Garron raised a hand in farewell, that easy half smile still lingering on his face, and then nudged his horse into motion. The cart rattled as it rolled away along the rutted path, wheels creaking, leather harnesses jingling softly. Riley stood where he had dropped her off, her bucket and helmet at her feet, watching him go.

  He did not look back. The road curved and swallowed him up between the trees until he was nothing but the fading sound of hooves on packed dirt.

  The ride had saved her valuable hours and energy. It had also filled her belly. Garron had shared his trail food and it was an unexpected highlight. Whatever those chewy strips were, they were a thousand times better than the thin wheat porridge she had been living on. They had actual flavor. The meal was a welcome stopgap for her hunger but even as she had been chewing, she was calculating rations for the days ahead.

  And now, she was alone again. Just her, the rustling leaves, and the faint glow of the HUD map hovering in the corner of her vision.

  She focused on it and the map obediently expanded, unfolding like a translucent sheet across her view. The shroud that had once smothered everything between the tower and the village was torn open now, a wide clear ribbon of revealed terrain leading all the way back to the little blue icon labeled HOME.

  She stared at that label for a moment.

  ? Home.

  The word snagged something in her chest. Her parents' house flashed in her mind, then her cramped room in the basement, the pile of laundry on the chair, the wall outlet with the triple adapter crammed full of chargers. She saw her bed and the familiar glow of her phone lighting up the ceiling at two in the morning.

  She looked at the ghostly drawing of a ruined stone tower.

  "Yeah, I guess it is home…for now," she muttered.

  It felt both wrong and right. The place was drafty, its front door broken, its trapdoor unreachable, yet it had held her through nights of hunger, tears, and stubborn survival.

  Riley shook herself out of the momentary nostalgia and bent to scoop up her gear. Branch over her shoulder, bucket hooked through one elbow and helmet in hand. The weight of the ore pressed against her chest in its tightly tied pouch.

  She checked the HUD. The cleared path toward the tower glowed in faint, reassuring lines. No shroud in the way. No guesswork. Just a neat little glowing route from here to there.

  She started walking. She still had a six-hour walk from this bend in the road, through the forest, to her tower.

  While old Riley would have dreaded ever walking anywhere for six hours, today’s Riley was actually quite happy how everything had turned out.

  It felt fateful that a passing conversation with a stranger in a market had not only found her a ride today, but had turned into a viable longer-term transport solution. Garron had told her that he came this way every week on his route to Rivermark. So a week from now, if she woke at dawn and left immediately, she could make the six-hour walk from the tower and be back at this spot in the road hitching a ride with her new travel buddy. But he had made it clear that this first ride was a favor to Zelgra and next time she would need to pay coin to ride. That was a fair deal. He was saving her a lot of travel time and she knew from experience that time was a valuable commodity.

  Riley smiled as she walked, the forest sliding past in a rhythm that matched the quiet satisfaction in her chest. She had accomplished a lot on this trip, in spite of the pickpocket fiasco. Her mind gladly began to list her wins.

  She had made an acquaintance with someone who seemed to be willing to share their knowledge and show her kindness.

  She had scouted the market and knew what kind of goods it carried.

  She had a concentrated, albeit small, handful of ore that she could put towards her door repair.

  She was proud of what she had accomplished, but regret pressed in like missed side quests. Her gaming taught her that wins were only temporary; you had to stay on the defensive, always preparing for the next challenge. To reach the levels she had, you had to dissect every loss, re?strategize, and push forward. The wins were fine, but what hadn’t she done?

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She hadn’t spent enough time in the village to ask the real questions. Not the surface ones about prices and routes, but the deeper questions that had gnawed at her since waking beneath a sky that was the wrong shade of blue.

  How had she gotten here?

  Was she the only one this had happened to?

  Had anyone in this world ever met someone from hers? Had they even heard of Earth, or seen anything that resembled a smartphone?

  These were key questions, not side content.

  But out here, in a place of simple tools and trail grub what was she supposed to do, walk up to some farmer selling cabbage and say, “Hi, I am an alien in your world, have you heard of a place called Earth?” That was not how you made friends, that was how you got branded a lunatic or a witch.

  "Yeah, those conversations can wait," she said.

  She called up the full HUD again. The semi-transparent menus hover over the forest. The map stayed anchored in the corner as she started flicking through other screens, eyes roving across icons and tiny lines of text.

  If she started harvesting the nearby resources tomorrow, she could stack materials for the tower upgrade. But she could not pick the upgrade until she had deposited the ore and the system counted it. Once that construction timer started, she could pivot to gathering items that converted into coin.

  A week was a lot of time to collect wood and wheat and anything else that had a little coin icon attached in the HUD. With that she could pay Garron for the next ride, buy a proper backpack so she wasn’t trying to juggle everything in her arms like a raccoon with a hoarding problem, and maybe secure some actual food.

  She pictured it, a little future-Riley with a backpack, pockets with snacks, maybe a water skin. The lion's share of her coin would still go into ore and upgrades, obviously, but there had to be a balance. Quality of life. Better tools. Things that moved the needle.

  Her gamer brain was in full spreadsheet mode now, slotting tasks into days, days into cycles. Wake at dawn, meet Garron, ride to the village, sell resources, buy supplies, ride back, dump ore into the tower, check upgrade tree, adjust plan.

  It felt comforting to think in loops. Repetition, but towards something. She could see the lines of progress here, even if the numbers were fuzzy.

  A flash of color pulled her attention to the side of the path. Berry bushes, their branches heavy with small dark orbs. Her stomach perked up immediately, sending a hopeful little signal like a dog who had just heard the crinkle of a treat bag.

  Riley stepped off the path and crouched beside the bushes, bucket set down in the grass. She plucked berries in quick, practiced motions and let them ping softly into the bottom of the bucket. Every few handfuls she brought her stained fingers to her mouth and ate, the familiar sweet-tart burst spreading across her tongue.

  She should have been sick of them by now. Blueberries for breakfast, lunch, and emotional crisis. Yet her body still treated them like gold.

  When the bucket was decently filled, she wiped her hands on her skirt and took one last look around for anything else edible. The HUD still hovered in front of her, so she minimized it into a tiny square. The map continued to track her as she stepped back onto the path.

  She softly hummed some shapeless tune that kept time with her steps. The forest wrapped around her. Branches arched overhead, leaves filtering the sunlight into shifting patches of gold on the ground. The air smelled like pine and damp earth and distant water.

  For a few minutes she let herself sink into it.

  Then the tiny map blinked red.

  Her humming stopped abruptly. The corner of her vision flashed more urgently, the mini-map pulsing. The little path line turned from soft green to a sharp, urgent red.

  "What is that?" The map made no noise but something else chimed in.

  "Wrowf! Wrowf!"

  She flinched so hard the berries in the bucket jumped. The barking came from behind her, sharp, close and horribly familiar. The bucket slipped from her hand and smashed onto the ground, berries exploding in a messy cascade of blue.

  She whirled around.

  A dog was racing down the path toward her. Same massive frame, same thick fur, same terrifying intensity as the dog that had caught her scent but been distracted by the rabbit. This time it didn’t appear to be as easily swayed. Its paws tore up clumps of dirt with every stride.

  Just as she turned to run, Riley looked into its eyes.

  Wait a minute, this was the dog from Rivermark. The friendly, tail-wagging dog from the gate.

  She didn’t even have a moment to speculate why it had turned almost rabid towards her. Her flight instinct kicked in and she began running faster than she thought she was capable of.

  Her legs pumped, but the part of her that had played hundreds of hours of games involving speed stats and movement penalties knew immediately that this was not a race she was equipped to win. She was tired, full of trail grub and berries, and carrying the lingering ache of a fall off a cliff and a dozen smaller impacts. The dog was built like a tank and ran like a sports car.

  The barking shifted into a deep growl that vibrated in her bones. There was nothing friendly about it. There was no tail wag, no playful bounce. It was pure threat.

  Her heart slammed against her ribs. The forest blurred at the edges of her vision. Her breath scraped her throat in ragged pulls.

  "Ahhhh," she screamed, a sound that seemed to tear out of her without permission.

  Desperation seeped into every thought. There was no way she could outpace this animal. It knew the terrain too well, knew where she would stumble, where she would fall. Even if she broke from the path and hurled herself into the brush, it would still track her like a heat-seeking missile.

  The sense that her story might end here, in the stupid middle chapter before the climax , sent a cold crawl up her spine.

  On instinct, and only instinct, she skidded to a halt and spun.

  No strategy. No plan. Just a human brain at the end of its rope, deciding that if she was going to die, she would at least see it coming.