“Your arm feeling any easier to move?” Jake asked, reclining back against the curved wall of the cave the two had landed in. It wasn’t a huge space, but thankfully, they were trapped with enough room to recline comfortably.


    “…Kinda?” Alice replied, voice uncertain as she slowly bent and unbent her arm, free at last from the sling. Her arm felt sluggish and heavy, difficult to move. The pain had died down, fading to light stings and pricks that poked into the sides of her arms as she overextended herself. Still, though the all-consuming pain was gone, she found it difficult to freely move her arm how she wanted. “It feels kind of heavy?”


    “Heavy?”


    “Best word I can think of.” She called back with a short sigh, also falling back to lean against the cave wall opposite him.


    “Probably just need to keep moving it, like physical therapy, you know?”


    “Not really.”


    “Just keep moving it around, it’ll loosen up. I mean, the pain’s gone, right? It should get easier to move in no time.”


    She guessed he had a point. Thanks to the sudden development in the harp’s ability, she’d managed to restore the strings wrapped within her arm at an unprecedented speed, quickly beating any estimate she had and allowing her to free herself from the confines of the sling. While she appreciated it for helping to mediate her pain, it was rather annoying to be so constricted.


    Still, while she appreciated the near removal of all the pain she’d come to loathe over the past few days, annoyance flared in her as she felt her arm struggle to respond to her call. She’d been so ready to enjoy her recovery, to once again be able to fully enjoy herself traveling around. Still stuck lugging around wounds from such a sudden and seemingly minor injury… it began to bubble over from annoying to infuriating.


    “I just…” She said after a moment, her gaze directed toward her feet, slightly curled beneath her, “I just thought I’d finally be better, you know? Especially after everything with the harp and I just… I thought I’d finally be over this.”


    “I know what you mean,” Jake said, a slight smile on his face. Alice changed her gaze quickly, looking at him with a look of bewildered skepticism. It wasn’t that she doubted him or thought him a liar. It was just that she knew it was hard for him to understand what she meant by her strings, how deep a web they weaved within her. How truly part of her they felt like now she could feel them.


    “When I was a kid in elementary school… maybe it was middle school? Kinda muddled to be honest. When I was a kid, let’s say that. When I was a kid, I fractured my arm.” He paused a moment when he heard Alice wince at that.


    “Yeah, it wasn’t the most fun thing I’ve ever done. Wouldn’t recommend it. Still, I fractured it just screwing around with some friends at school. Had to get a cast put on it for eight weeks while it healed. Couldn’t move it all, hurt a lot in the beginning. The pain got better as time went on, but I still had to be careful. Made my life seem so boring, especially compared to everyone else’s. Was my dominant hand too, so writing was a pain in the ass.”


    “Finally got the cast-off and was so excited about it. But my arm still didn’t feel right. It was all limp and weak and hard to move. I found out I had to go to physical therapy for months to get the thing working again. Let me tell you, that sucked. It was way harder than just sitting around in a cast, and it was slow, and it hurt. But I mean it worked well enough at the end of the day, my arm went back to normal. Give yours some time, I''m sure it’ll work out.


    Alice stayed quiet after he''d finished his rambling. Glancing toward her, he saw she was bent over, lost in thought, staring at the ground. After a beat of silence, she looked toward him with a clear hint of annoyance in her eyes.


    “So, you’re saying I’m being childish?”


    “What?!”


    “Like you were as a kid, I’m being childish? I’m too impulsive, should I just learn to wait? I know how to wait, Jake!” He wasn’t quite sure where this reaction was coming from. He’d just been trying to relate to her, maybe cheer her up a bit with how long it was taking for her arm to feel. Not insulting her. Falling into a stammering mess, he quickly tried to correct her as delicately as possible.


    “No.. no... I ah.. No, that’s.. not what I’m…”


    “So, I’m stupid now too?!”


    “NO! When did I…”


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    She couldn’t keep a straight face any longer, falling backward into the smooth curve of the rock behind her, her gleeful cackles quickly filled the space of the cave. Still sat up in a panic, Jake began to fall back, slightly red-faced as embarrassment took hold of him. Staring at the floor now, he avoided looking at her as he heard her calm down, heard her laughter die away.


    “You’re still pretty gullible, aren’t you, greenie?”


    “Stuff it.”


    “Ah, don’t be like that!” She sat up a bit and gazed at his downtrodden face. “I appreciated the story.”


    Glancing up from the ground now he saw her smiling at him. She still had a few tears in her eyes, he could guess they’d come from when she’d fallen back laughing. Yet the smile she wore now looked genuine. No hint of mischief or trickery behind it.


    “No problem.” He said with a simple shrug, casting his gaze away from her to instead stare out at the horizon beyond the cave’s entrance. His face still felt red.


    “How long do you think it will take?”


    “For what?”


    “Physical Therapy? How long do you think it will take to get my arm back to normal?”


    “How would I know? You know more about the curse than me.”


    “Well… you’d know more about magic than me!”


    “How?” Jake asked, tearing his eyes away from the horizon to meet hers, finding a mischievous twinkle back in them. It suited them well, he thought to himself as he continued, “How would I possibly know more about magic than you?!”


    “You’ve actually met a magician!”


    “You are magic!”


    “I’m not magic, I’m cursed, remember?”


    “Oh, my bad!” His voice sounded exasperated, yet at the same time, he found a sense of enjoyment rising within him as their mock argument continued. Both could tell neither cared what they were arguing about, simply enjoying the time wasted going back and forth with one another. It was fun. By the time they finished, arguing over literally nothing, both were struggling not the laugh.


    Pressed back into the cave wall, their gazes turned toward the horizon. Beyond the cave’s entrance lay only a sheer cliff face, a vertical drop neither could hope to survive or climb down. When they poked their heads out, they could vaguely see a few more caves carved into the rock around them, all circular and varying in size. What really caught their eye, though, was the rock wall across them.


    Too far for either to ever hope to jump across, all they could do was lie back and admire it as the setting sun cast its shadow upon it. The massive rock was a pale whitish color, and they could see that its surface was equally coated in holes. The shade of the setting sun crossing these holes looked odd, creating an eye-catching distortion that held both their attention as they sat in silence.


    “Sorta looks like Swiss cheese…” Jake said after a while, head slightly tilted as he examined the rock.


    “Swiss cheese?”


    “You won’t know Swiss ''cause there’s no Switzerland where you’re from. At least, I think there isn’t…” he glanced at her and waited a moment till she nodded, confirming she indeed had never heard of Switzerland. “Cheese, though, you’ve had cheese, right? There was some before back at the lab of horrors.”


    “I’ve had cheese, yes,” Alice said, rolling her eyes. She paused a moment before adding, “Not often though. Didn’t notice it back in the lab, didn’t think to look for it. The last time I had it I was a kid. I remember it tasting alright. I gave a lot of my half away though, so I didn’t eat much…” Her voice sounded distracted for a minute. A slight smile crossed her face.


    She recalled the bit of cheese, given to her by an elder close to the end of their life. Smuggled in from the outside and pressed into his hands as a gift to celebrate the end of his life. How excited Betsy had been by it. She’d practically drooled over it as Alice was still cutting it in half, scarfed her half down while Alice was still chewing her first bite. How annoyed at the time Alice had been to give her cheese to her begging sister. Now, she didn’t regret that choice at all.


    “Why’d you give it away?”


    “What?”


    “You said you gave most of the cheese you got away. Did you not like it?”


    “No… no. It was fine. I just… I had a friend who liked it more…” Her voice choked a bit as she answered. She hadn’t realized she had said that much; she''d been too distracted thinking about the past.


    “You, ok?” Jake asked, noting the quiver in her voice. He turned to face her, only to find her head buried in her knees, voice muffled as she said,


    “Fine, I’m fine. Just miss them.”


    “Your friend?”


    “Yeah... every day…”


    Silence rang for a while after that as the sun continued to set. Finally, when the light around the two had nearly completely vanished, Alice spoke, her face hidden in the near-perfect darkness.


    “We’ll have to try it sometime. Swiss cheese. Wonder if it’s any good.”


    “…Maybe. We might get a chance to.” Jake replied, voice quiet and uncertain.


    “Well, why wouldn’t we?”


    “Well, I mean, we may not be together long enough to find a world that has it.”


    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice had a certain cold seriousness to it now. Silence rang out as the two sat in perfect darkness, the sun completely set.


    “Well?” Alice demanded, the jovial tone of their earlier discussion gone.


    “I just mean… It was an accident I kidnapped you, and I mean, look at all that’s happened so far! With the corridor and the lab and getting arrested were lucky to be alive! If we find a world you like…”


    “What!” She said, sounding enraged as she interrupted him, “You’re just going to ditch me?!”


    “No, that’s not what…”


    “Leave me behind like a sack of garbage as you get to keep on your merry way, jumping from world to world?!”


    “What’s so merry about it?!” Jake snapped “Not like I asked for this, not like I want to be here! You though, you have a choice!”


    “Doesn’t sound like it!” Alice growled back.


    “Look…” Jake tried to say again, only to feel pain suddenly creep up the sides of his legs as he felt her begin to kick at him in the dark.


    “Don’t bother explaining it. I really don''t care. Just do me a favor, don’t ditch me here, would ya? Don’t want to have to jump to my death.”


    “Alice…” but he received no further response from her, and as the dark of night wore on he pressed back into the wall behind him a deep sigh escaping his frame the jovial atmosphere of the earlier argument destroyed.