"I! Love! You! Baaaaaby and ifitsquitealright, I something Baby, to fill my lonely nights, I hm-hm-hmmhm-hmmm....."

Mari half sang, half hummed as she whisked the sugar and eggs together. It was a beautiful Sunday morning; she had woken up late, it was cool and sunny outside, and now she was whipping up some butterscotch slice for breakfast. She would probably get hungry halfway through and end up eating cereal while the slice was still in the oven, but what the heck. It was Sunday.

Sunday meant doing whatever she wanted, when she wanted. To Mari, Sunday was her one day where she didn't have to think about work or reports or deadlines or that blasted bug that she still couldn't find in her discrete-event simulation code.

Not to be mistaken; Mari loved her job at the R&D department. It was great fun - lots of maths, lots of programming....lots of banging your head against the wall. But some days she just wanted to bake and sing and dance around the kitchen in her pyjamas without a care in the world - like she was doing now.

Except this time the world started to dance around her. Her vision swam; the colours leaked into each other like a horror picture story - her frame of reference started to twist and she wasn't sure which way was up. At some point her feet were no longer touching the ground and Mari felt her entire body being excruciatingly stretched apart like a brioche dough being pulled between a million hands. Every molecule in her screamed. Her vision was full of particulate supernovas and a weird, alien pressure was sucking her entire being. The last thing Mari thought before she blacked out from the pain was how she was glad she didn't have epilepsy because this was the craziest light show she had ever seen...

... and then everything disappeared.

*****

Her head was still woozy when Mari came to.

"Uuurghh..." she groaned.

A face appeared, warbling strange sounds she didn't understand. Mari tried to ask what happened, but all that came out was:

"Whahka-hapftahkhk...hflkk?"

Her mouth was waaay too dry. The world was still spinning in a terribly nauseating way, and Mari decided she just didn't want to deal with all this right now.

So she closed her eyes and played dead.

It was a legit strategy! Backed up by thousands of years of ethology....

The person next to her eventually shut up and went away. Mari focused on breathing in and out, calming down her body until it felt real and solid again. Her muscles relaxed; she started to feel sleepy.

The person came back. Mari heard them crouch down next to her and fiddle with something, when suddenly a pungent chemical smell punched her nostrils like 10-ton truck. She sat up with a gasp, eyes watering.

The person put the nasty smelling stuff away and watched as Mari recovered from her intense wake-up procedure. As she sat there gadping for breath, Mari noticed a few facts:

1. The person was a he,

2. She didn't know him,

3. He didn't look like a doctor,

4. And this definitely wasn't the hospital.

"Where and when am I?"

She asked the guy.

He responded in a language she couldn't understand, looking equally confused.

Okay, thought Mari, whatever is going on, we're not in normal-land anymore. She needed to be careful in this strange, bizarre situation.

First thing she did was scan her surroundings. She was sitting on the floor of what looked like a small bedroom - complete with unmade bed, messy desk, bedecked bookshelf, a large window and a plain wooden door. Mari noted that she was sitting in the middle of a circle carved into the floor, with strange patterns that practically screamed magic ritual.

Uh-oh.

She quickly looked at herself.

No ropes. Good.

No stab wounds, no blood. Very good.

Clothes still on. Excellent.

The next thing she focused on was the other human in the room. He was young, maybe slightly younger than her, with lanky arms and foreign, robe-like clothes. His long, messy grey-brown hair framed a thin face that was a weird mix of Central Asian and Mediterranean, with pasty white skin and dark bags under his eyes-

"Your eyes are purple."

He blinked at her, not understanding what she said. Mari looked at him, at the weird robes he was wearing, at the creepy magic-circle-thingy, and decided it was high time she got out of there.

She stood up. Her body still felt very heavy, but she started to move towards the door. The young man stood up too, apparently protesting in his language. Mari ignored him. She powered through to the edge of the magic circle, about to step over the line carved into the floor-

Bonk.

"Ow!"

Something hit her forehead and shoulder. Mari rubbed the hurting spot with one hand while looking to see what hit her. Seeing nothing, she approached the circle boundary again; slower this time. Her hand reached out. And there, in the area above the carved line, where air should have been, there was smooth, invisible resistance.

"No way..."

Mari breathed disbelievingly. Her hand moved faster now, exploring the superimposed barrier, trying to find its limits. Up, down, left, right, all the way around the magic circle, taller than she could reach; the invisible force field trapped her inside the carved line.

Mari stared at the air, then at the line.

"No...flipping...way..."

The young man was quiet now, looking slightly guilty. She looked at the him intensely, searching for the words.

"You....you have a real life force field!? That's so cool!"