Her latest traveling companion is sitting on the floor of the engine room. His mind is swimming as he tries to understand the schematics he's reading; engineering, science, and math had never interested him before now, but the promise of travel through space and time is enticing enough to draw him in. Like a moth to a flame, or Sisyphus up the hill, he begins.

That's why, he will later insist, that he didn't notice the ship had already landed.

She's busy running for her life. She can't even travel out of this shithole of a world - Fillory, really?? - so she's stuck using her mediocre cardio abilities and she keeps tripping like some sort of B horror movie damsel -

When she spots the diner she kind of - stops and stares at it for a whole three seconds before she runs towards it. It has to be magic, it's in the middle of a random forest in Fillory. Or it's a trap. Whatever. She doesn't have much choice at the moment.

She swings open the door and runs inside.

There is a diner. There are booths and tables, but despite the lights being on, it appears to be closed. The chairs are stacked up on the counter. There is a door leading to the back- probably the ktichen.

Into the back she goes then. Getting out of the open won't help a lot, but it's something.

Instead of a kitchen, she sees a spacious white room with a large mechanical something in the center with a glass pillar rising from the top. There are levers, buttons, and switches galore.

There is also a man, roughly her age, standing up from the floor.

"What are you doing here?"

"Running for my life. What about you?"

"Until now, reading. Do you need to leave here now?"

"Needed to leave here weeks ago. And if you have that power, we should really go immediately because the thing chasing me would really really really love that ability and will murder us all to get it."

He knows more than enough to turn the damn thing on. He flips some number of switches, presses a few buttons, and pulls a lever; the engine makes an odd sound as it powers up, but it's clear that it has- and clearer, through the viewscreen, that the diner is de-materializing as they take off.

Jocelyn takes in the viewscreen to keep a watch out for the thing chasing her.

"That's some magic you have here. Don't know why the hell you would have it out in the open in Fillory. That's just asking to be murdered."

"Magic is an old story people told themselves to explain a reality that terrified them in its breadth and complexity. Unless you know something we don't."

As they leave, the viewscreen turns off automatically.

She spins around and steps back towards the door.

"We?"

"Me and the mistress of the house. 'Clara', as she calls herself. You're inside a TARDIS, a ship that can fly through space and time. It's a convenient invention for avoiding certain problems."

Jocelyn takes a look around, seemingly unimpressed.

"This is your solution for space/time travel? Bit much, isn't it?"

"She says it's an engineering marvel from another planet- to me, it looks like the last gap of a dying civilization which reached greater heights than ours. You are human, right?"

"Very human." Not quite a lie, really. "Where is your friend then?"

"She'll be in the back. Just a moment."

He pushes a button on the console, then flips a switch, and pushes another button twice.

"Two minutes at the most, I've timed her."

She nods and circles the console. "How far away are you taking us? Very far away from Fillory, I hope?"

"Is Fillory where you're running from? We can go quite far, yes. This ship travels through space and time. It can go anywhere we like. Let's see..."

He starts fiddling with the switches.

"Yup. Fillory is this stupid backwards dimension filled with psychopaths and air that's made up of bullshit and opium." She examines the switches. "I've never seen a machine that could do all that stuff. I guess magicians can come up with some crazy stuff."

"This machine has very little to do with 'magicians'. Whatever dimension you're from, those rules no longer apply. Prepare yourself for something so far beyond your paradigms that it will challenge the underpinnings of your reality- on some days. Other days, you meet aliens who seem exactly like humans."

"....seems pretty typical for Fillory, actually. And Earth. My Earth, at least. We have creatures, maybe not aliens, that seem human and then can be very not. Gods and monsters. Vampires, werewolves, faeries... weird goat people."

A part of the wall slides aside, revealing a woman in a fur coat, a beaded skirt, and apparently fighting with some kind of nest that's taken up habitation in her hair.

"Sorry, just a moment, I'll be right with you!"

She tromps about the console room, giving the guests a wide berth. The glittering insects bite at her flesh, leaving dark red marks as they go.