The crickets, or what must be their equivalent in this new world, chirp excitedly, while other animals buzz, croak, and hoot, creating a symphony unheard of during the day, filling the incipient night air. A complete contrast to daytime, which despite the safety of light, brings chills down her back whenever she strains to listen to any animal life and fails to find much.

Here, it’s just them and the stars and the small wildlife and the moon. Absolutely beautiful, but Cora wishes for the sights to be transient, not fixed every night she is away from home.

Home. She clenches her hands at her sides. One step at a time. There’s no point in ruminating when other pressing matters demand her attention. Like keeping watch.

Liam is supposed to catch up on much-needed sleep while she stays vigilant, but even in the moon’s dim light, his restlessness is obvious, every few minutes switching from one side to another, or perhaps his back. It's a random game of chance, her only entertainment in this otherwise monotonous routine.

To pass the time, she guesses when he'll switch positions and which new position he will choose to adopt. This goes on for the better part of half an hour, which she checks by using her phone, although even with the heightened light that the moon provides her phone is still too bright, so she powers it off and hugs her knees close to her chest.

She watches him give yet another turn and sighs, breaking the silence that has settled between them. Liam doesn’t stir after. Cora watches him for a few more minutes, but he remains in his final position, on his back with his hands on his stomach and head laying on the more comfortable bulk of her backpack.

The box’s golden surface is a dull brown. Inside are two precious water bottles, perfectly crammed together. Her fingers twitch to feel the bite of plastic on her fingertips, the soft click of the cap giving way to pressure, and a cool stream of water running down her throat.

Cora glances at Liam. Glances back at the box. There is no way she can move her backpack to jostle one of the last bottles free, but the box is free for the taking. All she needs to do is open the lid and pull a bottle out. Drink it halfway rather than the entire thing.

In the end, though, they’re not hers. She doesn’t want to risk their survival because of her selfishness. Worse yet, she doesn’t want to invoke Liam’s wrath. She has no doubts that he will protect her, but people have their breaking points.

Liam’s arm moves slightly. His fingers curl, wrist rotating so that his hand lies on its side.

“You’re still awake, aren’t you?”

He groans. He makes no effort to get up, choosing to clasp his hands together and open his eyes.

“I was almost asleep when you asked me.”

She lowers her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think I’ll last long, anyways. Being in another world kind of shocks you awake, you know?”

Smiling, she uncrosses her legs and stretches them out. “No kidding. I’m surprised both of us even managed to get some sleep. I’d kill for a bed…”

“Don’t remind me. Now my back hurts more because you made me remember I’m sleeping on dirt.” He chuckles, and this elicits some restrained laughter on her part. “Now that we’re not running for our lives…” Cora’s mood dampens. “I never got to ask you–how did you end up here in the first place?”

Silence. Deathly still. Even the alien insects and animals have stopped their sounds, as if choosing to listen in on their conversation. The gravity of Liam’s question weighs on her shoulders uncomfortably. She glances at the box, just briefly, before making eye contact with him.

Cora might as well be honest with him, but she knows she dragged him into this world. She’s the one who opened Pandora’s box. Sure, she was the only person around when she got yanked into the portal, and she had been in a particularly abandoned area of town when she got teleported.

Yet Liam is here. How else can he be here? She doesn’t know how else he got ripped out of Earth and thrown here with her unless it was because of her opening the box.

She sighs. She can’t tell him the whole truth. That she’s the reason why he’s away from his life, his family, his friends, whatever pets he might have. She doesn’t want to risk him turning on her or worse, forever hating her for dragging him into this interdimensional mess.

Biting her lip, she places her hands on her thighs and smooths out the wrinkles of her jeans.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me how you got here, okay?”

Liam nods. “Deal.”

“Okay…” Cora stares at a patch of dirt and summons forth the memories of her final day on Earth.

Her heart races. Now or never. “It was like any other day. Just a regular Saturday. Sleep in. Do nothing. Etcetera etcetera. I wanted to get out and go for a walk, so my mom let me go as long as I came back before noon.”

This, at least, rings true. She exhales slowly enough that Liam doesn’t notice.

“I brought my backpack with me because I wanted to buy a jewelry box at Walmart. I bought the box and then I was walking home when it happened.” She closes her eyes and lets the blinding colors of her final moments on Earth wash over her. “One moment I was stepping on the sidewalk, the next…”

“You landed here.” Wherever here is. Cora is eternally grateful for Liam finishing her sentence. It’s a lie so convincing even she believes that is the truth. She can almost imagine rehearsing the motions, each frame sliding into each other with crystal-clear precision, a kaleidoscope of experiences that culminate in her impossible feat of traveling between worlds.

“Yeah. It was like waking up from a bad dream.”

Liam bows his head. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“Don’t be. It was–” Her fault? The universe’s fault? “–Just something completely random.”

“Did you feel anything before you got teleported? Anything strange?”

There is no harm in telling him. “It felt like these tentacles–tendrils–grabbed me by the arms, chest, and waist, and I suddenly got yanked off my feet. But before that…” She opens her eyes and looks at the moon. Its pale face with the reflective circles around the southern crater drags her into its visage.

In it, she sees Earth’s Moon. She sees unexplored potential, so sweet and attractive and yet so dangerous and tiresome. Her feet hurt. Her muscles hurt. Her hands hurt, her shoulders hurt, her everything hurts.

And they will continue the same routine for endless days to come. When they set up camp, they’ll still have to work day in, day out to secure their water, then their shelter and finally their food.

All uncertain variables. All depressingly distant concepts, as nothing around them looks usable. The river itself is an educated guess based on her memory of a science textbook and the damp ground. This world doesn’t have to follow the rules back on Earth. The new rules could be so convoluted that neither Liam nor her will ever be able to decipher the secrets of surviving in this world.

Cora starts tearing up before finishing her response to Liam. Stupid. She bites her tongue and directs every ounce of willpower containing her regret behind a neutral face.

“Before that, there was this huge explosion of light. I don’t remember anything in between. I wish I could, but I only remember getting dragged into the portal and then waking up. I don’t know, something like that.”

Cora rubs her temples. The strain of recalling what happened brought a headache that refuses to go away. Her eyes fall back down to the ground, staring blankly at nothing but dirt.

“Hey, are you okay? Do you need me to take over the watch?”

“No, it’s fine. You’ve done enough already. I want to do something for once.”

He furrows his eyebrows. “You’ve done plenty.”

“That’s not true at all. We,” she gestures wildly around them, “are only here because of you. I keep getting into trouble and you keep having to pull me out. I will always be grateful for what you’ve done for me, but I don’t want to feel like dead weight. I want to do something.”

Liam sighs. “We already talked about this. You telling me that there would be a river here saved our lives. That, in my eyes at least, is more than enough compensation for whatever I do for you. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s true.” She grabs a handful of dirt and crumbles it under her fingers. Streaks of moisture cling to her palm as she lets the particles slip out of her hand. “But I still want to do something. I don’t want to be some princess. I don’t want you to work endlessly. So uh…” Her face flushes when she realizes that none of what she said was necessary. All she needed to say was no and he would’ve accepted it.

At least the crippling guilt got lifted off her shoulders. She exhales and purses her lips, hoping that Liam is kind enough to leave what she said alone.

“Heh. Thank you for thinking about me.” He scratches the back of his head. “I appreciate it.”

She lets a ghost of a smile flicker across her face. “Whatever happens, we’re in this together.”

He shakes his head. “Now you’re being melodramatic.”

She stifles a laugh. “You said it first.”

“Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn’t. Either way, between the two of us, you’d be the better actor.”

Some of her pent-up desperation dissipates, trailing down her limbs and erasing some of the fatigue that has worn her down since she took her first steps after being teleported. Liam could’ve been one of her close friends, if only they’d met before.

If only. She has no doubts about it. He fits in so perfectly with the few other friends she has. He reminds her of a mix between Jenny and Ben. Funny. Resilient. Courageous. More than she thinks about herself. He's the perfect fit to this world, and she is the sand stuck between gears, the rusted component of an unimaginably greater machine.

Which reminds her. She needs to ask him about his story. His origins.

She desperately wants to turn a blind eye and leave the night on a positive note before he goes back to sleep, but the question has burned at the back of her mind since he first appeared like magic and took down the boar-creature easily.

How he arrived here. Why he came with a knife. Why he came with an entire pack of bottled water. Or his blanket. This night is special, as there is nothing keeping them busy. Normalcy. That's what she misses about home. This is the first normal time they've earned for themselves. She dares herself to stretch the limits of the new boundaries set between them.

“I wonder if you can beat my melodrama by answering this question: how did you get here?”

She fears sudden silence between them again, like when he asked her how she arrived in this world. For several moments, that appears to be the case. She’s left hanging without an answer, and she repeats the question in her head and mentally slaps herself for being so sudden with her questioning.

Instead, he rolls over on his side to fully face her. “Portal.” The irritating way he says it with a casual expression makes her want to stand up and swat him on the shoulder. He chuckles. “Not the answer you were looking for, I suspect.”

“Not at all, smart-ass." Instantly, she clasps her hands over her mouth. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it–"

He laughs. A deep, rumbling laughter that shakes his frame and sends him gasping for air. Cora is stuck between further apologizing and letting him finish laughing. Her ears burn as she waits for him to finish, biting her lip.

"I didn't think you had it in you."

“Had what?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“Tell me.”

He threads his fingers together. “Sass.”

She pretends to gasp. “Excuse me? What did you think I had, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The type of girl who carries a backpack full of school junk and never misses class. You know, a nerd.”

Cora huffs. “That’s it, I’m done talking with you.” She crosses her arms and turns away from Liam. “Go back to sleep and I’ll keep look-out. I don’t want to hear you anymore.”

“You know, I was sitting at the table when it happened.”

She doesn’t stir. Doesn’t make any indication that she is listening, but he continues anyways, whether to draw her back into their silly and dumb conversation or just release weight off his shoulders the way she had.

Either way, she’s listening, letting herself go cross-eyed and visualize the events from his perspective.

“I’ve never been a believer in the supernatural. To me, it’s always been our physical world and nothing else. Imagine my surprise when I found it.” Liam exhales. “It was cold. I wasn’t burning anything to keep me warm, and I didn’t have a heater. All I had was this blanket when the air started distorting in the bathroom. I had to go, and…”

“You landed here.” She hopes her mimicking irritates him the way his taunts annoyed her.

“Now you’re copying me just to annoy me, aren’t you? I take back what I said earlier. I shouldn’t have acted that way.”

“It’s fine. It beats sitting out here being bored. Keep telling your story. It’s interesting.”

“It’s not a story if we’re still living through it.”

She sucks in a deep breath and holds it. “Keep going, then.”

“The air was warped. Warping, the details are kind of hazy. I didn’t have to turn on the lights because the air gave off its own colors. Red, green, blue, gold filaments being woven into and out of existence. Does that make any sense to you?”

She gives the slightest nod. “Yeah, I remember that too.”

“Obviously I had no idea what the fuck was going on. I didn’t have my phone on me so I went to fetch my knife. I thought–I had this shitty idea–that I could slice through it using my knife. So back in the bathroom I did that.”

Finally, she turns to face him. He’s on his back, face upwards where he has a view of the star-speckled night. “And then you came here.”

“Yes. Without any warning. I felt the same things you did, these tendrils pulling me into the air and then appearing in the middle of nowhere. I thought I must’ve slipped, hit my head on the toilet, and hallucinated everything from severe brain damage, until I got attacked by those rats. Whatever they were.”

The limp bodies strewn about the ground. There wasn’t any way they would’ve ended up there naturally. “You-you killed all of those things?”

“I had to. It was a good thing I was still holding onto the knife. I got teleported into a new dimension and I was still holding onto the knife.” His voice turns lighter at the end. She frowns as he grins. “I can’t think about whether I was the luckiest or unluckiest person ever when that happened. Without that knife…”

“Don't talk about it. So, you killed them all and nothing happened after. Until you saw me.”

“Yes, after some time. I couldn’t move all the water bottles far, you know. It was more luck than anything. Sure, the packaging was there and I could lift all of them, but after the rats I couldn’t risk being exposed like that again.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Wait, why did you have water bottles teleported with you in the first place?”

One question after another, he satiates her curiosities without him ever knowing why she wants to know so badly. She wants more information. She suspects that he hides something behind his confident mask, but his experience matches hers. The shimmering air. The jumping threads of color. Things she hadn’t mentioned before.

“My pipes froze a week before and I didn’t have enough money to fix them. I had that water for shaving, brushing my hair, and brushing my teeth.” His hand rubs his jaw, where stubble has planted its seeds and grows thick enough to discern from his skin. “Why my toothbrush or sink or the entire damn house didn’t come with me I don’t know, and I don’t have time to care.”

“What? Frozen pipes?”

“It’s winter. It was winter.” He closes his eyes, then opens them again. “Accidents happen and I didn’t prevent them from freezing properly.”

“Where do you live?” And he’s talking like he owns his own house. He looks her age. “And how old are you, exactly?”

“Seventeen. How old are you?”

“Sixteen. My birthday’s in April. I can’t even imagine living on my own.”

“Oh, it wasn’t like that. I moved out a few months before the portal accident and crashed with some friends. Not the best choice, don’t remind me about it.” Liam turns his head to see her. “You’re telling me you’ve never had your pipes freeze?” Cora shakes her head. He returns back to his original position, eyes going vacant. “I thought everybody did. I live–lived–in Oregon.”

Oregon? Her mouth gapes open. “I live in Florida.”

“Well. That makes things more interesting, doesn’t it?”

Impossible. When she opened that box, the light had burst out of it and then she was dragged into the portal, which was inside the box. Yet he’s here through some way or another, so either he’s lying to her or he really did get teleported from Oregon.

Which means… “Do you think–”

“That other people got teleported, too? Yes.”

Cora’s heart lurches. The thought about having trapped Liam in this world torments her occasionally. But other people–other people apart from him, maybe from other states, maybe from other countries altogether–getting teleported as well steals her breath away.

She doubles over, trying to hold herself together. Trying to stay strong despite the monumental strain of holding back her panic. Liam sits up, blinking and rubbing his eyes. “If they’re out there, they’re probably safe. We made it through. That means they’ll probably make it through, too.”

“It’s sick. They never asked for it.”

“We never asked for it, either.” He raises a hand to his mouth and stifles a yawn. “But life happens, and sometimes, you have to push through all the shit to get to the other side. Sorry. That’s the only analogy I could think of.”

“I understand. I hope nobody else came with us.” Oregon. Florida. How many people did she drag into this mess, then?

“I hope so, too.” A yawn overpowers him and his body goes still. “Hey. I think I can sleep now. Do you think you can keep watch? I’d really appreciate it.”

“No problem.” He lowers himself onto his back and closes his eyes. They don’t open afterwards. When no more words are exchanged between them, she dares herself to keep the conversation open just a little longer.

“Tomorrow, we’ll find the river.” Her stomach grumbles. She’d forgotten about her hunger until now, because the water she consumes fills her stomach rather than leaving it empty altogether. “And then, we’ll find food. I swear on it.”

“I could eat one of those trees for all I care.”

She smiles. “Just go to sleep.”

He opens one eye and closes it again. The slightest trace of a dimple forms on his cheek when his lips turn slightly upward. “Good night.”