The Unicorn's Forest

Jenn took a deep breath. She wasn't sure if she had merely ignored that possibility or if it hadn't really occurred to her about the images that she herself had noticed. Besides, as she thought about it, she could also remember a few instances of something like that happening when she'd first brought them into a dream conference.

"Don't worry about it, Charlie," Tim said conversationally. "We're sure you'll do well. Though, we would like to know if that's all you wanted to talk about."

"Uh, why wouldn't it be?" Jenn asked, feeling like she might be missing something here. She did have other things to talk about, but she couldn't say why they thought she'd go to this extent just for one thing like that.

"Well, this is you, we're talking about," Wes replied. Though as Jenn scowled at him, he merely smirked. "When it comes to things that's outside your comfort zone, you tend to get a little… hmmm… I guess the best way to describe it would be that you just get all stressed out and tend to overthink things. So, I guess it's a good thing that you've been able to handle it for so long already without having to reach out to us for help with it."

Jenn let out a sigh. For some reason, his explanation merely made her depressed. She knew he didn't mean to do that, but that still seemed to be the effect it had on her.

"Don't worry about that," Beth chimed in. "Just tell us what it is that you're having trouble with. We'll do what we can to help you out." As Beth finished her statement, a look came over her eyes that Jenn couldn't help but feel a little uneasy about. "It's just like that song from that one episode on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that you got into. Where it had the song… uh, I think it's called 'A True, True Friend' where one of them is singing that… uh, 'Pinkie Pie is in trouble. We need to get there by her side. We will do what we can now, for together we can be her guide.'"

Jenn knew which song Beth as referring to and while she found it incredibly embarrassing to have to be seen in a position like Pinkie Pie was there, although somehow how she also found it incredibly comforting too. To the point where she couldn't help but smile. No matter how much she wished she wasn't.

Which certainly didn't escape her friend's notice.

"Yeah, exactly like that," Beth continued, smiling in return. "We'll be here for you if you need any help. Besides, once we get to where you are, it's clear we'll have an army to help us find that griffin canyon."

Charlie felt a little surprise at seeing everything flash through her mind that Beth had done in order to look into three griffin canyons that she'd become aware of. Though, one piece of information completely shocked Jenn.

"You thought you might have been pregnant?" she blurted, unable to help herself at that moment.

Beth looked at Jenn for a moment with a surprised and uneasy expression as everyone else's heads slowly turned towards Beth.

"You've been having sex?" Hannah asked, her tone a mixture of being incredulous and impressed.

"Yeah she has, though I didn't think that was the reason she'd stopped," Wes remarked.

Which in turn caused Beth to look at Wes. "What do you mean by that?!"

Wes merely shrugged. "It's just that everyone knew about your threesomes. We just didn't care enough to say anything about them."

Jenn couldn't help but feel satisfaction as Beth's face turned red in embarrassment. While part of her felt a little sympathy about it, she still couldn't help but feel satisfied that she wasn't the only one who was getting embarrassed, if not mortified in this dream conference.

Although, on the other hand, she was pretty sure she could do without the knowledge that Beth had been sleeping with two people at once. There were some things she really didn't care to know, even if it was about her best friend. Especially if it put images in her head that she wouldn't care to have.

"You know, as entertaining as this is, maybe we should get back to what we had been talking about," Hannah said, looking like she was regretting saying that much. "If we don't, who knows when we'll start waking up, right?"

"True," Tim agreed. "We can always get on Beth when she gets back before we head out to meet up with Charlie."

"Oh, just one last side question," Beth said eagerly, and Jenn was confident she understood why Beth was so eager to change the subject. "Why does everyone there call you 'Jenn?' Are you trying to go incognito or something?"

Jenn sighed. "It just was easier to have them call me that than try to get them to fully pronounce my name, since I couldn't say it for them to hear."

"Why? It's not like you never learned to talk, right?" Hannah asked.

"Uh, we're getting off topic again," Tim said, "We can discuss this again later, remember?"

"Right, sorry," Hannah said, sounding a little chagrined.

"So, what were we talking about again?" Wes asked.

"And this is why we need to stay on topic," Beth declared.

"You're one to talk, you were part of us getting off topic in the first place," Hannah retorted.

"Guys!" Tim snapped. "Focus! Charlie's the one who should be talking. Or we'll never get to it before we wake up."

"Hurry up and talk, Charlie," Hannah said, her voice filled with amusement. "Before we get bored again."

Jenn merely sighed. She couldn't say that she was surprised. Especially since she knew this was how they typically were. Even though she wasn't sure how intentional a lot of it was most of the time.

Shaking her head to clear those thoughts from her mind, Jenn said, "I guess it's not so much a specific problem after the name thing, but I'm not doing so well on having to give approval for almost everything that's been getting done."

"Uh, Charlie," Tim said, sounding like he was trying to essentially handle her with kid gloves. "A little more detail, please? It's kind of hard to understand what you're talking about when you don't give us any frame of references."

Jenn merely took a deep breath to try and calm herself. She had a feeling she was rushing into explaining things simply because she was nervous about merely talking about these things in general.

"Well, uh, I guess it's like they expect me to be the final say in almost every decision and they expect me to know what to do, no matter what the problem is," Jenn said, feeling like the words came out in a rush, like they just wanted to get out. Though, she did feel a little relieved when she finished talking.

"Well, if you're having trouble doing that, why not delegate?" Beth asked, as if that was the simplest thing in the world and she should have thought about that on her own already. "Some of the other stuff you'll just have to blunder through, but delegating will certainly help. I mean, there's plenty of historical, and religious, examples if you'd like me to explain a few."

"Maybe another time," Tim replied before Jenn could even open her mouth. "I'm pretty sure that there's more that she'd probably like to say."

Jenn wasn't sure how accurate what Tim said, but she didn't feel like arguing about it. She just would rather get this over with as fast as she could.

"I could do a few things like that, but mostly the problems are that we can't find any hardwoods to make tools, we can't find any metals that we can turn into steel so we can make tools, oh and plus, we're not sure what the seasons on this world are just yet. So, we could be close to winter while at the same time, it could still be spring," Jenn cut in, not sure if the others would mind so much.

"Wait, what're you talking about now?" Beth demanded, a glint in her eyes that Jenn wasn't sure she really liked seeing. "How would the people you're with not know what season is on… the…" Jenn didn't like the look of realization that was appearing on Beth's face as she trailed off for a minute before quickly adding, "You took them through a gate! That's why none of you know what season you have going on right now."

While Jenn would have preferred not having any of them have figured that bit out, she at least hoped to have gotten an answer to her problem before having to deal with them returning their focus on where they might be able to find her. Though, she realized that while it gave them a clear idea of where they'd be able to find her, she couldn't say that they still have been able to really help her out on her problems unless she pretty much did let them know where she essentially was.

"Wait, so if you're on the other side of a gate, how are you managing the dream conference with us?" Wes asked, looking like he was asking Beth more than Jenn.

Jenn opened her mouth anyway to answer that she really didn't know, but was beat to the punch by Tim. "She came back through the gate, obviously. Otherwise you know she wouldn't have been able to manage it."

As Wes seemed to accept Tim's explanation, Jenn decided to not try to correct the misunderstanding. It wasn't a real issue as far as she was concerned, though she did wonder if there was a reason she was able to reach them in a dream conference while on a different world. She couldn't help but wonder if she should talk to Heathcliff about it later on. It certainly would be good to figure out.

Though, she also couldn't help but wonder why it was that her friends had picked up on her thoughts about where she was and that she was essentially the leader of the people she'd saved but they didn't pick up on the fact that she was still on that other world. That she had merely thought to try it out before she came back through the gate to see about recruiting more people to join the settlement that 'her people' had started.

She hadn't really expected it to work, but since it did, she was happy to have that bit of information. That she wouldn't need to worry about where anyone was in order to talk with them in a dream conference… or at least she wouldn't need to worry as much about where they were. As this showed that pulling people she knew into a dream conference had a much greater range than using their magic to talk with each other had.

"So, which gate did you bring the through?" Beth asked, her focus clearly still on that subject.

Jenn couldn't think for a moment. She had thought that Beth had gleaned the information from her thoughts, which she would have assumed that she'd also have picked up on which gate that she'd used. Yet, here she was asking about that very point.

"Uh, didn't you get that from my thoughts or something?" Jenn asked, unsure if she should be worried about what Beth might answer her with.

"Of course not!" Beth snapped. "You mentioned about how your people didn't know when winter would come, so it's clear that they're in an unfamiliar place, but with the level of technology on this world, and the fact that it wouldn't be too hard to extrapolate what season it was from where you had been to know what it was where you ended up, that you had to have crossed to another world."

Jenn blinked. She was pretty sure that Beth's reasoning was solid, but somehow she felt like it was still a foreign language. Like her mind wasn't able to process what had been said.

"You know, how about you go find Charlie and bring her over to the marquis' place?" Hannah asked. "That way we can all get together and we'll be able to really take the time to get everyone on the same page of what's been happening." Hannah paused for a moment before quickly adding, "Oh, and Charlie, why not bring the kids you said adopted you? We'd love to meet them."

Jenn couldn't help but give a weak smile and small laugh. She wasn't sure what she could do to avoid that, not to mention the fact that her mind was going blank. Like her brain had frozen or something. She didn't want her friends to know where she was, but it seemed like they had found out.

While she could just move and find another place to be when they reached the gate her people had established their settlement through, she knew that it wasn't like her people could just pack up and move with her. Not to mention that she'd have to return periodically anyway to deal with some of the other problems that would certainly come up. So, she knew that all her friends would really have to do was to camp out there until she returned. As she certainly wasn't going to just leave them like that. Not only would she be abandoning the responsibility that she'd already accepted, but she had a feeling her people wouldn't take it too kindly if she just left and didn't return at all.

"Hey, Charlie!" Tim called, pulling Jenn out of her thoughts. "Where'd you go? We were asking where the gate you'd gone through with your people is."

Jenn felt like her heart was beating rapidly, though up to this point she hadn't even noticed it at all. Not to mention how she was pretty sure that all that she could see around her was illusion, since it was all essentially in a dream. Yet, at the same time, she was struggling to figure out how to get out of that situation.

What happened to her at that moment was that she just felt something in her mind essentially stop. She let go of everything. She let go of her worries and fears. She let go of her ideas of what she should do down the road. She even let go of her magic, and so had stopped pulling it.

When that happened, her surroundings disappeared as well as her friends. However, she was still present. And while she didn't move, she still suddenly had a very unsettling sensation of falling. She didn't feel any air blowing her hair upwards or any of the usual pieces that would indicate that she was in fact falling. It was similar to how she would feel like she was moving while she wasn't actually moving when she was first collecting her friends for the dream conference.

Only, this time she wasn't sure if she'd screwed herself over or even how long it would last. She couldn't help but wonder if she screamed if it would have an effect. Though, she also couldn't be sure that it would do her any good.

Then suddenly it was over. She opened her eyes to near complete darkness. She wasn't sure where she was for a moment, until she heard some of the other sounds from the settlement that her people had built.

When she realized that, she settled back down and took a deep breath. She wasn't sure what time it was, but it didn't really matter. What did was the fact that she knew her friends would only be taking a look at all the gates they knew about. Especially since this was a gate that she knew full well they were aware of. Which meant that it would be on the list.

So, she had to expect that they'd be there sooner or later, even though she really didn't know where they were in relation to the location of the gate. Or even if they would even think of this gate. Though, eventually they'd come through this gate, if only so they could return back to Earth, since it was the one that they'd come through in the first place to get to that world.

There were just too many possibilities for her to really get too worried about it happening in the next few days at least. It was a problem for her to worry about maybe in a week at the earliest.

Besides, there was always the possibility that they'd get distracted and forget. While she couldn't say that it was a strong possibility, it was still there. Although, on the same note, her friends could always remember about it afterwards at any time.

Yet at the same time, Jenn knew that if she continued thinking about all of that, that she wasn't going to get any sleep. Which would just make her even more miserable when it came time to leave in the morning. She wasn't sure what to expect overall during her search. She just knew that if she didn't get enough sleep, that it might even be harder to deal with those who would be trying to get her to change her mind and send someone else with the authority to speak on her behalf.

Maybe if she had one of her friends with her or she knew the people here better she might actually consider it. Yet, part of the reason she felt she should go herself is simply because she knew that being a thought mage would help her to know if anyone she spoke to would be genuine in any agreements they made with her or if they were planning on stabbing her in the back the first chance they got. Or even if they were coming up on an ambush to begin with.

Somehow feeling better, Jenn turned on her side and took a deep breath. While this straw mattress wasn't exactly comfortable, it still beat having to sleep on the bare stone, dirt, or wood flooring she'd had to sleep on as a slave. Even now she found this straw rather luxurious in comparison.