The ground opens up in front of him and he is pulled into a dark and silent void, through which he falls for a measureless time, unable to hear or see, tugged at by eldritch breezes.

And then he lands very gently on soft grass at the base of a low hill, with a river some twenty feet away in front of him and a very Disney-aesthetic town visible in the middle distance on the other side.

— right so this is the absolutely classic question, either magic is real or he's gone crazy and what do you do then?

(magic is real, say these thoughts)

(but in any case, now what, say those thoughts)

It's late evening; he can see the beginning of a beautiful sunset from where he sits.

And what else can he see? Might the top of the hill offer a reasonably accessible better view?

It does! He can see a forest, and some more hills, and the course of the river - it curves around to go right through the town, past the golden palace decorated with sunbursts that perches on high ground in the middle.

Everything has - a certain quality to it, like things are more real here, more vivid, more vibrant. Like walking through a movie with excellent set design and flawless colour correction.

Okay, but are the things trying too hard, or do they come by their vividness honestly?

(He's going to go by Andre Norton rules here and assume that if you actually pay attention you can tell whether something is evil by gut feel. Because if it's the other sort of thing, he's probably doomed anyway.)

He sits down and studies the grass's grassness.

The grass's grassness is very grassy. It looks like it could be perfectly natural, it just... happened to come out in an especially aesthetically pleasing way, down to the smallest detail.

—right. That'll do for now. And now he needs to take a minute. Flop. The grass even sounds extra grassy.

And the sun is going down and he hardly packed for camping and his only option for reasonable shelter looks like the town, much as he would rather not now do the NEW PEOPLE thing with way too little information. Up. Go. Don't tense up.

The town continues to give off a vaguely Disney-fairy-tale aesthetic as he rounds the river's curve toward it.

There is a large white tiger wearing a gold-trimmed white sash around her neck, fastened with a golden sunburst pin. She appears to be patrolling the edge of town. When she sees him, she pauses and looks consideringly in his direction, then turns toward him.

"Excuse me," she says. "Are you in need of assistance?"

oh of course talking animals

better than a tiger you can't understand

He shakes his head sharply and looks properly at the tiger. “—yes?”

She nods gravely and sits. "Lost?" she guesses.

“Quite lost.”

"You're in the city of Bright River, capital of the Kingdom of Day. If neither of those sounds familiar, I venture to guess you're an outworlder."

“What do outworlders do?”

"Outworlders are invited to meet the King when they feel ready to do so, and in the meantime I'm happy to help them find things such as a meal and a place to stay," says the tiger. "My name is Stormcloud; I'm a member of the Royal Guard. Helping people is my job."

(don't ask for a tent and food, that would be weird and you might be stuck with gear intended for otters and you don't know how rules about being on land work here)

(don't ask how to get home, that never works and are you going to run away)

(don't think about meeting the King)

“Yes, a meal, and a place to stay, and — I would like to learn about this place and about outworlders and about — how one meets the King.

“Do you have books?”

"Yes, certainly," she agrees. "I can get you a room at my friend's inn and show you to the library in the morning, if that's agreeable?"

(don't ask if there's a catch, because what would you do if there is, and his best guess is there isn't)

“yes. Yes.”

She nods. "This way, then."

And off through the city. There aren't many people about.

But of the not many, are they all tigers, or...?

Nope! There is a short man in an enormous floppy-brimmed hat, and a peacock in a glittering diamond necklace, and a quartet of tiny deer traipsing out the front door of an inn, under the shadow of the large colourful woven basket that serves as its sign.

Stormcloud takes him around to the side door. There is a tree rooted next to it.

(Hopefully there are no people small enough to accidentally step on.)

(That's a slightly odd place for a tree.)

He follows Stormcloud.

Nobody less than about a foot tall so far, and that was the deer, who are bulkier than humanoids of a similar height would be.

Into the inn they go. The side hall is quiet. Stormcloud sticks her head through a door - all the doors here seem to be saloon-style, which makes sense given the general scarcity of hands - and calls softly, "Pebble, got a moment?"

A parrot with bright blue-and-green feathers swoops in and perches atop the door.

"Spare room for an outworlder?" says Stormcloud, retracting her head from the doorway.

"Sure," says, apparently, Pebble. "Number ten, down the hall on your left. Welcome to the Kingdom of Day."

“—Thank you for your hospitality.”

Speaking more to Stormcloud, “Ah, how many kingdoms are there?”

"No trouble at all," says Pebble.

"Two," says Stormcloud.

(Two is a meaningful number. What it means, we don't know yet.)

"This way," Stormcloud says to him, and she proceeds down the hall to the room labeled with a big '10'. This one has an actual door with a doorknob and everything!

He will see if the doorknob and the things which operating it reveals are suitable for his use.

Yes and also yes. Perfectly human-compatible, if rather Disney-movie-aesthetic, hotel room. With an ensuite bathroom, even, and a tray of oatmeal cookies by the door in case of snack-related urges.

(Well, that's more than he was expecting.)

But he does not put down his pack.

“This seems fine.”

"Glad to hear it," says Stormcloud. "You can ask Pebble if you need anything, and I'll be around in the morning whenever you'd like to go see the library, does that sound all right?"

“In the morning. All right. And would it be dinnertime around now? It was a bit earlier than that where I was and I will need to adjust a bit.”

"Yes, approximately."

Presumably they are both heading back the way they came at least until the door Pebble was on the other side of. Presumably that is also where the food is.

Yes, that is accurate.

Just as they reach it, a tall woman steps in the side door. She is wearing what appears to be a dress made of bark, and has pale green skin, and leaves and flowers tangled in her long brown hair. The leaves and the bark match the tree that was outside.

"Evening, miss," says Stormcloud.

— okay that explains the tree. Keep an eye on the trees because trees may be people. Pretty peopledon'tthinkaboutthat.

Are they having a conversation or was that just a verbal nod?

Just a verbal nod. She nods politely back, and they all proceed into the inn's main room, which is largely deserted at this time. The tree-woman, who must be around seven feet tall, approaches a tap with some cups next to it and pours herself some water.

And so you, like, place your order at the bar, right?

Looks like it! There is a two-foot-tall sky-blue humanoid with white hair and glittering dragonfly wings standing on a stool behind the bar, regarding them all with a friendly smile.

— Glance at Stormcloud​, then approach the bar.

"Evening!" says the small blue person. "What can I get for you?"

There is a slate behind the bar with a menu written on it in chalk, divided into sections for various dietary needs. Perhaps he would like Mixed Nuts, or one of various salads, or (farther down in the omnivorous section) rabbit stew. Prices are listed in small whole numbers of an unfamiliar currency symbol - a lot of ones, some twos, a handful of threes or fours or fives. Beverages are also available, listed on a second slate: tea, coffee, hot chocolate, assorted fruit juices.

“What can you get me? I'm, er, an outworlder and I don't have any of your money,” he says with a significant glance at the menu.

"Oh, don't worry about it, then," he says. "Not fair to ask you to pay if you've never gotten your citizen's stipend."

(Oh, so this is a fairy tale with economics in?)

“All right then, uh,” he picks one of the least unfamiliar-sounding salads.

He nods amicably. "That'll be just a minute," he says, leaving his stool to flit over to presumably-the-kitchen.

He collects a cup of water (after quiickly asking whoever's nearby to confirm that it is water and not something more esoteric) and takes a seat at the bar. Because that's what you do in an inn, right?

Yep! There are many different kinds of seat available, but several of them are human-suitable. Stormcloud gets herself a bowl of water from a similar fixture and sits nearby.

Time to take in the ambience. What's the building made of, what technology is visible (glass? iron? fasteners?), what kinds of people exist, what are they talking about...

Glass yes, iron yes, rather fewer fasteners in evidence than the architecture should require - in a few places, there is a visible instance of timbers being held together by wooden pins, but in most places the walls and ceiling and so forth seem all of a piece, in defiance of logic. The tree-person from earlier is still alone at a small table, and at another table there is a unicorn with a pearly white horn, having a quiet conversation with another small winged humanoid.

The blue person comes back with Jonathan's minimally unfamiliar salad.

—er, does it come with a fork?

Yes it does!

Oh good, because he's not built like a herbivore.

There is food! Let's eat!

The food is so edible!

Okay, time to make an effort to look approachable. Like that. Because information is useful and he's definitely not going to be able to get to sleep at this hour (do they even use hours).

Fidget.

There aren't that many people around to approach him, and none of them seem to be taking the hint.

After a few minutes, Stormcloud says, "Are you all right?"

“Hm? Fine.

“I feel like I should be asking you questions but you said you would show me the library tomorrow and I don't feel like I know what to ask right now and I'm sure you've got better things to be doing.”

Shift in seat like he's thinking about getting up.

"Helping lost folk is part of my job description. I can try to answer questions if you have any, but you seem like you might be in need of a rest."

“—not a rest exactly but yeah.”

Up.

He will be entirely unimpeded if he chooses to return to his room.

That is good because that is what he is doing.

Where's the sun now?

Down.

Okay then he might as well pretend it is time to go to bed.

He checks the room for a magic wardrobe with clothes in his size, then, not finding one, takes off his only set of clothes and washes them as best he can manage with the facilities.

Then he closes the shutters on the little boxed potted glowing vines that serve for indoor lighting, gets into bed —

— and does his best at pretending-to-be-asleep for far too long until his thoughts quiet down and he achieves actual sleep.

The sun comes up again in the morning.

…bed feels funny. room sounds funny. Oh. Right.

Okay he's up what can he do now. Presumably Stormcloud will be conveniently available shortly after he steps out of his room.

Bathroom. Clothes.

Contemplate contents of backpack. (Oh, yes, let us start a technological revolution by reinventing electricity using the information in his digital textbooks — before the battery dies. The chicken is calling and wants its eggs back.)

30%-fake-and-decreasing smile on face. Open door enthusiastically.

There is the hall leading to the main room, and there in the main room is Stormcloud, enjoying a bowl of rabbit stew for breakfast.

“Good morning!”

"Good morning," she says. "Did you sleep well?"

“Adequately! What's for breakfast?”

He approaches the bar.

"I'm having rabbit stew; I recommend it strongly, if you like that sort of thing."

There are other options written on the menu, some the same as last night's, some different. He could have toasted nuts with syrup and jelly, or many other things both more and less recognizable than that.

He will have a half portion of rabbit stew and decide what else after he finds out what his stomach thinks of it. Listening to your body is important and this is all new.

“So if a visit to the library is still next on the schedule —”

Stormcloud nods.

“— then what I'll ask you is: what do you think I should make sure to learn about? I mean, I get you don't know lots about what us outworlders are like but where I come from there is only one kind of people but we have lots of different places and you learn about someplace before you go visiting it so you know what's interesting and what to watch out for. And that can be like ‘you really should go visit this’ or it can be like ‘this is a flood plain’ or ‘people don't like it if you say this’. Uh. That was a question, I think?”

She nods again, thoughtfully.

"Perhaps you could start by seeing if there are any records of previous outworlders," she suggests, "and learn something about the sort of thing outworlders tend to need to know by reading about them."

“Yes, good idea!”

“Maybe I should write down what I learn. I'll probably be terrible at it but anyway.”

"I think that's an excellent idea," agrees Stormcloud.

He reaches down for his backpack and pauses.

“But I should finish my stew while it's hot, before getting started with that.”

"A fine plan."

He finishes his stew, orders small amounts of nuts and vegetables, pulls out a mechanical pencil and a really too small notebook for the purpose, and spends several minutes alternating writing heavily abbreviated notes (left-handed) and eating.

And then he is done.

"Time to visit the library?"

“Yep!”

Use of napkin! Backpack! The upright posture which is how human locomotion works!

And off to the library they go!

There are more people out on the streets this morning than there were last night. Several of them exchange quick greetings with Stormcloud as they pass. Some know her by name and vice versa; with some it's just 'Morning, miss' and 'Good day, ma'am'.

He'll observe how these people go about their peopling, on the way.

In many many many different sizes and shapes and colours. Bird-folk and cat-folk and unicorns and goats and deer and an enormous variety of humanoids, some tall and some short, some winged and some not. There is a generally friendly and cheerful air to the place, which is not broken even by the occasional passerby who is in a bad mood or disinclined to exchange nods with Stormcloud.

—an honest friendly and cheerful air, right?

As far as can be determined, yes!

A library?

A library! It is near the tall golden palace, and is both less tall and less golden but still pretty respectable on both fronts. Its interior has a great many books, and a stork perched at a desk who is delighted to help Jonathan find anything he might be looking for.

Jonathan would like to take Stormcloud's suggestion.

Then the stork will find him a small pile of books about previous outworlders.

He will read the beginnings of each to get an idea of general (dis)similarities. For example, are all outworlders human?

All the ones in this small pile of books, anyway, although nobody doing the writing seems to have picked up on the pattern as a thing, and two of them didn't disclose the name of their species and were described as 'some sort of outworld fey' with a list of very humanlike characteristics.

And what do outworlders do in the world? How do their stories end?

They meet with the King, and -

Of the five books in the pile:

Two asked the King how to get home and took his advice and left.

One decided to help the King win the war against the Moon Queen, who rules the Kingdom of Night; and failed in his quest, and never returned.

One decided to stay in the Kingdom of Day without helping with the war, and lived a long quiet happy life and died peacefully of old age a century later.

And one decided to move to the Kingdom of Night, and was only occasionally heard from again on this side of the border, but seemed to be doing fine as far as anybody could tell, to the implicit bewilderment of the book's author.

That — sounds fairly positive, overall. Except for the part where there's a presumably-eternal war between day and night.

Next research topic: What is said about the Kingdom of Night, and what's bewildering about moving there, other than the “other side of the war” part?

There is a big map of the world available. It's circular, with a roundish continent surrounded by a rounder ocean. The Kingdom of Night occupies the north half, above a band across the middle of the continent labeled 'Borderlands'. Moonrise, moonset, sunrise, and sunset are marked locations along the outer edge: the moon rises in the northwest and sets in the northeast, whereas the sun rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest. In a few places the land goes right up to the edge of the circle and then, apparently, just stops.

Non-geographically, the Kingdom of Night is known as a place where things are done very differently. It comes across as sort of anarchic. There is only one city: the capital, Silver Falls, where the Moon Queen lives. Rumour has it that they have an intra-kingdom violence problem, and no citizen's stipend, and no Royal Guard to help people in need, and the people of the Kingdom of Day - at least the subset of them who wrote the books in this library - are sort of bewildered that anyone wants to live there.

Okay but if one of your complaints is violence why are you having a war.

No one seems to have thought of this argument in order to address it directly. In fact, no one seems to discuss why there is a war. The war is just a fact about the world, a basic underlying assumption.

Maybe he'll ask somebody that question, if he meets somebody in a position to have an answer.

Well, the King.

So! What shall he do now? He can go home, say the books. He can live here, say the books. He can fail at changing the world, say the books.

He meanders around looking at titles to get a sense of what life is like here: What do people think is worth writing about? What do they write about how to do? What do they write about happening?

There are books about gardening and natural philosophy and architecture and cooking and literary criticism and art and theatre and mathematics. There are books about sporting events and game tournaments and poetry contests and seasonal festivals.

There does not seem to be a whole lot of history. The outworlders were interesting enough to have books written about them, and there was a plague a few centuries ago (if he skims that one he may notice an underlying assumption that normally no one is ever seriously inconvenienced by illness, let alone killed), and here's a book about famous natural disasters (one time a whole town was swept away by floods and they evacuated everyone safely but it took them years to rebuild! a storm sank a fleet of fishing boats and ten people died! an unexpected wildfire killed two dryads and gravely injured a dozen more!), but there's nothing that lays out a coherent large-scale timeline of past events.

Okay so it seems likely that things are nice and don't get worse but they don't get better either.

What time is it? (Do they have clocks? Do they automatically make sense to him? Either way, he'll also look out a window.)

There's a clock on the wall. It's round and has a single arm with a sun on the end of it, which is presently just shy of the top of the circle. The sun in the sky appears to be in an approximately analogous position.

How admirably simple to read!

But how does it run, anyway? Is it making clockwork noises or electronic noises? Does it faintly glow and tingle with magic and raise the hairs on one's arms?

Clockwork noises!

And more elaborate clockwork than it appears at a glance.

There's only one arm going around, but the background of the circle is divided into thin pie-slice sections - ninety-six of them, to be exact, four for every hour of the day - of which approximately the top half are a pale sky blue, and approximately the bottom half are dark and speckled with stars. The little sun on the end of the arm seems like it can be flipped to show a little moon, which it will presumably do when it crosses the day/night border; and the sections surrounding the border are flippable too, able to display either a night side or a day side. So the clock shows not only the objective time in relation to noon and midnight, but also the current relationship between that time and the interval between sunrise and sunset.

Fancy. And thematic.

If he wanders out of the library —