The porridge tasted as terrible as ever, bringing my thoughts back to the rabbit and the spider. I couldn't stop thinking about how good they tasted even raw and unseasoned, the spider was like a five star meal, and it frightened me. Every night would bring more nightmares of what happened in that cave. Why did I eat that spider and why did I try to eat that rat?

  If anybody found out they'd think I'm a monster! Maybe I was, maybe Steilae were evil cannibals and I'm only here because they don't want me to eat people. Even out of all the other wayfarers I looked the most out of place, there weren't any other Steilae here, what if they were all killed and I'm the only one left! What if-

  “Hey Michael.” Scarlet called out to me with a cheerful tone and sat down at my table causing me to yelp. I nearly fell out of my chair as Scarlet stared at me with eyes that I could mistake as concern.

  “Are you alright?” Scarlet asked the question with the same tone as she did when greeting me.

  “I'm fine! You just startled me.” My words came out louder than I expected them to, but nobody seemed to be staring.

  “The porridge here is really good, you know.” I couldn't believe my eyes as Scarlet began devouring the porridge after saying an insane statement.

  “It's bland and tastes like glue, whatever they put in there can't be healthy.”

  “Well it beats eating little spiders after tearing off their tiny legs.” Scarlet nonchalantly brought up the concept of those evil cave spiders and ruined my appetite.

  “Yeah…” She must have had to survive on eating just spiders, but I didn't, I didn't need to eat anything down there, but I still did.

  “Are you going to finish that?” In my moment of contemplation Scarlet once again interrupted me and was pointing to the half empty bowl of porridge in front of me.

  “No?” My appetite was gone and the porridge wasn't very appealing.

  “Well then bottoms up- wait, no that'd be super unhygienic, spreading germs and stuff.” Scarlet left my bowl alone and just started eating out of her own bowl, leaving mine to be picked up by a server annoyed at my reluctance to eat cardboard soup.

  As Scarlet finished gobbling up her disgusting meal she turned to me and asked a weird question. “Do you brush your hair?”

  “Why would I?” I hadn't brushed my hair a single time in my life, never saw the point.

  “Just look at your hair! It's all matted and has split ends all over. When was the last time you washed your hair?” Scarlet was scolding me like the child I appeared to be and reminded me way too much of my old teachers. She seemed to be in her early twenties, barely older than me.

  “Back when I first met you…” The last time my hair actually got wet was when I fell into a giant underground lake.

  “That's it, we're going to fix your hair young miss!” Scarlet got up from seat with enthusiasm and offered me her hand. Her loudness turned heads from all around the room but she didn't seem to care.

  “Alright fine, not like there's anything else for me to do.” With a sigh I got up and took her hand, the enthusiasm spreading to me like a virus.

  Scarlet dragged me through the inn until she stopped at what I could only assume was her room before she led me into it. Her room looked completely unlike mine, she had a hand mirror, a hairbrush, and even a pair of scissors all on her dresser along with a single uncut blue gem. There was even this strange pink, white, and blue flag pendant that I couldn't place which country it was from, if it even existed in my world that was.

  Seeing the mirror made me realize that the last time I saw my own face was over a month ago when I first arrived and saw myself in a water basin. Suddenly all thoughts of mirrors went away, on her bedtime was an honest to God mattress, it didn't matter if it was less than an inch thick, it was better than what I got. She even had two blankets instead of that useless thin blanket I have.

  “I thought all the rooms were the same.” Every room I'd seen apart from mine looked the exact same except for Scarlet's.

  “Well they are, but this place is so drab and I had time to kill so I got started working around the inn and doing odd jobs around the city. Better than lazing in here all day, and it also meant I got enough money to actually sleep on something comfortable.”

  “Yeah…” I realized how little I actually did day to day.

  “Anyways, come sit.” Scarlet patted down her bed, gesturing for me to sit.

  As I sat down I realized just how uncomfortable everything else had been up to this point. Wooden seats, wooden beds, caves with nothing to rest on but endless stone, this mattress had the have been the most comfortable thing I'd ever sat on. Its softness was so sublime that I wouldn't have to force myself to sleep on it unlike my own bed.

  “Y'know I'll let you sleep on it if you want.” Just the thought of being able to sleep anywhere other than that plank of wood made me want to fall asleep.

  “Really!” I couldn't help but let out an eager reply to her which quickly gave me a bout of embarrassment as I realized how childish I sounded.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Of course. Maybe we can even have a sleep over, just the two of us.” Scarlet genuinely seemed excited at the prospect of having a sleepover with me.

  “Sure.” I couldn't just deny the opportunity to actually have a good night's rest, even if it meant sharing the bed with Scarlet.

  “Alright then, with that settled let's get to fixing that bird nest on your head.” She grabbed the hairbrush and gestured for me to turn away from her.

  I turned my back to her as I felt her grab the back of my hair. It felt strange to have somebody hold my hair, especially since it was also so long. As I thought about my hair I was suddenly tugged backwards by my scalp.

  “Hey! I thought hairbrushing was supposed to be gentle.” I turned back to Scarlet.

  “Sorry it’s just, your hair is so tangled that I'm not sure I'll be able to untangle it. Hmm, let me try something. Tell me if this feels uncomfortable okay?” I kept my back turned as Scarlet picked up something from the dresser.

  Soon Scarlet started brushing again but now the brush didn't get stuck on my hair, or at least not as much anymore. The brush moved through my hair but I could tell there were spots that not even Scarlet could get through. Scarlet stopped brushing for a moment and then just for a split second I could feel cold water on my neck.

  “Eep!” I flinched forward at the sudden coolness, the sound I made sent a wave of embarrassment through me.

  “Oh sorry, I was just using some water, I should've told you.” Scarlet just lifted the blue gem she had as if it told me anything.

  “I didn't see any water on your dresser.”

  “Well I just used this gem to make some.” She said it as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “I thought blue gems only healed people?” Every time I used one I was never able to make water.

  “Well you know how you make a star while using your gun? That's basically a spell circle! You use looms to make constellations to make spells! It's amazing really.” The excitement in her voice was nearly palpable.

  “Alright alright, just get to fixing my hair.” Scarlet had been the one to suggest it, so she should just get on with it.

  Scarlet tugged and tugged at my hair, I could feel some knots slipping through while others were persistently thick. The more she tried the more I realized that my hair problem was unusually bad compared to most people. Every inch lower from my scalp the harder and harder it was for Scarlet to keep untangling my hair.

  “I think… I think we need to cut your hair.” Scarlet said the words as if it was a tragedy.

  “Why?” Although I had no attachment to my hair I was still curious as to why she needed to cut it.

  “First of all you probably haven't done any hair care since you arrived here and I doubt there's a surplus of hair care products in this medieval world.” I just nodded at her, it wasn't like I knew anything about haircare.

  “Alright then, cut it, just make sure it doesn't look bad.” I didn't care how it looked, just that it didn't make me look stupid.

  “Don't worry, I used to be a hair stylist back where I came from.” She gave me a reassuring smile.

  “Let's get on with it then.”

  “Actually wait, get off the bed.” Scarlet stood up from the bed and stared at it with a tilted head.

  “Why?” I stayed put on the bed, she wouldn't make me leave without a good excuse.

  “I just realized that if I'm cutting your hair then all that cut hair would just end up on the bed. Wait here.” All of a sudden Scarlet left the room and came back a minute later with a stool from the dining area.

  “Are you allowed to do that?” I asked as Scarlet dropped the chair on the ground.

  “No clue, I'll just return it later. Sit.” I sat down on the chair.

  “Do you have any preferences on how your hair's done?” My hair had been the same since I could remember, but it wasn't like I knew what the haircut was called.

  “Just make sure I don't look stupid.” I'd been to barbers that ruined my hair so badly that I needed to go to a second one just to get it fixed.

  “Got it.” Scarlet began cutting my hair with a smile on her face.

  I kept as still as I could, I knew how much barbers hated it when their clients moved. Back when I was a kid they'd always have to adjust my head so that they could cut my hair better, Scarlet never asked me to do anything like that. She moved around me and pushed and pulled at my head with her hands, finding the perfect angle to cut my hair.

  “So, Michael, where are you from? I know you're from the U.S and all but what city?” It was the first time I'd been asked that question, and I never expected it on Ennath of all places.

  “Honestly it's cliche to say but I'm from Old York.” I thought back to my hometown, sprawling skyscrapers, centuries old architecture, I couldn't help but miss it.

  “Old York huh? I have a similar place back on Earth. Did you have any hobbies back there?” I wondered if Scarlet had ever been to Old York before, she talked about it with some familiarity.

  “Yeah, I liked going to the theaters, the last time I went there was this new movie called Ex-Terminator Two about a time traveling robot sent to save a guy in the past.” The action movie was one of the greatest movies I'd ever seen.

  “Wow that's… quite the unique premise, when did this movie come out anyways?” Scarlet seemingly knew the movie I was talking about.

  “I saw it about a month before waking up here, so two months ago? That would be May.”

  “May huh? So you also got transported in June.” Scarlet cut a few more strands of hair in front of my face.

  “I guess so, seems our worlds aren't so different after all.” I doubt many people from Ennath knew about movies in general so she and I must've been from similar places.

  “Did you play any games back on Silt?” She began to cut off entire chunks of my tangled hair.

  “Games?” Of course I played games, but that term was so big for such a simple question.

  “You know, arcade games, you probably have those where you come from.” The moment she said arcades I immediately knew what she was talking about.

  “Oh arcades, I've been going to them since I was a kid. There's this one game where you can play as a bunch of people and fight each other.”

  “A fighting game must be fun, I really miss playing video games, if only I had a charger for my phone.” Scarlet sounded nostalgic for phones for some reason, I preferred talking to people in person.

  “Isn't a phone useless without anyone to talk to?” Now my hair was damp from Scarlet using some magic gem water on it.

  “Well maybe for you, but in the twenty twenties phones are a lot more advanced, we can even play video games on them.” I thought about playing on a phone with those tiny screens they had and it didn't seem that appealing to me.

  “I doubt there's anything good on those clunky things.” All the portable phones I'd seen were wildly overpriced when I could just use a payphone or just to talk in person.

  “You'd be surprised, and also I think I'm done cutting your hair.”

  “Already?”

  “It wasn't that complicated to do so it was quick. Tell me if there's anything you dislike.” She handed me her hand mirror and for the first time in over a month I saw my new face.

  The girl in the mirror was different than she was a month ago, her soft face was still young but it held a strange imperceptible quality. If you knew where to look you could see faint scars, bruises that hadn't healed yet and slitted green eyes that seemingly trembled at the thought of getting hurt again. Her hair was now slightly past shoulder length instead of being halfway down her neck like it used to be, it was a childish haircut and distinctly feminine. The hair that adorned her was swept in the middle unlike it had been earlier where she carelessly let it sway wherever it wanted, tipped with unnaturally natural green highlights. Out of all her features the most distinctive one was her wide smile at the thought of… of being pretty.

  Instantly my smile faded away and I threw the mirror into the wall as it shattered into thousands of pieces. I couldn't let those feelings take over me again, I wouldn't let them, not again. My parents taught me that lesson years ago and I wouldn't forget it. Even if they weren't here somebody else would punish me, there were dozens of people in the inn that could make my life hell if they found out. What if Kael found out? He might just kill me on the spot for being even more of a freak than I already am.

  “Hey, hey are you alright?” Before I realized it Scarlet was hugging me and the rapid breathing I didn't realize I had began to slow down.

  The ramifications of my actions began to come into my head, Scarlet knew, Scarlet saw me smile at the smile and I'd just broken her mirror. All she did was try to help me and I broke her stuff after she gave me a free haircut. Soon involuntary tears began to flow onto the hair covered floor. I tried to turn my head so Scarlet wouldn't see but she stopped me and forced me into her embrace.

  “It's alright, shh, it's alright.” Why was she comforting me?

  “I- I didn't- I didn't mean to.” My words were so quiet I could barely even hear them myself.

  “It's not your fault okay?” She said words in a way that expected me to reply and I was terrified not to.

  “Okay.” I let myself fall deeper into her embrace.

  “Do you want to be a girl?” The question was sudden and I immediately tried to pull away from her but this weak body couldn't do anything against her, only more tears flowed out because of my movement.

  My lips wouldn't move and all that came out were small squeaks that failed to produce anything of value. Despite doing my best to tell her no my body wouldn't comply and I was stuck there unable to answer her question.

  “If you're not going to answer me then you should just go to sleep, you'll be able to think better tomorrow.” Scarlet gently picked me up in a princess carry and brought me over to her bed before placing me down and tucking me in.

  I wanted to protest, to go back to my room and forget this ever happened but my body wouldn't move, I was trapped here. There was only one thing left to do and that was do what Scarlet wanted me to do and go to sleep.