Book 1 - Chapter 1.1
Sol woke up on a grassy hill a kilometre outside of a town she did not recognize. The entire landscape was significantly different from the side of the rocky, bare mountain she had lied down on for a quick nap. She had been scaling it in the early morning, and in the early afternoon she had settled between some boulders that shielded her from the biting wind, and dozed off.
Where she was now there was no elevation to speak of, save for the knoll she found herself on, which was only a couple metres high at best. The rest of the landscape was far stretching plains land bordered by a thick wall of mist kilometres away that broke open overhead to reveal a wild blue sky populated with fluffy cumulous clouds. The town rested next to a medium sized river that flashed silvery in the light, and there were large boats with metal hulls coasting on its waters.
Sol sat up with a frustrated sigh and took off the padded leather gloves that she had originally donned for the frigid autumn mountain air. The weather down on the plain felt like mid-spring, which made everything she was wearing feel like too much.
Sol rubbed the sleep from her face in aggravation.
This wasn't the first time she had been unsuspectingly and swiftly transported to a different place against her will. The first, and assumedly last time this happened to her was when her mother had brought her to the edge of Fae at the age of twelve.
Whatever ghostly beings existed within that faerie ring had kicked Sol from their realm and sent her some two-hundred kilometres away towards the Northeast, far from her home and mother. Sol had hiked a whole day until she finally found a branch of her mother's coven and asked someone to fly her back home. It was an overall humiliating and exhausting experience and was brought up at least once at every witches gathering Sol went to, before she quit the whole witch business at the age of twenty.
Sol looked up at the large clouds that crowned the wall of mist and noted that they were slowly turning gold with the setting sun. She would have to head to the town soon to beat the night.
She wondered how she could have missed a faerie ring, especially one that was on the side of a rocky mountain. It was a rookie mistake to fall asleep inside of one, and Sol at the very least prided herself on not making those.
Was it the boulders? Were they some new kind of portal?
She would have to corroborate that with the Rangers' Guild, and her mother's coven if she was so inclined, once she made it home.
Getting home was the first step, though. Since the air on the plains felt like mid-spring that meant she was on the other side of the equator.
Sol put her head in her hands and groaned. Then she sighed as she cast one more glance at the clouds before loosening a few buttons on her thick coat, so she wouldn't overheat, and reached around for her gear, which thankfully the Fae had sent along with her.
She stood, stretched, and made her way down the small hill towards the town, hoping that the people there spoke one of the languages she knew.