I'm going to be a little blunt here: as you've probably noticed, strange and supernatural things have been happening to me since day one. And, as you've further noticed, they became an almost daily basis starting with the killer lamp incident. And, right around this point, as I stumbled away from a battle with what I had to assume was alien, I was sure I had seen it all. I didn't think anything could top something like that, it just couldn't have.

With all that in mind, know that I'm being completely honest when I say, I was about to be proven wrong. Everything that had happened to me so far, from the zombie army to the talking spider, that was nothing compared to what happened next. It may be kind of hard to stomach, so, just keep in mind that nobody was more confused than I was. It'll all make sense eventually, I promise.

So, after making my way out of the office building, I opened the door only to be greeted with an unexpected face.

"You..."

"I really hate to ask," said the monkey's timid voice in my head. "But does this red hat belong to you?"

For a split second, I had been ready to pummel the little thing, but after catching sight of the hat it was holding out, I couldn't help but forgive him. After everything I had just gone through, it sure felt great to have that thing back.

The monkey explained, with the general tone of somebody who was constantly afraid of getting smacked, what exactly had happened. Apparently, the starman (yes, the animals called it that too) had showed up earlier this morning and had been giving off a very loud sound that was too high to be audible to humans. It'd had the exact same effect as it had on the pet store, except now, only this time, every animal within a half-mile radius had heard it. The way the monkey talked made it seem as if the problem was happening in many other places too.

"And I swear on my life," he interrupted himself to say. "I didn't mean to steal your hat thing. I don't even know why I was holding it when you-"

"Hey, I believe you. Just tell me more about the starman."

Any other day, I'd have loved to see him wallow in apology, but today wasn't any other day.

I asked the monkey if he knew exactly why the starmen were doing all this, and to my astonishment, he did. It was to, one, stir up all the animals so it would be difficult for me to traverse the area, and two, stir up the zoo animals specifically so I wouldn't be able to talk to him, the monkey. I asked why on earth the starmen would want to keep me from talking to this one particular monkey. He said it was because he was the only one that was able to sing.

"Could you... back up a bit, please?" I said. "I'm lost."

"Okay, look: you're on a special trip around the big mountain, right?"

"Yes...?"

"And you ARE the special boy that is going to protect us all from the terrible noises, right?"

"I think so, I guess? W-wait, I still don't get what that has to do with you singing."

"There's not a lot I can tell you, honestly; most of the details got lost with the passing of my gran. She's the one who actually talked with the crazy guy."

"Crazy guy?"

"Yeah, Gran talked to me about him all the time. She said he kept going on and on about some horrible disaster coming up and how we're all gonna get our minds taken over by people from other planets, and that the only one who could stop him would be a special boy with a red hat. Guess he wasn't so crazy after all, eh?"

"What did he look like?"

The monkey shrugged its tiny shoulders, which, I'll admit, was kind of cute. "I don't know, he's dead. Anyway, he told her that she would play an important part in bringing down the alien menace, so he gave her a set of instructions on what to do once you showed up."

"So, I'm guessing she passed those instructions on to you?"

The monkey nodded and then turned to walk away, gesturing for me to follow.

No, this isn't the weird thing I was talking about. Just wait a few minutes, I'm getting there.

The monkey lead me back to his enclosure, which, in the last then minutes since the starman had vanished, had attracted the attention of what seemed to be all the other animals in the zoo. It was a bizarre sight to be sure: every animal you could picture, from the towering pair of elephants to a colony of tiny green tree frogs, were all clustered around the same small place in a disorganized sort of assembly. They all showed signs of being anxious, and, as soon the monkey and I showed up, their attention immediately turned to us.

Every animal in the crowd was still and silent. It was like being in a claustrophobic taxidermy museum, except every single unblinking glass eye was turned in my direction. After half a minute of uncomfortable silence, the animals parted to allow the monkey and I through, and I watched as a giraffe gave the monkey a boost back into his cage.

My first thought was that the monkey was about to give some over-the-top and dramatic speech that would be really painful to sit through, but he didn't say a word. Instead, he just beckoned for me. I kept a tight grip on my bat while I walked through the crowd, just in case any of the animals got any ideas. When I reached the monkey, he sat up in a somewhat formal stance and cleared his throat. Once again, I anticipated hearing words play out in my head. Instead, the monkey started singing.

Have you ever heard what a monkey sounds like when it sings? It's definitely something else, but I didn't get to listen to it for very long. The monkey let out exactly five notes before falling silent once again. Kind of a letdown, honestly; from the way he went about it, you'd think he was about to perform a rock opera.

I tried my best to keep my disappointment and confusion hidden. The monkey looked as if it's entire life had been leading up to this moment and, after giving me my hat back, I couldn't let his moment get crushed.

"Uh... thanks!" I said, with as much fake enthusiasm as I could muster. "Thanks, monkey, I'm sure that'll help me a lot!"

The monkey looked pleased. All the other animals relaxed a little bit more, as if they had been collectively holding their breaths.

"So what happens now?" I asked, feeling awkward.

The monkey didn't answer at first. A few of the bigger animals seemed to cast glances at each other, while some of the others had already started to leave.

"Isn't there somewhere you wanted to go?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"That music isn't going to be very helpful around here. You're on an adventure, aren't ya? Aren't you trying to go somewhere?"

It's true, I was. My eventual goal, of course, was to make it to the top of the mountain, but I wasn't going to ask them to take me there with no help, no experience, and no clue what exactly was going on. It'd be too long of a trip on foot anyway.

I racked my brain. This singing monkey couldn't have been a dead end. There had to be some clue I'd been given along the way, some indication of where I needed to go next...

Then I remembered. It was a long shot, but it wouldn't hurt to try. "Have any of you guys seen a cave with a big weird rock in it? A rock with two letter... uh..." I drew a letter X's into the dirt with my shoe. "Two marks that look like this?"

And, as a matter of fact, they had. And according to them, it was within walking distance of that very zoo. No, that wasn't the weird part either.

Five minutes later, I was following a small insect through the untouched tangle of a forest. The sun had finally started to set, so it was quickly getting hard for me to see, even with my flashlight. Thankfully, the bug I was following wasn't just any bug. It was a mole cricket, and if you've never seen a mole cricket, they've got to be among the ugliest things in all of creation, so keeping my attention on it was very easy. And if it ever did wander off, all I had to do was call and it would scuttle back into view almost immediately, while little voice in my head said "I'm right over here, genius." or something to that effect. Mole crickets were friendly, if a little abrasive.

Now, I trudged through that forest for a really, really long time. And I mean, enough time for me to get truly frustrated with just how long it was taking me. Every single time I felt confident that we were going to stop somewhere, the mole cricket just kept on going, not showing a single sign of even thinking of slowing down. I had a box of raisins and half a water bottle to hold me over, but there was nothing I could do to help how tired and beaten up I was. A blister started carving into one of my heels, then into both of them, and still the mole cricket just kept on going.

The sky turned orange, then purple, then a very deep shade of blue. The air had turned chilly, and I now had to keep my flashlight constantly fixated on the mole cricket in order to see him. That meant no rest stops, not even for a second, or else the cricket would be too hard to track down again. I don't know why, but he didn't seem to register when I told him things like "stop" and "please slow down". Maybe it was his tiny insect brain, or maybe he just enjoyed seeing something much bigger and stronger than he was struggle to move as he plowed proudly onward.

Then, just as I was about to scream out in frustration and demand to be taken to the nearest possible bed, the mole cricket suddenly stopped. It was still for a moment, then began waving its disgusting little pincers into the air.

"We're here!" he said. "It's just up ahead, you can't miss it!"

I pointed the flashlight up ahead of me and saw two thick pines growing closely together, their tangled mess of branches neatly hiding what I had to assume was the mouth of a cave.

"Well, so long, kid!" said the cricket, before I could even respond. "Good luck saving the world and all that, it probably won't mean a thing to crickets like me! We're an unstoppable race, haven't you heard?"

He then burrowed into the forest floor and I never saw him again. Normally I'd have wanted him to stay so I could thank him, but by then, all I wanted to do was get this whole thing over with. Whatever was so special about that rock, it'd better have been worth it.

The inside of the cave was dark and dusty, but at least it was dry and gave some shelter from the cold outside. I trudged to the very back of the cave and looked around with my flashlight, trying to remember what the rock in my dream had looked like. The details of my dream were fuzzy, but I remember there being nothing really special about it other than-

"Whoa..."

Nope, never mind. Either somebody had replaced the rock since it had been carved, or it had somehow been changed. After everything that had happened, it wouldn't have surprised me. It seemed to be a lot bigger, for one thing, but then again, I was a lot taller in that dream. Its surface was gleaming like glass, and it seemed to have been carved into a shape that suggested a seashell. I did a little research later on and the real-life shell that most closely resembles it is called a wentletrap. Still, it had the same two letter X's carved into it, so there must have been some connection either way.

The shell looked cool and all, but at first, I couldn't see anything really helpful or noteworthy about it. It didn't have any words or a map as far as I could tell, and I couldn't find any secret buttons or switches. It was only once I stepped back to think when that I first heard the voice.

"Heard" isn't really the right word, though; the first time it happened, it was too quiet to make out words. It made me jump slightly, but my immediate instinct was not that somebody was watching me. I was still just as alone as I was when I entered. The voice seemed audible, but it didn't seem to be anywhere except in my head. It was similar to the voices I heard when I communicated with animals, but, in a way that was difficult to pin down, not quite the same. Think of it like, the difference between hearing something live, and hearing a scratchy recording of it.

Though I was startled at first, it wasn't long before I decided that this was what I was here for. Closing my eyes and concentrating, I listened as the voice in my head steadily grew clearer. After a few moments, I was make it what it was saying: a question, repeated over and over again:

Who has lost his tail?

It took me a second to remember, but I knew I'd heard that somewhere. My eyes drifted down to my half-backpack, which I'd dropped to the side when I'd heard the voice, when I saw something that jogged my memory. My heart started racing with excitement as I pulled out my great-grandfather's journal and began flipping eagerly through the pages, trying to find the entry that I'd read on the night I first found it. I nearly tore the thing in half in my rush, but eventually I got to it. Clearing my throat and taking a breath, I read the answer out loud.

"'The eternal one of the ship that sails the cosmos'."

I still didn't know what that meant, by the way.

For a while, nothing happened. I just waited there, in the middle of an old cave, standing expectantly in front of a talking rock as if I were waiting for it to burst open and reveal all the undiscovered secrets of the universe. After a time, a crippling feeling started to form in the edges my mind; the thought that I may have just trudged several miles through the woods just to be met with a dead end. The fact that the entire world depended on it didn't exactly help much either.

Then, all at once, I felt unbearably tired. Yeah, I had been tired beforehand, but that was nothing compared to the feeling that suddenly hit me. What I was feeling before was the result of several hours of strenuous exercise; what I felt right then was like, how it would feel if I had taken ten doses of sleeping pills and they had just now made it into my brain. I struggled to keep my eyes from drooping but, before I knew it, my knees had hit the mossy rock floor. I tried to raise a hand to slap myself, but my arms felt as if they were made of concrete. Losing balance, I fell against one elbow, and my face came dangerously close to reaching the suddenly-very-soft-looking floor. It occurred to me, right there in the middle of the cave, that in the time since I had last slept, I had gone to school, walked home, had my dog try to kill me, walked to the zoo, had a tiger and an alien try to kill me, and then walked several miles through a trackless forest.

The side of my face touched the cold wet floor. Had it really only been a few hours since I was chewing pencils in science class?

I closed my eyes. The cave floor really was comfortable if you gave it the chance…

The sleep I plunged into was deep, dreamless, and incredibly gratifying. Never mind the fact that I was beaten up and freezing and miles away from my bed - the sheer exhaustion I had suddenly been afflicted with made all of those things only mild inconveniences at most.

I didn't get very long to savor that rest, though, because... well, it's getting to be about that time. I guess there's no point in stalling anymore; just take comfort in the fact that I was just as confused and disturbed as you will be in a few moments.

When I woke up, I didn't feel like opening my eyes. I felt so comfortable, so safe and secluded, that I would have been perfectly happy to lie there for the rest of my life. It felt a lot warmer, strangely, and I don't remember the floor being so soft and flexible, but I didn't let that bother me. What I did let bother me, though, was the thing that was poking my nose. I reached up and swatted at it, not really caring for what it was. Another poke. Shoo fly, don't bother me...

"...Mister?"

That voice, that completely innocent but still out-of-nowhere voice, jarred me so much that I actually recoiled backwards and let out a yelp. Too confused by my abrupt departure from sleep, all I could tell for sure was that somebody, or something, was crouched over in front of me. A millisecond later, I became aware of other alarming things. Like the fact that it was now very bright; even in broad daylight there was no way the inside of the cave could be that illuminated. The ground I was lying on didn't feel like the cave either; it was soft and slightly warm against my back, like I was lying on a blanket.

All of the sudden I was completely terrified. Where was I? What was going on? Who touched me?

I heard noises and saw blurry shapes, but they made no sense to me. The light had left me half-blinded for a few moments, but I seemed to be surrounded in an endless sea of bright, seashell pink. I rubbed at my eyes frantically until they felt like they'd work again, then, reopening them, I found myself face-to-face with a very small boy. He couldn't have been older than five by the looks of him. I could have carried him on my shoulders if he asked me.

"Where'd you come from, Mister?" he asked, his voice as gentle and naive as before. "And how come you don't have any clothes?"

I blinked. Any clothes? Wait, what? WHAT?!

Yes, I hadn't realized it before, but it was true. I was naked. I was somewhere I didn't recognize, with somebody I didn't know, and I was naked.

I was too shocked to even respond to the kid, all I could do was let out another yelp and make a mad dash for the nearest place of cover. My eyes fell on a big, swirly-looking rock formation that was the same pastel pink as most of my surroundings, and I dashed behind it moments later without even questioning what it was. If it meant putting a wall between me and him, it was a good thing. I crouched behind it and felt myself hyperventilating. I wasn't even that embarrassed, honestly, just confused and scared beyond all belief.

"Where are you going?" I heard the kid's voice ask.

"Go away!"

I didn't mean to scare him, but I probably did, because a second later, I heard him running away as fast as his short legs would let him. I probably would've felt bad if I was in literally any other situation besides this one. Besides, with the kid gone and some sense of privacy, I could finally take a few moments to look around and make some sense of my surroundings.

I was... somewhere else. Somewhere that didn't seem like it should be possible for it to exist. I had to assume that I wasn't on Earth anymore; as far as I know, there's no place on earth where the sky looks like one of those nebula photographs I see hanging up in school. The ground was made out of what appeared to be smooth, pearly stones, but they seemed to have just enough give to be comfortable comfortable to sit on. If you fell on your face while running here, you wouldn't have to worry about breaking a bone. I couldn't see any plant life or any other people, but I did see an animal a little ways to my right. It seemed to be a perfectly normal white Persian house cat, except for the fact that it was swimming. No, not in the water, in the ground. It almost hurt my head to look at, but it was true; the ground was parting its way around the cat's body as seamlessly as if it were water.

The chalky pink landscape seemed to stretch out endlessly in all conceivable directions, populated here and there with hundreds of tiny houses. They were different from any houses I had ever seen, though; they seemed to have grown straight out of the ground itself, forming into tall, curling shapes that looked strikingly similar to the stone I had talked to to bring me here. With their simple little doors and windows, they almost looked like something from a child's picture book. Somewhere close by, I could hear the gurgling rapids of a stream and the chirping of small, friendly birds.

My mind was absolutely flooded. I had stopped asking myself where I was, it was safe to assume I wouldn't figure out the answer by myself, and instead began wondering HOW I got here. Was this another planet? Had I been abducted and sent here by the aliens that had been invading? That kid back there didn't seem very alien to me. Was I dreaming? That seemed to be a reasonable guess, since I had just fallen asleep and all, but... if I had become aware that I was having a dream, wouldn't that give me control over it? That's how lucid dreams were supposed to work, or so I've been told. Testing this, I tried to will the dream to let me shoot lasers out my eyes, but I was met with no success. This didn't rule out the possibility altogether, I know, but some part of me couldn't shake the feeling that, whatever was happening to me, it wasn't a dream, or at least, not a typical one.

So... was I dead? Had I finally somehow gotten myself killed and this was what heaven looked like? I'd expect to see a lot more people, if that were the case, but I guess nobody really knows what heaven looks like before they get there...

I mentally shook myself. No, that's just stupid. Why on Earth would I have died? Sure, I was tired and beaten up, but I wasn't that tired and beaten up.

The dream possibility was looking to be the most likely by that point, especially once I remembered how many weird dreams I'd been having lately. I wasn't entirely convinced, but I still kept that idea firmly in my mind and held tightly onto it. With luck, it'd it'd keep me from losing my head completely.

"Is this where you said he was?" said a voice from behind the rock formation, startling me.

"Yeah, Mom! He ran away when he saw me, and he went behind that big rock."

Oh, great, the kid was back. And he'd brought his mom.

"Go look, Mom! Look and see!"

Crap.

The slowly approached my hiding place. "Hello? Is there someone here?"

The voice was getting closer. I had to do something.

"P-please don't come back here!" I sputtered, my voice shaking stupidly. "I-I d-don't want anyb-body to see me!"

"Oh, how come?" the mother asked in a friendly, soothing voice.

"I... I-I'm, uh..."

I took in a breath and swallowed, steadying my voice just long enough to answer their question with another question.

"Could you please get me some clothes...?"

There was a horribly awkward pause, then I heard her speak to the little boy again.

"Run back home and get him some clothes, okay?"

"Which ones?"

"Whichever ones you think will fit."

The kid scampered off without another word, and I was left curled up behind the formation with a flushed-red face. I swear, if my mind had been under any more strain right then, it would have spontaneously combusted.

"I'm terribly sorry if my son bothered you," the woman said after some time. "He's usually a good boy, but it's been a long time since he's met any strangers."

"N-no, it's fine. He was fine. He didn't bother me."

I was talking very fast and still stammering like an idiot.

"You seem upset, honey, what's the matter? And why did you come outside without putting anything on? Heaven knows you could get terribly sunburnt in this weather."

Seriously, lady? I thought. That's your biggest concern right now?

"I... it's a long story."

It was a dumb response, but it was the best I could give.

"Well, when he gets back, you're free to come to our house if you'd like and tell us all about it."

That statement stirred up extremely mixed feelings in me. On the one hand, it would be an absolute godsent to actually talk to somebody and get some information regarding where I was and how I had gotten here, but on the other, I didn't exactly trust these people very much, and life hadn't exactly rewarded me whenever I investigated anything weird or out of place.

Ah, but who am I kidding. I was in over my head as it was.

"I'd appreciate that, thanks. Um, did I ever get your name?"

She didn't immediately reply to that question, which was odd, but it wasn't long afterwards that the kid came back with the clothes. The lady threw them around the rock to me and they landed in a heap by my side.

My jaw dropped. They were... my clothes.

The same baggy striped shirt, the same denim shorts and belt, and the same sneakers with the tall white socks. They even had same neckerchief and hat as well, with the Franklin Badge still pinned proudly to the clasp. But, at the same time, I knew they couldn't have been the same clothes; mine had been filthy and frayed in several places. These ones looked so new and clean I could smell laundry soap on them. There were no signs of stitching in the places they'd torn, and even the ink stain I'd been trying to get out of the inside of my hat for at least two years had vanished.

Right then and there, my mind settled on a conclusion: wherever this place was, it must have had some connection to me. I still had no idea what that could possibly mean or how it was happening, and I couldn't help but look at the clothes and feel a sense of... not knowing exactly what to feel. Any rational person would have immediately had a holy-crap-somebody-call-the-cops feeling about finding out somebody had an exact replica of their favorite outfit, but I couldn't help but believe that these people genuinely didn't know who I was and had these clothes for... reasons. Reasons that were still unknown to me, but reasons that I knew in my gut were completely innocent. Besides, I could tell I was in a place where rational thinking wasn't very welcome anyway.

After pulling all my clothes on, I stepped out from my hiding place and finally got a decent look at the people who had found me. The boy was even smaller up close, with big brown eyes that matched his soft head of hair. His mother, while taller, was still a lot shorter than my own mom was (then again, most women I knew were). Her hair was a little darker than her son's, and, strangely enough, tied into two long ponytails. I'd never seen an adult do that before, and it made her seem a lot younger than she probably was. Both of them were dressed in strange, almost identical sets of clothing, which further perpetuated my confusion as to how they had clothes that looked like mine. They had simple, deep-blue robes on that were so baggy they trailed slightly behind them and caused them to have very big sleeves. The boy's sleeves were so big that I had to wonder how he was able do anything productive with his hands. On their heads, they had tall, pointy hats that drooped a little on one side. They looked like cartoon characters, or the little people you'd see in fairy tales and play sets meant for little girls. Give them wands and some silver stars on their clothes, and and they would have looked like wizards.

"Thanks for that," I said. "Did, um... did either of you see how I got here?"

"Here?," said the woman, pointing at the ground. "I assumed you walked here."

"No, I mean... uh..."

I gestured around myself.

"How I got... here, here. Where am I? What is this place?"

The woman looked slightly concerned.

"Did you hit your head, honey? You don't seem to be very well..."

I was about to reply, until I realized that I couldn't honestly answer that.

"Look, why don't you come with us?" she said. "You can talk with us over lunch, and we can help figure out what happened to you."

Well, what other choice did I have? I was pretty hungry by that point anyway.

The inside of their seashell-shaped house was small, only consisting of two floors. The bottom floor doubled as a kitchen and a dining room and the top floor, I assumed, was where they slept. The furniture was all made of the same pastel-pink material and, just like the house itself, seemed to have grown straight out of the walls, as if the stone had somehow eroded itself away until it had formed into the exact shape of, say a table or cupboard. Another cat, this one gray with black stripes, was snoozing on a cushion by a windowsill, and I could hear birds singing from the room upstairs.

Now, you've probably noticed by now that I've been referring to the two people without any names, just "the boy" and "the woman". This is because... well, as far as I knew, they didn't have names. Literally, I asked what their names were, and they seemed to be genuinely confused by the question. I tried waiting for them to call each other something, but the mom only referred to the kid with terms of endearment, and the kid only referred to her as "Mom". At first, I assumed that names were a completely foreign concept to them, but when I told them that my name was Ninten, they accepted it without asking a single question. I felt it'd have been rude to pursue that matter any further, so, if me referring to them without names ever gets annoying, then it isn't my fault.

When the boy asked her what they were making for lunch, she told him that, since they had a guest in the house today, it was only polite that they make my favorite. And I was absolutely astounded when the unmistakable smell of ribs suddenly filled the room, making me suddenly a lot more hungry and a lot more concerned. I asked her how in the world she knew what my favorite food was, and she reacted as if I was joking around with her; like it was common knowledge around here that, if you find a random kid lying around on the ground outside your house, then you must assume that his favorite food is pork ribs.

"Now, what was it you needed help with again, sweetie?" the woman asked me as I slowly ate. "Start from the beginning."

I described the events that led up to our meeting as best I could, including the dream I'd had that lead to me going to the cave. I tried my very best to communicate that I was from a different world than this one, but as far as I could tell, that seemed to go right over their heads too. It became more and more apparent as the conversation went on that the people in this world were very simple. Not stupid, exactly, they didn't seem to have the same depth or complexities that I was used to people having. Even their physical appearances reflected this: as time went on, I couldn't help but notice the lack of imperfections on their skin, the strange simplicity in the colored parts of their eyes, and the way their movements seemed just a tiny bit strange and unnatural, like puppets being controlled by a puppeteer who could mimic human movement almost to perfection, but just not quite. They were too friendly for me to dislike, but I couldn't help but feel very out of place when I was around them.

"... so then I passed out on the floor, right then and there, and the next thing I knew, I was being poked awake over by that weird rock."

They exchanged an uneasy glance with one another, and I couldn't help but feel like my story had scared them.

"So, you don't remember what anything here is called, where your family is, or where you live?"

"No, what I'm saying is that I never lived here in the first place. I've never been here before in my life. I came from another... another planet? I think? Maybe another dimension or something, just, not anywhere like here."

"Oh, you poor thing..." she said, putting her fingers near her mouth. "You must have gone through something terrible for you to be this forgetful..."

"No, you don't get it! I..."

Just then, her attention was taken by the little boy, who was tugging at her sleeve. She turned her ear to him and he cupped his hand in order to whisper something into it. Whatever he said to her made her raise an eyebrow, and then start looking at me critically.

"You really think he does?" she said. The boy nodded and, after a moment, I saw her eyes widen. "You know, now that you mention it, he does..."

"Does what? What did he say?"

"Yes, of course!" she said, ignoring me. "And if there's anybody who could help him with his problem, it'd be her!"

"Who's 'she'?" I asked. "Who are we talking about here?"

Their attention finally returned to me. They looked almost offended by what I had just said.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten about her?"

"Look, I already told you, I've never been here before."

She still didn't seem to register this, and kept going on as if trying to jog a memory I'd lost.

"The crown leader of Magicant, Queen Mary?"

"No, I've never heard of anyone called... wait, 'Magicant'? Okay, so now you finally tell me what to call this place?"

Part of me knew I should probably stop talking, especially since I had no idea how anything I was saying would go down with these people, but I was so desperate for answers that I just couldn't help myself.

"L-look... if this Queen Mary person can help me, where can I find her? I really want to, uh... get my memory back as soon as possible."

"I'll take you there as soon as we're done eating," she said in a slightly short tone. I could tell from her tone that I'd said some things no respectable resident of Magicant should.

"Look, I'm sorry if I said anything rude. I'm just really confused and really stressed out right now."

She looked at me over her fork, and I saw her expression soften a bit.

"It's alright, honey. None of this is your fault."

It was quiet for a while as I ate my ribs. It really was uncanny how exactly the same they were to how mom made them, right down to the sauce that she always used. Funny, with the way everybody was dressed, I wouldn't have imagined them having access to any grocery stores...

"So, can you make things move without using your hands too?"

I looked down. The little boy had moved over to a nearby chair and was looking up at me.

"Kinda, why? Does everybody around here do that?"

"No, just the queen. Whenever she's around, I always see her moving stuff around without touching them, like when she helped make Mom's garden. I've been trying to practice doing it, but everyone says it's something only the queen can do."

"So, why'd you ask me?"

The boy looked nervously over at his mother, as if asking for permission to tell me. Instead of doing that, she put down her cup of milk and spoke to me directly.

"Because we couldn't help but notice," she said. "That you and the queen look... very alike."