A Grand Adventure In Foreign Policy

Chapter One- Buying the Farm

The twittering of birds greeted the first signs of my return to consciousness. My mind searched for a short moment as it sought to identify the noise. My head twitched involuntarily, and I groaned. That pain that I thought was previously terminated, had obviously decided to reassert itself, and was now playing like a rambunctious marching band through the deepest recesses of my brain. I decided to see if the eyes still worked. It was a risky venture, but I was a shit-disturber and was well acquainted with risk.

I fluttered my eyelashes. Good response. I squinted, looking through my lashes, and was met by bright light. It must be day, I reasoned. Opening my eyes further, I took a tentative look at my surroundings. Given that I was splayed on the ground like a fallen doll, and my head was smooshed into the dirt, I didn’t see much, other than dirt. Oh, there were the bottoms of some trees and some grass. Wait a minute, dirt? Grass? This was not looking good for me. I distinctly remember being on a gravel path, and the ‘garden’ didn’t have any grass, just bark mulch. I pressed my hand into the dirt and slowly pushed myself up into an upright position. My head screamed in protest. I closed my eyes and pressed my hand into the back of my head to try and soothe the throbbing.

Let’s try the eyes again, shall we? I opened my eyes all the way. My pack was lying by my feet. It looked little worse for wear. Check, one thing on the list of ‘what was normal’. Yes, I was definitely sitting on dirt. Grass was confirmed to be in patches around me. The trees were really tall, not at all like the trees outside my apartment. I knew for a fact those trees were only twenty years old, these trees looked to be dozens, if not hundreds of years old.

I was not going to panic. My hand felt sticky. Looking down, I saw it was all goopy with almost dry blood. Yuck, and yay, cuz head injuries were always my favourite. No bloody way I was going to panic now. My drive to solve problems and fix any crisis jumped into play. Reason was in working order, I didn’t have any visual acuity issues, and pain was still registering; so I felt like I probably broke the skin and had endured a mild concussion. I could deal. I’ve dealt with worse. I decided to send for home.

Some people called me weird, others thought I was down-right odd, and in previous centuries I would’ve been burned at the stake for being a ‘witch’. Whatever. I was different, that’s for sure. I could sense things, like where home was and if someone was lying to me. Other people’s emotions and internal rules were felt by me like they were my own. I knew things. Stuff I knew no one else would be happy for me to know. I was of the wiggy. When people called me psychic, I’d get so pissed and tell them that I wasn’t some nut-job wandering down Robson Street in a polyester muumuu and a duck on a leash, asking if people wanted their palms read for ten bucks a pop. Getting trotted out like some trick pony at parties was both a giant pain in the ass and embarrassing. I was a respectable person and I didn’t advertise what I could do, so I wouldn’t be ridiculed.

Looking around, I couldn’t see anyone within eyeshot, so I closed my eyes and felt. My home wasn’t in any direction that I could sense, so I decided to cast farther away. I sensed people, but no home. I went farther. Home, where was home? Faintly I felt a shallow tug. Allowing more energy to try and strengthen the tug, I tried to gauge the distance. My inner eye gibbered. It felt like a vast chasm between where my home was and where I was now. Was it time or distance that separated me from home? I didn’t know. Now I really groaned. This was not the news I had hoped to hear. I prayed I was just in a coma at VGH and I would wake up to find it all a bad hallucination.

I clambered to my feet, intent on finding those people I had felt earlier. Maybe someone would help me and I could figure out where the flying frack I was. Seeing a break in the shrubbery, it looked like a hiking trail and it was in the general direction of where I felt the closest smattering of people; I picked up my pack and followed it.