She is in a - flat area. It's so flat. There is dirt under her. The dirt is flat.

Loops of biting cold shift and writhe under her skin, as though she is being aggressively snuggled by a nestful of ghost snakes.

She produces a rather eloquent whimper. The places the ghost snakes are not snuggling are too hot. It's an odd sensation.

She can't see, and she's not sure how much to trust the sense advertising flatness; she crawls, a little, hands outstretched.

The ghost snakes settle down after a minute. The sense advertising flatness also advertises that she is now wrapped in artistic loops of thorny vines, with huge soft petals stretched between them to make a sort of swimsuit. Her other remaining senses corroborate. The vines are chilly, the petals pleasantly cool. There is a spiral of vine around her left wrist that ends in a single bloom, perched corsage-like just above the back of her hand.

And off in the distance, in the direction she's crawling, there is - fire?

...how does this interact with the jeans and shirt and fluff parka she was wearing before?

The petalsuit is under all that, but her clothes have sustained minor damage in a few places when they fought the vines and the vines won.

...she gets up. She walks towards the fire. It is very flat so she doesn't trip.

So flat. The flattest.

The fire is being produced by a - creature. The creature has four legs and two wings and a long neck and a long tail and in general strongly resembles the sort of thing you would think of if someone said 'dragon', even before you get to the part about the breathing of fire.

Oh no now her mind is going all kinds of fucked up places how many artifacts even was that.

"- um."

—the creature very abruptly turns into a human. The human stares at her in utter bafflement.

Oh good. - sort of. What even is her life.

"Um," she says again.

"Where did you even come from," he asks in a language she has never heard before and yet somehow understands perfectly.

"...Noregr?" she says helplessly. "I, um, a lot of artifacts landed on me, I don't even know how many. Several."

"—and by 'artifact', you mean—?"

"Magic objects? Um, where am I."

"On the bottom of the world. ...The world in question is Elcenia."

"...my world doesn't have a bottom."

"—really? How's it manage that?"

"It's spherical. - down is the middle."

"I mean, down is the middle here too, but it's a big flat square and all the - things - are on the side where we currently aren't. Plants, dwellings, weather."

"...okay." Swallow. "Um, an artifact is a magical object each of which confers when touched one benefit and one drawback. A lot of them fell on me. I'm not sure how many. Too many. At least I don't seem to be dying."

"Objects with the described properties are not a thing I've previously heard of. We have different kinds of magic than that."

"Okay. Uh, good for you. Is that how you can turn into a dragon."

"A - well, dragonish - is what I am, a human is what I turn into," he corrects.

"Oh." Sigh. "- I have touched way too many artifacts."

"It sounds like that's a concerning state to be in!"