Leau couldn’t believe that she’d followed Felsen up here. It was true that there was nothing she liked better than water and rocks, but this was more than a little crazy. The water was crashing over the rock, and he wanted her to walk on top of it all? What kind of crazy person had she let lead her here? There was every possibility that they could get washed off. That was all well and good, but you never knew what could happen. What if they got swept off the rock and into some other world? Who knew what kind of crazy things would happen to their lives while they were away. Unless they ended up in a world that ran on a different time from theirs, then it wouldn’t be as bad because they would only be gone for a bit. That could be fun – traveling to different world. What if it was all underwater? That might be a bit difficult to manage, but the great thing about traveling to other worlds was that if they were significantly different from your own something in the traveling process made it so that you could survive. That’s how it always worked in the stories she’d read.
“I wonder what would happen if a wave washed us off… What would we find under the rocks?”
“I dunno. We’d probably get bashed into them and drown. The waves aren’t that big though, so there’s no need to worry about it.”

That was Felsen – practically pessimistic. As they reached the top of the rock and looked over the edge, Leau was beginning to hope (for one of the first times in her life) that nothing fantastic would happen. She’d forgotten that Felsen had never really read fantasy books, and while he’d watched some anime and science fiction, his favorites were always the rational ones and not so much the fantastic. He would have no idea how to fight a dragon, or what to do in the event of a goblin attack, or where the best places to find help would be. If they did get washed off the rock Leau would have to take charge because Felsen would immediately entrap them in the wizard’s plan to take over the kingdom, or the queen’s plot to overthrow the ruling powers. They would be dead in about two seconds if she didn’t take over. And while she didn’t mind taking charge, she didn’t want to have to explain all the conventions of the story they were in the midst of trying to save their lives. It’d just be easier if Felsen already understood how whatever world they found themselves in worked.

But those were all simply stories that Leau had played out in her head, and there was no real way that they would get washed off the rocks and into one of them. She wasn’t calling on the Goblin King, so there wouldn’t be an owl or anything; it would just be like all the other times they’d climbed on the rocks and played along the tidepools.

As the sun set over the ocean, the golden light gleamed off the water’s surface and made Leau squint. The sun was getting ever closer to the golden moment when everything would look like something out of the King Midas myth and even people like Felsen could feel the magic that bubbled under the surface of the world. And as Leau squinted into the sunset, she saw, for the briefest of moments, what she thought was a building. She looked harder and convinced herself that it was a new oil tower and not anything to be worried about. But as Leau looked again, she was unconsciously inching closer to Felsen. If they were about to be transported to another world, she wasn’t going to be too far to reach his hand. If there was one thing that she knew was imperative to their survival in whatever might happen in the next few moments it was that they had to end up in the same place together. Since he wasn’t interested in her, Felsen would never be close enough for Leau to grab his hand to ensure that wherever they went next, they would go there together. And at the moment that a wave she never saw coming swept up high onto the rock, the building resolved and she reached for his hand.
Felsen, however, didn’t have a clue as to what was happening, and so he didn’t reach out for her. He hadn’t been watching the sunset and the liquid gold flow over the surface of the earth. Oblivious to the glorious wonder he was missing, Felsen had been staring down in a tidepool and watching the progress of one of the numerous hermit crabs through its daily gauntlet for food. He’d heard the wave coming and quickly stood up. Felsen had just enough time to see that Leau was captivated by something out in the water and peer out into the sun. He hadn’t noticed Leau’s move closer to him, and didn’t reach out for her because he had no idea that her movement was necessary for them to end up in the next place together. But as Leau felt her body slipping off the rock and into the water that would conduct them to the unknown, she reached out farther and just managed to grab his hand. Once she was certain that they were now going to end up in the same place, Leau began to relax ever so slightly. Even if she’d have to teach him the ways of fantasy, at least she was with someone reliable and smart. He’d learn fast enough and then would be tremendously more fun to travel with.