The ground beneath her dissolves into a swirling void that reaches for her with vaporous arms and pulls her down.

She falls for a timeless interval through the void, and then lands in a grassy field on a soft patch of springy moss.

She lets out a strangled scream that dies in her throat when she's landed on the moss. She looks around.

She is in a field. There is a beautiful sunset just getting underway in one corner of the sky, and in most directions the field seems to give way to woods a long way off, but opposite the sunset there is instead a little stream emerging from some woods that are much closer by.

Everything seems... slightly too real. The grass in the field is all perfectly natural grass, growing every which way - but it always seems to grow the right way, coming together in aesthetically pleasing swirls, and the shades of green involved are just a little too vivid, and the water in the stream sparkles a little too brightly, and the clouds veiling the descending sun glow too beautifully.

Uh... huh.

"Is anyone here?"

No. No one is here. Just the stream and the grass and the trees and the sunset.

...okay. Creepy hallucination. Alright. Stream and woods it is. She gets up, dusts herself, and starts walking.

As the sun sets, golden flowers open on climbing vines strung between the trees. The flowers begin to glow, softly at first, then like beautiful little streetlights.

Oooh pretty hallucination. She walks up to some vines.

The vines are so pretty. Big glowing gold flowers.

She'll keep walking, then, taking in all the pretty around her.

Everything is beautiful and rich in detail and just slightly otherworldly. Most of the trees and shrubs are recognizable or at least not-obviously-strange species, but the glowflowers are definitely nothing she's heard of, and there are a few other things like that, trees with spiral-shaped leaves or moss that sparkles as though dusted with gold.

It takes about an hour and a half to cross the forest, following streams and glowflowers the whole way. When she emerges from the other side, she is at the bottom of a gently sloping field that leads up to a charming little town, very Disney-picturesque, with dim glowflower streetlights in a rainbow of colours. Up on a hill in the middle of town is a golden palace, all tall towers and sunburst-themed decor, which gleams softly in the many-coloured light from below.

...well, then. She probably hit her head harder than she'd thought. She starts walking that way.

It's a pleasant evening, but there aren't many people wandering the outskirts of town. In fact the only one is -

- that's a tiger. A large, fluffy white tiger, wearing a gold-trimmed white sash neatly tied around her neck and fastened with a brooch or pin in the shape of a golden sunburst. She looks in Sadde's direction and pauses.

"Good evening," she says. "Are you in need of assistance?"

"Good evening. Yes. I, erm, seem to be rather thoroughly lost."

She nods. A nodding tiger is a slightly odd-looking sight.

"Where were you expecting to be, and how did you come to be here instead?"

"I was expecting to be on the way to school and then a creepy void swallowed me."

"It sounds like you might be an outworlder. The King will want to speak to you tomorrow, if so."

What a convenient hallucination. "Um, may I ask why?"

"I assume he has a good reason. He generally does."

"...I suppose that's a good characteristic for a king to have."

"Yes," the tiger agrees. "I wouldn't have been nearly so eager to join the Royal Guard otherwise."

She nods, slowly. "I'm Sadde, by the way."

"And I am Stormcloud. Pleased to meet you. Will you be needing a place to stay?"

"Well, probably, unless there's magic that lets me go without sleep and food."

"Not to my knowledge," says Stormcloud, amused. "I could find you a room at my friend's inn, if that's agreeable."