Untitled Novel, Day 17 - Words to Go: 18,727

Less than 20,000 words to go!

The best bet for finding Floyd was probably to keep an eye out for small movements in the grass. Then again, if there were any movements out there in the grass she was standing in, moving toward her legs at any rate of speed, Goldie's first thought would be to run away from it and find something she could climb to get out of its way. She was in a strange world with two suns and a white sky that hurt her eyes so bad she could barely look up. She had absolutely no idea what kind of creatures might be out there. Well. Kiffen. He was probably the kind of creature that was out there and the rest of his kind might not be so nice. She watched in a much bigger radius now that she'd had that thought. A serpent with arms and legs slithering through the grass did not sound like an appealing sight within her first five minutes here. Especially while she was separated from her companions. They hadn't told her much about the world. Basically all she knew of it were five generic facts.
One, it shouldn't exist.
Two, she was pulled from her world to this one.
Three, there were fairies here.
Four, there were other creatures here, including killer butterflies.
Five, it was possible there was someone else here that had come from her world to this one.
Oh, wait.
Six, there were two suns.
Twice as much radiation, twice as much skin cancer. Of course, the one thing she always knew but kept forgetting was that this was not the same world that she lived on and, therefore, things likely worked differently. The gravity was about the same. The sky was white. As she walked, she was beginning to notice a pattern. She looked at the trail she was leaving in the grass behind her. Instead of kicking up a breeze as she walked and causing the grass to blow forward as she past through it, the grass leaned back away from her, as if she was repelling them instead of compelling them with her movement. The grass to her front and sides was the same, all pushed out in a much larger area than she was stepping, as if she was standing in a bubble that she couldn't see. An invisible ball of energy surrounding her body. She didn't like it.
Now, that she'd noticed the strange effect she was having on the grass, she began to feel claustrophobic in possibly an entirely imagined tiny space. She could feel little sweat beads start to pop up on her forehead and it wasn't just because there were two suns. She wiped her forehead with her arm and continued as quickly as she could. When she got to the tree hiding herself from the possible Kiffen dot in the distance, she stopped and leaned her forehead against it. It didn't lean away. The bubble didn't seem to have any effect on it.
If the bubble affected the grass, but didn't have an effect on the tree, then maybe there was no bubble at all. Maybe this was another small difference between this world and Goldie's world.
She put her small arms around the large tree in an embrace and tried to pull in a slow calming breath, but realized she was hyperventilating. She tried to slow her heart and calm her nerves. It would really not be the best idea to pass out here in the middle of nowhere when she hadn't even made herself known to Kiffen. Maybe he was looking for her and Floyd. She hoped she wasn't lost. She was just walking toward that one black spot out in the distance because it seemed like the place she should go, but she'd been walking for ten, maybe fifteen minutes now, and that spot had not moved one bit from the place where she'd first seen it. Unless he was walking toward her, it seemed like there'd be some indication it was him. That he was alive.
She let go of the tree and sat down at the base of the tree. She pressed her hands to her face in a similar, but less-exaggerated "Scream" painting sort of way and blew a few puffs of air out in quick succession, just to try and calm herself.

"I'm not lost," she said aloud to the empty meadow.

She stood and dusted her bum off and then set out with more determination that she thought she could muster. She'd just get right out there and let him see her coming. Maybe he actually needed her help. She should be there for him.
She stomped through the grass, now, not caring who heard. They'd not told her that there were any dangers in this world. Maybe there weren't. Maybe it wasn't the type of place that her world was where, really, you could find danger around any corner you looked - abandoned wells, loose screws, sharp knives, nearly un-aimable hammers. Things were dangerous. She trudged on toward the dot in the distance. It had gotten big enough that she could kind of see a shape rather than a dot, now. In fact, now and then she caught an unmistakable glint of silver within the shape.
She went on and on and on, passing few landmarks. Just a few trees scattered about. There was nothing particularly forest-like except in the distance to the left of the black shape she was chasing. An orange stripe began to come into focus on the shape in the distance. And, now, after an hour of walking, she began to fear he was actually walking away from her.

"Kiffen!" she choked out in as loud a scream as she could muster. Emotions suddenly crashed down upon her. She grew tired of her hike and feared getting lost in a land that was not her own. How would she survive? Eat? Drink? How would she know which bugs were going to kill her and which ones weren't poisonous at all?

"Kiffen!" she screamed again.

She watched as the orange stripe disappeared and the silver armor shining as the suns bounced off of it, twice.
Then, she saw wings. Great black wings that spread out thrice an arms width from each side of his body and she watched as the creature's wings lifted him and dust puffed up from the dry ground. She watched him lifted very high in the sky, until one of the suns was in her eyes and she couldn't see him anymore through the glare. And, then, she saw him, closer now, gliding through the air scanning the ground for her... she hoped. Should she yell again? There was no way he hadn't heard her, it was all too perfectly timed, but somehow she felt at a disadvantage. She felt like a giant bird of prey was hunting her. She wanted to hide. How could he find me if I hid? Be a smart girl, there's no sense getting lost in a place know nothing about when you have two perfectly good friends who do know something about it! Goldie waved her hands in the air. He was close enough to see her now. Perhaps he has perfect eyesight and could see her the entire time, just like a bird of prey. He was getting closer to the ground now, coming right toward her. His chicken legs stuck out like a sore thumb. Plus, they stuck out from his body, like he was getting ready to grab something with them. He lost altitude until he was right on the level with Goldie's head and as he flew over her, she ducked.
She spun around on her knee to see where he'd gone.
He'd landed not far from her and with all his flight gear tucked away behind him, he didn't seem quite so menacing. Still large and dark and scary. But not menacing.

"Goldie!" snort, growl, "I'm so glad I find you. I've been looking for you for hours."

Hours?
"I've been walking toward you this whole time. I hadn't thought you were moving." She scratched her forehead. "I didn't think I'd been walking more than an hour."

Snort. "That's the problem with any esoteric door leading to our world. It'll throw you out into the middle of no where and also, just to mess things up a little more, separate your entire party and shoot them out somewhere entirely different." Snort, growl.

"Esoteric doors?"

"Secret doors between our world and yours. The room we were in was a halfway world between mine and yours. You had to go through two esoteric doors to find my world." They'd begun walking again, although Goldie wasn't sure where.

Kiffen's upper teeth were so long, the didn't stay inside of his mouth. They sparkled like diamonds when he spoke. He looked like a wyvern vampire dragon serpent. Goldie smiled. She kind of wished she looked like a lot of different creatures all at the same time. It'd be so fun. She wouldn't mind having the ears of a cat and maybe angel wings, so she could fly as well. Oh, cats, though. Cats. Floyd.

"What about Floyd? Have you seen him?"

Kiffen growl-sighed. Everything he did included a snort or a growl. It was like the fire inside his belly was always trying to get out causing an angry sort of racket when Kiffen wouldn't let it out, which was most the time, since he hadn't been just walking around setting fire to everything in his path. "Floyd could be twenty miles from here. We'll watch for him as we go."

"Where are we going?"

"We're on a fairy hunt, aren't we? I'm taking you to find a fairy. Otherwise, what are we doing here?"

"I don't know. I'd kind of forgotten about the fairy hunt already. I am probably trapped here until I figure out how to get back to my world anyway, huh?"

Kiffen nodded his gigantic head.

"Maybe the fairies can help me get home."

"What do you know about fairies, Kid?" asked Kiffen.

"I don't know. Not a lot." She'd read about them in stories. Tiny wings, little bodies, maybe they were born in flowers and they were magical. Tinkerbell caused children to be able to fly. Other fairies, other fairies. Well, there were dark fairies in Sleeping Beauty, she was pretty sure, but she didn't know whether that was a thing to be worried about a lot. Mostly fairies were described as fun and firey and mischievous. She hadn't actually met any as of yet, but she hoped so. That was why they had originally started on this hunt. It'd just kind of passed out of her mind right around the time she got stung by a stupid killer butterfly.

"There are two types of fairies here. They silf and the sprite. The magical ones are the sprites. They don't spend a lot of their time out in the open and they tend to cause trouble."

A beautiful dark blue hummingbird buzzed past them on its way to somewhere important probably. A pretty flower feast, probably! Goldie laughed as she watched it fly by.

"That," said Kiffen. "Was a sylph."

"That hummingbird?"

Kiffen nodded.

"You mean, I just saw a fairy and I didn't even know it?"

Kiffen nodded again.

"Are there fairies in my world?"

"I don't know. We'll have to ask Floyd when we find him."

As they walked, they called for Floyd. They were quite obviously in the middle of nowhere because they hadn't encountered a single creature other than that one single sylph. It was making its way somewhere, because for as long as Goldie watched it, she never saw it stop to take a break or anything. It didn't take long for it to leave her sight, though, it was so small and quick.
At sundown, when both suns set on opposite edges of the sky, Goldie and Kiffen found a place by a stream to settle in for the night and Kiffen went in search of something to eat.
As the suns dropped beyond the horizon, the entire sky began to erupt in a blazing show of lights, as if the clouds were dancing, celebrating the setting of the two suns. Instead of slowly changing and darkening like a sunset in Goldie's world, until the colors in the sky went dark, the sky went dark, but the colors stayed vibrant. Like, stars, only much more exciting.