Sanctuary

“Oh, don’t be silly, you don’t need to prove-”

The sound of three quick taps on the door, followed immediately by the handle being turned, caused both of them to jolt and swivel their heads toward the door. Long locks of blonde hair swayed into the room a moment before Orria’s piercing blue eyes followed, her face as bright and ebullient as ever, though a look of surprise did mask that pleasantness for a moment as she saw the scene before her.

“Oh, my apologies! Am I interrupting anything?” Orria said, putting her hand over her chest in an attempt to seem embarrassed.

“Of course not,” John said, smiling at Farrah. She was markedly less embarrassed than when John had revealed how much he knew, but a faint pink hue had still washed over her cheeks. “After all, if we were doing anything private, we’d have locked the door, right, Farrah?”

Farrah spun to meet his eyes with the precision and lethal intent of a terminator. The furrow of her brow and the daggers in her eyes made it clear that John would pay for his remarks later – though she carefully smoothed out her expression as she stood and faced the doorway once more.

“Right! I was just coming to talk to John for a little while. I knew you two would probably end up out in the meadows all day, so I figured I’d better get here early,” Farrah said, stretching out her steps so she was almost bouncing a bit as she made her way to the doorway.

“I can wait if you two-”

“No need. I already got what I needed. Gotta go work on getting what I want.” Farrah’s voice was surprisingly playful with that, her awkwardness overcome as Orria opened the door all the way, letting Farrah sashay by her and continue on down the hall, humming the whole way.

“She seems to be in a good mood.” Orria smirked wryly as soon as they heard the sound of a door closing in the distance. “Are you sure I didn’t interrupt anything?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than you think. A lot like her, I suppose.” John grinned at his own minuscule wordplay, then stood from his chair and brushed his pants down brusquely. “I assume she was right about what you’re going to want to do – are we headed outside for your day?”

“Oh, you think she’s complicated, but I’m so simple?” Orria quirked an eyebrow at John in a direct challenge. “You’ve got me all figured out? Well, Mr. Know-it-All, I think I’ve got a few ideas that will surprise you.”

“I can’t wait.”

“Let’s see… I mapped it out, I think the border is right here. How close am I?”

“Right on the mark, just a few more inches and we’d technically be passing over.”

John and Orria stood at the boundary of his world, one of the western boundaries to be specific. They were at the southern edge of the forest and the far west end of the zones he’d created for his world so far. It didn’t look like anything special at first, but in the distance he could see the eastern edges of the mountains as the world looped back on itself. A few more feet and they would technically be on the eastern edge of the world, akin to looping around a globe, though he never noticed any signs of the curvature of the world while they were traveling.

“Excellent,” Orria said, scribbling in her notebook briefly. “I tried to get as close as I could, using some quick calculations and the sketch of your map you let me copy down, but I wasn’t sure if I had made any mistakes anywhere.”

“You? Never.”

Orria threw a skeptical look his way as she closed up the book and tucked it into her pouch. “Your map is a bit oddly shaped because of how you’ve built your world out, and with perfectly square zones, it should be impossible to form any kind of sphere. Yet somehow, the world loops back on itself flawlessly no matter how many times I cross the border, or where. Sometimes different zones even seem to cross over to the same space. Despite that, going in the other direction never drops you off anywhere random or unexpected, and when I’ve had one of the others cross from a different zone, we end up nearer or farther apart, even though we’re both still walking in straight lines…”

“This place has changed a little over time. I assume it has something to do with my abilities.” John glanced back toward the house, then off toward the mountains again. “When I first showed up here, it was an empty void. A couple of times, I’ve even sworn I could see the void again under our feet – like at the borders of the world or between zones. Now it just feels like there’s a bit of a reality warping effect to it. Like you said, if you only cross between connected zones, everything is static – but if you cross the border, it can get a little wonky if you trace out your route afterward, even though it always makes sense when you’re traveling.”

“It’s definitely some kind of space-time distortion, even if it’s a benevolent one,” Orria agreed. “Have you ever flown high enough with Sophia to see what shape this world forms if you view it from afar?”

“It’s always looked flat, and I’m not sure how high we’d have to go for it to look any other way. Not sure I want to find out. I assume we’d just see the void again, but maybe it would turn the whole place into some kind of kaleidoscopic nightmare where you see the same thing from multiple ang- okay, stop getting excited about glitches in reality.”

John rolled his eyes as he could see Orria’s imagination running wild, but there was still a smile on his face. Her enthusiasm knew no boundaries, not even the boundaries of reality itself. “Calm down. If you want Sophia to help you fly up and study how space-time warps, you’re the one who has to talk her into it.”

“Don’t think I won’t!” Orria stuck her tongue out briefly, her finger toying with the pen still tucked into her pocket. “Alright, well, putting that aside, I know this is a bit of a big ask, but could you create a new zone right here? Right on the other side of the boundary we’re next to?”

“Sure, that’s not a problem. I haven’t made one in a while, so I’ve got plenty of banked points for it. What do you want me to make?”

“Just an empty zone will do, plains or- oh, actually, can you make it a section with some hills? No, no, wait – a small valley! I want to make sure it’s obvious when the zone forms, but I don’t want it to block my view of what’s happening further along when the first hills form,” Orria explained enthusiastically. By this point, her eyes weren’t turned toward John in the slightest. She was completely fixated on the invisible boundary between zones, as if thinking it could start to shift at any second if she glanced away.

“That’s not a problem. A valley… I’ll give it some steep declines and make sure it’s aligned with us so that you can see the whole length of it.” John opened up his menus and began to flick through the options, using the preview of his new world map to make sure that he got it right. “I could make it larger, if you want? Two or three zones wide? That would give the valley a little bit more natural of a look, I think.”

“I wouldn’t ask for you to use up so much space just for this,” Orria responded quickly. She still kept her gaze forward for the most part, but he could see her eyes go wide when she dared to peek in his direction, wide enough that John could see the twinkle in them as he reached to tweak the settings and expand his generation.

“I know you wouldn’t, that’s why I’m not waiting for you to ask, silly,” John teased, already selecting the additional tiles, and lengthening the valley a little more as well. “This will let the sides be a bit less steep, and it’ll really make the valley a lot more visually impressive. I’ll keep it nice and straight though, with minimal deviations.”

“John, I don’t know what to say! But if you’re-”

“Better get ready, I’m starting it now. Wouldn’t want you to miss anything,” John teased, not giving her more chances to object as he set the valley to a healthy four miles wide and confirmed the adjustment.

“John…”

The word left Orria’s lips in a whisper between annoyance and awe, the last thing she said as her mind became totally focused on the scene ahead. She clutched her hands together in front of her chest as the world in front of them began to distort and warp, stretching out slightly. Because most of the land ahead was flat and endless plains, it wasn’t very noticeable, at least at first. John could just barely tell that the distant mountains were getting even further away, a little smaller at the edge of his vision. It wasn’t until the ground began to dip and spread in front of them that it became incredibly obvious what was happening.

The dip was subtle at first, a soft curve downward that was no steeper than a wheelchair ramp, but as it grew and expanded, the sides became more and more of a sharp drop, and the total area lowered continued to grow as the dip widened and fleshed itself out into a full valley in a matter of seconds. The valley continued to stretch and deepen at an accelerating pace as they watched, with Orria’s unblinking eyes swiveling wildly between each section of it. By the time the terrain finished warping, the valley was four miles wide, with almost all of it being largely flat. Only at the very edges did it begin a steep upward climb, covering the three-quarters of a mile ascent back up to ground level in just a few hundred feet.

“Wow, it’s so strange to watch it happen like that,” Orria finally said, after a few seconds had passed with no further changes to the geography. “I couldn’t point to a single blade of grass that I watched appear, yet there’s no denying how much more there is now…”

“About twenty square miles worth of it, minus the patches of rocky bits near the edges.” John glanced over to Orria, expecting to see her frantically sketching away, but she was still just standing there as if awestruck.

“Amazing. Your world is truly magnificent, John. And your abilities are a wondrous gift.”

John smiled, but remained silent as Orria basked in her newest “discovery”. John had created most of the terrain he’d added to his world in the last year before her Purification. What little he’d added a few weeks later, to give Shishun a sandy area to practice and slither around in, he’d done without consulting her, and she’d been very obviously annoyed by that fact.

“Okay, um, I need to write down some notes. And I want to make a quick sketch of what it looks like from here in case it changes, and so I can know what the grove will look like from this perspective.”

“The grove?” John asked, glancing down the length of the valley. “You want to move your grove here?”

“Not exactly.”

Orria didn’t elaborate further immediately, already squatted to the ground and hard at work on her notebook. John could already see a half-dozen lines scribbled so quickly that no mundane pen would’ve been able to keep the ink flowing quickly enough. He waited patiently as a startlingly accurate and well-inked sketch slowly formed across the pages, flowing like water from her pen as she recreated the sight on her preferred canvas.

“Perfect! Actually getting it down on paper has given me a few new ideas, too,” Orria said happily, bouncing up from her sitting position and slapping her book closed. “And no, John. I’m not going to be moving the grove. I like it right where it is, thank you very much!”

“A new one, then?” John mused. “You didn’t need your whole day for that, you know. Not even for the valley. I don’t mind making new spaces for you – especially since you always turn them into something beautiful. Honestly, this is more of a favor from you to the world than a gift from me to you.”

“I appreciate that. Really, I do. But I’m being more selfish than you realize,” Orria said, giving John a sly wink. She started to walk towards the newly formed valley, her steps light and purposeful. The gentle slope at the edge they were nearest was mostly smoothed out, and Orria navigated what few bumps and twists there were deftly, her blonde hair swaying with each careful step.

John, caught off guard by how quickly she’d started to venture off, hastily followed after her. "Hey, wait up! What do you mean by 'selfish'?" he called out, his longer strides allowing him to catch up quickly.

Orria glanced back at him, a mischievous glint in her eye. "Oh, you'll see soon enough," she teased, her voice lilting. She continued her descent, fingers trailing along the tall grasses that had sprouted into existence mere seconds ago.

Realizing she wouldn't give him a straight answer, John changed tack. "Alright, keep your surprise for me. But tell me this at least – why make a second grove? Why not just expand the first one? You’ve still got plenty of space, and I could always create more."

Orria slowed her descent, turning her head to face John. Her expression softened, a gentle smile playing on her lips. "Well, you see, the first grove was for me," she said, her voice warm with affection.