Kindle regained consciousness mid-fall, which seemed unfair considering she didn't remember losing it in the first place.

She tumbled through space that couldn't decide what color it wanted to be—orange folding into purple folding into a shade that might have been green if green had better taste—while her stomach performed acrobatics that would have impressed even Pyra. Her mind scrambled for context, for memory, for anything that explained why she was falling through a kaleidoscope that had become self-aware and decided to weaponize nausea.

The integration. The dragon. The supernova.

She'd been whole. Five perspectives compressed into one, power blazing through her like she'd swallowed the sun. And then she'd been—

Separating. Scattering. Five flames streaking across the sky in five directions. She was the one heading... well. In this direction.

She summoned her flames on pure instinct, trying to create thrust to slow her descent. Fire that should have erupted in a controlled burst instead produced exactly three sparks, each one roughly the size and brightness of a particularly optimistic firefly.

"Oh, that's bad—"

The canopy caught her with all the gentleness of an angry blanket. Branches snapped. Leaves scattered in musical protest (an A-minor chord, if she wasn't mistaken, which was absurd). She tumbled through layer after layer of foliage that smelled like cinnamon and tasted like regret—wait, no, she shouldn't be able to taste the air, that was wrong—until finally, inevitably, she hit the ground.

The grass broke her fall.

Also, the grass was literally singing.

Kindle lay there for a long moment, staring up at a sky that was the wrong color (sunset orange, except it was clearly midday), listening to the grass harmonize around her body in what sounded like a very concerned alto section. Everything hurt in that specific way that suggested nothing was broken but everything was very, very upset about recent life choices.

She cataloged the damage: Scraped everywhere. Bruised probably everywhere else. Clothes singed at the edges from her pathetic spark-attempts. Hair full of leaves that hummed when she moved. Otherwise intact.

"Okay," she said aloud, and the grass shifted to a major key. "Okay. Assess. Figure out what's happening."

She pushed herself upright, and the world tilted sideways.

She closed her eyes. Opened them. The world stayed mostly stable. Good enough.

First step: Check powers.

She cupped her hands, concentrated, and tried again. This time, she managed a small flicker that danced weakly across her palm before guttering out. Like a birthday candle someone had already sneezed on.

She tried a third time, focusing everything she had left. The flame emerged, stayed for a whole two seconds, and gave one last defiant spark before disappearing.

Well.

She wasn't powerless, exactly.

"Fantastic," she muttered. The grass hummed sympathetically.

A sound built in the distance. Rhythmic. Thundering. Growing rapidly closer.

Kindle scrambled to her feet, instincts screaming danger despite every muscle protesting the sudden movement. She spun toward the sound, calling up what little fire she could muster—

—and nearly got trampled by a fox made entirely of autumn leaves riding a horse constructed from crystallized sunset.

The fox skidded to a halt inches from her face. It grinned, which foxes really shouldn't be able to do with that much enthusiasm. "Oh! Oh, this is perfect! Fresh mortal! Right on schedule!"

"I—what—" Kindle's brain tried to process what her eyes were showing it and politely declined. "You're a fox."

"Technically I'm Tatter, but fox works." The creature—Tatter—bounded in a circle around her, leaving a trail of falling leaves that immediately sprouted back into place. "And you're mortal, which means you're exactly what I need! Can you ride?"

"Can I—look, I don't even know where I am—"

"The Bordermarches! Obviously!" Tatter grabbed her hand with a paw that felt like dry leaves and somehow had perfect grip strength. "No time for the full tour, explanations later, race NOW!"

"Race?!" Kindle barely got the word out before Tatter bodily hauled her toward a second mount she hadn't noticed—a horse that seemed to be made from the actual colors of sunset, orange and pink and gold flowing like liquid light over a definitely-horse-shaped body.

Behind them, the thundering sound had resolved into dozens of other riders emerging from the forest. Kindle caught glimpses of creatures that made the leaf-fox look positively normal: Someone riding a deer made of lightning. Someone else on what appeared to be a cloud with legs. A warrior seated on something that kept shifting between a horse, a dragon, and a really aggressive rainbow.

"Just hold on and think FAST thoughts!" Tatter shoved her toward the sunset-horse, which knelt obligingly.

"This is insane—"

"Yes! Now get ON!"

Months of being the sister-self who just went with things kicked in. Kindle scrambled onto the horse's back—it felt warm and insubstantial, like sitting on colored steam—and barely had time to grab what might have been a mane before Tatter slapped the horse's flank.

"Go go go!"

The horse exploded into motion.

Kindle yelped and clung desperately to the not-quite-solid mane as the world blurred into streaks of color. The other riders thundered past on either side, whooping and laughing. A starting line materialized out of nowhere—a banner held by two trees that were definitely bowing to each other—and then they were through it and the race had officially begun.

The course, if it could be called that, made absolutely no sense.

They plunged into a forest where the trees were growing and ungrowning in real-time, saplings shooting up into ancient oaks in seconds before reverting back to seeds.

Kindle's horse wove between trunks that kept changing position, and she had to duck branches that hadn't existed a moment ago. Other riders were having similar problems—the lightning-deer stumbled when its path suddenly filled with a fully-grown oak, and the cloud-steed actually got tangled in a particularly aggressive willow.

"This is INSANE!" Kindle shouted.

"Isn't it GREAT?!" Tatter called back from somewhere ahead.

They burst from the forest onto a riverbank. The river flowed upward.

Kindle's brain gave up trying to make sense of things and just accepted it. The horses splashed into the ascending water—which somehow still behaved like water despite flowing the wrong direction—and began climbing the current. Her sunset-mount seemed to treat it like a hill, cantering up the flowing water while fish swam past their heads in the opposite direction.

A rider pulled alongside her—a woman made of gossamer fabric and controlled violence, riding something that looked like a horse if horses were made of wind and bad intentions. The woman grinned at Kindle with too many teeth.

"First time in the Marches, mortal?"

"Is it that obvious?!"

"You have a face! Most of us got rid of those ages ago!" The woman laughed and surged ahead, her wind-horse practically flying up the inverted river.

They crested the top—Kindle refused to think about the physics of that—and suddenly gravity reversed. Everyone fell upward into a valley where the sky was ground and the ground was sky. Kindle's stomach attempted to relocate to her throat.

Her horse hit the inverted ground running. The valley stretched ahead, filled with obstacles that kept shifting: Crystal formations that grew and shrank, patches of earth that decided to be water for a few seconds, and what looked like a very confused flock of birds trying to figure out which direction "up" was supposed to be.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Kindle was falling behind. Her mount was fast, but she had no idea how to steer properly, and every time she tried to guide it with her knees or hands, it just did whatever it wanted anyway. Other riders were pulling ahead—the wind-horse woman, Tatter, someone riding what appeared to be a very annoyed star.

Then she noticed: Her horse was responding to something. Not her physical cues, but... her feelings? Every time she got excited about a maneuver, the horse moved faster. When she tensed up before an obstacle, it slowed down.

Okay. Worth trying.

Kindle stopped trying to ride properly and just let herself feel. Excitement about the jump ahead—the horse surged forward eagerly. Wonder at the impossible landscape—it practically danced through a crystal field. Competitive determination not to finish last—the mount found a burst of speed she hadn't known it had.

They rocketed past the star-rider and pulled even with someone riding a very dignified chair (which somehow looked more elegant than half the actual animals).

The finish line appeared in the distance—another impossible banner, this one held by clouds that had formed convenient banner-holding shapes.

Kindle was tied with the wind-horse woman. Both of them leaning forward, both horses giving everything they had. The other riders were close behind but these two had pulled ahead of the pack.

"Not bad for a mortal!" the woman shouted.

"Not bad for someone with no face!" Kindle shouted back, and got another too-many-toothed grin in response.

Final stretch. They were dead even. Fifty yards. Twenty-five. Ten.

Kindle's horse faltered—just a tiny stumble, maybe tiredness, maybe the ground decided to be less solid for a second. Enough to break their rhythm. The wind-horse pulled half a length ahead.

No.

Pure instinct drove Kindle to try what she'd always done—create a diversion. Something flashy, something surprising, something to give her an advantage. She called up her flames, trying to create a burst of light and heat that would startle the other horse just enough—

Three sparks erupted from her hand.

Orange. Weak. Barely visible in the strange sunlight.

They scattered across the wind-horse's path anyway.

The mount reared, just slightly, surprised by something bright in its face. Not scared—just momentarily startled. Enough to break its stride.

Kindle's sunset-horse surged past.

They crossed the finish line with Kindle half-falling sideways, barely holding on, trailing sparks like dying fireflies.

She tumbled off her mount and landed in a heap of singed hair and bruised everything. The ground here was soft, at least, covered in moss that seemed very pleased to cushion her fall.

"Did I..." Kindle pushed herself up on her elbows. "Did I just win?"

Tatter materialized beside her in a shower of falling leaves. "You CHEATED! Brilliantly! I LOVE it!"

The wind-horse woman—Gossamer, Kindle would learn her name was—dismounted with impossible grace and approached. For a terrible moment, Kindle thought she was going to be angry.

Instead, Gossamer laughed. "That was the most mortal thing I've ever seen." She extended a hand to help Kindle up. "Using almost-dead fire as a distraction because your mount couldn't win on speed alone. Again?"

"Again?" Kindle accepted the hand, let herself be pulled upright. "You want to race again? I barely survived that one!"

"Exactly! You survived while winning! Think how entertaining a second race would be!"

Other riders were arriving now, most of them laughing or cheering. Nobody seemed upset about losing. If anything, they seemed delighted by the chaos. The star-rider was arguing good-naturedly with the chair-rider about whether furniture counted as a proper mount. The lightning-deer's rider was trying to untangle themself from a tree that had grown through their stirrups.

Tatter grabbed Kindle's arm. "Come ON! Victory celebration!"

"Wait, I don't even—who are you people? What WAS that? Where—"

But Tatter was already dragging her toward a structure that definitely hadn't been there a moment ago—a pavilion that seemed to be growing from the ground like a crystalline flower, petals opening to reveal tables laden with food that looked both delicious and like it might bite back.

Inside, the celebration was already in full swing. Music played from no visible source. Beings of every impossible description mingled and laughed and told stories that probably weren't true but were definitely entertaining.

Kindle was swept up in introductions faster than she could process them:

"This is Gossamer—you met her—warrior-dancer, incredibly competitive, will absolutely challenge you to a rematch later—"

The gossamer woman bowed with a flourish, her fabric-body rippling. "You have potential, mortal. Cheating shows creativity."

"I wasn't trying to cheat—"

"Even better! Instinctive dishonesty! Beautiful!"

"And this is Reverie—she's mostly harmless unless she's thinking, then she's dangerous—"

A being made of moonlight and distraction floated closer, regarding Kindle with eyes like distant stars. "You taste like fire and fear and something else. Determination, maybe? I can never tell human emotions apart. They all look the same to me." She said this kindly, like someone apologizing for color-blindness.

"And THESE are Maybe and Perhaps—they finish each other's—"

"—sentences!" two identical voices chimed. Kindle turned to find what looked like a single person split down the middle, each half existing independently but moving in perfect synchronization. "We're the Possibility Twins!"

"Though technically we're just—"

"—one person experiencing—"

"—two separate—"

"—existential narratives."

Kindle's head was spinning. If Alice in Wonderland had been written by someone with a fever dream, this would be the chapter she skipped. Everywhere she looked, the rules of sensible existence had been taken out back and beaten with whimsical, nonsensical sticks.

There was only one conclusion that made sense, even a little bit.

"Okay. Okay, so you're all... Fae?"

"Mostly!" Tatter said cheerfully.

"In the general sense," Reverie added dreamily.

"We prefer not to—"

"—limit ourselves with labels!"

Gossamer just smiled her too-many-teeth smile.

"Right." Kindle looked around at the impossible party, the beings that defied description, the casual violations of physics happening in every corner. "And I'm in... the Bordermarches?"

"Where the Wyld touches the edges of your world," Reverie murmured. "Where stories spill over their edges and ideas learn to walk."

"Where anything can—"

"—happen if you let it!"

"Perfect." Kindle tried to summon her flames again, managed a brief flicker. "And do you know how I can get back? To my world? To my sisters?"

The Fae exchanged glances.

"Why would you want to leave?" Tatter asked, genuinely confused.

"The Marches are wonderful!" Perhaps insisted.

"Besides," Gossamer added, "we only just started having fun with you."

Kindle realized, with a sinking feeling, that these beings operated on completely different logic than anything she was used to. Questions like "how do I get home" probably didn't translate properly to creatures for whom home was a flexible concept at best.

But she'd also noticed something during the race. Her flames had flickered—weak, pathetic, barely there—but they'd flickered when she was excited. When her blood was pumping and her competitive nature had kicked in and she'd stopped thinking about being powerless and just reacted.

She tried again now. A small spark. Fizzled out.

She focused on the race, that feeling of the finish line approaching, of not wanting to lose. Another flicker, a little brighter this time.

It wasn't gone. Just... sleeping.

Maybe forcing her way home wasn't the answer. Maybe the path back to her sisters-selves ran through this impossible place first.

Besides, Pyra would probably love it here. Cinder would hate it. Ember would try to protect everyone from the chaos. Ash would find the philosophical implications fascinating.

And Kindle? Kindle had just won a race through an impossible landscape on a horse made of sunset colors.

Maybe she could work with this.

"Okay," she said, accepting a cup of something that smelled like starlight and probably shouldn't be drunk by mortals. "I'm Kindle. I'm from another world. I'm stuck here. And apparently I'm good at accidental cheating."

"Perfect introduction!" Tatter beamed.

"Very mortal," Gossamer approved.

"You'll fit right—"

"—in with us!"

Reverie just smiled distantly, as if Kindle's arrival had been exactly what she'd been dreaming about.

That evening—and time was weird here, so "evening" was more of a suggestion than a fact—Kindle found herself in guest quarters that rearranged themselves every time she looked away. The bed was in a different corner each time. The window kept changing which direction it faced. The walls couldn't decide what color they wanted to be.

She sat on the currently-blue floor and stared at her hands.

The connection to her sisters-selves was just... gone. Not severed—she could still remember what it felt like, could still recall the sensation of having four other perspectives existing alongside her own. But trying to reach for it now was like reaching for something that had never existed at all.

Separated. Scattered across this world—or worlds, plural, maybe, she had no idea how any of this worked. Each of them alone with their powers reduced to almost nothing.

Kindle called up her flames. They danced weakly across her palms, orange and struggling. She could sustain them for maybe thirty seconds before they guttered out. Ten percent capacity, if she was being generous.

But they had responded during the race. When she'd stopped panicking and started feeling.

"Is this how Pyra feels all the time?" she wondered aloud. "Just... pure chaos and going with it?"

The room hummed thoughtfully—because of course the room could hum—and rearranged itself so the bed was closer. A blanket appeared that smelled like cinnamon and comfort.

Kindle lay back, staring at a ceiling that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be stone or sky or something in between.

She was stuck in an impossible place with beings who didn't think like anything she'd ever encountered. Her powers were barely functional. Her sisters-selves were gods-knew-where.

And yet...

She'd won the race. Through cheating, yes, but still. She'd adapted to an impossible situation. She'd survived.

Kindle closed her eyes and let the strange light of the Wyld paint colors across her eyelids.

A tap at the window—the one currently facing east, or possibly west, directions were subjective here. Kindle sat up to find Tatter perched on the sill, grinning that impossible fox-grin.

"Tomorrow we're stealing something!" the leaf-fox announced cheerfully. "Want to help?"

Kindle looked at Tatter. Looked at her weak flames. Remembered the absurdity of the race, the sheer joy despite the impossibility of everything.

"Sure," she said, and meant it. "Why not."

Tatter's grin widened. "I knew I liked you."

After the fox disappeared, Kindle finally managed actual sleep—fitful, filled with impossible colors and the lingering scent of cinnamon-singing grass.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.