The next morning came sooner than Anika liked. She woke up in bed in her room, Lily curled up and snoring next to her. This morning, she did not have the abrupt realization that this was not a dream. By the time you’d gone to sleep for the second time in a strange new world after spending a day fighting monsters and wielding magic, the reality firmly took root.

  “Guess this is really real, then.” Anika mumbled groggily to herself.

  She yawned and grudgingly crawled out of bed. She had not been awoken by the unexpected pounding of an acolyte on her door, but by the biological alarm that warned her she needed the bathroom quite urgently. Proper hydration had its downsides when you just wanted to sleep for 12 hours after an exhausting day.

  Her sleeping chamber did not have its own bathroom, as this hallway was arranged more like what she would have expected in a college dorm. Of course, Anika had avoided the dorm experience by living at home to save money during college, so she was not thrilled to be experiencing dorm life in this new world. She supposed having to share a bathroom was better than having to go fully medieval in her fantasy and be stuck using a chamber pot. She wrinkled her nose in distaste at that thought.

  Throwing on her robe, she quietly opened the door, as she had managed to avoid waking Lily when she crawled out of bed. She figured even magical capybaras followed normal animal rules, and the rules said you don’t wake a cute sleeping animal. Good thing Lily hadn’t been on top of her or she would have been trapped.

  The bathroom was only two doors down and across the hall and Anika slipped inside without seeing anyone else in the dimly lit hallway. The bathroom, as it turned out, was relatively similar to earth, with pipes bringing water in and out of the sinks, toilets, and showers. The differences were in how the water flowed in the pipes. Turning water on or off was not a valve, but a magical circle that behaved like a touch screen, allowing you to turn the water on or adjust the temperature and flow. Instead of having a continuous flow adjustment, the permanent ritual had five levels of water pressure. The temperature also had predetermined settings, though these ranged from zero to ten, which allowed for a bit more precision in temperature adjustment.

  Anika hadn’t really experimented with the settings much, having only used the sinks to wash her hands so far. She had been too overwhelmed to shower the first night and too exhausted to shower last night, but going that long without a shower now made her feel incredibly uncomfortable. She was looking forward to a long, hot shower this morning… once she had relieved herself, of course.

  The bathroom had a similar layout to a shared restroom on Earth, with a row of stalls for toilets and a matching row of stalls with showers. One wall had a giant mirror that the sinks were built into. The sinks were all grey stone basins sitting on stone pedestals that were hollowed out in the center for the water to drain. Small apertures in the mirror sat above each stone basin, with the ritual circle controlling the sink encompassing the water aperture.

  Lights in the ceiling shed a bright, white light on the room, and it was as bright inside as it was on a sunny day at noon. Anika squinted her eyes against the intensity of the light. The floors were made of stone and Anika could feel the cool of the stone despite the slippers she wore. She quickly ran to the toilet stalls and took care of business, washing her hands at the sinks despite the fact that she was about to shower.

  On the wall near the row of showers was a shelf full of clean towels and a mostly empty hamper for dirty ones. Grabbing a towel off the top of the stack, she headed into the closest shower. The shower stalls had solid, locking doors and inside was a bench and a variety of hooks on the wall for towels or clothes. The stone floor slanted down at a slight angle towards a long skinny gap in the floor that ran under the walls on the left and right. Anika assumed all the showers shared a connected drain.

  The shower head on the left sprayed towards the other wall rather than back towards the door, as there was no curtain to separate the shower from the rest of the stall. The shower head itself was strange. Anika examined it closely and determined it must be a mix of regular pipes and magic. Either that or it just gushed a solid flow of water like the sinks, as the aperture was a large pipe near the ceiling with a wide, 4 inch mouth. She’d find out when she turns it on, so she quickly hung her towel on a hook and undressed, hanging her robe next to the towel.

  She examined the magic ritual on the wall under the shower head and saw the now familiar flow rate and temperature symbols. There was also a secondary circle of different configurations which looked similar to markings on fancy shower heads on earth. She quickly tapped three markings and the shower turned on, a wide circular spray of water at a medium pressure. It was immediately hot, because magic. That aspect of these showers would be amazing in the winter - no waiting for hot water.

  Various soaps, conditioners, and lotions sat on a chest high stone shelf jutting out of the wall opposite the shower head. A metal dispensing plunger topped each meticulously labeled glass bottle. The fact that she could read the language here had surprised her, though somehow the fact that she had immediately been able to understand the spoken language hadn’t been as surprising. Spoken language she would write off when waking with some kind of babel fish from Douglas Adams’ universe. But for some reason written language seemed more difficult to her. When she had asked about it, she found out that part of the enchantment included knowledge of all languages in all forms and it was separate from the ritual elements that changed their bodies. For some reason, knowing the ritual changed her mind bothered her a lot more than the change to her body. She shook her head, refocusing on her task which, right now, was enjoying the gloriously hot water and scrubbing hair and body thoroughly.

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  After the shower, she slipped back into her robe and went back to her room. No one else had come into the bathroom while she was there and the hallway was still dim. She had no idea what time it was - there were no windows in the dormitory area, as it was built into the mountain. She would have to figure out by what method they kept track of the time since there were no cues from the sun. Yesterday had been such a blur she hadn’t even realized how much time was passing. Figuring that someone would eventually come by to wake her up, she decided to just crawl back into bed and go back to sleep. She managed to curl up next to Lily without waking her, though she did do some adorable little kicks in her sleep.

  Anika next woke up to knocking on the door. Unlike yesterday morning, she was somewhat expecting it and she yawned, her full senses more in tune with the environment than yesterday. Lily yawned next to her and sleepily stumbled onto her feet in the tangle of blankets under her.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” Anika called, crawling out of bed, “I need to get dressed.”

  She grabbed the simple shift dress from one of the dresser drawers. Someone had left additional clothes in her room yesterday and she had managed to put them away before collapsing in bed. Anika now had a collection of basic pants, tunics, and dresses in colors that complimented her new blue skin and all pieces were made of the same soft, comfortable fabrics she had experienced so far. She looked in the mirror to brush her hair and check out her outfit.

  The dress she put on was a soft lilac that complimented the threads of purple in her hair. Minimalist geometric embroidery in white and green decorated the neckline and made her think of springtime. The scoop neck of the dress revealed the corners of the gills under her collarbone. That was just… weird. She hadn’t thought much about it before with everything else. Was she still a mammal? Part fish?

  She really didn’t mind the overall mermaid look but the gills just seemed so unreal. Did they just automatically start working if she went under water? Did they work with anything that wasn’t water? At some point she’d have to experiment or ask. Either way, she never would have dreamed it up herself, so in some ways, the gills added to the wild reality of her current circumstances.

  After brushing her hair, she pulled it into a side braid and tied it with a leather cord. She would probably French braid it later if they were going to the dungeon, but she was fairly confident her morning was going to involve more archery practice, so the Katniss braid seemed appropriate.

  Lily finally woke up enough to become her chipper self while Anika was braiding.

  “Ooo Anika, your new clothes look good!”

  “Thanks,” Anika replied. “I didn’t wear a lot of pastels in my past, as they didn’t look great with my Scandinavian background - my skin was too light. It’s nice to have some more variety.”

  “What’s a Scandinavian?” Lily asked with childlike curiosity. She jumped onto the ground and was sitting on the fluffy rug in the center of the room.

  “It’s what I am… well… was, I guess. A group of people from some countries back home. I used to have really light skin and blond hair, so a pastel like this dress wouldn’t look great. Not that I really cared much about fashion… my mother was always the one telling me which colors I should or shouldn’t wear to look good. I mostly ignored her…”

  Anika paused, realizing for the first time that one of the realities of being here, in this world, was that she was no longer at home where she lived with her parents. What did they think happened to her? She didn’t think the ritual left behind a note that said, “Hi mom, don’t worry, I’ve just been summoned to another world!” They probably would report her missing and, when no one found her, think she was dead in a ditch somewhere. What about her friends and teachers and everyone else she knew?

  Anika sat down heavily in the armchair by the hearth. Part of her had still thought this was all a weird dream, even when she had convinced herself she had accepted it and was happy. But this reality hit her like a punch to the gut. She had no way to tell anyone what happened. She was alive, learning magic, and potentially having the great adventures she’d dreamed about while playing tabletop games… but back home? Tears welled up. They would be mourning her. Her mind, usually so full of thoughts, was suddenly silent.

  “Anika, what’s wrong?” Lily nuzzled her leg, but Anika couldn’t find the words to respond.

  The knocking started again. Anika felt a calm aura wash over her, trying to push the tears aside, but she wasn’t sure she wanted it to work. She knew it was Lily, but she didn’t want to just push aside the feelings with magic. She didn’t want to feel this way, but to not grieve the loss of the life she knew and the sorrow her absence would leave in everyone who thought she was gone seemed callous.

  “Anika? Lily? Are you alright in there?” Sinaya’s voice was recognizable through the door.

  “Anika, please don’t cry!” Lily nuzzled her again, and Anika felt the calm intensify in her mind.

  “I’m coming.” Anika replied, allowing Lily’s calm to take hold. She would have plenty of time to cry… but she also had to live her life here now.

  “I’ll be ok,” Anika said softly to Lily, “I just… I just realized that everyone back home probably thinks I am dead.”

  “Oh…” Lily’s voice was mournful and she lowered her head, “I’m sorry Anika.”

  Anika pushed herself out of the chair and wiped her eyes, glancing in the mirror to see if it looked like she had been crying. The signature red, puffy eyes that would mark the tears on a human were missing from her Mizeta face. Anika tried not to think about it and turned around to open the door.

  “Hi Sinaya. Sorry, I just took a little too long getting ready.”

  Sinaya looked at her with an expression that said she wasn’t sure if she should believe Anika’s words, but she nodded with acceptance. “No problem! I just wanted to make sure you made it to breakfast before it was time to start training for the day.”

  Anika jumped on a new topic. “Speaking of that… how do you tell time here, anyway?”

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