Jesse's POV

"Oomph!" I landed onto something soft-ish as I hit the ground of the next world. Something... warm. And yellow.

"Please get off...!" said the person below me. I quickly realized that I was laying on top of poor Lukas, whose body is just so prone to being fallen on.

"Oh, I'm so—oof!" Before I could finish, someone else fell on top of me, sending a jolt of weight through my body and knocking the wind out of me.

"Oww... Jesse! You totally just screwed my landing!" Maya said on top of me.

"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't control where I land!"

"Could you please get off me?!" Lukas whisper-shouted from below.

"Yeah, get off him, Jesse," Maya said sardonically.

"I can't move until you move!" I said, "Hey, where's Ai—"

On cue, Aiden landed at the top of the stack, sending us toppling to the ground. The ground around us was cold, white, and fluffy. Snowflakes fluttered through the air. A gray puff came out of our mouths whenever we spoke and the tall trees around us were dotted in white.

"Oh, no! The snow is white! I'm triggered!" Maya said, laughing at her own joke.

"Maya..." an annoyed Aiden groaned. Lukas shuddered as he shook the white clumps out of his hair and spat the unwanted snow from his mouth.

"Okay, gang," I said, "Let's start looking around. I don't know how far it will be, but there has to be something we can—"

"There are some houses over there," Aiden said, pointing past the trees. A quaint village sat in a large meadow with small stone houses and a well in the center. A larger stone castle stood behind the houses.

"Okay, that looks promising," Lukas said, "Let's just hope this place is normal. No dead people walking around, no crazy murderers, no nightmares, no psycho girls who try to... uh... roam the broomstick with you..." His voice trailed off.

"WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!" Maya shouted.

"Just... forget that last part," he said, his face turning bright red, "Let's just... just go."

We walked past the opening in the trees and toward the village. The longer we were out there, the more I realized how cold I felt. I had nothing covering my arms, making it worse.

We made it to the village, which was almost entirely barren of any human life. There was one girl walking around carrying cloaks in multiple colors and going door to door handing them out. She had light skin and long, curly black hair with jagged bangs tapering from one side of her forehead to the other. A dusting of freckles covered her cheeks. Her clothes consisted of a simple gray dress that had crossed stitching at the top and a long, seafoam green cloak draped on her shoulders.

"Um, h-hello!" I said, forcing words through my chattering teeth. She jumped slightly and turned around. Seeing our group, her head tilted in confusion. She studied us for a moment, then a sly smile spread across her lips.

"Hi, there," she said sweetly, "Are you cold? Oh, I mean, obviously, you are, uh, um, here you go, I'm sorry." She gave each of us a cloak corresponding with a color that we were wearing.

"Oh, thank you so much," I said, truly grateful as I wrapped myself in its warmth.

"Yeah, no need to apologize," Aiden reassured, "You're okay."

"Yeah, haha, okay, okay," the girl laughed, embarrassed.

"Um, are you alright?" I asked, "You seem a bit... edgy."

"Oh? I'm sorry," she said, "Oops, I keep doing that, I'm sor—" She stopped herself mid-sentence, then shook her head as if to clear it, "Are you from around here?"

"Nope, we just arrived here," I said.

"Well, uh, if you don't mind me asking, from where did you come from?"

"Okay, this is gonna sound completely nuts," I laughed, "but we just came through a portal to get here."

She looked at me and nodded seriously.

"I thought so," she said, "Come with me, I can help you." She walked past us, leading back into the woods.

"Okay, then," Lukas said. Unsure of how she knew that we had come through a portal, we followed her anyway.

We walked a little while, then the girl looked back and said,

"By the way, I'm Magnolia. Sometimes people call me Mags, but that's just personal preference, ha."

"So, can I call you Mags? Or..." I asked.

"Oh, sure, if you want to..." she said.

"Cool, thanks."

"Haha, yeah, yeah. Cool. Cool..." she said.

"Cool-o-rama." Lukas chimed.

"Okay, so where are we going?" I asked.

"Uh, to see a few friends that know about this sort of thing," Mags said, "Let's keep going. Juniper shouldn't be too far now..."

Aiden's POV

"Okay, Aiden," Katcha said as she pressed her fist into her hand, "I know you and your friends trust this girl, but it's my job to be paranoid, and I am not receiving good vibes and rad times from her!"

"Relax, Katcha," I said quietly so only she could hear as I stifled a chuckle at the fact that she said "good vibes and rad times."

"She seems nice so far and she said she can help us," I continued, "If she's being truthful, great. If not, we can handle it. Besides, don't you get some sort of ghost-intuition-future-flash-thingy when something bad is about to happen?"

"Well, yeah, but that only happens when something really bad is about to happen, like something fatal. But, I didn't know about Cherry, and I wouldn't have figured it out had I not seen her hurting your friends."

"Yeah, but I think we're pretty much disparate for someone who might know how to navigate the portal hallway and get us home."

"Yep, you got me there," Katcha said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Just lighten up. We'll decide if she's trustworthy when we get to know her," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Fine."

"Juniper," Mags said as she stopped next to a tree and began to knock on it, "Juniper, are you there?"

"Are you sure you should trust her?" Katcha asked, "She's got psycho-freak-show written all over her."

"Just give her a chance."

"She's talking to a tree!!"

The trunk of the tree began to press outward, then morph into something that looked human. A girl then popped right out, sporting bright gold hair and green eyes that matched the dress she wore.

"Hey, Mags, would you please knock... it off?" she asked through giggles, "That sound echoes through the entire trunk!" She burst out laughing as Magnolia smiled and rolled her eyes.

"I've been working on my punning, what do you think?" Juniper asked.

"Uh, you might want to work on it," Magnolia said.

"So, who are they?" she asked, putting a hand on her hip. Studying us, she gasped.

"Wait a minute!" she said, her eyes lighting up, "They're from that one stor—"

"Shhh-shhh!" Magnolia hushed with a grin, "We're going to help them!"

"Right on!" Juniper saluted, "The name's Juniper! And... you look familiar, but I don't remember your names. You're from something, though, right?"

"I'm Jesse, and this is Lukas, Maya, Aiden, and Pet—" Jesse stopped herself and gulped, her face full of sorrow.

"Nice to meet cha!" Juniper said happily.

"Um," I said, raising my hand as if I were in school.

"Yes," Juniper said, looking at me.

"Okay, I would like to address the elephant in the room; you just morphed out of a tree..."

"Yep!" she said like that was not at all out of the ordinary. Magnolia nudged her.

"Oh, right. Yeah, see, I'm what you might call... oh, I don't know... TOTALLY AWESOME! I am part girl, part tree. One with the trees. A tree nymph! And, gosh, I've waited so long to be able to introduce myself like that!" she gushed, "Anyway, you'll probably get sick and die if we stand out in the snow for much longer, why don't you come on inside?"

"That would be great, but where is 'inside?'" Jesse asked.

"Alright, hold on, this might get disorienting for a sec," Juniper said. My vision blacked out for a moment, then I regained my bearings a moment later. I felt a bit shaken up like my body was still adjusting to the change.

"Oww, my organs!" Maya said, grabbing herself.

"Don't worry; you'll get used to it," said a male voice. All around me was a much cozier environment. It looked like a living room made of wood. There was a warm fireplace by the wall, but instead of a fire there were oil lamps. Near the back of the room was a bed, and in the middle, was a round carpet with soft looking chairs on it. In the room with us stood two others, a boy and a girl. The boy had short, light blonde hair that brushed over his forehead. He wore a gray tunic over a dark red shirt. The girl had straw colored hair that was tied into a half ponytail. It cascaded down her back in unruly waves and curls. Her dress was long and blue with a pink hem and pink lace around her corset.

"Hello," Jesse said to them. The girl smiled and waved back. The boy nodded.

"Okay, I know this might be a lot of new people to take in, but these are two of our friends, Darling and Sheldon," Mags introduced, "Darling, Shelly, this is Jesse and her friends."

"Yeah, don't worry too much about it," Sheldon said, "We're so different from each other, you'll get the hang of it soon."

"Huh," Jesse said, "Those are weird names."

"Well, except for Sheldon," Maya said, "That's an actual name."

"So, why are you bringing them in?" Darling asked.

"See what they're wearing?" Magnolia asked quietly.

"Then how would they have gotten—" Darling stopped, "Oh..."

"Um, would anyone care to tell us what's going on?" Jesse asked, "What about what we're wearing?"

"Um, yes, I was getting to that," Magnolia said, "So, you wouldn't happen to know of, like, a big room? And it's got a lot of books in it?"

"Mags, that's a library," Sheldon said.

"Oh, okay, can someone else explain, then?" she asked, a blush spreading onto her cheeks.

"Here, I'll do it," Sheldon said, stepping forward, "There's this dimension, okay, and it's like one big world with a bunch of other dimensions inside it."

"It had a lot of portals in it, right?" Jesse asked.

"Um... you could say that... look, we're sorry if we might be acting a bit secretive, we just can't decide if we can trust you yet."

"Oh, don't worry, most of us are good at keeping secrets," Jesse said, "Maya, you might want to cover your ears, though."

"No, it's not that," Darling said, "Telling people about this sort of thing could risk the safety of all the worlds."

"I'm sorry, I'm not following..." Jesse said.

"It's okay, it's confusing to us sometimes too," Sheldon said.

"But, you're clearly from another world," Darling said, "Your clothes look pretty futuristic."

"Wait," Lukas said, "So, what you're saying, there's another dimension with portals in it? Because I feel like we're not talking about the same thing here."

"Okay, okay," Darling said, "Describe what you're talking about."

"Well," Jesse began, "My friends and I were exploring an old temple that had an enchanted flint and steel in the basement. We used it to navigate through a portal, but that led us into a huge network of thousands of portals. We've been traveling through them for a super long time trying to find our way home, and one of the portals led us here."

"Alright," Sheldon said, putting his fist on his chin, "You've got a dimension of portals, and we have something kind of like that, but instead of portals it's stories, and instead of, what was it, enchanted flint and steel, we use magic quills. Now, the question is: is your dimension inside of ours, or is our dimension inside of yours?"

"Ah, my brain! It's working too hard!" Juniper said as she grabbed her forehead, "Too paradoxical!"

"Hold up," Lukas said, "What do mean by stories instead of portals?"

"Books that you can travel through. This is a story, you have a story, every world is a story," Sheldon explained.

"So... we're just gonna, like... go on and tell them?" Juniper asked.

"It's a bit late to be asking that now," Sheldon said, "Every world is a different work written by an author. Your portal network thing is probably a story."

"I still don't get it!" Maya said, "Stories?"

"We're all fictional characters made up by authors and our books exist in another dimension!" Juniper said, "There, understand?"

We all gave each other dubious glances, wondering who was crazier, us for hearing this or them for saying it?

"I know how it was when I first found out, and I understand if you're confused," Darling said, "But let us prove it to you, we can show you! There are different stories you can go to: fanfiction world, dead character world, non-fiction—"

"Hold on," I said, "dead character world, what's that?"

"Well, when a character dies in a story," Darling began, "they appear in dead character world. They stay solid for a little, but as time goes on and the storyline of a book develops, their body starts to fade away."

"And, can you get... 'characters' back from there?" Lukas asked.

"As long as it they're not decomposed and their revival won't mess up a storyline."

"And if you're brave enough to go," Juniper said as she moved her fingers around like spider legs.

"Did you lose someone? I just, I couldn't help but feel like there was a sad presence in the group," Magnolia said as she brushed some of her black bangs out of her green eyes.

"Yeah," Jesse said quietly, "her name was Petra. She was one of our closest friends."

"And..." Maya added, "Aiden had a mega crush on her."

"Shut. Up," I muttered, elbowing her in the ribs.

"Let me take you," Darling said, "It'll be the best of both worlds; you'll get your friend back, and you might be able to get home!"

"That's... wow!" Lukas said with laughter in his voice, "That's the best thing I've heard in a long time."

"Now, let's see," Darling said, "Where do we begin?"