Chapter Text
You are jade harley, 12 year old girl, destined hero of space, princess of prospitian royalty, terrible flute player, decent bassist, and very confused.
Minutes ago, you had still been jade harley. The only difference? You were jade harley – the girl who lived on an island in the pacific with her normal dog and definitley alive grandpa. The girl who knew what was going to happen and when, the girl who had her destiny carved into the stone of a great frog temple.
Now? You are still jade harley, that’s for sure. Cargo skirt, blue shirt, colourful reminders. Its all there, you are still you. Except for the island part.
Now? You have no idea where you are.
Its dark, theres tall branched shapes rising up all around you and the ground is damp with mist, its cold on your back where you lay on the grass, surrounded on all sides by leaves – damp and with the smell that probably means theyre decaying. They remind you of washed seaweed but with less salt and more wet. You feel like youre a piece of plastic or a shell washed up on some strange beach with the wrack and the sand.
Theres a glow in the distance and when you squint into the sky (you must have misplaced your glasses somewhere) the stars are different. It’s also freezing.
JADE: what the fuck?
Faintly in the distance you can hear what may be voices? Theyre muffled – screaming and laughing about something but you cant for the life of you tell what.
You should probably do something.
You do not.
Not for a good while. Instead, you lay on the unfamiliar grass surrounded by unfamiliar shapes and sounds and plants and stars and try not to panic.
(you’ve always been good at that)
On your island, there was never much in the way of large shrubbery, seabirds build their nests on the ground protected by bunches of hardy grasses that cut your hands when you try and grab on to them when you feel yourself slipping – or digging deep networks of burrows in an instinctive behaviour to hide from any predators that are not here anymore. You suppose killing all of the native wildlife and keeping their stuffed remains among aliens and plates of armour and pictures of faded out models doesn’t exactly do all that amount of good for the native biodiversity.
Here though? You can hear strange birdsong in the night instead of the calls of muttonbirds and the scraping call that tropicbirds make. You hear a loud rumbling overhead that you know to be a plane but it sounds far too big to be the ones that come by your island to drop off supplies and mail. You hear generators far off in the distance, and *moving* – changing in pitch as they travel. Doppler effect. You know this.
You cannot hear the waves.
You do not move.
⋅˚₊‧ ⚛ ‧₊˚ ⋅
When the sky lightens, that’s when you do. By now, theres a slight shiver in your teeth and your hands feel stiff. You’ve felt worse.
You sit up, back wet from laying on the grass too long and hair hanging behind you weirdly where its half damp half dry and all too tangled. You blink at the rising dawn and look around for your glasses, theyre sitting right next to where your head was formerly – you could probably have very easily grabbed them without even moving your arms too much. Oh well. you cant go back and change anything now.
Sitting up, you take stock.
This is definitely not your island.
Firstly - you sit half submerged in a pile of leaves, and you do mean a pile because elsewhere (aside from the odd one or two) all the fallen and dead leaves are arranged in piles dotted across the lawn. You make an estimation of how many of those have ended up in your hair. Its probably a pretty high number.
Theres no trees on the island.
This place looks like one of the houses you see in books – a large flat space with big buildings and bushy plants dividing the land. Theres weird looking statues covered in moss that climbs up their legs and a couple of plants cut and shaped to look like... a giant snake? Maybe? It reminds you of the giant game trophy your grandpa insisted on placing on top of the transportaliser in the foyer – except for the fact that it is obviously not.
The big house is only three floors high, maybe 4 if you include an attic? It probably has more stuff underneath it then, it in no way looks big enough for a house – not that youre an expert on those at least but come on! This one doesn’t even have a tower! Theres a path a couple of metres away from where you sit now, grass and moss slightly overgrowing the flattened stones, and condensation making them look slippery and cold.
The little house is dog sized. This is a good thing at least?
In the distance you can see hills covered in trees, leaves orange and yellow and falling, the trees around you are doing the same.
Deep inside you, theres the hope that, well. First of all that this all some kind of really weird dream, but you dream on prospit and this is certainly not prospit. No where near yellow enough and youre not flying and youre not in a yellow princess dress in a pink room in a tower.
You are here in a strange place in a damp brown skirt and a damp blue shirt with messy hair and colourful reminders.
Secondly, if you dig up the small childish optimism that you’ve burried deep underneath practicality and tired resignation, if you pull it out really carefully – you could almost pretend that you are still on an island. Somewhere. And that maybe the hills that surround you are the walls of the volcano and that the reason you cant hear or smell or feel the sea is that its just a really big volcano. Maybe.
But probably not.
Even if bec had teleported you to another island for some reason, not that that had ever happened before, he would be by your side and the stars would at least be familiar the sounds would be familiar and it wouldn’t feel so *wrong*.
So yea.
You are not on your island anymore.
You stand – fingers covered in reminders and little accidental burns from the cookaliser smooth down the creases in your skirt to the best of your ability, tidy the 3/4 sleeves of your shirt, and ruffle up your hair to be a bit more presentable. You don’t think it works.
You take the path up to the door and knock.