A low thrumming just beneath her skin, running through her, circulating through her body like she imagined her blood did. Was it something new or something she had never noticed before?

She tried drawing on it, pushing it out through her fingertips into the cold stone under her hand. An Understanding washed over her, and to her shock, she felt warmth and opened her eyes.

The lamp was glowing – only a faint blue light – but it was glowing.

“Oh!” she said, taking a step back and losing contact with the lamp. It didn’t flicker out like she expected, instead it continued to glow. Elowen clapped her hands happily from behind her.

“It won’t go out?” Sophie asked, glancing back at the spirit.

The spirit shook her head happily. “Not for a while.”

Sophie turned back towards the stone lamp. She had really done that? Could she do it again? She felt like she somehow knew how to do it now, although the skill felt strange with its newness.

She walked over to the next lamp, touching it and trying the same process. It was much quicker this time now that Sophie knew what to expect. Giddy with her success, she visited each lamp that she could find along the wall of the room. The lamps lit up one at a time as she touched each of them and added mana to them. To her surprise, she couldn’t quite make it to the end of the wall before she started feeling drained.

She wobbled a bit, unsteady on her feet all of a sudden. “Woah, this really takes it out of you, huh?”

Elowen made a small displeased noise and frowned. “Only because your mana levels are so low,” she said, and she made it sound just as accusatory as it had earlier in the morning. “But I guess it can’t be helped,” she covered quickly. “You are from another world after all.”

Sophie sat down on the floor, feeling her head spin at all of the energy she managed to use up. She nodded, the entire world tilting with it. It felt an awful lot like her hangover had earlier today, and she didn’t like that at all. But on the other hand – “You finally admitted it,” she said, oddly pleased that Elowen was starting to believe her.

Elowen crossed her arms with a huff. “Well, there’s really no other explanation,” she said. “Your mana levels are like a child’s.”

Sophie waved a hand at her. “Let’s not talk about that,” she said and then she groaned. “I think – I think I’m just going to lay down for a bit.”

And that was how Sophie ended up sleeping on the still-dusty floor of the shrine for the second night in a row.

***

Sophie groaned as she sat up, glancing around the unfortunately familiar room. It was morning, now, and she was still in the front of the shrine with the broken window and the unpleasant sound of birds trilling loudly right outside. The mana stone lamps she had lit last night were still glowing faintly, but it was much less noticeable in the daylight streaming in through the shrine’s windows.

Elowen hovered next to her, just as she had the previous morning, but at least Sophie felt a lot more refreshed than she had yesterday. In fact, she felt positively energetic today. Albeit extremely hungry. And she really needed a shower.

“You leveled up!” Elowen said, excited.

Sophie blinked at the spirit, her brain still coming online. “I – what? Leveled up?”

Elowen nodded. “Your levels increased overnight!” she explained happily. “You’re a Level 2 now.”

Sophie frowned. “A Level 2? What does that mean? How can you tell? I didn’t get a pop-up screen or a stat boost or anything.”

Elowen tilted her head at Sophie in confusion. “I can sense your mana, silly,” she said. “All shrine spirits can, and a lot of higher level classes can, too. As a shrine priestess, you should also be able to sense mana levels soon, although maybe not until you’re a Level 5. But anyways, you can test your mana levels yourself at the Level Stone in the courtyard, if you’d like.”

Sophie didn’t remember hearing about the Level Stone before, but she shook her head. “Tea first, then talking,” she said. She could not deal with a chatty shrine spirit first thing in the morning. “Do you even sleep?” she grumbled as she started to make her way into the back part of the shrine.

Elowen floated behind her. “Why would I need to do that?” she asked, and that was answer enough for Sophie.

Why, indeed.

Sophie went through the arduous process of drawing water for herself for the day from the well. One of those strange dragon-looking creatures blinked curiously at her from the trees, and she studiously ignored it. Nope, not dealing with that right now either. It didn’t seem aggressive, at least, and she’d have plenty of time to ask Elowen about the flora and fauna of this place. If the shrine spirit would even know, of course.

When Sophie got back inside, she heated the water on top of the stone oven in a large, heavy pot, and before it got too hot, she used some of it to fill a metal basin to wash her face and her hair. At least she had thought ahead enough to buy a bar of soap yesterday at the market. She hadn’t thought to check out the public baths though, but she’d have to do that soon. Maybe when she got a change of clothes…

After washing up as best as she could and making a cup of hot tea, she felt a lot better. She ate the remaining scone, and then she cut off two slices of the bread and slathered them with room temperature butter. She couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to toast the bread, but it was delicious regardless.

She tried not to think about her favorite bakery on the first floor of the office building she usually worked in. She was pretty sure it was Sunday now back in her old life, and therefore she would not have walked all the way to that particular bakery during the weekend anyways. She might have had some leftovers or a bowl of cereal, and really Acacia’s fresh-baked bread was probably better than either of those.

She also tried not to think about all of the questions that would arise when she invariably did not show up at work on Monday.

She frowned into her tea. It was only the second day – she doubted she’d be able to make any useful progress on getting the portal working any time soon if she passed out after turning on a few lamps. How would she keep track of time here, anyways? Did it matter?

She finished off her bread and stood up, Elowen watching her curiously.

“Let’s see what else there is to clean around here.”

It was, after all, better than moping.