Not Your Usual Magical Girl

The night Susan Hill was kidnapped from her home and taken away to another world was actually quite nice.

The streets were cool despite the summer heat thanks to a gentle breeze, lying dark and quiet thanks to the absent moon.

Susan herself was still awake, lying on her bed and reading an article off her phone. She was almost as still as the world outside, until a casual glance at the clock above her door made her do a double take.

She was on her feet the next instant, cursing up a storm.

She knew it was her fault, she shouldn’t have let herself get distracted reading internet articles. But there had just been a new article released detailng advances on CRISPR gene modification and she… was getting distracted again.

Stumbling steps took her past the overstuffed bookshelves that filled her room and over to her dresser. It took a moment to focus her heavy eyes enough to safely place her phone on the charging cradle.

Then she had to pause when her wandering eyes found herself in the mirror. Slowly taking in her blonde hair that normally hung down to her shoulders, now arrayed in tangled curls over a plain, sallow face that was a little too pale from a lack of sun.

In other words, she looked like a mess.

A wide yawn threatened to bowl her over, but she fought it down. It took a moment of fighting to pull open the drawers of her ancient wooden dresser, not helped at all by her drowsiness. Finally freeing her pajamas from its confines, she moved to undress.

Then froze the moment her t-shirt came over her head, light blue eyes locking onto the sight of the dark blue bruise that covered the entirety of her right shoulder.

She gulped. Last Friday the head cheerleader, and resident terror of her high school had hip checked Susan so hard she’d been sent careening across the hall and into a bank of lockers. The girl’s cackle as she fled the scene still echoed in Susan’s ears two days later as she stared at the evidence of the encounter.

Susan had hoped that there wouldn’t be a bruise. But her shoulder had taken on an interesting color over the course of the weekend and now there no denying what it was.

“Freaking Kelly,” she growled under her breath, “Freaking high school, freaking everything.”

Couldn’t the girl just leave her alone, it wasn't like she was a nerd or anything. She didn't talk about anime or D&D or anything, she just read science articles in her free time.

Unfortunately the decision wasn’t hers to make, and Kelly had lumped her in with the rest of the social outcasts at their school as easy prey.

She was so stuck in the events of the past week in her head that she failed to notice the sound of a door opening. Then the little pin lock of the bathroom door directly behind her popped as it was locked and she couldn’t help but jump in surprise.

Turning, she slowly walked over to the door. The light was on in the small bathroom that sat between her and her little sister’s rooms. Tentatively, she reached out and gave a light rap.

It took her until the doorknob began turning for her to realize that she didn’t want Elizabeth seeing her shoulder. Turning the bruised away from the door, she crossed her other arm over her chest to cover it with her hand.

The door opened and a familiar head popped through. Elizabeth shared Susan’s blond hair and blue eyes, but that’s where their appearances diverged. Only in middle school, the girl was a head shorter than Susan’s four foot ten, and a love of sports had given her tanned skin and an overall healthier look.

“Oh hey,” Elizabeth said with a nonchalance that shouldn’t have been possible at this hour, “Do you mind if I take a shower real quick?”

Susan stared at her incredulously, wondering if this was some exhaustion induced fever dream. “It’s two in the morning, who takes a shower at two in the morning?” She almost whispered.

“Look, is it fine or not?” Elizabeth shot back.

“But you already took one today!” Susan couldn’t help but retort, waving her arm at Elizabeth.

“I got dirty again, alright? I just need to take another- wait a second, what’s that?” Elizabeth asked, eyes widening.

Susan’s arm had come off her shoulder to wave at Elizabeth. She immediately slapped it back in place, but the lance of pain brought a grimace to her face. Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s nothing!” Susan almost shouted. “I just fell, go take your shower okay?”

Elizabeth frowned at her response, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah totally fine…,” Susan trailed as Elizabeth nailed her with a flat stare, “…Please don’t tell Mom and Dad.”

“I’m so telling mom and dad.”

“T-then,” Susan warbled as she searched for an appropriate retort, “I’ll tell them how late you're staying up!”

Elizabeth froze, then her eyes narrowed into a glare, “…Fine.”

She vanished back into the bathroom, the door snapping shut behind her.

Susan’s hand fell away from her shoulder and she slumped in place. That had been a cheap shot by her. She didn’t want her parent’s looking into her sleeping schedule any more than Elizabeth did. But the idea of them finding out about Kelly terrified her even more than a curfew.

She felt… heavy. She moved back to the dresser and got changed as her mind ran through the last few minutes over and over. Flipping off the lights, she wobbled back to her bed and flopped down on it so that she lay face up. She let out a sigh, only Elizabeth could drive her crazy like this. What even possessed the girl to stay up this late anyway.

She realized something was wrong when she tried breathing in again and failed. The weight from earlier had grown. Now it felt like there was something pressing down on her chest and into the bed. She began to panic, was she sick, was there something wrong with her?

It got worse when she tried to raise her head. It was an impossible effort, like pushing her forehead against a wall. Her eyes moved desperately back and forth, but there was nothing she could see. The only sight was the dim paint of the ceiling above her.

The weight seemed to grow with her panic. Her fingers impotently scrabbled against the sheets as it grew to become an all encompassing pressure. Instead of being pressed down, it now felt like she was being forced into herself.

Black spots began to grow in her vision as a lack of air threatened to take her before the pressure could. She wanted to scream, cry, anything, but she couldn't. Her mouth flopped open, attempting to force out whatever air remained in a desperate cry for help.

And then she vanished. The only evidence left of her being rumpled bed sheets and a disgruntled sister.

On the other side of the interstate from Susan’s home lay the local park. Far away from the road and nestled within the forest that made up the grounds, a section had been cleared and prepared for spectator sports. Unfortunately, lack of budget meant that every sport popular with the local children was only made playable by a creative use of white paint and portable goals. The only permanent structure being cheap aluminum seating for the parents.

As the clock in Susan’s room moved to two thirty, the vibrant green of the well cut grass was barely visible. The dim moon was shadowed by clouds, its light almost completely cut off from the empty grounds.

The breeze stopped.

The chatter of animals and the roar of the interstate stopped.

For a few long moments the world froze in place.

Something appeared. Long necked, long limbed, and impossibly large the creature dominated the field. The sinuous neck waved a huge head back and forth, as if daring the world around it to move. Out on the interstate the sounds of cars could again be heard, but in the field silence reigned as every animal felt the presence of a predator like no other.

“I made it,” The dragon named Susan whispered at a volume that was louder than a shout from a human. Her voice was different now, deep and reverbant, though it was still vaguely recognizable as the one she had before.

She gathered herself and stood. Things were different now though. Four legs pushed up instead of two, and a huge head rose on its elongated neck as a sinuous tail swung around from behind. The nostalgic view warped and vanished, and the towering trees shrank as Susan now looked down on their leafy tops.

“Oh dear,” She whispered, “This won't work.”

Two huge scaled eyelids closed and enormous lips pursed in concentration. The dark towering form that stretched the entire width of the football field from head to tail seemed to shiver. It stilled for a split second before it seemed to collapse in on itself. The neck shrank, the tail and scales vanished, and the enormous muscled limbs thinned until the figure that remained almost perfectly resembled the Susan of before.

Not everything was the same. As Susan looked down with pride at her human form, her eyes fell on fair healthy skin and toned muscles. And nothing else. She blinked and tried to resist the urge to facepalm.

“Right, clothes,” Susan muttered in her normal voice.

She crouched on the ground and began tracing a small circle made of strange symbols on the ground. She stood and looked down at it, with a snap of her fingers the symbols glowed before vanishing as a coarse cotton robe appeared over her body.

Susan nodded in satisfaction and turned in a circle, getting her bearings. From her memories, the sports fields should be within a few miles of her house. She remembered trudging next to an excited Elizabeth as their family walked to the baseball pitch and seeing the football scoreboard in the distance.

‘Which would mean…’

Susan turned toward the empty scoreboard and did an about face before marching confidently towards the field, the dark night a stark contrast to the brilliant summer day of her memory.

She quickly passed through the shadowed fields, and onward into the lightly forested park beyond. As she walked under the dark canopy of the trees ahead she couldn’t help feeling excitement bubble up in her chest.

Her feet picked up speed, abandoning her dignified walk as Susan broke into a sprint. The dark trunks rushed by as she reached a speed faster than most cars. In barely an instant she was out of the woods and on the hard concrete of her neighborhood streets. She blurred past the cookie cutter two story houses of her neighborhood as they looked down with their large, eye-like windows.

She didn’t even feel the exhaustion of running but her breath still picked up from the excitement. She took one turn, then another through increasingly familiar streets. Nothing in the neighborhood noticed her passing, her bare feet making barely any noise despite the force she put into each stride. Before she even realized it, she was turning onto a familiar driveway next to a lawn turned yellow from the early autumn heat.

All of the sudden she found her chest tightening, despite the elation she still felt. Stopping in place, Susan’s excitement drained away, replaced with worry at what she might find. What if she was days or months early, or years late? No, the grass was right… she thought. It had been so long since she had last seen that lawn, what if she had still gotten the time wrong?

Susan shoved away the paranoia, the house still had its familiar painted walls and shingle roof. Shaking her Head, Susan forced herself to refocus on getting in. She could knock… and freak her parents out. Or wake up Elizabeth… and freak her out too.

No, the best way was just to go through the window to her room.

Having decided to break into her own house, Susan looked up at the window poking out from the roof on the second story. She could have climbed, but habits built over the years she had spent away from Earth were hard to break.

Crouching, Susan took a quick breath before pushing off the ground and leaping toward the window. Her feet pushed deep into the lawn and she flew twenty feet over and up onto the sloped portion of the roof that her window sat over. Her feet touched down softly on the tile and she grabbed the top part of the window frame to hold herself in place.

Before she could get stuck worrying again, she reached down, grabbed the bottom part of the window and lifted. The metal lock that had faithfully stood guard for the sixty years of the house's existence popped off the window and landed on the floor. Susan crouched and crept through the window and onto the bed below before stepping down onto the wood slatted floor of her bedroom.

Susan looked around at the room with shimmering, tear filled eyes. No longer needing the electric lights to see, she took in the shelves, brimming with books and topped with medals and ribbons from science fairs. The familiar doors, the dresser, the desk, the everything that called out to her with its comforting sameness. She approached her phone and reached out with a trembling finger to tap the screen and bring up the home screen.

The tap brought her phone to life, its screen like a tiny beacon. The date was right. The time was right. The phone had barely even charged ten percent since she had last touched it. Stumbling back to her bed Susan sat heavily on it.

“The date is right… I… was right. I’m home,” She whispered to herself as tears fell to the floor below. Hugging herself, she let out a quiet chuckle. Basking in the quiet ambiance, she couldn’t help the next words that slipped out her mouth.

“It only took a thousand years.”