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Beau woke up like a hangover, fuzzy in all the bad ways but without the pleasant hum of alcohol to dull the shame. She blinked open her eyes, wincing as the sun hit them. It wasn’t as bad as it probably could have been, the sun was little low, pink-purple with dusk, but it still stung like a bitch. Her eyes started to water and she groaned as she wiped at them, slowly starting to sit up when suddenly there were hands on her shoulders. She instinctively went to attack but paused when she recognized the voice that spoke.
“Sit up slowly, now,” Caleb said, kneeling somewhere behind her. “I moved too quickly right away and threw up.”
“Caleb? What happened?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“We were… talking. You were talking to that red head man that creeps me out.”
Caleb sighed and she finally opened her eyes to see him crouched next to her, his hair a tangled mess (worse than usual, most mornings he would at least run his fingers through it or something) and his face pale like he was about to get sick. “That’s what I remember too. I don’t know what happened. Shiße ,” he cursed under his breath.
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only seen you so far.”
Beau grunted as she forced herself to stand, holding onto Caleb’s shoulder when she was hit by a wave of nausea. She started looking around and frowned. They were in a field of some kind with tall, pale grass that came up to their chests (well, Caleb’s chest, Beau’s collar bone). There were trees far in the distance, maybe twelve miles away in Caleb’s opinion and nothing but grass going the other way.
“Where are we?”
“I have a theory. And I hope I am incorrect. I believe we are in the feywild.”
“The what?”
“Feywild. It’s a plane, parallel to ours that-”
“Yeah, I know what the fucking feywild is, doofus, I worked in the biggest library in the fucking empire. It was an expression, I was shocked.” She brushed off her pants and too ka second to fix her bun which was laying lopsided and loose down by her ear. “Why the fucking hell are we in the goddamn feywild?”
“The last words I remember hearing before things went dark was… ‘Have fun’. I don’t remember the context, I don’t know if this is some kind of test, some kind of lesson, or just a big trick. There could be something out there watching us, hoping we succeed or there could be something laughing at us while we stumble around.”
“Why does there have to be anything watching us at all? That just makes the entire situation so much creepier.”
“Something sent us here. There must have been a reason.”
“The fey are tricky creatures, there is never a reason for what they do, at least not one that follows any semblance of logic. I’ve read about one fey who gave four people a love potion just to see what would happen and one of those people fell in love with an ass. Not a person who is an asshole, an actually donkey.”
“So, what do we do?”
She looked around and crossed her arms. “The best thing to do is send up a flare and stay put so that, if our friends are out there, they can find us. But I don’t want to do that, I want to know what the fuck happened and the only way to do that is to investigate.” She cried out in frustration and kicked the dirt angrily. “Goddamnit! This is bullshit!” She huffed and turned to look at him. “What do you want to do? Those are our options.”
“I agree with you. Staying put is probably for the best. But I don’t want to do that. Let’s see what we can find out.”
She grinned and moved over to stand behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders. “Stand still.”
“ Was machst du gerade ?” he asked, trying to look over his shoulder at her.
She pressed her hand on his cheek to turn his face to look forward. “Stand still, jackass.” With a huff she pressed down on his shoulders and used his body to lift herself in the air. She threw her legs around his neck from behind and sat on his shoulders. She cried out when he stumbled back but caught himself. “Don’t fall, fucker!”
“You are very heavy! Some warning would have been nice!”
“I did warn you, I told you to stand still.” She could tell he was shaking from the effort to hold her up, but managed to power through as she started looking around. The height definitely helped, she got a clearer picture of how far the trees were and she could also see some kind of lake in the distance where the grass fell away. “I see a lake. Less tall grass. It’ll be safer to head that way, more defensible, more visibility.”
“Do you see our friends?” he said, his voice strained.
“Umm…” She started looking closer, trying to spot any movement, when she finally caught some. In the direction of the lake she saw a dark head of fur poke out of the grass and then fall back out of view. A few seconds later, it popped back out again and then fell back down. “Not our friends,” she said quietly to him. “But we are not alone.”
She hopped off his shoulders and pointed in a direction that was towards the lake, but it was not a direct path and it sort of went around the figure in the grass. “Go that way. I’ll catch up.”
“I don’t think we should go off alone.”
“I’ll be close, don’t worry, if something goes wrong scream at the top of your lungs.”
“Do not worry, I would have done that anyway.”
“Go.” She crouched down under the top of the grass and started moving towards where she saw the creature while Caleb moved forward in a line about thirty degrees left of her path. She peeked out of the grass every now and then to see if she could spot the creature and, sure enough, every few seconds she caught it popping out of the grass and it was slowly following Caleb. It seemed like it was keeping its distance, but it was absolutely trailing behind her friend. She moved through the brush as quiet as possible, planning each step she took to make a least amount of noise she could. Finally she got to where she could see the creature through the grass and he seemed to be paying her no mind. She waited a moment, and then lept at him, grappling him to the ground as he squirmed in his arms.
“No!” he screamed, kicking his little satyr legs. “Not again! Let me go, I was only taking notes, leave me alone!”
Beau held him easily and stood to her full height to see Caleb looking back at her about forty feet in the distance. “I caught something!” she called, moving forward to meet him in the middle. “Check out our little stalker here.” She noticed he was clutching a book in his hands and snatched it from him, tossing it to Caleb. “Check that out. I want to know what he’s up to.” She wrapped one of her scarves around him to keep his arms pinned to his sides and then turned him around to look at her. “Alright. Who are you and why are you following us? Did you send us here? Do you know who did?”
“I wasn’t doing anything! Honest! Following you, puh, I wasn’t following per say, I was merely... observing! Let me go, vile woman!”
“Vile? Now that’s just rude. Caleb, what’s in there?”
Caleb’s face a bright red and he was covering his mouth as he flipped through the pages. “Um… well… he’s a bit of an artist.”
“What, he was sketching us? Like Jester?”
“These are eerily similar to Jester’s works, yes.” He cleared his throat and flipped the book around and she realized suddenly that he wasn’t red and covering his face because he was embarrassed, it was because he was trying not to laugh out loud.
Beau had no such reservations and when she saw the picture of an elf with a nose so high in the air that it circled up and around his head she cackled madly. “Holy shit! That’s brilliant! Flip to the next one.” The next one was just as good and showed a woman in a long, otherwise elegant dress that was made entirely of penises. Beau had to fight through laughter to speak and Caleb was biting his lip. It was harder to control his own laughter when he saw her laugh with such abandon. Her joy always got to him because she was just so free about it. “Alright,” she said through tears. “Flip to the end, what was he drawing of us?”
“Wait!” the satyr screamed, fighting against her hold once more. “There’s no need to-!”
Caleb flipped and they were both silent as they took in the drawing. It was Caleb’s body up to his shoulders, with both of his thumbs shoved up in his armpits. Where his body ended, Beau’s torso began. Her waist grew where Caleb’s neck should be and she had giant boobs that were throw over her shoulders like scarves. Her face was small and pinched and the bun on her head was replaced by a third boob. They both remained quiet for a few more seconds as they took it in and then simultaneously exploded in laughter. Even Caleb couldn’t keep it in, he threw his head back and nearly dropped the book and Beau was so focused on not tumbling over in her mirth that her grip on the satyr loosened and he wiggled away. Her started fighting against the scarf around him but didn’t run.
“Can I have that?” Beau asked, gasping for breath. “Please, I want to have that picture for the rest of my life.”
Caleb tried to speak but kept getting interrupted by his own snorts from trying to hold in the laughter. “We should- pfft! We should ask- haha- if he’s seen our friends. If he knows- shiße - where we are.” Their laughter pettered off and they both turned to look at him expectantly.
“Well, I’d be happy to send you on your way if you would release me and kindly give me back my book.”
Caleb started to close the book but Beau stopped him with a hand on his arm. She reached over and ripped the picture of them out, ignoring the squeak from the creature. Underneath their picture, she saw a picture that was clearly Jester with long horns that curled and curled like giant curly fries before ending down at her feet. “Wait. This girl, where did you see her?”
The satyr frowned, staring at the piece of paper she’d torn out before glancing at the book. “A few weeks ago, she came through with a little green girl who stole my glasses.”
“A few weeks? That can’t be right, we were just with them.”
“No, I know for certain, it was a few weeks ago. I haven’t seen a soul since.”
Beau untied him and held the drawing of her and Caleb in the air when the creature reached for it, turning to her friend. She easily ignored the Satyr as he jumped around her feet, trying to grab it from her. “This is worse than we thought. We’re not only not in the same place as our friends, we might not even be in a same time. If Jester and Nott came a through a few weeks ago, who knows when the others came by.”
Caleb nodded. “We should still head for that lake, you were right it’s more defensible. We can set up there and try to get our bearings.”
She nodded and shoved the satyr away with her foot. “Go away and don’t follow us anymore. We’re keeping this, because you were a dick.” She grabbed one of the books from Caleb’s holster much to his annoyance, and shoved the paper between two pages to keep if safe and uncrinkled.
Caleb snatched it back from her and put it back where she got it before they both continued onward, almost immediately forgetting the strange satyr and focusing on find their friends.