16:30.

After class, Kiri stuffed the invitation in the pocket of her culottes. She had thought about throwing it out, but something in the back of her brain begged her to keep it.

Flustered, she fled campus and went home to her little rustic, green-painted house at the corner of the town. She walked sullenly in the warm, breezy nostalgia of a Goldtown suburban afternoon. Couldn’t stop thinking about what her conversation with Gabe meant. Well, maybe it had meant nothing on the surface. But she felt shaken out of her daily routine. That much was clear.

What had she been doing all this time? What was to come? She feared this attention, and yet she wondered if it was a sign she needed to change.

At home, she made a beeline for her bedroom. Rummaged through several layers of clothes in her creaky closet while the dust rose in plumes, glowing in the golden afternoon sunlight. Thankfully, she didn’t need to make any tough choices. Well, she didn’t have any choices. All she had were clothes that were too small and faded. Most smelled like dry mold, and tiny noticeable portions had become dinner for the closet moths. This wouldn’t do.

With no choice, she looked at her backpack like it housed a demon. After some deliberation, she sighed, then emptied it of books and notepads, and stray paper. She fished out the green sundress she’d carelessly stuffed at the bottom.

She tried it on, and it fit perfectly, much to her chagrin. Even worse, it was comfortable and suited her pale, brassy skin. It was a shame this was the only relatively nice outfit she owned now. But what could she expect? She hadn’t bought new clothes since she was 14, and it was the one record she intended to keep breaking.

She grimaced as she spun in the dress in front of the mirror, looking at different angles. She dreaded how her shoulders looked so broad and bare in it. The way it gave form to her oversized chest. Maybe if she threw her beloved forest-green cardigan over the outfit, her dreaded proportions wouldn’t be so noticeable.

Not like she would even let anyone notice because this was a stupid idea, anyway. No way in hell she was going anywhere near Gabe and his friends.

Of everything in the world, she remotely considered an invitation to a sweaty college party from one of the most popular boys in town. It didn’t really matter that Gabe had invited her. Anyone with a reputation would’ve ignited this crippling anxiety she felt.

“Why am I even doing this?” she grumbled. She looked one last time at the invitation from Gabe before crumpling the paper and flicking it into the trash can without remorse.

She slipped her cardigan over her dress and threw herself on her squeaky rolling chair with the cracked gray leather. She turned on her computer, and it buzzed in protest. The familiar, comfortable blue light on the desktop flickered on. It welcomed her with a background photo of a cloaked adventurer on a journey, set against a sunset softly resting over the mountain tops.

She went straight to a game application on her desktop. It was an online multiplayer game she could afford to play for the next several hours of her evening. There was no reason to go to this party when she was perfectly content to drift into her usual lull. Or so she thought.

Her eyes glazed over as she stared at the in-game “lobby,” which had lists offering her various choices of which character she’d like to play or which virtual world she would like to play on. She wasn’t sure how long she sat staring at the screen in that mindless state when she remembered she hadn’t checked her emails today.

A new anxiety ignited in her as she tabbed out of the game and opened her mailbox application instead.

Scanning the list of unread emails, there wasn’t much, just some promotional stuff and some conspiracy bait from a distant relative she hardly knew. The one that caught her eye was the Lacrelon Anthropology Essay Scholarship.

Her stomach clenched as she opened the email.

Dear Ms. Avelen, it said. We regret to inform you that your entry wasn’t a fit for us at this time. However, there will be opportunities in the future — Etc. Etc. As if their softened words made a single speck of difference.

She scowled. It was the same as always.

She added the email to the “what u deserve” folder, a long list of rejections from other universities and scholarship applications from within the past year. She kept the folder just to remind her she shouldn’t expect much, or at least she should suspect the good things that came to her. At least, it gave her a thick skin. Or so she liked to tell herself.

She side glanced one of the stray papers she’d just taken out of her backpack and thrown on her desk. The Creative Writing Scholarship application. Slowly, she drew it toward her, grabbing a pen like it was second nature. She hovered it over the paper for a moment.

No, she thought. Why even bother? It won’t differ from every other time.

Steeling her expression, she set down her pen and pushed the application to the corner of her desk, along with the partially crumpled invitation from Gabe. She left her desk and threw herself onto her bed.

The warbling of birds in the golden hour of the evening and the sounds of the local kids playing ball outside should’ve been a comfort. But now they felt cold and unfamiliar.

She lay there, staring at the ceiling. She was drifting off when suddenly, her phone vibrated on her desk. Her eyes snapped open, and she jumped out of bed instantly.

It was Uncle Jim on her call screen. She picked up, putting the sound on speaker.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hey, Kiri. Can I ask you a favor?” Uncle Jim asked. His kindly voice was refreshing after spending all day with the brusk chicken farm ladies and then the loud, boisterous Gabe.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I just realized that a new issue of The Boroworks is out. The bookstore’s tent should have it in stock, but I’m afraid it will sell out by the time I make it to the festival. Mind going a bit early and picking one up for me?”

“Sure, okay.” Kiri didn’t really think too hard about her answer. She was a little miffed to have to dive into that overwhelming crowd sooner than necessary, but it would be fine, she thought.

“Thanks,” Uncle Jim said.

When Kiri prepared to say goodbye, Uncle Jim asked. “Hey, you home right now?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Did you happen to see the journal I left for you on the console table?”

“Nope, why?”

“Oh, thought you might’ve recognized it.”

Kiri looked guilty. “Oh… My bad. I was sort of in a rush, so I didn’t notice.”

“Yeah. That journal is the one I thought we lost. You know, the one we shared when we were collaborating on a novel?”

Kiri blanked for a moment, then perked up in realization. “Oh! Yeah, I remember that one. I totally forgot about it until now.”

“Yeah. I thought you’d get a kick out of it. I finally got to respond to your last entry.”

“Oh. Cool.” Kiri wasn’t sure how else to respond to that. She remembered that journal from when her hopes and dreams of being an author were at their peak. She scowled, disappointed she couldn’t feel more excited to see that journal again.

After a short silence, Uncle Jim said, “I don’t think I ever told you, but your parents gave me that journal on my birthday just before they passed away. I think it was your mother’s idea, since my brother was telling her I liked to keep dream journals.”

Kiri nodded. “So that was just after I was born, then.”

“Mhm.”

“Did you want me to keep it or something?”

“If you want. I thought it could be a little inspiration.”

“You know I don’t write anymore.”

“Oh, no, I don’t mean that. I just mean, in your day-to-day. It can be a little dose of whimsy when life gets too heavy.”

Kiri fell silent again. There it was, again. That unwarranted hope in his voice. She wished he’d drop the topic already, which he did.

“Anyways,” he said. “I’ll see you at the portal festival. Think of ideas of where you want to eat.”

“‘Kay, I will. See you there.”

They said their goodbyes. Kiri hung up first. She felt bad that she might’ve hung up a little too fast.

She thought about the journal as she paced her room. Thought about just leaving it downstairs and forgetting about it. But then her uncle would probably ask why she hadn’t taken it.

Whatever, she thought. She could just take it and never have to actually look at it, right?

Out of her room, through the hall with the peeling floral wallpaper and down the creaky old stairs, she went to the entrance area. Found the journal exactly where her uncle had said it would be, on the aged but sturdy wooden console table. A post-it note he’d written accompanied the journal, saying the same thing he had explained earlier, apart from the tidbit about her parents.

She picked up the journal. Turned it between her hands. The way the soft leather felt like butter between her fingers brought back a familiar nostalgia.

She remembered the last time she wrote in it. She was nine, crying, frustrated that she couldn’t think of what to write next. Uncle Jim, with that same reassuring smile as always, took her out on a walk to clear her head. They walked to the riverbank where they tossed stones.

What do you see? he had asked.

She had found a smooth, egg-shaped rock. She admired how shiny and blue it was as its river water coating looked like glass, shimmering in the afternoon sunlight. Instantly, it stirred her imagination.

Dragon egg! she had proclaimed.

And what will happen to that dragon egg? Uncle Jim asked.

Hatch! I want it to hatch. It’ll be the coolest dragon ever!

And so she kept that rock. Lugged it all the way back home, even as it dried out and became just as dull and ugly as the rest of the rocks on that bank. She went on and on about the dragon’s powers and how it would save the world the entire time.

See? Uncle Jim encouraged. When you’re ever stuck, sometimes you can hatch a new character. Want to see what happens when you add a new character to our story?

Kiri at twenty-one didn’t want to see what would happen. It was just some dumb story she wrote with her uncle when she was a kid. But as she stared at the blue leather journal, she couldn’t help but wonder. What did Uncle Jim write in response to her last entry? It couldn’t hurt to take a peek.

She opened the yellowed pages, flipping through them and coughing out dust until she reached two-thirds of the way through.

And there it was. Uncle Jim’s last entry. His neat, cursive handwriting seemed to glitter on the worn page like a spell. Indeed, he wrote it fairly recently, as the ink looked sharp and fresh compared to everything else. The way he curved his capital T’s had also changed recently and showed in this latest entry.

She recalled the premise. Nothing special, but strangely, she could remember it above all the other stories she’d written as a child.

As she made herself comfortable on the living room couch, she flipped to her uncle’s entry at the beginning.

There once was a small, timid goddess. She created a small world. Unbeknownst to her, it grew much bigger than she. After millions of years, she went to live in the world to see how it had developed.

However, what she saw, she did not recognize anymore. There were wars, famine, and cruelty.

She became sad, hiding herself away, believing she was a failure as a creator. However, in a far off land, a human girl dreamed of helping all living creatures and saving the world…

Kiri chuckled. How very much like her uncle to write about great world-creators and optimistic heroes. She looked at some silly little drawings she’d made of the characters so far. The goddess in her long, starry dress, and the heroine with her big, hexagonal glasses and wizard staff she liked to carry around, for some unknown reason. Turning the page, she read on.

The living creatures of the world thought that their suffering would never go away as war rattled on. However, a strange new god appeared. He believed in Nothing, and so he vowed to disrupt the balance and undo the world entirely. In secret, he gave humanity powerful orbs that could grant the grandest wishes, give people supernatural powers, and allow leaders to conquer kingdoms. Humans gladly accepted these orbs, convincing everyone that they would solve the problems of humanity.

This was so much more grandiose than Kiri had remembered. He surely had a greater vision for this than a child could comprehend. Why did he waste it on a nine-year-old who couldn’t string a sentence together without needlessly changing tenses?

She read on.

The next section was her writing—messy and grammatically gross, but she couldn’t help but smile a little. This was where she introduced the heroine, Jade, who would finally gather orbs and use them to connect with the gods and rebalance the universe once again.

At least, that was the idea, at first.

As she kept reading, the story veered off more and more from the main premise. Jade would roam her village, searching for seashells, convinced they could speak. Clearly, Uncle Jim had tried to work with it, but then she would veer to another side quest.

Kiri swung her legs onto the couch and got comfortable.

Jade would soon gain an orb of her own (at her uncle’s suggestion, she recalled). It turned into her advisor, suggesting places to go to gain more and more power. New islands, new, interesting species, galore.

Kiri sighed. Every entry she wrote was all about Jade getting distracted by shiny things in her path. She flipped through a bunch of pages where nothing was happening except training scenes and banter between Jade and a potential love interest who’d never be seen again.

Thankfully, her uncle seemed like he was trying to keep the story on track with his entries, but little Kiri, apparently, had other plans. She wanted Jade to find out she was actually half-dragon. For what reason? She couldn’t remember for her life.

Kiri slid further into the couch until she lay flat. Sighed again, then flipped onto her stomach. This was going nowhere. No wonder she had gotten so frustrated with it. Her uncle must’ve been a saint for putting up with all of her ramblings that had nothing to do with the premise. She couldn’t recall even seeing the goddess in any of her entries, let alone the premise.

When she got to her last written entry, she recognized it instantly from the day she and her uncle found the “dragon egg” rock; the day she added a new, important character after so long. She must’ve really wanted it to be an important part of the story, because a random prophet told Jade, You must protect this egg with your life, and Jade held it up to the sky as it glowed in brilliant iridescent rays.

When Kiri finally turned the page to her uncle’s most recent section, she breathed a sigh of relief. It felt like he’d finally put his foot down, as if to say, Okay, Kiri. Now that you’re older, maybe you can continue the path to Jade’s destiny with more resolve.

In his last paragraph, he wrote:

The dragon awoke in Jade’s hands. As its big, sparkling eyes met hers, it gave her a vision. In it, she saw a vision of the sad goddess who had hidden herself away. A mysterious, echoing voice said, “The creator of our world holds the key to rebalancing our universe, but she needs your help to believe in good again.”

“Why doesn’t she believe?” Jade asked.

“Because there is so much pain in the world. Even the people of this world believe nothing can stop the God of Nothing from unraveling the world down to its very core. Will you find her and rebalance the universe once again? Will you act when there is so much reason to be inert?”

Kiri blinked at this question. Was this really the vision talking to Jade, or just Uncle Jim trying to give her an encouraging push? She got up abruptly from the couch. Went to grab a pen from the console table, then raced back. Everything that had happened today seemed to wash away like a tide overtaking the grassy plains. None of it mattered. Not the invitation to the party, not her old lady coworkers picking on her, not even the scholarship rejection.

She picked up the journal once again and wrote:

Jade asked, “The goddess is the one who created this world. Why can’t she snap her fingers and have it go back to normal?”

The voice said, “She can no longer do this on her own. The world is no longer small enough to remain in her grasp alone. That is why you, young hero, have been chosen for this task.”

Jade lowered her head and thought hard about this.

She had always been the first to try many things. She had so many ambitions and had learned so much. But what was she really doing? What was the point of all this power she’d been gaining when she hadn’t been truly helping the world with it? It was time for her to choose.

So she turned her head to look up at the image of the goddess and said, “I want to. But what if the goddess is right to just hide away? What if I can’t even help her? What if it all turns out pointless?”

After Kiri wrote the last line, she felt something click in her. Who was this? Was that what Jade was feeling? Or just her?

She set her pen down. Slapped the journal shut. This is silly, she thought. She stood up, considering what to do with the journal, when suddenly, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

It was a strangely familiar feeling.

She looked up from the journal.

Out the living room window, she saw that distortion again. It was so close this time. It might as well be touching the glass.

She dropped the journal. As it clattered onto the coffee table, she fell back onto the couch. Hyperventilated. Not this again, she thought. What do you want from me?

The air pulsed around her. Was it actually the air, or just her imagination? She had no answer.

Soon, parts of her vision began to glitch. Parts of her body lost feeling for a moment. Returned to normal the next. She could swear parts of her were morphing into inhuman objects, but she’d glance down at herself, only to find everything was still normal.

She clasped her head in her hands. Should she call the hospital? No, it would be too expensive. She could breathe fine. There was no pain. She just had to wait it out. So she squeezed her eyes shut and curled into a little ball on the couch.

She lay there, the sun finally hitting the couch as it did in the sunset hour. When everything felt still, she slowly unclenched her hands from her hair and looked warily back out the window.

Once again, the distortion was gone.

Sitting up, she muttered. “I guess it’s about time I go to the doctor again.”

She looked at the time on her phone.

6:00 PM.

Crap. She needed to get going. The Goldtown Portal Festival had already started.