Yes, wonder-book power...Activate!

Hesitantly, Doe extends her hand. "Put your hand on mine if you're sure."

You nod your head. "Fee, fie, foe, fum, here we go!" you say. You wonder where the story will fit Doe in.

You put your hand on hers.

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK

A young man trades the last of the family's fortunes for a handful
of beans. Magic beans, that twine their stalks to a giant's cloud-castle...

You look hard into the featureless void before you for a full minute, maybe two, when a variation in the pearly grayness reveals that you're staring into a nearly smooth cloud deck, looking up from below. "There's nothing wrong with your television set," you mutter to yourself.

With that established, the world now has an up and down. You're lying on your back on a surface that supports your weight in perfect, comfortable balance. The skin of a magic cloud. Looking elsewhere in the sky, you discern a spot of brighter glow from the sun behind the upper clouds, and a few seams of blue where you can see up the crevices between clouds.

You sit up and take in yourself and your surroundings. You're wearing rough canvas trousers, fair road boots, and a simple shirt. There's a cloak wrapped round your shoulders, and a belt and carry pouch at your waist.

"Doe?" you call softly.

Doe is playing impromptu Guardian to your rough-and-ready Interloper, hoping that by luck and wit -- the talents of storybook heroes -- and perhaps by kindness and prudence, you can restore the fairy tale worlds' happy endings. Maybe not the same happy endings, but needs must when the devil drives. Or any port in a storm, perhaps. For this story, Jack and his mother should be rescued from hunger and want.

There's a wall of Cyclopean stone blocks not far from you. This must be part of the giant's castle. But where are you? Inside or outside? Here near the cloud's surface, the sameness of the cloud makes the seen hard to figure out, and little drifts of mist make longer distances tricky to perceive.

"Doe?" you call again.

But your Guardian seems nowhere close at hand.