Day 20 of being exactly what I always was.
The morning came without fanfare, which felt appropriate. No dramatic dawn, no metaphorical sunrise. Just light creeping through the window like it had somewhere better to be. Back home (and when did I stop calling it that?), Mom would be making breakfast right about now. Dad would be reading news on his phone, making disappointed sounds at headlines. Normal morning in a normal world where physics worked properly and nobody bled philosophy.
God, I missed disappointing headlines.
I sat on the edge of my bed, feet on the floor, studying the wood grain. There was a knot that looked like an eye. It had been watching me for what, a month and a half now? Six weeks of me pretending I understood this place because I'd written ten chapters when I was thirteen. Ten chapters. That's like thinking you understand ocean ecology because you once had a goldfish.
The communication device had stopped blinking yesterday. Either the battery died or it got tired of being ignored. Even inanimate objects had limits to their patience with me. (Story of my life, really. Even my laptop back home used to crash when I procrastinated too hard on essays.)
"Breakfast," Marta called from downstairs.
I dressed and descended, each step a small agreement with gravity. At least gravity worked the same here. Small mercies. The dining room held its usual collection of boarders. People with jobs and purposes and no delusions about authoring reality. They nodded at me. I nodded back. We'd reached an understanding: I'd stopped muttering about narrative significance, and they'd stopped avoiding eye contact.
"You look better," Marta said, setting down porridge that actually looked like porridge today.
"I stopped trying to be protagonist material."
"Good. It didn't suit you." She said it kindly, which somehow made it worse and better simultaneously. "Message running does, though. You're reliable."
Reliable. I tested the word, rolled it around like a stone in my mouth. It didn't taste like destiny or importance. It tasted like truth. Back home, I'd never been reliable. I was the kid who forgot his homework, showed up late to shifts at the coffee shop, promised to call and then didn't. Here, delivering messages was the one thing I could control. Point A to Point B. No interpretation required.
I ate my porridge and thought about projection. About how I'd looked at Arthur and seen a character I'd created instead of a person who existed. How I'd inserted myself into his story like a bookmark in someone else's book, convinced I was the author when I was barely a footnote.
(Thirteen-year-old me had been really proud of Arthur Solvain. Tragic backstory, cool sword, philosophical magic system. Everything a middle school writer could want in a protagonist. Eighteen-year-old me had met him and discovered that tragic backstories hurt real people and philosophical magic systems made them bleed.)
*How pathetic*, I thought, but the thought came without its usual sting. *To think someone would believe me based on words alone. Based on coincidence dressed up as causation.*
What had I expected? To walk up to him and say "Hey, I wrote you when I was in middle school" and have him what, thank me? Acknowledge me as his creator? I couldn't even convince my English teacher that my creative writing deserved better than a B-minus.
Kellan had my routes ready when I arrived at Central Communications. He didn't ask if I was feeling better. We'd moved past that performance.
"Busy day," he said, handing over the cylinders. "New shipping contracts from the harbor. Academic papers for the University. Some personal correspondence."
"I'll handle it."
"I know you will."
That was it. No concern, no probing questions. Just work to be done and faith that I'd do it. I clipped the messages to my satchel and left.
The city moved around me in its ancient rhythm. I'd been walking these streets for six weeks now, learning patterns through repetition rather than recognition. Because here's the thing about writing ten chapters when you're thirteen: you don't include useful details like street layouts or economic systems or how the hell interdimensional travel works. You just write "Arthur walked through the city" and assume that's enough.
(Spoiler: it's not enough. Not when you're the one who has to actually walk through an actual city with actual confusing streets that don't care about your narrative convenience.)
First delivery: Harbor District. The smell of salt and tar and honest work. I handed shipping manifests to a clerk who thanked me without looking up. Behind him, dock workers loaded cargo with the practiced efficiency of people who understood their role in the great mechanism of trade. They weren't questioning their narrative significance. They were moving boxes from here to there, and the world turned on such simple actions.
I thought about Arthur saying I needed therapy. He'd been right, of course. But not for the reasons he'd assumed. I didn't need help processing trauma from the zones. I needed help processing the trauma of being an eighteen-year-old idiot who thought his middle school fanfiction gave him some kind of authority over reality.
Mom would have laughed. Not meanly, just in that way she had when I'd announced I was going to revolutionize literature at age fourteen. "Start with passing English," she'd said. "Revolution can wait."
God, I missed her reality checks.
Second delivery: Academic District. Professor Marens opened her door before I could knock.
"Oh good, you're here. The new readings are…" She paused, studying my face. "You look different."
"Same face, less delusion."
She tilted her head. "Delusion?"
"I used to think I was important to the story. Turns out I'm just good at reading maps and avoiding danger zones."
"Aren't we all." She signed for her messages. "Though there's something to be said for good map reading. Half my colleagues can't navigate their own offices without getting lost in their theories."
"Maps are practical."
"Exactly. Reality needs more practical people. We have enough theorists claiming to understand how everything works." She paused. "No offense to theorists. I am one. But sometimes I think we'd all benefit from admitting we're just very organized guessers."
I left her to her charts and measurements, thinking about organized guessing and the arrogance of certainty. Thinking about how I'd been the worst kind of theorist, the kind who confused creating something with understanding it.
(Like, seriously, what had thirteen-year-old me been thinking? "The zones are places where reality gets weird." Great. Super helpful. Really nailed down those mechanics. No wonder I'd nearly died multiple times trying to navigate based on my own vague worldbuilding.)
The lunch crowd at the market moved like schools of fish, flowing around obstacles, following currents of commerce and hunger. I bought bread from a vendor who'd been there every day since I'd arrived. Same spot, same bread, same nod of recognition. There was something profound in that consistency. Or maybe there wasn't. Maybe it was just bread.
Back home, I'd been allergic to consistency. Every day had to be special, meaningful, leading somewhere important. Now I ate the same bread from the same vendor and found comfort in the repetition. Character development or just exhaustion? (Both, probably. Definitely both.)
I ate while walking, because efficiency mattered when you weren't the main character. No dramatic lunch scenes for background August. Just calories consumed between points A and B. I wondered if my parents had noticed I was gone yet. Time moved weird here. Maybe it had only been a few days for them. Maybe years. I tried not to think about it too hard.
The afternoon brought more deliveries. Guild Quarter. Merchant Row. The Lower Banks where the smell of fish and poverty mingled like old friends. I moved through it all with the ease of someone who'd finally stopped fighting the current.
At a textile shop, the owner asked, "Weren't you the one asking about passage to the Disputed Zones a few weeks back?"
"That was someone else."
"No, I'm sure it was you. You had all those questions about Foundation mechanics and zone barriers."
"I deliver messages," I said. "That's all."
She looked at me strangely but signed for her invoice. I left before she could pursue it further.
The truth was, I had asked those questions. I'd gathered information like breadcrumbs, convinced they were leading somewhere meaningful. And they had, in a way. They'd led me to Arthur, to Lyka, to a courtyard full of reflected beliefs and blood that looked like philosophy. They'd led me to the revelation that knowing things and mattering to things were entirely different concepts.
I'd survived the zones not because I was special but because I'd paid attention. Because I'd learned to read danger in the quality of shadows, to navigate by principles I didn't fully understand. Any competent message runner could have done the same with the same information. I'd just been the one who did.
(Also, let's be honest, I'd survived because of sheer dumb luck and Arthur's inexplicable willingness to save random idiots. My thirteen-year-old self had written him as heroic. Apparently that part stuck.)
By late afternoon, my satchel was empty and my feet hurt in that satisfying way that meant work accomplished. I took the long way back to Central Communications, through the park where children played games whose rules they made up as they went along.
One girl stood apart from the others, directing the action with grand gestures. "And then the dragon appears!" she announced. "But it's not really a dragon, it's a metaphor for institutional collapse!"
"Dragons can't be metaphors," a boy protested. "They're dragons."
"Everything can be a metaphor if you squint right," the girl insisted.
I kept walking, smiling despite myself. Let her have her authorial moment. Reality would teach her about the difference between creation and participation soon enough. Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe she'd grow up to write actual stories instead of trying to live in one she'd retroactively claimed.
Maybe she'd be smarter than me and keep her fiction fictional.
The park path wound past a fountain I'd never paid attention to before. Someone had carved words around the rim. Not in any language I recognized, but the intent felt clear: *memory of water, promise of return*. I sat on the edge and thought about promises.
Mom had made me promise to clean my room before I went to Dave's house that night. The night I'd been walking home and then suddenly wasn't. The night the world had shifted and I'd found myself here, in the city I'd sketched in barely-legible handwriting in a composition notebook.
(Did she think I'd run away? Did she think I was dead? Did she check my room and find that stupid notebook and wonder if it meant something?)
The water in the fountain moved in patterns that shouldn't have been possible with normal physics. Little spirals that climbed upward before remembering gravity. I watched them and wondered if anywhere in this world there was a fountain that moved the other direction. A fountain that could spiral me home.
Probably not. Thirteen-year-old me hadn't been big on including useful things like "how to get home" in the worldbuilding. Too busy with cool swords and tragic backstories.
"You alright there, son?"
I looked up. An older man stood nearby, concern creasing his weathered face. He wore the simple clothes of a laborer, hands scarred from honest work.
"Yeah. Just thinking."
"Dangerous habit, that." He smiled. "Mind if I sit? These old bones need a rest."
I scooted over. He settled beside me with the careful movements of someone whose body kept a running tally of every hard day's work.
"You're that message runner," he said after a moment. "The one who asks all the questions."
"Not anymore."
"No? What changed?"
I thought about how to answer that. How to explain that I'd discovered the difference between creating something and understanding it. Between writing a character and meeting a person. Between being eighteen and thinking you know everything and being eighteen and realizing you know nothing.
"I got some answers," I said finally. "Didn't like them much."
He chuckled. "That's usually how it goes. The questions we really want answered are the ones we shouldn't ask."
"What questions do you ask?"
"Simple ones. Will it rain tomorrow? Is this joint pain worth seeing a healer? What's for dinner?" He watched the impossible water spirals. "Used to ask bigger ones when I was your age. Why are we here? What's it all mean? How do I matter?"
"What happened?"
"Got tired. Decided doing was better than wondering. Built things. Fixed things. Raised children who ask their own questions now." He stood, joints protesting. "The meaning comes later, if it comes at all. In the meantime, there's work."
He left me there with the fountain and its defiant water. I sat a while longer, thinking about work and meaning and the space between them. About my dad, who fixed cars and never wondered if he was the protagonist of anything. About my mom, who taught third grade and came home exhausted but satisfied.
They'd never asked if they were main characters. They'd just lived.
(I missed them so much it felt like drowning in reverse. Like all the](water was leaving my lungs at once and I couldn't remember how to breathe.)
Eventually, I had to move. The sun was getting low, and Kellan would be waiting. I walked back through streets that were becoming familiar through repetition rather than destiny. Past shops I knew by their smells. Past corners where I'd learned to step wide to avoid the puddle that never quite dried.
This wasn't the grand adventure thirteen-year-old me had imagined. It was just life, happening somewhere else, without a clear path home.
Kellan marked my completed routes without comment. The sun was setting, painting the sky in colors that meant nothing beyond "day ending." I walked back to the Bent Gear thinking about Arthur, somewhere east, dealing with communities gone silent. He was doing the work he'd always done, with or without my belief in my authorship. The world hadn't needed me to write it into being. It had been being all along.
The worst part? I couldn't even be properly angry about it. Arthur hadn't asked to be created by a thirteen-year-old with delusions of literary grandeur. He was just trying to survive in a world that operated on principles that made people bleed philosophy. My claiming authorship probably seemed like just another inexplicable cruelty in a reality full of them.
Marta was in the garden when I arrived, tending to vegetables that grew regardless of their narrative significance.
"Good day?" she asked.
"Average day. Perfectly, wonderfully average."
"Those are often the best kind." She pulled a weed with satisfied violence. "Stability gets a bad reputation. Everyone wants to be the hero, the chosen one, the author of their fate. Nobody appreciates the profound accomplishment of just being decent at something useful."
"When did you get so philosophical?"
"When I realized philosophy is just thinking about life while you're living it. No special qualifications required."
I helped her with the weeding until dinner. There was something meditative about pulling unwanted growth from around things you were trying to nurture. A metaphor, probably, but I wasn't going to force it.
(Thirteen-year-old me would have forced it. Would have written three paragraphs about how weeds were like doubt and vegetables were like hope or something equally heavy-handed. Eighteen-year-old me just pulled weeds and thought about how my mom's garden was probably overgrown by now.)
After dinner, I climbed to my room and sat at the small desk by the window. The communication device lay in its drawer, silent now. I'd answer it tomorrow. Not because I was ready to rejoin some grand adventure, but because leaving people hanging was rude, and I was trying to be better than that.
I pulled out paper and started a letter I might actually send:
*Arthur,*
*You were right. I needed help, though not the kind you suggested. Turns out the therapy I needed was just time and distance and the slow recognition that wanting to matter and actually mattering are different things.*
*I'm not the author of your story. I'm barely the author of my own. But I'm learning to be a decent editor of the life I actually have.*
*I wrote you when I was thirteen. That probably means nothing to you, but it means everything to me. You were my first real character, the first time I felt like I'd created something that could walk around without me. Finding you here, real and breathing and bleeding, broke something in my understanding of the world.*
*But you know what? That break needed to happen. I needed to learn the difference between creation and existence. Between writing someone and knowing them.*
*I'm eighteen. I don't know if that matters here, but it feels important to say. Eighteen and lost and trying to find my way home to a world that makes sense. But maybe that's everyone, everywhere, always.*
*I hope you find whatever you're looking for in those silent communities. I hope the weight you carry gets lighter. I hope you know that even if I didn't create you, I'm glad you exist.*
*-August*
I stopped writing, read it over, then crumpled it up. Too much. Too honest. Too much like an apology for existing.
Instead, I pulled out a fresh sheet and wrote:
*Mom and Dad,*
*I don't know if I'll ever be able to send this. I don't know if time moves the same here as there. I don't know if you're looking for me or if you've already forgotten, or if this is all just some weird coma dream and you're sitting beside my hospital bed right now.*
*But I need to pretend you can hear me.*
*I'm okay. I'm in a city called Edgeharbor. I deliver messages for money and live in a boarding house run by a woman who makes good stew and better observations. It's not the life we planned, but it's a life.*
*I think about you every day. About Dad's terrible jokes and Mom's garden. About my room that I never did clean. About all the ordinary things I didn't know were miracles until I couldn't have them anymore.*
*I'm trying to be good here. To be useful. To be the kind of person you raised, even if I'm doing it in a place that doesn't quite follow physics.*
*I love you. I'm sorry. I'm trying to come home.*
*Your son,*
*August*
That letter I folded carefully and put in the drawer with the silent communication device. Another message that couldn't be delivered. Another connection that distance had broken.
Outside my window, Edgeharbor settled into night. Somewhere, stories were happening. Beliefs were reflecting. Philosophy was bleeding. People were saving each other or failing to. Parents were wondering where their children had gone. Children were trying to find their way back.
And here, in this small room, I sat with the radical acceptance of my own ordinary existence.
I wasn't the main character. I wasn't the author. I wasn't special. I was eighteen and homesick and learning that sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is deliver messages reliably while your heart breaks for people you can't reach.
Tomorrow I'd deliver more messages. I'd earn my copper. I'd help the great machine of civilization turn in my small, essential, unremarkable way.
It wasn't the story I'd thought I was living.
It wasn't the story I'd written when I was thirteen.
It was just life, happening to someone who'd accidentally fallen into the wrong world and was trying to make the best of it.
(Which, when I thought about it, was probably most people's story anyway. We're all just trying to make the best of wherever we've landed.)
I got ready for bed, moving through the routine I'd established over six weeks of being nobody special. Wash face. Change clothes. Check that the door was locked. Lie down in a bed that wasn't mine in a world I didn't write.
Tomorrow would come with or without my permission. Messages would need delivering. The city would turn on its ancient axis. And I would continue the slow work of building a life in a place I'd never meant to be.
The last thought before sleep was, surprisingly, not about home or Arthur or the cruel distance between creation and reality.
It was about that fountain and its impossible spirals. About water that forgot gravity just long enough to be beautiful.
Maybe that was enough. To forget the weight just long enough to keep going.
Maybe that was all anyone could ask for, regardless of what world they'd stumbled into.
Maybe that was growing up.