Alice Turnip scuttles down the street coffee in one hand and packages in another. If she disappears before she drops them in the post box she, there is a good chance she will not be able to make rent this month.

When she was little, it was fun to disappear to always have a friend to literally turn to. But Alice grew up and Alta is basically a tween. And probably immature even for that.

It’s always glossed over in the fantasy novels that Elves age slower than humans, and more so that they mature slower than humans. The reason fantasy realms are always having race wars is undoubtedly because of elves in their thirties finding the last straw keeping a human from strangulation. This might be why there are no elves in Alice Turnip’s world.

Ms. Turnip rounds the corner thinking about how she cringes watching movies about people swapping bodies with their kids or otherwise ending up reliving childhood. She sees such films as horror movies. She gets her hopes up now that the post box is in sight.

She chucks what’s left of her coffee into a nearby trashcan and increases her speed and hold on the packages. Alta’s world has a different length of day than on this one. While it is early here in the bustle of the city, it is nearly 3PM in the realm of fantasy, and hence nearly time for Alta to wake up. Alice never travels but is nearly always jetlagged.

She reaches the post box, piles her packages on the top, and begins to feed them in one at a time. Her hope increases a little with each one. Or it would if she got past the first two before disappearing.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2