Rowboat’s cabin was practically falling apart. The floor creaked loudly as the group entered the one-room home, and the wind from the broken windows rustled their hair. There was barely anything inside, just a simple wooden bed, a table, and a chair. Judging by the state of things, Rowboat hadn’t been living an easy life. Not that Pail or Pretty noticed, of course, as they’d been living in even rougher circumstances.

  “Sorry for the mess. I wasn’t expecting to have company,” Rowboat grunted as she set the still passed-out Norman down on the bed. She wanted to offer better hospitality, but she barely got by as it was, so offering anything more than shelter would be difficult.

  “Woah! You got a whole house to yaself! I’m gonna get rich and buy a house too!” Pail said in amazement. It didn’t ever cross his mind that this place was barely worth being called a shack; he was just impressed that Rowboat owned a whole building.

  “Is that so? Doesn’t this mister have a house somewhere?” She asked, vaguely gesturing to Norman. If he could afford to feed and dress a random slave, then he was surely a rich man. Especially if he could afford those glasses on his face. Glasses were a product for nobility and were as expensive as hell.

  Pail shrugged. As much as he wanted to stay with mister, he didn’t know much about him. “He said he’s from far away, in a place without magic! He musta never been on the continent before ‘cause he asked me if all people have wings here! Ain’t that funny?” The boy giggled at the memory; mister sure said some strange things sometimes.

  Rowboat had never heard of a place devoid of any magic, but she had to admit that she wasn’t very educated. Mana comes from the air, so maybe he lived somewhere deep underground or in the ocean. Yeah, she could picture the man in front of her as some mountain prince from someplace faraway. That would certainly explain his lack of muscles, at least. She’d never seen a man so slim and pale before; he had the kind of body only a noble could afford to have.

  “What’s he doing over here, then? Sightseeing?” Rowboat asked. She couldn’t even imagine a man of such stature traveling alone through a forest in the middle of nowhere, yet here one was—asleep in her termite-infested bed.

  “Dunno! I never asked.” Pail hadn’t even thought about it before because it didn’t really matter. As long as mister kept him around, he didn’t care who he was or where he came from. He could be the most wicked man alive, and Pail would still follow him around like a lost baby duck as long as he got food and company.

  Meanwhile, Norman was staring awkwardly at the man in his dreams as he scrambled to hide what looked like pictures with red hearts sharpied on them in his desk drawer. Norman didn't know when he fell asleep, and judging by the dream man's expression, neither did he. The man's third eye gazed in any direction other than Norman as he tidied up his desk hastily. The ding of notifications from the old computer didn't help the awkward silence in the slightest. It probably even made it worse.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “You're here again. I didn't know you'd fall asleep in the middle of the day; it’s usually cleaner than this, I promise!” The demonic looking man stammered out quietly while wiping the sweat off his flushed cheeks. He straightened his glasses and adjusted his hair, trying to look as presentable as possible before he hastily added. “I wasn’t doing anything, by the way. Nothing at all.”

  “I didn’t know I would pass out, either. I hope I don’t get eaten by a wild animal.” Norman responded in his signature monotone, “This is a recurring dream, then? Will I be seeing you every time I fall asleep?” He asked as professionally as possible. He didn’t mind dreaming about this snowscape, even if the man inside it was very awkward.

  The man could only give a weak shrug in response. How was he supposed to know? Norman wasn’t even supposed to be here, and he certainly wasn’t meant to come more than once. Norman seemed perfectly fine after last time, so it probably wouldn’t hurt him to be here, but it couldn’t be good for a mortal soul to linger here for too long. This place was known to cause… changes in people.

  “I wouldn’t stay here too long if I were you,” The man warned him in the gentlest way he could. Part of him wanted Norman to stay here forever, to keep him company and tell him all about the manufacturing process of fences or something, but a bigger part of him wanted him to keep his sanity.

  “Why not? This is just a dream, is it not?” Norman tilted his head ever so slightly in confusion. Was this a dream message of some kind? What kind of symbolism did it have? He would have to look it up when he awoke.

  The man at the desk didn’t know how to explain it in a mortal-friendly way to ensure he didn’t break Norman’s mind, so he told him the second reason as to why he should probably wake up. “You are currently passed out in an unknown place in a strange magical world, you know?”

  “Oh, right. Thank you for the heads up, figment of my imagination.” Norman nodded politely. His figure flickered slightly as he started waking up, but right before he disappeared entirely, he added one thing at the end. “Oh, right. Calling you ‘figment of my imagination’ is too long-winded. I’ll just call you Frank. I’ll see you next time, Frank.”

  And with that, he was gone, and the newly christened Frank was alone. He would have a whole heap of online love calculators to go through now that he had a human name. Maybe this time, he would get a better score than 9%. Even though he convinced himself that they were so compatible that the calculator read 109% and the display was broken, he still wanted to screenshot the nice crisp 100% just to prove his siblings wrong and that he did, in fact, have evidence backing his soulmate theory.

  Norman woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling. Well, calling it a ceiling was a bit of a stretch. There was a giant hole in the roof, hastily covered with sticks like some sort of pitfall trap. He inhaled deeply and got a whiff of what could only be described as cooking fat and dirt. It made him want to hurl, but that wouldn’t be very polite, so he pulled himself together and sat up to survey the situation.

  In front of him were Pretty, Pail, and a giant woman he’d never seen before, cooking something over an indoor fire. The woman was explaining the cooking process to the harpy boy, but from the sound of it, it amounted to little more than adding fat and spices to mud monsters to make them more palatable. Pretty was lazily basking in the fire with their snout covered in mud. Norman guessed that Pretty helped with the hunting of whatever creature was currently roasting. Everything looked perfectly fine until he looked down at his own body.

  “Excuse me, but where are my clothes?”