Oh, there it is! It's actually (checks watch) two minutes early! Good thing she expected them to not have any basic respect for schedules and got out early.

Hop on, the adventure starts!

She likes to look at the houses passing by, all those small lit windows, each one a story, each one a person, each one a tiny miracle of science - photons harnessed to keep the dark at bay, to leave the fear of night outside, on the other side of the glass.

The inside of the bus is lit with an hapzard mixture of warm and cold light, the tiny LCD of the ticketing machine adding its own glow to the cacophony.

There is no one else, no one to wonder what a young girl is doing on the bus all alone after dark. Well, no one except the driver, but he knows her, so she's a Known Quantity, and doesn't get questions she doesn't have a lie ready for.

Well, no going back now.

Hop, off the bus, with plenty of time to spare before the NightJet is there. She checks her ticket for the hundredth time, yes, it's still there in belt pocket of her backpack, easily accessible.

And now, the wait.

The train is thirty minutes late! She could have taken a later bus, if she had known!

Hopdammit!

Uuuuuuuuuugh, it's going to take a full hour, sixty excruciatingly boring minutes until it gets there!

Three thousand six hundred.

Three thousand five hundred and ninety-nine.

Three thousand five hundred and ninety-eight.

Three thous...

Yeah, this is silly. She can just put down her backpack and grab one of the books she packed.

But! Having her backpack on makes her feel like She Is Having An Adventure, if she puts it down then she's just... a girl waiting for a train.

On the other hand, more Tolkien.

On the Mage Hand, this is a train station, so everything is Probably Dirty.

Ok, time for some Magic!

She opens the chest strap, wiggles out of the shoulder ones, then - keeping the waist strap closed - moves the backpack to be on her front, and grabs the Lord of the Rings from the top pocket, which is exactly why she put it there. She is a genius.

She should have gone before leaving the house, but there isn't time to go back now, so she will have to use the Train Station Bathroom, which. Ewwww.

Bonnie steels herself, and then opens the door -

- to somewhere else.

It's... a bar? What?

The bar is the previous door and it's closed now anyway, and doesn't have a brick fireplace. It does have a pizza oven tho, so there's that.

She doesn't see anyone behind the counter, and they seem to be doing something incredibly funky with those fake windows, are those exploding galaxies?

It's not really a conscious decision, to walk inside, and she only realizes she's taken a few steps when she can hear the door softly closing behind her. A wooden door, completely different than the one she had opened on the other side.

"Am I going mad?"

A napkin appears on the bar counter out of thin air. There are some words scribbled on it.

Bonnie walks, cautiously, towards it.

"Not as far as I can tell, assuming you're baseline human. Welcome to Milliways! The first drink is free."

So. On the one hand she could be hallucinating, or dreaming. On the other hand, "baseline human" implies that whoever scribbled on the napkin has met creatures who are not baseline human!!! ADVENTURE! Possibly with aliens involved??? Aaaaaaaaaaaah! So exciting!

"I really love what you've done with the place! It's so... cozy! But. Uh."

"Do you have a bathroom?"

Another napkin appears next to the first one.

"You should use the one on the upper floor, we just cleaned it. Go up the wooden stairs then turn right four times."

Four times? Wouldn't it make more sense to...

Wait no, if this is the kind of place that doesn't have a normal relationship with geometry that makes perfect sense. They probably have Escher prints in the bathrooms, don't they?

As she looks around for the stairs she gets distracted by the fake windows. She gets closer and wow, that's a great resolution, she can't see the pixels at all.

Some of the windows look like they can be opened. She ignores the part of her brain that's telling her that if those are real galaxies outside there might not be air on the other side of the window and tries to turn the handle -

- when she feels something poking her leg.

The something turns out to be the nose of a big golden retriever, looking at her worried.

DØG!

"Oh hello there! Whooooo is a good boi? You are, yes you are!"

As her mom taught her, hand open, from below.

"Do you want scritches?"

"Actually, I should go to the bathroom, wait for me here!"

When she get back downstairs the dog is patiently waiting for her, sitting next to the counter while looking pointedly at it.

There is a new napkin. "It would be very unwise to open those windows. Please refrain from doing so, or Security will have to stop you, and possibly even lick you while looking incredibly sad. What would you like to drink?"

"Surprise me!"

The door opens and in walks . . . probably a teenage girl? She has four arms, cat ears on top of her head, pointy elf ears sticking out of her mop of hair, silver dragon scales on her forehead, one bright green eye and one bright blue eye, and is wearing full plate and a sword.

She eyes the bar and its inhabitants, mutters "planar nonsense, sure, why not", and strides up to the bar. "Hello!" she says cheerfully. "I'm Brenda. What's this place's deal?"

Wow! An alien! Four arms! Cat ears and human elf (!) ears (smart, she can both be cute and use earbuds) and some kind of scales. Also, a sword. Everything is better with a sword.

Must be someone from the human diaspora in some kind of parallel universe, she looks too... human to have evolved independently. Although crabs and all that.

"Hello! I'm Bonnie! This place's deal is apparently, one free drink, and mine is..." she turns around to look at the counter "something red with oregano on top?"

Sure, why not, she's immune to poison. "Sure, I'll take a free drink. What plane and planet are you from? And universe, if you've got a name for it."

Napkin-flutter.

"I... don't think people have given a name to my plane or universe? As far as science knows - well, knew, unless I'm dreaming or hallucinating - there is only one plane and one universe. Or at least, only one we can meaningfully measure and run experiments in. We call out planet Earth, and we're in the Milky Way galaxy, which is part of the uh... local cluster?"

She's almost forgotten her drink, but the napkin appearing makes her turn around.

"The entity responsible for these napkins appearing wants to know which drink you'd prefer."

She tries hers, it tastes like... tomato juice with some salt and oregano? Is that a think people drink??? It's kinda nice tho, makes her think of pizza and other tasty food.

"Oh fun, I'm from an Earth originally too! Been on the planet Golarion for the past while, though, and it's got hundreds of species including humans and contact with several other planes." She puts a hand on the napkin. "Nice to meet you, Bar! Can I get something in the general vicinity of a milkshake, but not quite like anything they have on Earths?"