Where the Wind Goes

Chapter 4 - Sandstorm

Oliver had never walked into a room and had his presence announced as, Oh, there's a human! It was weird to be called human- creepy, actually. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder if the person you were talking to was human too. And considering that the girl he found himself face to face with didn't exactly look human, he was feeling a little unnerved.

For a tense moment, she stared at him and he stared back, and his brain tried to make sense of that fact that her skin was a rosy shade of pink. It faded to an almost natural, peachy color around her face, where cream-colored spots splashed across her upturned nose like freckles. He figured that could all be faked with makeup. He was at ren faire, after all.

"Who are you?" The girl stepped close to get a better look at him. Her eyes were an unnatural shade somewhere between blue and purple that only color contacts could create.

Oliver didn't answer her question. He was too busy trying to digest the room around him. He felt like he'd wandered into an ancient clock shop, with weather-beaten floorboards that belonged in another century. And that was to say nothing of the other person in the room. Standing behind the pink girl was a distinctly apple-green woman with long, thin limbs and a narrow, angular face. Her whole appearance was reminiscent of a praying mantis, save for the pair of brass spectacles she wore on a beaded chain.

He tried to tie up all this confusing sensory information with a neat, little bow, and for whatever reason the words his mouth chose to spit out were, "Please tell me the Sign wasn't some weird ren faire promo all along."

The pink girl frowned. "Are they always this odd when they show up?"

The green woman crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

Oliver took off his glasses and ran his hand over his face. This is fake, he thought. These are actors. I'm on a horrible prank tv show that Penny signed me up for.

But somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that wasn't true. He'd felt the ground shift when he walked through the door. As impossible as it seemed, he was somewhere new.

He turned back to the door, and the pink girl cried out, "Wait!" She grabbed him by the wrist, and in a flash, his first visit to the Sign came back to him- the warm summer rain, the smell the incense, the voice- that awful voice- calling his name.

Then she let go and the memory faded. "You mentioned the Sign," she said. "You're from the human realm, so that must be: A world away from the one you know, follow the wind and see where it goes. Right?"

Something about hearing those words in this girl's voice just sounded so right. There was a cadence to her speech that made him feel both comfortable and uneasy at the same time.

"Do I know you?" he asked. "You seem familiar."

The girl's eyes lit up, and she grabbed him by the hands; he braced himself for another vision but nothing happened. "Have you seen Iris then?" she asked earnestly. "Or my mother? Did they send you?"

The only person who'd sent him here was Penny, and when he saw her again they were going to have a long chat.

"I don't know who you're talking about," he said. "I was just looking for my friend."

"Oh." The pink girl exchanged a glance with the green woman and then let go of him. "I just thought because- never mind. When I wrote the Sign-"

For the second time that day, Oliver felt the ground shift beneath him. "You wrote it?"

"Yeah," she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

He let out a pent-up breath. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to meet you!"