"Help! I'm Falling For A Girl From Another World"
my phone buzzes while I'm staring at a giant spreadsheet my boss sent me
I open Signal, grateful for the distraction, to find a selfie from Maggie, captioned "I'm back! I didn't even get a chance to kiss you goodbye!"
by the look of it, she's on a green line train, probably fare evading again
I react to her selfie with a heart, look at the time, and type a reply: "omw home in a min. meet u there?"
"omw?"
"on my way" I send back as the doors of the elevator close in front of me
if my boss'd seen me leave this early, he'd've yelled at me, but he hadn't even bothered to come back after lunch today
half of Boston seems to have had the same idea as me this lovely friday afternoon and the train is packed
when I get home, Maggie is waiting for me out front of my apartment building
as soon as I spot her pink hair from down the street, my heart starts fluttering
"heyyyy Rachel" she greets me
"hiiiii Maggie"
I lean in and kiss her on the cheek and then immediately pull away, scared that I went too far
"y-you said you wanted a kiss and I —uh-" I stammer and trail off
I feel my face blushing as I try to stammer out another sentence
"yeah, I-I did want a kiss" she says, the blush spreading to her cheeks
she plants a kiss on my cheek and takes any words I was about to say out of my mouth
"let's go in; it's a bit too sunny out here"
"I'm getting kinda hungry. anything particular you want for dinner?"
"me too; getting hit by an omnibus took a lot out of me"
"again?"
"they never look before turning! at least it sends me here and not to the hospital"
"anyway, how do noodles sound?"
"sounds good to me"
not long later, we get off the train at Porter Square
Maggie looks up at the long escalators, only one of which is moving
she looks down and before I can say anything, she kicks the emergency stop button and sends it grinding to a halt
"damnit, I thought it'd start it" she sighs, gesturing at the next escalator over
we start our slow climb up the seemingly innumerable steps, clanking our way up to the mezzanine and the second set of escalators
"how was I to know that the enchantments on these stairs were that fragile?" she asks halfway up the escalator
our wait in line outside Yume wo Katare is surprisingly short
I guess nobody else saw this weather and thought of ramen
we take our seats in the tiny, colorful restaurant at a table the width of the room styled after a school desk
I'm not in the mood for it often, but it's cozy and the one thing on the menu, pork ramen, is really good
the cook asks if we want "delicious garlic" and I say yes, as always, and nudge Maggie to do the same
"so... how've things been since list time you were out here in Mass?"
"pretty okay. I feel like both a lot and not a lot has been up. uhhh... the weather's been annoying"
"too hot?"
"nah, that's been fine, but the meteor showers have been a mess"
"huh?"
"meteorite gravel keeps falling out of the sky and I keep having to sweep it off the roof and magic it out of the yard"
".. we have meteor showers here sometimes, but they're nothing like that"
"oh right, you don't have magic, so there aren't any stray spells for the meteors to hit and spontaneously reform"
I notice the server gesturing for quiet and everyone soon stops their slurping, leaving the room nearly silent
"everyone! we have a next time! would you like to share your dream?" he says
the lanky boy behind me who just finished his ramen stands up and says "I'm Scott, and my dream is to pass all my classes this semester"
the server looks to the next diner
"everyone! we have a perfect! what's your dream?"
"hi, I'm Mark, and my dream is to ask the cute boy in my Diff Eq class out"
we all politely applaud these dreamers and get back to our conversations
as they walk out, Maggie turns to me with a confused look
"what was that all about?"
"this place makes dreams in addition to ramen and everyone gets to share their dream at the end if they want to"
"ohh, that explains the sign that says 'dream factory', but what's the whole 'perfect' thing about, then?"
"he ate all his ramen and drank all the broth and got a good grade"
"does getting a good grade make the dream come true sooner or something?"
before I can answer, our conversation is interrupted by our ramen being ready
my glasses fog up as I lean towards my bowl of ramen and its delicious smell fills my nose
I stir the still-too-hot soup with my chopsticks and fish out a piece of pork and take a bite
it's salty and savory and delicious and I take another bite
I slurp up some broth, narrowly avoiding burning my tongue, and feel the warmth spreading through me
Maggie looks dubiously at her chopsticks before picking both up in one fist and stabbing them into the piece of pork atop the noodles
she lifts them up and the pork flops back into the bowl
she looks over at my technique and tries again, but still doesn't quite get the technique right before resignedly picking up a fork and twirling the ramen like spaghetti
"everyone, we have a perfect! would you like to share your dream?"
"h-hi, I'm Maggie, and my dream is to come and visit Boston more often" she stands up and says, making me blush a tiny bit
I get a "good job", but don't stand up, not wanting to say my hopes around Maggie
"what magic do they use to ensure that the dreams come true? I thought you said there isn't any magic here?" she asks as we walk back to the station
"they don't use any magic. you have to bring your own determination and your own magic"
she looks disappointed
"aren't you a powerful mage back home? I know you'll find a way to get here without getting hit by a bus and make your dream come true"
"maybe. I'm not too sure— unless, hmmm, wait, maybe that'll work from here" she says, going through magical options in her head
as I drift off to sleep that night, I can't help but think about the elven mage sleeping on the other side of the wall
she's lovely and pretty, but a million worries fill my mind
what if whatever magic sent her here never works again?
what if she's not actually gay and what I'm picking up as gay flagging mean something completely different in Ithkuil?
don't French people kiss each other all the time?
maybe they're like that in Ithkuil and she doesn't actually have a crush on me
what if dating works differently in the fantasy kingdom she's from?
is she going to get judged for premarital handholding or something equally silly?
what if she's actually from here and is just doing an elaborate act?
I laugh a bit at that last one; there's too many things about her that make no sense
I worry what my friends will think of her when ("if", a tiny corner of my mind worries) I introduce her to them and I worry what they'll think of me because of her
are they going to believe her like I do or are they going to laugh at us?
as we eat breakfast the next morning, Maggie looks around my living room and asks a question
"I've been meaning to ask — is that flag the flag of the kingdom you're from?" she asks, gesturing at the trans flag on my wall
"no, no, it's the transgender pride flag. y'know, the whole thing about how I .. used to be a boy"
even though I'm out to her, I still mumble the last few words
"ah, yeah, it seemed a bit too simple to be a kingdom"
I raise an eyebrow at her, a bit confused
"the flag of Ithkuil's got three dragons and a lion. anything less would be boring"
"this country's flag is just a bunch of stars and stripes" I tell her, pulling up a picture on my phone
"ohhh, that's what that flag is. I thought it was for a holiday or the city or something. you guys really need a more impressive flag"
"a lot of flags are even more boring than ours"
"is every king in this world a coward?"
"well, most countries don't have kings and the ones that are left don't have much power, so yeah"
we take the train to Haymarket and she follows me into the narrow and busy streets of the North End
as we weave between tourists and locals on the sidewalk, she smiles
"it's just like back home"
"do you have these back home?" I ask, gesturing at the case of pastries we wait beside
"we have something like that one, but I've never seen most of these before" she answers, pointing at an éclair
we soon reach the front of the line and I order us some cannoli
"where are we going now?"
"it's a surprise I hope you'll like" I say, leading her back to the train station
a change of trains later, we sit down on a bench beside the ferry dock and look across the harbor at the city
even though it's getting late in the day, there's still plenty of ships moving back and forth
we eat our cannoli, breathe in the sea breeze, and talk, our conversation meandering between worlds
Ithkuil City has a harbor too, she tells me, although the ships that dock at the bottom of the blue "Mages' Light" there are nowhere near as big as the tankers and container ships that visit Boston
time passes quickly and by the time either of us notices, the sun has already set
we take the ferry back across the harbor and look out from the top deck
she leans in close to me in the chillier night air and I smile in the twilight
I'm going to miss doing things like this with her so much when she goes home to Ithkuil and I hope she'll miss me too
the weekend passes far too quickly and I leave for the office on Monday before she wakes up
I leave her my spare keys, hoping that she won't vanish on me, and a note before running to catch the train
at work, my eyes are on the spreadsheet, but my thoughts are with the pink-haired mage who crashed into my life
what if she teleports back home without even giving me a chance to say goodbye?
what if she can't come back and the next time she crosses the street without looking sends her to the hospital instead of to Boston?
every time I see her, I get flustered, and I seem to have the same effect on her, but what if I never see her again?
I get home from work to find Maggie practicing carpentry in the middle of my living room
she's gotten ahold of an entire wooden door from somewhere and is in the middle of cutting one corner off with a hand saw when she notices me
"hey Rachel!"
"Maggie, what on earth are you doing?"
"building a portal!"
I stare at her and her carpentry project in confusion
she's turned a cheap wooden door into a rough parallelogram entirely with hand tools and left piles of sawdust and random hardware store purchases on the floor
"I didn't expect magic to be so .. to be like this. I thought you'd make a portal by like drawing a circle in the air" I say, miming how I'd imagined it
"you can do that, but without a focal point, you can only go about this far" she says, gesturing with her finger and thumb around an inch apart
"with a focal point at each end, like this is going to become, the casting cost is reduced to basically zero to set it up plus a linear amount based on weight and distance. orbs do this with a tiny focal point at the center of an otherwise empty sphere that only sends light back and forth, and since light weighs nothing, orbs need basically no magic to keep working"
she draws strange angular glyphs with a marker before cutting them out of the cheap wood of the door with a chisel
"are those the spell?"
"no - well, they're a component of the spell, but they're just decoration until I channel magic into them"
"do they mean something?"
"it's a blessing in Oldtongue Ithkuil, the language we spoke before everyone started speaking English"
"wait, why'd you start speaking English?"
"there was this magical disaster 200 years or so ago that replaced all the old languages with it. nobody knows what happened or where English came from, but since I came here, I've come up with a theory"
"oh?"
"I think English came from this world and that I'm not the first to travel between worlds"
"I looked a bit on my flat orb earlier and the only thing I found was something about an old book" she continues, taking the phone from her pocket and pulling up the catalog of the Boston Athenæum
"that's here in Boston, so we could maybe go and take a look at it sometime"
Maggie sets down her chisel and stares intently at the wooden parallelogram that was once a door
she sands down one of her earlier cuts and chisels one of the strange glyphs deeper before grabbing the door as though trying to shake sense into it
her face strains with unseen exertion that soon changes to disappointment
it's clear that whatever magic she's trying is not working
she unscrews the hinges hanging off the side of the door, muttering something about metal contamination
"I should've known these aluminum hinges were too cheap to be real"
"huh?"
"aluminum's a precious metal"
"it isn't here. we wrap food in it" I say, rummaging in a kitchen drawer for the roll of foil
I tear off a piece and she stares at it, turning it over and over in her hands
she neatly folds it and puts it in her bag
she tries again, holding the door so tightly that her knuckles are white, but her magic fails and she sighs and drops to the floor
"I could feel the magic at the other end, but I just couldn't call on it" she says, the disappointment clear in her voice
"I know you can figure it out"
"maybe. maybe it's not even possible"
"let's have dinner and you can think more about it tomorrow"
the next day in the office goes by quickly as I think of her
she meets me at my office for the walk to the Athenæum and teases me a bit about how I try in vain to hide the flustered look on my face
she's so cute when she's nerding out like this
Maggie and I gaze up towards the arched ceiling of the Athenæum in awe
even though it's smaller than the central public library in Copley Sq, it makes up for it in ornateness
she pays our entrance fee (a whopping $40 each that had been my excuse for not visiting before) and we wander the stacks in search of the shelves of books on foreign languages
we find them neatly arranged by the English name of the language
"Esperanto, no. Hindi, we're getting closer .. Italian, Italian, there it is—Ithkuil" she mutters as she finds what we're here for
she slides the dictionary halfway out from between its neighbors before abruptly— and silently— vanishing before my eyes
I blink.
I blink again and she's still gone
I reach for the book, hoping to follow her, but it simply slides off the shelf
still firmly in Boston, I blow many years of dust off it and open the cover
the title page proudly proclaims it to be "A Dictionary, Orthography, and Phrasebook of the Ithkuil Language"
below an overwrought crest featuring three dragons and a lion, smaller text reveals it to have been written in "MCCMXXV" by one Thomas Anderson
I turn the page to the preface and as I read it, I become more and more convinced that Maggie's theory is correct
the author describes his visits to Ithkuil and even includes a sketch of a coin that looks nearly identical to the ones Maggie carries
he ends the preface with a plea to use the knowledge within to "civilize" and christianize Ithkuil and the neighboring kingdoms, claiming that everyone there is guilty of witchcraft and other sins that would "damn them a thousand times over"
I smile to myself, thinking of sins I want to commit with Maggie
I turn the page to the orthography and immediately recognize the same style of angular glyphs that Maggie carved on the portal door
they're fiendishly complex and each diagonal stroke is accompanied by several dots and dashes that clearly have some meaning but are alien to me
as I turn to the next page, I hear footsteps approaching me and turn to see someone who must be a librarian
they tell me that they're closing up for the night and I put the old book back in its dusty place on the shelf
on the train ride home, I can't help but yearn
I hope that I'll see her again
I hope that I'll get to kiss her again soon
she's so cool and cute and and I love talking about our different worlds and getting to show off my city to someone who'd never even heard of Boston before
if Thomas Anderson made it to Ithkuil City and back several times like he wrote in his dictionary, there must be a way for me to do it too
getting run over can't be the only way, right?
maybe I can activate the portal somehow and surprise her by showing up in Ithkuil City
I get back to my apartment and nearly trip over the door laying in the middle of the living room floor
not really having anywhere better to put it, I drag it towards the couch and lean the rough wooden parallelogram against the wall behind a lamp
I flop onto the couch, thoughts still churning
I think I love her and I hope I'll get to see her again soon.
FIN.
thank you to Tris, kim, and a certain girl from a place even stranger than Ithkuil for their help coming up with silly places for the girls to go to and editing