There appears a girl, mid-yelp and beautiful and winged,

and a boy the same age, far less remarkable.

She startles, almost falling over but catching herself.

(Here: an abandoned house, grown over with vines and dust and lost memories, windows broken, siding missing, a dark sky outside limed with the first hints of dawn. Here: a woman, her age hard to place, wearing a knee-length dress made of oranges and blues and blacks with a window cut over her stomach to reveal a strange eye - a tattoo, on second glance, though an incredibly realistic one - and a witch's hat on her head. She's sitting in the middle of a circle of salt, a variety of crystals arrayed in front of her, incense holder to one side and a small homemade broom to the other. The air smells strongly of incense, with a fading layer of dust and mold and despair).

She quickly mutters a somewhat butchered incantation to break the circle ("spirits thank you west south east north the circle is open", all run together) and stands as the salt obediently swirls into a tidy pile.

"Are you okay?"

"Where are we?"

"I don't think I'm hurt. Xander?"

"In one piece, I guess... unless I got hit on the head and that's why I can't tell how she's pulling off the blue and orange..."

"We're in West Virginia, near the northern bit of the Virginia state line. What happened?" They could have been veiled and then unveiled, but they seem surprised... She's not aware of many ways to appear suddenly without illusions, except from myths...

"Cryptid, uh, ate us. I guess West Virginia isn't awful, though I don't have my ID on me for a plane, Xander, do you -"

"No."

"...Cryptid?" Possibly a term from a coven she's unfamiliar with.

"It wasn't even a pretty one! Looked like a fuckoff huge snake with a big mirror for a face!"

"No, uh, 'what do you mean by a cryptid.'"

The girl tests the floor gingerly with one hand, folds herself into a more comfortable sitting position. "The thing magical girls turn into if we overdo the shapeshifting? I don't know if there's a West Virginian regionalism for it."

"...I've heard of new shifter witches having a hard time turning back sometimes?"

"Aren't... you a magical girl?"

"I'm a witch. I think some younger witches use 'magical girl', partially ironically..."

"Do you have an Internet-enabled device handy."

"Yeah, one sec..." She pulls out a colorful, somewhat clunky smartphone and holds it out to Isabella. It appears to be a Nokia. "Though reception's usually bad out here."

"Thanks for the heads up." She attempts Wikipedia.

"You're welcome."

The lock screen loads first - it's a bit before eight in the morning, October fifteenth, twenty twelve. The 'witch' has a background of an autumn forest on her phone. There's one bar and a little 'LTE' icon. Wikipedia is willing to load.

...2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_girl ?

Magical girls (魔法少女, mahō shōjo, also known as mahou shoujo or majokko) traditionally belong to a sub-genre of Japanese fantasy anime and manga, but it has gained traction in non-Japanese formats, such as animated television series, graphic novels and webcomics. Magical girl stories feature young girl heroes with superhuman abilities, forced to fight evil and to protect the Earth.

Wikipedia also seems under the impression it's 2012.

Bella hands the phone back. "Hi, we're from an alternate universe where among other things there's magical girls and it's 2004."

"...Okay that's new."

"Yep."