Ch 3. Making Plans

John stood at the table, placing a few of the pastries onto a small plate made from a leaf, then poured a cup of tea. He took his usual spot in the corner and had a small bite. It was stale. John presumed there was some kind of rule that says that they have to be stale at support group meetings like this. Another thread of consistency between his old world and his new one.

He washed the bite down with some tea. It was warm, and rich, but not what he really wanted. He’d always preferred coffee, but it was harder to find in Avalon and he kept what he did have mostly for his own use. When he’d first arrived he’d have traded his soul for a cup, which was almost certainly an option if you met the right demon on the right street at night. He’d eventually found a much safer supplier, an odd little gnome that seemed capable of pulling almost anything from a small barrel that hung from the neck of a three headed dog. Unfortunately it was always ground, and never the same type twice. He’d missed the ritual of the whole beans. Grinding them, pushing down on the press, the satisfying sound as it poured. It had been how he’d started every morning back on Earth. He sighed, and drank more tea. Going down the “I miss” track was dangerous. He’d had whole support meetings be nothing but ‘I miss blank’ with no progress being made. He made an effort to avoid those; they didn’t exactly improve morale. He’d eventually found a few herbalists that supplied whole beans, though he still visited the gnome seller on occasion.

He stayed in the corner as he ate, listening to other people talk. He liked to stay isolated for the first portion after the break, even when he wasn’t in a bad mood, in case someone wanted to ask him for something. He’d found that sometimes people wouldn’t get the help they needed from him if he was already talking to someone else.

John watched Sarah and the small group gathered around her. They were laughing hard enough to spill small splashes of their tea on the floor. That was typical; she relished the opportunity to work through her old material. He’d told her it was unhealthy to linger on it too much, but that had never stopped her before.

Eric was eating a plate stacked high with pastries, sitting alone as he did so. Sometimes John was certain that the free meal was half the reason he showed up.

He looked around for the new girl, seeing if she was talking to anyone, but saw no sign of her. That worried him a bit, but he’d ask around to see if anyone else knew anything about her, and make sure she was okay. The Fey had given John a fairly large stipend as ‘just recompense’ for what had happened to him which he spent liberally to help the other outworlders like himself. That was what most of what he made as a therapist went toward as well.

Ben and Rene were maybe two yards away from John. He could hear Ben complaining about a lack of women as Rene politely did his best to cheer him up.

Since he had no one come up to him yet to talk, John reached into his back pocket; and pulled out a flier he’d seen on a walk through the city on the way there. He took one more look at it wondering if it was a good idea to bring up. He approached Ben and Rene with the flyer in hand.

Rene was relieved at John’s approach. Ben’s complaining was rapidly draining what little sympathy he’d managed to muster for him, and he was glad to no longer be the only one burdened by it.

“-don’t look at me how they used to. Harder to get a job too, still stuck hauling stuff from wagons. As if I can’t do anything else?” asked Ben, a snort leaving his snout as if to punctuate the sentence.

John sighed. He’d gotten him that job by cashing in a favor with a client. “Ben, I found something I thought you would be interested in.” He held up the flier for him.

Hourglass Courtship

Feeling lonely? Having trouble finding love?

The Thirsty Drake is hosting its first singles event!

Five minutes of time with a potential romance before shifting to the next one.

Find a lover, a friend, a mate, or a spouse!

Who knows? You may find all four!

Below that was an hourglass ticking down to show how long until the event would occur. John thought the enchantment was a nice touch, though he still had difficulty with how uncanny the effects like that could look. On his second week in Avalon he’d run screaming from what turned out to be a particularly convincing mural of a minotaur that had been enchanted onto a wall.

Ben read through the listing, and began grinding his teeth. It made him look like a cow chewing cud, but John kept that observation to himself.

“I don’t know…” he started.

“This is something we’ve talked about before. You’ve been here for a year, and during all our sessions, both private and in group, you’ve talked about wanting to meet women.” He’d really talked about wanting ‘pussy’, but John tried to class things up a bit, for Rene’s sake.

“They’re not going to give me the time of day.”

John shook his head. “According to this, they’ll give you five minutes. Think about it, this guarantees some face time. If you actually get to talking, they’re more likely to give you a chance.”

He groaned, unconvinced.

“Tell you what,” John said, doing his best not to let out an audible groan in preparation for what he was about to do. “I’ll come with you.” This was his last resort, and he’d really hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

“I’ll go as well,” said Rene. “I didn’t have much time to meet women before the war. This may be… fun.”

John smiled at him, surprised, and happy to have the support. Ben was the kind of person it was best to have another person to act as a buffer when you were with. “There, we’ll all go together. Take some of the pressure off you.”

Ben let out a kind of low whine. “Fine… I’ll give it a go.”

John gave him a pat on his furry arm. “Proud of you, Ben.”

He snorted. “Sure.”

Everything wrapped up shortly after, and John was left to pick everything up by everyone except Rene, who always made himself available to help out.

“Today, I saw a… person with a snake tail, but a human body. What do I…what do I call a person like that?” he asked as he wrapped up the remaining pastries in a large leaf.

“Ah, those would be Naga. They’re… harder to get used to seeing than some of the other people. I had a patient with acute ophidiophobia that I think of every time I see one.”

This was a common back and forth between Rene and John. Unlike everyone else, who’d been transported to this world during a time after a very popular series about a magical ring and group of halflings had been published, and things like orcs, goblins, elves, and dwarves were in everyone’s lexicon, Rene had come into this world completely blind. In some ways, that helped him. He had fewer prejudices and preconceptions to deal with, but in others it could be hard and often embarrassing for him.

“I also saw a purple woman, with one eye, and a kind of horn where her nose should be.”

John stopped what he was doing. “Okay, that one I have absolutely no clue about. Maybe just call her by her name and hope for the best.” He finished wiping down the chairs and putting everything back. A dwarven craftsman had helped him to create the feeling of a typical support group meeting. Folding chairs, tables, lights that looked like they were from Earth, but were actually enchanted stone carvings. It was as close as he could get it, but he felt that the differences were important too. Trying to make things exactly the same as they were on Earth wasn’t going to help, but there was nothing wrong with a few of the comforts of home to help put people at ease.

Once they were done, John walked Rene out and locked the door.

“See you at the end of the week.”

“I’m already regretting it.”

John patted his shoulder. “I didn’t want to go either but who knows? Maybe we’ll have fun. It’ll be good to help out Ben either way.”

“You really think some women will give him a chance?”

“It’s not the women giving him a chance I’m worried about, it’s him giving himself one. Thanks for volunteering, not sure he would’ve gone for it otherwise.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get back to my girl back home. May as well try to meet one here.”

…

John walked home, his path lit by the enchanted lights that floated on either side of the road. He passed by the ‘Thirsty Drake’ as he walked and considered for a moment that it might be nice to have a drink. It was the kind of thing she would have suggested to him, but he would’ve insisted on just going home. Convincing only himself not to go in was even easier and he walked the rest of the way back home.

His apartment ‘building’ was a large tree growing more than a hundred feet into the air. He climbed the stairs that weren’t carved, but instead grown, and made it up to his second story apartment. He’d been lucky, when he’d first arrived in Avalon, that some of the same Fey bloodline that had made the circle that transported him there lived in the city. Due to their laws, they felt they had to pay a price for their relative’s negligence, and so he was given a regular stipend. They wouldn’t return him to Earth of course. They had no way to; the Fey paths were too complicated without the person who’d built them. That explanation had only maddened him at the time, but he’d made peace with it, at least that’s what he told himself.

He muttered the activation spell for the lights. His apartment was simple. A small kitchen with an ice-rune chest, furniture he’d commissioned from the same dwarf that helped him to furnish the support group room, and flowers growing everywhere. His furniture was more Earth than Avalonia, but he did sleep on a hammock. A boyhood dream that had turned out to be fairly normal in his new world. He put his leftover pastries in the kitchen along with the tea, undressed, and laid down, deactivating the lights with a whispered command. He swayed back and forth gently, missing the sounds of traffic, and the warmth of Katrina on his chest until he fell asleep.