I’d just woken up... right?

  I was sure of it. It’s one of those universals of human experience, the return of consciousness after sleep, despite individual differences. I tend to wake up fairly quickly and cleanly, unlike my roommate, who takes a while and sets his arm early so he can hit snooze a couple of times while on the journey back. But either of us could tell you when we’ve woken up.

  What if you can’t possibly be awake, though?

  I was horizontal. That bit was normal. Horizontal on bare ground, on the other hand, less so. There was a rock digging into one hip, and my mouth was dry and fuzzy-feeling.

  I did a careful self-assessment before I moved, just in case I’d been injured, but nothing hurt, not so much as an aching muscle or a bruise. The dull pain that was increasingly present in my lower back wasn’t even there. When I opened my eyes, the light was bright but not uncomfortable, and I could see without difficulty. My hearing was fine: I could hear water burbling nearby, and wind in trees, and birds singing, although something sounded wrong about the songs. I’m not a birdwatcher or anything, but you get used to rhythms, and these ones didn’t sound familiar.

  I sat up and looked around, then down at myself.

  I was wearing my work clothes, right down to my safety jacket and boots, although my mini-kit of the bare first-aid essentials that I always wanted in reach was missing from my belt. No mask, either, and no tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in its rubbery holder dangling from a belt loop.

  Trees, rocks, water, birds, check.

  And they were definitely exactly those things.

  I counted five types of tree visible, and each individual instance of each type was identical, though rotated randomly.

  There were rocks of four sizes visible, and they were simirly identical, rotated on more axes than the trees. Some of them were in the middle of the absolutely-clear and impossibly-picturesque stream that wandered between the trees. There were water-pnts growing along the edges, in discreet separate identical clumps.

  Two brightly-coloured birds that I could see were the same other than one being all shades of red and white and the other one all shades of yellow and white. Both were singing the same song, and past them, I was sure that I was hearing the same song being repeated over and over from different directions. I counted four. There might have been five. There was a second song, more complex; I couldn’t see the source but it came from two directions.

  Did I hit my head? I must have hit my head. I checked my skull with both hands, but found no signs of a blow, not so much as a swelling or a trace of blood. I didn’t have a headache or dizziness or nausea, my vision and hearing were fine with no blurring or ringing or sensitivity, and when I said my full name out loud I had no sense of it being slurred. If I was a bit disoriented and confused, well, that was the whole problem, wasn’t it? I couldn’t check for things like pupil asymmetry or cognitive issues by myself, but as far as I could determine, I probably wasn’t suffering from a concussion.

  Either something was very wrong with my brain that I couldn’t assess, or it was something artificial, then. Drugs of some kind? Even though this felt very real and not at all dreamlike?

  Because there was absolutely no way that I could actually be sitting in a pce that looked like this.

  I got up, using the nearest tree for bance. The trunk felt like normal bark, at least, rough and corrugated, although when I took a closer look at it, there were no chips or irregurities, no bugs going about their business, nothing suggesting that it was a living thing that was in a world that it interacted with constantly. If I followed it vertically, it eventually started to repeat the bark pattern.

  Real trees do not grow like that.

  The water in the stream was cold and sparkled in the sunlight. There were a lot of possible risks to drinking water in the wild, and I really didn’t need any of them on my pte right now, but if everything I was seeing was somehow artificial-looking, was the water actually dangerous?

  On the other side of the stream was a bush, the top of it about level with my chest, and scattered through it fairly evenly were pinkish-red berries. Hoping they might be something familiar, I used one mid-sized rock as a stepping stone to get across the narrow stream and investigated.

  Nothing I knew, and I was just not going to eat berries of any kind that I couldn’t identify. I’d just have to deal with a dry mouth for the moment.

  I turned in a slow circle, hoping for some sign of civilization. Anything would be fine at this point.

  There was no underbrush to obscure the view, just those repetitive trees. In one direction, I thought I saw a rge shadow that might be a building. For ck of any better options, I started walking towards it.

  No underbrush to rustle, but also none to hide motion.

  I was less concerned by the mechanics of how the creature that was suddenly in front of me had gotten to that position than I was by what it was and how much danger I was in.

  It bared iron-orange incisors at me and hissed.

  It... looked like a rat? Sort of? Without an obvious tail?

  But it was the size of my sort-of-girlfriend’s cats, and it was... it was... that wasn’t fur. I would swear it was moss.

  When it charged at me, I ran for a tree. One of the standard models of trees had broad, wide-spreading branches that started about level with my chest. You’d better believe that I grabbed one and pulled myself up onto it in a hurry. Possibly I shrieked, but I wasn’t listening.

  What the hell was going on?

  The ratlike thing apparently couldn’t climb trees, because it just circled around the base of my perch, sniffing at the trunk and occasionally letting out another hiss.

  There was no way I was getting near that thing. One bout with rabies shots was enough to do me for a lifetime, thanks, and those teeth looked like they could inflict some damage. I really never got the tough-guy thing about charging headlong and for no good reason into a situation that had big question marks all over it—like whether that thing might also be venomous. Mammals rarely are but I couldn’t even be sure it was one, and not some kind of bizarre rat-shaped reptile or something.

  So... now what? It didn’t look any more inclined to leave than I was to come down into its reach.

  From the general direction of the shadow I’d been headed for, I caught a glimpse of motion, a human figure, strolling towards me. At least, under normal conditions I’d assume that it was human. Maybe humanoid would be better. I watched them optimistically. Maybe they’d know how to handle the rat-beast.

  When the figure was close enough, I swallowed my pride and raised my voice. “Uh... help?”

  The reply was a wave that looked somehow cheerful.

  It shouldn’t have made me feel bad that my rescuer was, very unmistakably, a woman. It really shouldn’t. I had female colleagues that I trusted absolutely at my side or my back, and I was reasonably sure that I didn’t treat girlfriends as any less my partners and equals than other genders.

  But it did.

  She had a wooden staff in one hand that was as tall as she was, the metal head oddly-shaped with a spike at the end and a sort of hook at one side, but she didn’t get close enough to the rat to use it; instead, she threw a small-sized rock at it. She didn’t even hit it, although I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she had meant to aim next to it instead. “Scat! Go away!”

  The rat-thing hissed at her, but a second rock, which again didn’t connect, convinced it to leave. It scurried off, out of sight almost instantly.

  My rescuer surveyed me thoughtfully, both hands around her staff, and then giggled. “You can come down now. It’s gone.”

  I was up high enough that it took me a couple of steps to get safely to her level. She just watched, her expression suggesting that I was the most entertaining thing she’d seen in some time.

  It was easier to face her at the same level than from above, though I automatically kept a bit of distance despite being outside. That low-cut blouse and the snugly-ced sort of sleeveless vest thing over it over it were, um, well... I’m not used to a view like that on women I’m not acquainted with, y’know? And what looked like a soft infinity scarf in green and very pale pink and very dark pink, looped twice but hanging loosely, didn’t really hide anything. Those hourgss curves weren’t out of human possibility for an extremely healthy and fit woman, not at all frail or delicate, who got spectacurly lucky in the genetic lottery, but they were teetering on the edge of it.

  I was actually a little surprised that she was nearly my height. Her hair, in a single long braid but with part of it loose and framing her face, was a rather pleasant rose-petal pink, and her skin was creamy-pale and fwless with no hint of makeup. Aside from that lethal blouse-and-bodice combination, she was wearing surprisingly practical-looking leggings that were tucked into sturdy low-heeled front-ced boots that ended just below her knees. Everything she was wearing was some shade of green, from the barely-there tint of her blouse to the dark green of her boots. On one hip a brown-and-green satchel of some sort of heavy woven fabric rested, supported by a wide patterned strap that crossed between her... er... across her chest.

  I don’t normally stammer over attractive women, but they don’t normally look like that.

  Or have cute little points on their ears, for that matter, with delicate gold rings along the edge of the cartige.

  “Um, thanks,” I said. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.”

  She smiled, the corners of her bright turquoise eyes crinkling. “About a single mossling? Did something happen to disorient you? Do you need help?”

  “Something like that, I guess. Could you remind me about... about mosslings?”

  “Never let one bite or scratch you, that’s how they pass on the moss infection and they feel a drive to do so, but most of the time they’re easily avoided or chased off as long as you stay alert. Going up the tree was not a good strategy. That was only a groundhog, but it could have been something able to climb or fly, and then it would have been harder to stay out of reach.”

  That hadn’t looked like, or acted like, any groundhog I’d ever seen, although maybe that matched the shape under the mossy covering.

  “They have a collective consciousness, so if there are other mosslings in the area, they know. Being in the tree would have allowed time for another to come that could reach you. When you see one, take care that it never gets into contact range and just chase it off. It will give up and go about its business. They’ll only risk themselves if the Queen tells them to, but she’s usually not paying attention unless she wants something or something catches her interest. Is any of this coming back to you?”

  I listened to every word in increasing disbelief, but with a sick feeling in my stomach. “What? Nothing... nothing like that can be real.”

  “Of course they can. They have been for generations, since the Moss Queen appeared. Everyone grows up learning all this. How could you possibly be otherwise coherent but forget that?” She looked me over measuringly, taking in everything from my bck combat boots to my bck tactical pants with the many—but never enough—pockets, the neon-and-bck reflective EMS jacket and the logo-embroidered navy shirt beneath. “Your clothes are strange. Where are you from?”

  “In retion to here? I haven’t the faintest idea. Does the name of a country called ‘Canada’ mean anything to you?”

  Hope died when she slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry, it does not.”

  To be fair, a colleague worked in Colorado in the United States for a while, and when seeing a nurse about required vaccinations, tried repeatedly to expin where Canada was. She was adamant that she had never heard of it and insisted on giving him the shots that they normally reserved for someone from a Third World country cking a standardized vaccination program, instead of that really big country just north of hers with universal socialized health care. But it seemed unlikely that ignorance of that degree could be common. We might get ignored a lot, but when presented with the name, it should at least register as a country, right? And Canada was on good terms with pretty much the rest of the English-speaking world.

  “We’re both speaking English,” I said desperately. “We can’t be that far from my home. You don’t even have an accent all that different from mine. North America? Europe? Australia? New Zeand? Any of those?”

  Again, she shook her head. “Those all sound unfamiliar to me. We’re in the Heavenmeet Grassnds. The Snowfell Highnds are in that direction,” she gestured, “and the Greenelk Forest in the opposite direction with the Gss Shallows on the far side past the Midnds. Those are the five provinces that make up, well, everything, I thought. More precisely, since we’re clearly not on open grassnd at the moment, we’re in Brightspring Wood, which is a region where the woods surrounding several small interlinked kes merge into each other. There are a number of settlements here in Brightspring, the closest is the vilge of Quailbrook. Do you know any of those?”

  “No. Those don’t even sound like real names. They sound like something from a computer game.”

  “A computer? Someone who adds and subtracts numbers?” She looked perplexed.

  “You don’t know what a... how about electricity?”

  “Of course I know that! Lightning, and static.”

  “Not for lights, or heat, or tools, or anything like that?”

  She stared at me, then burst out in peals of ughter. “Why under the sun would you use electricity for things like that when there are much better ways of doing them?”

  “Like what? Candles?”

  “Of course not.” She reached into the satchel at her side, fished around briefly, and produced a faceted stone the size of a rgish grape, in a silvery setting that supported it on a braided green cord. She tapped it with one of the neatly-trimmed rose-tinged nails of her other hand, and light sparked within it, gradually increasing until it was hard to look at and I averted my eyes.

  “How is it doing that?”

  “That’s what lumina stones do. They’re mined from under and around Mount Sunscar in the Snowfell Highnds, primarily. The best and brightest white ones, at least. Dimmer ones that come in unusual colours come from other mines. This is my best one.” She tapped it again and the light faded back down to nothing. “Fireflower pnts generate heat, a pot of them will warm a room of reasonable size as long as they’re cared for so they keep blooming. I can’t think what you mean by tools with electricity in them.”

  “I... I seriously don’t understand what’s happening, here. I don’t get how any of this can be real.” I heard the pintive note in my own voice, and winced. But with my mind spinning and unable to settle on anything except repeated divide-by-cucumber errors, paying attention to things like that was low on the priority list.

  Her amusement melted into something more like compassion. “I don’t know how you got here, but it’s very clear that your home must be very far away, somewhere I’ve never heard of and travelling is what I do. Come, let’s sit down, and maybe between us we can figure out what happened and how you can get home. I’m Serru.”

  “I’m Nathan.”

  “I can see berry bushes from here, and there’s water, so we can eat and drink while we talk.”

  “They’re safe?”

  “Of course they’re safe. That’s what red berries exist for. Do you not have berries in your home?”

  “We do, and some are delicious and healthy, but some are deadly to eat.”

  “Bck ones will make you fall into a very deep sleep and you won’t wake until they wear off. Yellow ones will make you excitable and impatient and the world will feel like it moves very slowly. Others will have other effects. But red ones are an excellent food. One can live quite safely on them indefinitely.”

  I considered asking about the water, but at this point, I was getting tired of impossible expnations being delivered with the calm patience one might use to a small confused child, and decided against it. I just followed Serru back towards the stream and along it a short distance. She paused several times to gather clumps of those pnts I’d seen and tuck them into her satchel. A moment ter she was showing me how to harvest red berries from one of a trio of bushes into a wide shallow soup bowl. The interior was silvery metal, the exterior some kind of gssy enamel in swirly spirals of green and white, and it weighed very little. Every berry was perfectly-formed and identical, and none were marred by damage, insects, or decay.

  Serru stripped a second bush much more quickly into a simir container, and filled a fsk that I thought might have been a striped green gourd with water from the stream.

  With food and drink, we sat down in a sunny spot on the grass to talk.