• Note that this story is intentionally very cliche in characters and plot. It is meant to be humorous and not meant to be taken seriously at all.

    Backstory: Mackenzie Rivers-Watts was on her way to work one morning when a man, Sam the Librarian, fell onto her car from a portal he'd opened between their worlds. Sam was under the impression that Mackenzie was a spellcaster who could help him "stitch" together the veil that was tearing between the two dimensions and therefore prevent the two worlds from bleeding into each other and causing chaos on both sides before ultimately collapsing both into nothingness.

    The problem, however, is that Macknezie doesn't know magic, didn't know magic existed, and by the time Sam tries to stitch it all together himself, the veil has already opened and several creatures begin to escape. One of them is a dragon that heads to new York in order to conquer Manhattan for its kin.

    Characters:

    Mackenzie: A 21-year-old girl who works in a plastics factory making sure spoons aren't mistaken for sporks and the knives are properly serrated. The protagonist, and because Sam is rarely wrong she will be the one who saves Dowunn and Earth from collapsing in on each other and destroying both universes.

    Sam: In his world, Dowunn, he's pretty much Google in humanoid form. As the Librarian, it's his job to know everything about everything and help people out when they need information for anything from a school project to how to stop a cat from growing twice its size every thirty seconds due to s spell gone bad. He's just started learning about Earth, and his favorite Earth subject is Global Warming and the hardships of polar bears.

    Chartreuse: Or, "Char." She's an elf-warrior-princess. She's very tall, very pretty, very angry, very possessive, and very vain. She's also Sam's ex-girlfriend and followed him through his portal in order to either ask him back to her, or drag him back to her. Either way, she wants him back.


    "Something Else"


    “We thought they were just… A new sort of natural phenomenon,” the newscaster was saying in his dramatic, newscaster voice. “The Northern Lights in a new, beautiful formation – swamp gas, refracted light; the theories kept coming. Some suggested aliens – others, witchcraft. Now, we know. The glittering cascades of shimmering lights that have sprung up in various areas of the city are something much different than anyone could have ever guessed. They are portals – to another world, from which great beasts fly and—”

    Mackenzie switched the channel, but it was just another Breaking News alert, this time talking about the dragon that had been spotted by various people heading towards New York City. This newscaster – a young woman wearing a bright red suit – was interviewing the same people in the same trailer park that always seemed to be interviewed during times of crisis.

    The one being interviewed currently was thin and pale, wearing a camouflage-colored baseball cap and dingy white tank top to show off his farmer’s tan, and holding onto a beer bottle wrapped in a blue beer cozy. Mackenzie didn’t think they could’ve picked a more stereotyped figure if they tried, then wondered if maybe this was them trying, and they had a catalogue somewhere of these types who were always available when Channel Forty-Seven needed them.

    “I saw it. It was this big honkin’ lizard, like an iguana or somethin’, only it was red not green and it had huge ol’ wings like a bat or some other kinda bird and I ain’t never seen no iguanas like that, so I know it was a dragon and not some overgrown iguana or nothin’,” the interviewee said.

    Mackenzie sighed. She flipped through the channels and they all featured the same thing – dragons, mysterious shimmering lights, curious incidents such as a woman in Oregon accidentally turning her cheating husband into a pig, and accounts of talking animals confronting tourists in Vermont and insulting their upbringing.

    “The walls between our worlds are breaking apart,” Sam said from the walkway separating the kitchen from the living room. He was staring Mackenzie’s MP3 player like it was something unbelievably fascinating. He randomly pressed some of the buttons, but nothing happened because Mackenzie had broken the thing months ago when she’d sat on it.

    “It doesn’t work,” Mackenzie said.

    “It reminds me of the devices they use to compress information into my head, only shinier and with less spikes.” He threw it on the chair next to him.

    She didn’t want to know. She would already be spending sleepless nights worrying if a dragon was terrorizing people from its perch on the Empire State Building, or if someone somewhere was being turned into a tree. She didn’t need to know what horrible, spiky device Sam used to shove magic knowledge into his brain. Char’s insistence that being the Librarian of their world was a meaningless position simply because he didn’t actually have to read all the books to get all the information held even less merit in Mackenzie’s opinion if Sam used spiky MP3 players to gain it.

    “Okay, so… other than the weird occurrences, what sort of bad things could happen here? Every time I see this sort of thing on TV shows, there’s all this talk about the worlds collapsing in on each other and sucking both realities through a giant, gaping Black Hole vortex… Is that going to happen?”

    “Honestly?” Sam moved to sit beside Mackenzie on the couch. He took the remote from her and shut the television off, cutting short another less-than-thrilling interview about the strange happenings. “I don’t really know. It’s never happened before – at least, not to my knowledge.”

    “And your knowledge is… pretty much everything.”

    Smiling, Sam nodded, “But not everything. Some things are hidden away – even from the Librarian. Never to be seen by any eyes, ever again… This could certainly have happened before, but there’s no way to tell. Once some knowledge has been banned, it’s next to impossible to reveal it again.”

    Mackenzie smirked, “Next to impossible, huh?”

    “Are you thinking something along the lines of a mystery-solving adventure, Miss Rivers-Watts?”

    Smirk growing into a grin, she got up from the couch. “I’ve never had an adventure,” she said. “Read about them, watched them on television, but I’ve never had one myself and… really, until now I’ve never wanted one. I don’t know if it’s an effect of that Veil thingy, but suddenly I feel like going around and slaying dragons or defeating evil witches or some other story cliché.”

    Sam was smiling, but a less joyful voice spoke before he had the chance.

    “I think you should let us handle it,” Char said, entering the room from the hallway and wearing the new dress that she’d insisted Mackenzie give her, since hers was ripped. “You’re just a little boring human from Earth… You don’t even have any power or anything – how do you expect to do anything effective in pulling two worlds apart from each other? Sammy and I can handle it.”

    “The spell led me to Mackenzie for a reason, Char,” Sam countered. “Things like that don’t just happen. It means that, somehow, she is the one that’s supposed to help us.”

    Before Char could toss another remark back at him, a tapping at the door interrupted the feud. Lifting an eyebrow, Mackenzie walked over and opened it, then groaned at the sheer strangeness of the situation in front of her.

    Several forest creatures had somehow traveled up two flights of stairs, found her apartment door, and were currently gazing up at her from their place in the hallway. At least, the smaller animals were gazing up at her – the deer were rather large, so they seemed to be just about eye-to-eye with her, and the birds were mostly perched on the tips of the deer’s antlers. One squirrel was down at her, as it was situated on top of the doorjamb of the apartment across the hall.

    “You better let them in,” Sam said. He’d gotten up from the couch and was standing, apparently unsurprised, behind her. “They’ll only block the walkway if you don’t.”

    Mackenzie stepped aside and the animals all filed into the apartment. She’d never thought of her apartment as “small” before, but with three deer, five raccoons, several squirrels, too many birds to count, mice, a skunk, what looked to be a beaver, three cats, two dogs, and a fox along with three people piled into it, the space was looking a little less than roomy. A bluebird flittered over from one of the deer’s antlers and landed on Mackenzie’s head.

    “Why are they here?” she asked, being careful not to move too much. She didn’t really know what birds did when they were frightened, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

    Char smiled sweetly at a raccoon that didn’t look too happy to be smiled at. “They’re probably here because of me,” the older woman said. “Elves, especially if they have royal blood, are very in-tune with nature. Wildlife flocks to us.”

    “Wildlife flocks to any brain-dead princess within walking distance,” Sam snapped. He pushed away a squirrel that apparently thought there were acorns buried somewhere in his hair and swatted away a robin that was fluttering around his left ear.

    The robin flew away from Sam and onto Mackenzie’s shoulder, where it was soon joined by a blue-jay, a cardinal, a pigeon, and a mouse. The deer moved closer to her as well, and three of the raccoons started rummaging through her pants pockets. The fox stayed in the corner and yawned, and one of the dogs lifted its leg and peed on Mackenzie’s potted plant.

    She wanted to shout out at the dog, but they were too many animals too close to her for her to make any sudden movements or noises, so instead she made an agonized expression at Sam, and the man went over to shoo the canine away from the fichus.

    The fichus was pleased. It expressed this by giggling.

    Wait.

    “Uh…”

    Mackenzie blinked several times. She was pretty sure plants didn’t giggle.

    “Did my tree just laugh?”

    Sam tilted his head curiously. “I would say it was more of a chortle… Perhaps a chuckle.”

    “The point is, I’m pretty sure plants aren’t supposed to do any of those things.”

    He shrugged. “It must have become sentient. It happens sometimes with trees back home.”

    Char snorted. “Yeah, speaking of home, Sam – when are we going back?”

    Mackenzie looked over to the elf who, according to her and Sam’s “conversation” earlier, should have been surrounded by more animals due to her elf/princess combination. There was a very bored looking black cat next to her, but she had little else – every other creature was surrounding either Mackenzie or Sam. Mackenzie wondered if maybe that was why she was looking more peeved than usual, but there really was no telling.

    “Why are all these animals around me, anyways?” Mackenzie asked.

    One of the raccoons had unbuttoned the pocket on her cargo pants and pulled out a package of cheese crackers that Mackenzie had for her lunch break at work. With nimble little raccoon fingers, it tore open the cellophane wrapper and cracker crumbs fell onto the floor, causing all the birds that had taken to roosting on her head and shoulders to flurry to the ground and start snapping up the little bits of bright orange cracker.

    “Oh,” Mackenzie said. “That’s not very flattering.”

    Four cheese crackers don’t last very long under the onslaught of so many forest creatures, so when the floor was clean again they all started milling about the apartment. Mackenzie had to run and stop a deer from head-butting her bedroom door, then realized – oh right, it was a freaking six-foot tall deer with lethal weapons on its head – and all head-butting actions after that were permitted through gritted teeth. Her cleaning deposit hadn’t a chance.

    A few animals wandered back over to Char, who looked happy to have the company.

    “Sam?” the woman asked, a follow-up of her previous question.

    “I don’t know, Char. We need Mackenzie’s help, but we haven’t figured out in what way yet.”

    There was a bright flash (which, Mackenzie was starting to learn, never meant something good) and from the ceiling opened another cascade of lights like the section of the Veil that Mackenzie had witnessed by the road. This one was in miniature, however, and only appeared to be above Mackenzie’s head.

    Then, with a sound like an arrow being released from a crossbow, a sharp, silvery object flew out of the ceiling straight towards Mackenzie. She jumped back, helped along by a pull from somewhere behind her.

    She was shocked to find that there was a very bright, glimmering sword halfway-embedded into her living room floor, quivering with energy that would’ve sent the thing flying straight through Mackenzie’s skull had she not jumped back and – she turned to find that it was Char, surprisingly, that had pulled her back in time to avoid an unfortunate, stabby demise.

    “Thanks,” Mackenzie said, a little breathlessly, to the elf, who shrugged and patted a nearby raccoon on the head.

    Mackenzie though, couldn’t take her eyes off the sword. It was silver all over – the hilt was intricately carved with what looked to be roses and doves and had the occasional green or pink gem decorating the carvings. Every surface of it sparkled, still caught in the light of – was it another section of the Veil?

    Sam nodded affirmatively before Mackenzie had even realized she’d asked him out loud.

    “You’ll find a lot of them springing up,” he said. “It’s like a rip, or a bunch of rips, in fabric. The barriers of this world and my world are weakened, and each passing moment causes more and more stress on them, and the stress on keeping the worlds apart creates more tears between them… Eventually, they’ll all form one giant split along the seams of the two worlds and… After that, I don’t really know.”

    “This seriously hasn’t ever happened before? I mean, I know you said it could have happened but was probably hidden away – but if it’s really dangerous, you’d think they’d have the information available for everyone just in case it happened again.”

    He knelt down to inspect the sword, which had finally stopped shaking but was still glowing with an unusual energy completely unrelated to the light from the section of Veil that was surrounding it. He gave the blade an experimental tug, but it was firmly rooted into Mackenzie’s floor and that cleaning deposit was really, really doomed now.

    “Some people tend not to be… very humble about the spells they cast,” Sam explained. “It could’ve been a very powerful spellcaster who closed the Veil in the first place, and in his pompous vanity he might’ve deemed it unable to ever open again, so he locked the instructions away… Or didn’t share them with anyone in the first place.”

    “Stupid.” Sam shrugged. Mackenzie walked over to the sword in the floor and pushed on it. “Can you get it out of my floor, please? As pretty as it is, I think the lighted portal to another world is enough of a conversation-starter for one room.”

    Sam stood up and pulled at the sword again. It still didn’t move. He tried a few more times before standing back to inspect the area of floor the sword was fixed in. He shrugged.

    With a roll of her eyes, Char let out a little mocking noise and walked over to the overly-decorated supposed weaponry. She pushed Sam away from it and smiled at him condescendingly.

    “You never were much in the area of brawn, Sammy,” she said. Sam glared at her and Mackenzie was almost certain she heard the man growl.

    “I come from a tribe of warriors, you know,” Char said to Mackenzie. “All the members of my family are the best fighters in the kingdom.”

    Arms crossed over his chest and scowling, Sam gave Char a look. “Except you’re not a fighter, are you Char?”

    With a curious mixture of hurt and anger from the elf, Mackenzie felt an inkling of sympathy for her for the first time since they met – and she was pretty sure it hadn’t been a glamour this time. There was an electricity-like connection of irritation and simmering rage between Sam and Char that told Mackenzie there was more to their words than she knew, but it wouldn’t be a wise idea to ask about it.

    With a stubborn determination, and without taking her eyes off Sam, Char pulled at the sword. When it didn’t come loose instantly she looked at it curiously and kept trying. When it still didn’t budge, she made a frustrated noise and fell back.

    “This is impossible,” she screamed. “I can control any weapon – this is just impossible!”

    Somewhere in the back of her mind, a little memory pulled itself to the front of her mind and suddenly all this seemed eerily familiar. Unmovable sword, stuck in a solid object…

    Sighing, Mackenzie nervously walked over to the sword and Char sent a scathing look in her direction as if about to say Like you could possibly do what I couldn’t, but before she could get the actual words out Mackenzie had already wrapped both hands around the sword hilt and pulled it out of the floor like – and excuse the poor metaphor – a knife through butter.

    From the ceiling, a belt and scabbard fell at Mackenzie’s feet where the sword had been stuck moments before. The silver embellishments on the black leather scabbard matched the ones on the sword’s hilt.

    “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mackenzie said to the ceiling.

    “I loosened it,” she heard Char mutter.

    Sam shrugged.